The newly sworn-in Virginia Governor Glenn youngkin signed 11 executive orders on his first day in office.
Youngkin announced the list of executive actions in a news release after being sworn in as the commonwealth’s 74th governor, the first Republican elected since 2009, on Saturday in Richmond, Virginia.
The governor signed nine executive orders that address the following issues:
- To restore excellence in education by ending the use of divisive concepts, including Critical Race Theory, in public education.
- To empower Virginia parents in their children’s education and upbringing by allowing parents to make decisions on whether their child wears a mask in school.
- To restore integrity and confidence in the Parole Board of the Commonwealth of Virginia.
- To investigate wrongdoing in Loudoun County.
- To make government work for Virginians by creating the Commonwealth Chief Transformation Officer.
- To declare Virginia open for business.
- To combat and prevent human trafficking and provide support to survivors.
- To establish a commission to combat antisemitism.
- To withdraw from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI).
He also signed 2 executive directives that would cut job regulations by 25% and rescind the Covid vaccine mandate for state employees.
He called for a probe of Loudoun County Public Schools’ handling of two sexual assault cases. We discussed one of the cases where a skirt-wearing Virginia boy raped one of his classmates in the bathroom.
The boy was sentenced on January 13 to a residential treatment facility as well as being placed on the sex offender registry for the rest of his life.
Judge Pamela Brooks said she had never before made such an order in a juvenile case but knew she needed to after reviewing the results of his psychosexual and psychological evaluations.
“Yours scared me,” she said of the evaluations.
“I don’t know how else to put it. They scared me for yourself. They scared me for your family. They scared me for society,” the judge admitted.
Another order declared an end to “the use of inherently divisive concepts, including Critical Race Theory,” in public schools. Something his superintendent of public instruction was tasked with carrying out by reviewing “all changes” made to the state’s public school curriculum over the past four years.
This seems to be a promising start to Youngkin’s career as Governor of Virginia.
