OPINION: By Walter Curt
For most of Governor Glenn Youngkin’s term, Richmond was trying to govern with one hand tied behind its back. Washington ran interference; blue‑stacked school boards shrugged; “equity” bureaucrats invented new euphemisms as if words could paper over reality. And yet Youngkin threaded the needle—advancing parental‑rights guidance, keeping a lid on the most radical experiments, and holding the line until the political weather changed.
Today, with a federal administration finally willing to enforce the plain meaning of Title IX, Virginians have a real chance to restore sanity—if we choose wisely. That means four years of Governor Winsome Earle‑Sears working in tandem with the Trump Justice Department and Education Department to rip this nonsense out root and branch. Give a good mechanic the right tools, and she’ll fix the engine; keep handing her a butter knife, and you’ll still be on the shoulder when the storm hits.
Consider what Northern Virginia just put families through—three scandals in as many weeks, all traceable to ideology crowding out common sense. In Arlington, a registered sex offender repeatedly accessed girls’ locker rooms, exploiting a policy that treats “gender identity” as a golden ticket to spaces meant for women and girls. Superintendent Francisco Durán told the community the district “did not knowingly admit a sex offender,” which is cold comfort to parents whose daughters were exposed to him. The case—now a political and criminal flashpoint—vindicates what parents have been saying for years: privacy and safety aren’t bigotry; they’re boundaries.
Next door in Fairfax, reports allege school staff arranged abortions for minors without informing parents—and may even have tapped public funds to do it. Governor Youngkin didn’t hem and haw; he ordered the Virginia State Police to open a criminal investigation immediately. The district says it’s investigating; Virginians are owed more than boilerplate. If it happened, it’s not just a breach of trust—it’s a moral and legal earthquake.
Then there’s Loudoun, where two teenage boys were slapped with ten-day suspensions for the high crime of asking why a girl was in the boys’ locker room—after that student recorded them on video. Title IX “found” them guilty of “sexual harassment” and “sex-based discrimination.” Their families—and the Attorney General—are fighting back. And now it’s confirmed: a third boy, who is Muslim, had his charges dropped entirely, while the two Christian boys were punished harshly for the same actions. That double standard isn’t speculation, it’s documented fact—and it raises unavoidable questions about religious favoritism, political bias, and the outright corruption of “equity” discipline. Even if you disagree on all the culture-war shorthand, this is not how a school system behaves when it remembers it works for parents.
This month brought a hard pivot: the U.S. Department of Education concluded that bathroom and locker‑room policies in five Northern Virginia districts—Arlington, Fairfax, Loudoun, Prince William, and Alexandria—violate Title IX and began moving to restrict federal funds after the boards refused to change course. For years, conservatives were told “You can’t do anything; Title IX says otherwise.” No—it never said otherwise. It said what it has always said, and now there’s an administration willing to enforce the law as written. When federal authority stops playing favorites, local ideologues lose their shield.
Leadership matters. Just last night in Arlington, Winsome Earle‑Sears showed up at the school board meeting and said what every ordinary parent is thinking: two sexes, two locker rooms, and stop pretending reality is optional. The activists waved their signs; some of the rhetoric was ugly enough to embarrass a 1950s segregationist. Sears didn’t flinch. That’s what the job requires now—steadiness in the hurricane, and the courage to say “no” when fashionable people are shouting “yes.”
Meanwhile, where is Abigail Spanberger? On the scandals roiling the very districts she depends on, we get posture and platitudes: soft-focus ads and an “education plan” that dodges the mess in her own backyard. As of this writing, I can’t find a direct, substantive response from her addressing the Arlington locker-room failures, Fairfax’s abortion probe, or the Loudoun suspensions. Virginians deserve straight answers, not curated vibes. And beyond that silence, court records confirm that Spanberger’s top campaign brass are entangled in an ongoing defamation lawsuit over a malicious smear against a decorated Army reservist. Her campaign manager, communications director, and press secretary have all testified under oath to their involvement, and Spanberger herself has been deposed. Her lawyers are working overtime to block her testimony, even as she personally signed an affidavit claiming she had “no knowledge” of the hit job. That claim strains credibility. If this is the model—silence on schools, denial on ethics—then the “moderate” branding is just a coat of paint over the same old machine.
Let’s be clear about what Youngkin actually managed under hostile skies. After his victory, the state issued model policies restoring parental authority and biological reality to school operations; many blue boards refused to implement them, and the administration’s enforcement tools were limited. That’s not failure; that’s federalism under siege. What changed in 2025 is the federal referee. DOJ Civil Rights and the Department of Education are no longer looking the other way. When Richmond and Washington pull in the same direction, reform stops being a press release and starts being a policy.
So here’s the choice. We can hand the keys to a politician who will nod along while Northern Virginia bureaucrats keep experimenting on our kids. Or we can elect Winsome Earle‑Sears—a Marine mom with a backbone—who will spend the next four years working with a Trump administration that’s finally enforcing the law, to restore parental rights, protect girls’ spaces, and make schools focus on reading, writing, and the Constitution. Virginia is not a laboratory for fads. It’s the Commonwealth that gave the country Washington, Jefferson, and Madison—a place where common sense was born and still knows its own name. Choose wisely, Virginia. The future of your schools, your families, and your freedom depends on it.
