FXBG Advance Monday, July 6, 2026
The New FXBG Advance: Three Squares a Day. Steve Farnsworth: Don’t Expect Virginia Democratic Disputes to Cool Off Any Time Soon. Phil Huber: Spanberger, Compromise, and a Lesson for Washington.
The New FXBG Advance: Three Squares a Day
Plus Seconds for Dessert
By Steve Watkins, ADVANCE EDITOR
You might have noticed—I sure hope you did—that The Advance came out in a different format the past several days. Instead of a newsletter with links to articles, columns, and stories showing up in your inbox at 6 a.m. on Thursday, Friday, and Sunday, we sent you our posts one at a time throughout the day: “The Morning Read” at 6, “The Midday Read” at 11, and “The Afternoon Read” at 4. We’ll be following that schedule going forward, with the newsletter (dessert in our admittedly tortured headline metaphor) now going out in the evenings with links to the earlier posts—in case you might have missed something and want to go back and check it out.
Our plan is to run with this new delivery system Sunday through Friday. Saturdays we’ll only post once in the morning—“Our Weekly Reader,” with links to several posts that ran during the week and that we think will be of particular interest—once again in case you missed them, or if there’s something you want to reread or share.
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Don’t Expect Virginia Democratic Disputes to Cool Off Any Time Soon
The Budget May Be Settled, But Little Else Appears to Be
By Stephen J. Farnsworth, SPECIAL TO THE ADVANCE
Virginia lawmakers approved a budget just in time for the new fiscal year, but the feuds among Democrats that triggered the lengthy political standoff in Richmond are not going away anytime soon.
At the core of this dispute, one finds sharply different views of how Democrats should present themselves in today’s Virginia. The long-standing impasse over the regulation and taxation of data center projects, papered over with an 11th-hour compromise that averted a Washington-style government shutdown, speaks to the depth of internal partisan disagreements.
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Finishing the Budget Race
Spanberger, Compromise, and a Lesson for Washington
By Phil Huber, ADVANCE COLUMNIST
We just watched a race in Richmond that most Virginians never signed up for: the race to pass a state budget before July 1. From the sidelines, it looked odd. The runners started with energy, then seemed to slow down the closer they got to the finish line. At times, it looked like they might stop altogether.
Yet in the end, they crossed the line. The state did not shut down. Teachers will be paid, troopers will stay on the roads, and services our communities depend on will continue. Here in the Fredericksburg area, that means paychecks for school staff and state employees, support for local services, and continuity for families who rely on public programs. How they finished matters—and it tells us something about our new governor, Abigail Spanberger, and the promises she made to Virginia voters.
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