News Releases

WHAT VIRGINIANS ARE SEEING: ATTORNEY GENERAL JAY JONES SHARES WEEKLY ROUNDUP OF ACTIONS TAKEN       

Takes action to protect consumers in consequential merger proposal, fights federal overreach, and invests in communities 

RICHMOND, Va. -- Attorney General Jones continues to advocate for ratepayers in front of the SCC, delivers on his promise to fight back against federal overreach, and invests in communities across the Commonwealth.  

Protecting Consumers 

Attorney General Jones told the SCC that the 180-day review period for the Dominion Energy-NextEra Energy merger proposal should be reset, following the companies’ substantial modifications to the original proposal. The Virginia Code charges the Office of the Attorney General with the responsibility to represent ratepayers in front of the State Corporation Commission as they consider cases that impact the interests of consumers, including this merger.   

Virginia Mercury and NBC12 and Cardinal News: ‘A different deal on the table’: AG Jay Jones asks SCC to reset the clock on Dominion-NextEra merger 

Attorney General Jay Jones told state regulators Friday that they should reset the 180-day review time period for the $67 billion Dominion Energy-NextEra Energy merger proposal, after the companies unveiled expanded conditions of the deal last week.  

On Sept. 14, Dominion and NextEra jointly filed supplemental documents to the State Corporation Commission outlining new additions to the proposal, including extending residential customers’ bill credits to four years instead of two.  

The companies also pitched five-year job protections for Virginia staff working on the project, instead of 18 months, and a promise of a new office tower in downtown Richmond. 

In the filing, NextEra CEO John Ketchum said several stakeholder hearings since the original filing of the case on July 15 prompted the changes that could make the deal more attractive. 

“The Supplemental Merger Commitments… address the comments we have heard and propose to provide greater immediate customer benefits, headcount commitments, meaningful economic development initiatives…” Ketchum stated in the supplemental filing on Sept. 14. 

Jones filed testimony on Sept. 18 arguing that the changes are significant enough that they should be considered an amendment to the initial proposal and that the 180-day countdown clock should be reset to start with the Sept. 14 filing.  

He stated that the 180-day limit for the SCC to consider the case should be reset to the date of the supplemental filing to allow proper time for intervenors to review the new details, allow for the public to be engaged, and for any additional interested parties to file as intervenors in the case. 

“The Joint Petitioners have put a different deal on the table,” Jones’ testimony read. 

Because the companies’ supplemental filing was submitted the first business day after the deadline to file as an intervenor in the case, Jones said, it “raises serious notice concerns.” 

“Case participants cannot simply take the Joint Petitioners at their word that these new proposals are unqualified benefits that will accrue to Virginia ratepayers and citizens,” Jones said in his filing.  

A proposal of this magnitude, Jones said, and the new conditions “prompt meaningful questions that must be asked through the discovery process to build a full evidentiary record about these commitments’ impacts” to the public at just and reasonable rates.   

As it currently stands, the SCC must make their final decision on the merger by Jan. 11, which would mark 180 days after the filing date of the initial proposal.  

If regulators approve Jones’ request to restart the 180-day merger review period from Sept. 14, the case would be ongoing during the regular General Assembly session, which begins in January. 

[...] 

If the SCC sides with Jones, a final decision on the merger case could be expected in March. 

Richmond Times Dispatch: Virginia AG seeks more review of $67B NextEra-Dominion merger 

Promises of more bill credits in NextEra Energy’s proposed takeover of Dominion Energy mean the State Corporation Commission should take more time to consider the deal, Attorney General Jay Jones said. 

Earlier this month, NextEra said it would offer residential bill credits for four years, instead of two, bring 600 new jobs to Virginia and direct $100 million of stockholder funds to Dominion’s Energy Share assistance program for Virginians struggling with energy bills. 

With that, NextEra and Dominion “have put a different deal on the table,” Jones said in a filing with the SCC. 

State law gives the commission up to 180 days to consider utility mergers, and the clock started ticking when NextEra and Dominion formally asked the SCC to approve the $67 billion merger in July. 

The deal can’t go ahead unless the SCC approves, but if it doesn’t act by what’s currently a mid-January deadline, state law says the merger can go through. 

“The proposals filed under the guise of 'supplemental testimony' amount to an entirely new proposal,” Jones said. 

If the SCC agrees that additional bill credits and other measures should be considered in its review, that would present significant procedural concerns because of the 180-day deadline, Jones said. 

He noted that NextEra and Dominion decided to file the supplemental testimony on the first business day after the SCC's deadline for interested parties to formally intervene in the case. 

That raises serious concerns about whether that gave interested parties sufficient notice, Jones said. 

“Case participants cannot simply take (NextEra and Dominion) at their word that these new proposals are unqualified benefits that will accrue to Virginia ratepayers and citizens,” Jones said. 

“As with any proposal, especially one of this magnitude, these newly proposed commitments prompt meaningful questions that must be asked through the discovery process to build a full evidentiary record about these commitments’ impacts to ‘adequate service to the public at just and reasonable rates,'” Jones said, citing the language the SCC must consider when deciding whether to approve or reject a utility merger. 

“Simply put, the filing of ‘significant expansions’ to the (NextEra and Dominion) proposal in this extremely important case just over a month before the filing deadline for intervenor testimony does not ensure intervenors have adequate time to analyze, conduct discovery on, and compile testimony regarding these 'significant expansions,'” Jones said, quoting the term the two firms themselves used to describe the changes. 

WTVR: Virginia AG says Dominion-NextEra 'put a different deal on the table,' seeks merger review reset 

Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones is asking the State Corporation Commission to restart the clock on the proposed merger between Dominion Energy and NextEra, saying new commitments filed by the companies amount to an amendment of the original merger proposal — not a simple supplement to existing testimony. 

"The Joint Petitioners have put a different deal on the table," Jones said in the Sept. 18 SCC filing. 

On Sept. 14, Dominion Energy and NextEra announced new promises, including doubling bill credits, creating 1,000 new jobs, building a new office tower for NextEra employees, and maintaining current Virginia employee headcount levels for five years. 

Jones said those new commitments require more time for review. 

Fighting Federal Overreach 

Attorney General Jones demanded that the federal government initiate an investigation into reports that the Department of Homeland Security may have violated Virginia’s laws as part of new DHS program, following a recent whistleblower report. Also this week, Attorney General Jones and a coalition stopped Donald Trump’s SNAP penalties and stood in opposition to a proposed federal law that could put federal funding for Medicaid at risk and interfere with state oversight.  

PBS: DHS may have violated state election law, Virginia's AG says after whistleblower report 

Virginia's attorney general said Thursday that the Department of Homeland Security may have violated several state laws after a whistleblower accused its employees of misrepresenting themselves on voter lookup tools to hunt for noncitizen voters. 

In a letter obtained by The Associated Press, Attorney General Jay Jones demanded that DHS confirm in writing whether it had directed anyone to access Virginia voters' information without first obtaining permission from those voters. 

"Virginia Election Code does not permit disclosure of this protected information to the federal government without a court order," he wrote in the letter to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin. The state explicitly limits its voter lookup tools to individuals who attest under penalty of law that they are looking up their own records. 

The AP has asked DHS for comment on the letter. 

Jones also asked Mullin to preserve all related records, including access logs, correspondence and training materials mentioned in the whistleblower report. 

The anonymous report, published Monday by Democratic Senate leaders, includes transcripts of a DHS training for a group of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services staffers, who it says were forced in late August to drop other work, complete a less than two-hour training and begin running DHS-provided lists of people through state voter registration systems to find "unlawful voters." 

The whistleblower contends that agents have been asked to review 40 individuals per day, giving them about 12 minutes to determine whether each person is a legal voter and create federal records of anyone who is not. 

The Virginian Pilot: Homeland Security agents may have illegally accessed Virginia voter rolls, whistleblower alleges 

A whistleblower alleged that Department of Homeland Security agents may have illegally accessed Virginia voter records. 

On Sept. 8, a whistleblower made a protected disclosure to the Senate accusing agents working on the Unlawful Voter Initiative — the department’s name for its investigation — of having used Virginia’s voter registration database to cross-reference names of noncitizens. 

The whistleblower said USCIS Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate personnel were directed to impersonate Virginia voters by using personal information to access Virginians’ voter records and falsely certify that they were the voters whose records they were accessing. 

Virginia’s online voter lookup portal requires users to certify that they are accessing their own voter registration record or have been expressly authorized by the voter. The site also warns that it is unlawful to access another voter’s record. 

The whistleblower also alleged that agents were assigned to review 40 subjects per day to meet a department quota. The whistleblower said agency training explicitly acknowledged Virginia’s attestation requirement. 

In a statement Tuesday, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson acknowledged the department accessed voter rolls. 

“The Department accessed publicly available data from states’ voter rolls and cross referenced them with known aliens in our systems. It’s not rocket science; it’s an easy step to secure our elections,” the spokesperson said. 

Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones sent a letter to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin on Sept. 17 citing several Virginia statutes that he said agents may have violated. 

“Users that falsely make this certification in an effort to gather protected voter information may be violating several Virginia criminal statutes,” Jones said. “The whistleblower also alleged that (Office of Chief Counsel) informed agents that they would not be ‘personally liable for conducting these searches,’ which further suggests that leadership is aware that the underlying conduct violates state law.” 

Virginia law protects voter information from disclosure. Jones said DHS would have needed a court order to access the records. 

Richmond Times Dispatch: Virginia AG challenges Trump administration voter probe 

Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones stepped into a national political spotlight on the eve of early voting for the next Congress by challenging President Donald Trump's administration for an undercover probe of state voter rolls that he said may be illegal. 

Jones, elected last fall in a Democratic sweep of statewide offices, sent a letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin on Thursday demanding accountability for the administration's "Unlawful Voter Initiative," which allegedly directed federal agents to access confidential voting records in Virginia without voters' knowledge or permission. 

He cited a whistleblower report, which Senate Democrats publicly released earlier this week, alleging that homeland security agents had been directed to use the Citizen Portal to access Virginia voting records, which are generally available only to voters themselves or to someone they expressly authorize to view them. The state requires anyone seeking to view the records to certify that they have the authority to do so and warns that falsely answering would violate criminal law. 

"These allegations strongly suggest that (department) leadership are knowingly directing staff to submit false certifications on Virginia's Citizen Portal in an effort to gather information they are legally barred from accessing," he said in the three-page letter, which The Times-Dispatch obtained. 

Virginia isn't the only state identified in the whistleblower report as targeted by the homeland security initiative. Still, Jones quickly drew national attention for his letter, which the New York Times first reported on Thursday night, hours after Trump participated in a "tele-rally" for three incumbent Virginia Republican congressional representatives whom Democrats have targeted in congressional midterm elections on Nov. 3. 

Early in-person voting began on Friday in Virginia, and absentee ballots went into the mail this week after the U.S. Supreme Court denied Trump's request to allow the U.S. Postal Service to implement a plan to limit absentee voting by mail.  

"He's been very aggressive on this issue and developed a modest national profile," Richmond political analyst Bob Holsworth said of the attorney general, a former delegate whose late father had long served as a circuit court judge and delegate from Norfolk. 

Jones does not conclude his letter but instead demands detailed answers about the initiative undertaken by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services' Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate, as part of the Department of Homeland Security. 

"To ensure that Virginians' privacy rights are fully protected, I seek confirmation from the Department of Homeland Security whether it has accessed the Citizen Portal to search Virginia voters and, if so, that it has discontinued this unauthorized and illegal use of the Citizen Portal," he writes. 

Jones said state law allows limited exceptions for third parties to access voting records through the portal, after certifying "that they are using the information for specific permissible purposes." 

"In contrast, Virginia Election Code does not permit disclosure of this protected information to the federal government without a court order," he said. 

The state elections website includes information about voter registration state, their polling place and voting history, the attorney general explained to Mullin. 

"To ensure that this information is properly protected, as mandated by the Virginia Election Code, the Department (of Elections) requires Citizen Portal users to certify that they are either looking up their own information, or that they are expressly authorized by a voter to access their information," he said. 

[...] 

"However, the Office of the Attorney General of Virginia is not aware of any blanket legal authority that would permit (homeland security) staff to obtain protected information from state officials without a court order," he said. 

Jones asked Mullin to confirm in writing by next Friday whether the department had directed staff to access confidential Virginia voter information without their permission and, if so, "how many Virginia voters' information was accessed." 

He also demanded that the department staff "cease making any additional false certifications to obtain access to Citizen Portal, and cease accessing protected voter information" through the state system. 

PRESS RELEASE: Attorney General Jones Permanently Blocks Trump Administration's SNAP Penalties   

“Food insecurity has hit Virginians across the Commonwealth in all types of communities, with Donald Trump’s ongoing war on struggling families. Protecting access to this critical program for our most vulnerable was a day one priority of my administration that I am proud to deliver on,” said Attorney General Jones. “Virginians are already stretching paychecks as far as they can and while Donald Trump might not care about the impact the cost crisis is having on them, this office does. We will not stop fighting for the programs and agencies created to support our most vulnerable Virginians.”   

Virginia Mercury and CBS19: Federal judge strikes down SNAP deadline that put Virginia at risk of added costs 

Virginia and other states cannot be penalized under a Trump administration deadline that gave them too little time to put new federal food assistance rules into effect, a federal judge in Oregon has ruled.  

The decision also rejects federal guidance that would have denied benefits to some lawful permanent residents, including people who previously entered the country as refugees or were granted asylum.  

The Sept. 17 ruling resolves a lawsuit brought by a coalition of 22 states, co-led by Oregon and New York. Virginia joined the case in January, after the court had issued a preliminary injunction in December.  

For Virginia, the decision removes a potential source of added costs as state and local agencies work through changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.  

It does not undo the changes Congress made to the program in its 2025 tax and spending law H.R. 1, including a provision requiring states with higher payment error rates to cover part of the cost of benefits beginning in fiscal 2028.  

Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones welcomed the decision in a statement Wednesday, describing access to food assistance as a priority for his office.  

“Virginians are already stretching paychecks as far as they can,” Jones said. “We will not stop fighting for the programs and agencies created to support our most vulnerable Virginians.” 

Jones’ office announced Virginia’s joining the lawsuit in February, following a review of existing litigation after he took office in January. 

PRESS RELEASE: Attorney General Jay Jones Joins Coalition of States in Pushing Back on Federal Rule That Could Undermine Medicaid, Insurance Regulation, and Health Coverage 

“Virginians depend on strong, stable Medicaid and clear, accountable oversight of their health insurance. This proposed rule would undermine both,” Attorney General Jones said. “Our coalition is standing together because CMS has overstepped its authority in ways that could reduce critical funding, create unnecessary barriers, and interfere with state responsibilities that protect families and their access to care. We’re urging CMS to pull back this proposal and work with states, not against us, to ensure Medicaid remains reliable for the people who need it most.” 

WRIC and WAVY: Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones joins states opposing proposed federal Medicaid rule 

Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones has joined a coalition of 24 attorneys general opposing a proposed federal rule that they say could affect Medicaid funding, state insurance regulation and the operation of health insurance exchanges.  

The attorneys general filed a comment letter with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), opposing the proposed rule. The rule would change how the federal government evaluates certain health care-related taxes and payments collected by states. 

CMS says the proposal is intended to implement changes made by Congress in 2025 and establish new limits on certain health care-related taxes. The agency says the rule is designed to ensure states share responsibility for financing Medicaid and estimates it would reduce federal spending by $246 billion over 10 years.  

The coalition led by Jones argues the proposal goes beyond what Congress authorized and could put federal Medicaid funding at risk.  

"Virginians depend on strong, stable Medicaid and clear, accountable oversight of their health insurance. This proposed rule would undermine both," Jones said in a news release. 

The proposed rule would establish new requirements for states involving health care-related taxes, including taxes involving health insurers. CMS says the proposal would establish health insurers as a permissible class for health care-related taxes and bring existing state taxes on health insurers under federal oversight. It would also create new reporting requirements for states. 

Invests in Communities through TRIAD Grants 

Attorney General Jones announced the distribution of $75,000 to 30 TRIAD chapters across the state, as part of the 2026-2027 TRIAD grant. Each year, chartered TRIAD chapters can apply for grants from the Office of the Attorney General to support their local programs. TRIAD is a cooperative effort of law enforcement agencies, senior citizens, and senior organizations to share information on how seniors can avoid becoming victims of crime and enhance the safety and quality of their lives.    

PRESS RELEASE: Attorney General Jones Awards $75,000 to 30 TRIAD Chapters Across the Commonwealth   

“Virginians everywhere continue to experience an increasingly complex threat environment as it relates to scams and fraud, and our seniors are especially vulnerable to these attacks. TRIAD organizations across the Commonwealth play an integral role in educating Virginians on scams and working hand-in-hand with law enforcement agencies and nonprofit organizations to stop them,” said Attorney General Jay Jones. “Supporting TRIAD chapters in their efforts to better awareness, spot trends, and respond to community concerns in real time is how we protect consumers on the ground-level. I’m proud of each of the grantees announced today and look forward to making communities safer with their partnership.”    

NRVNews: 30 TRIAD chapters share $75K 

Attorney General Jones announced the distribution of $75,000 to 30 TRIAD chapters across the state, as part of the 2026-2027 TRIAD grant. Each year, chartered TRIAD chapters can apply for grants from the Office of the Attorney General to support their local programs. TRIAD is a cooperative effort of law enforcement agencies, senior citizens, and senior organizations to share information on how seniors can avoid becoming victims of crime and enhance the safety and quality of their lives. 

[...] 

“These TRIAD chapters are doing important work in our communities, and we’re here to support them. This year’s grant budget was larger than the last two years, a direct nod towards the Attorney General’s commitment to TRIAD and Virginia’s senior,” said Benjamin Bickel, TRIAD Coordinator.“ The grant application process was highly competitive this year, demonstrating just how active TRIAD chapters across Virginia are.” 

The goal of TRIAD is to reduce seniors’ fear of crime and victimization by increasing awareness of scams and frauds targeting them, strengthening communication between law enforcement and senior communities, and educating seniors on local and state resources available in their community. 

Published on: September 25, 2026

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