[3] As governor, Northam's most notable accomplishments included expanding Medicaid coverage as allowed under the Affordable Care Act, abolishing the death penalty, legalizing marijuana, and raising the minimum wage.

[32] This action would have given Republicans control of the State Senate, but after news of the imminent switch broke on Twitter, Democrats held a closed-door meeting, and Northam reiterated that he was not leaving the party.

[51][52] During the campaign, Gillespie and President Donald Trump accused Northam of being responsible for the increased activities of the MS-13 gangs and of being "in favor of sanctuary cities that let dangerous illegal immigrants back on the streets.

"[53][54] Gillespie and Trump said that Northam had been the deciding vote to stop a Republican bill in the state Senate which would have banned sanctuary cities and that this contributed to the surge in MS-13 violence; a notion that FactCheck.org found to be "misleading".

[80] To fill the position, Northam appointed Megan Healy, who had previously served as assistant vice chancellor for academic services and employer partnerships at the Virginia Community College System and as the director of STEM-H during the McAuliffe administration.

[80] In June 2018, six months into Northam's governorship, a class action lawsuit was publicly disclosed, which had been filed the previous October, claiming that Latino teenage detainees at the Shenandoah Valley Juvenile Center had been physically abused by staff members there.

[93] Shortly after the news broke, Northam apologized for appearing in the photo[93] and issued a statement saying: Earlier today, a website published a photograph of me from my 1984 medical school yearbook in a costume that is clearly racist and offensive.

[115][116][117] Major national Democratic officials also called for Northam to step down, including 2020 presidential candidates Tulsi Gabbard, John Delaney, Pete Buttigieg, Julian Castro, Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris,[118][109][119] House Speaker Nancy Pelosi,[109] the Democratic Governors Association,[120][121] former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,[122][113] Senator Bernie Sanders,[123] Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,[109] and former Vice President of the United States Joe Biden.

[96] Sleep-deprived and ignoring the protests of some staffers, Northam held a press conference that afternoon,[96] in which he publicly denied that he was either of the men in the photo, but did admit to having "darkened [his] face" with shoe polish as part of a Michael Jackson costume around the same time.

A team hired by EVMS released a 55-page report on May 22, 2019, saying: “We could not conclusively determine the identity of either individual depicted in the photograph.” McGuireWoods contacted over 80 people connected to the school, including five members of their yearbook staff at the time.

[134] Facing widespread calls for his resignation, Northam chose to remain in office but made a public commitment to focus the remainder of his gubernatorial term on addressing Virginia's racial inequities.

[143][145] Among the issues that Underwood has focused on as Chief Diversity Officer are supporting small businesses owned by women, minorities, and disabled veterans, reducing inequities in health care, and diversifying employment in the state's public and private sectors.

[187][189][198] In July 2020, when an outbreak of COVID-19 occurred at the for-profit Immigration Corporation of America-operated Farmville Detention Center,[199] Northam's administration responded by twice offering to have the Virginia Department of Health help conduct testing at the facility.

[235][236] As a state senator, Northam introduced a bill to ban the use of gas chambers on companion animals in Virginia, addressing a means of euthanasia that has been described by medical experts as less humane than lethal injection.

[291][292][293] A month before signing this bill, Northam had faced scandals over racist content found in his college and medical school yearbooks and responded to calls for his resignation by pledging to prioritize racial justice issues throughout the remainder of his term in office.

[305] Chief Deputy Attorney General of Virginia Cynthia Hudson, who chairs the commission, said about this second phase of work, "it's certainly not my expectation to find the expressly racist language and intent that we found in the Acts of Assembly from generations ago.

[327][h] In the year Northam was elected governor, the Legal Aid Justice Center estimated that Virginia's policy of suspending driver's licenses for unmade payments had impacted around one million people.

[348] The Washington Post's editorial board found that Virginia's debt-based suspension of driver's licenses disproportionately impacted minorities and described the repeal of this policy as a priority for the state's Legislative Black Caucus.

[358] During Virginia's 2020 legislative session, there was discussion among the General Assembly's newly Democratic majority about the possibility of fully reinstating parole, which had been abolished by the state in 1995 under then-governor George Allen.

[365] This put Virginia in conflict with the 2012 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Miller v. Alabama, which ruled that mandatory life sentences without the possibility of parole are an unconstitutional penalty for juvenile offenders.

[430][431] An additional bill reforming the writs of actual innocence unanimously passed the state legislature in 2020 and was signed by Northam: it allows private laboratories to test DNA evidence when the Virginia Department of Forensic Science is unable to do so.

"[483] While campaigning for governor, Northam proposed a plan for Virginia to offer free community college and workforce training to students in high-demand fields who commit to a period of public service.

[30][492] During his 2017 campaign for governor, Northam pledged if elected to continue implementing the total maximum daily load limits for nitrogen and phosphorus discharges into Chesapeake Bay, a policy that had reduced harmful algal blooms.

[500] Earlier in the year, then-Speaker of the House of Delegates Republican Kirk Cox had established a similar policy offering legislative branch employees twelve weeks of paid leave.

[504] The package included universal background checks for gun sales in Virginia; a limit of one-per-month on the purchase of handguns; a requirement for the loss or theft of a firearm to be reported within 48 hours (with a civil penalty of up to $250 for failure to report); an increase in penalties for reckless storage of loaded and unsecured firearms in a way that endangers children under 14 years of age; and an extreme risk protection order (red flag) bill, which provides for a procedure for the temporary removal of guns from people at high risk of self-harm or harm to others.

[504][507][437] The package of gun control legislation supported by Northam in 2020 included an eighth bill that did not pass: it would have banned assault weapons, high-capacity magazines, trigger activators,[q] and silencers.

[494][515] After Republican attempts to repeal the law, Northam called for members of Congress to "put a stop to the uncertainty and work on stabilizing and building on the Affordable Care Act's progress.

"[516] Northam opposes a single-payer healthcare system in Virginia, preferring that such a plan be run by the federal government, but supports the creation of a state-run public health insurance option.

"[224] Northam opposed President Trump's decision to rescind Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which offered temporary stay for unauthorized immigrants who came to the United States as minors.

[546] In 2017, while running for governor, Northam spoke against the Physical Privacy Act, a bill proposed that year in Virginia, which if passed, would have required people in government facilities to use restrooms corresponding to the gender specified on their original birth certificates.