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Legislators slash funding for Health Wagon amid reports CEO’s compensation package nearly doubled in 2 years
Legislators have pulled more than $800,000 from the state budget that had been earmarked for St. Mary’s Health Wagon, a free clinic in Southwest Virginia whose top executive was recently compensated more than $520,000, a sum that nearly doubled over two years and places her compensation far beyond the salaries of comparable executives in wealthier regions of Virginia. The Health Wagon has received state funding consistently since 2006, and an earlier version of this year’s budget included another allocation for it. However, state budget negotiators removed this allocation after reports surfaced that leadership, including CEO Teresa Tyson and clinical director Paula Hill-Collins, as well as other Health Wagon employees, earned outsized compensation packages in recent years.
In 7th District primary, Republicans debate party’s future
Clashes among Republican factions in the 118th Congress are playing out in Virginia's 7th Congressional District, with money and endorsements flowing to rival candidates in a GOP primary from the party's establishment and most conservative wings in the House of Representatives. The 7th, based in Prince William, Stafford and Spotsylvania counties, is a pivotal political battleground in the outer Northern Virginia suburbs and countryside for control of the House in a presidential election year.
Graduating VCU students walk out during governor’s remarks
As Virginia Commonwealth University’s 2024 commencement kicked off at the Greater Richmond Convention Center, the student singing the national anthem wore a keffiyeh, a traditional Arab headscarf that has become a symbol of solidarity with Palestinians. Soon after, Gov. Glenn Youngkin, the commencement speaker, took the stage and dozens of students walked out to cheers from the audience. After exiting the building, they held up signs like “No graduation as usual” and “Unacceptable leadership,” while chanting and marching to nearby Abner Clay Park.
Textbook decision tabled in Montgomery County after questions about bid process
It was a question of buy the book or by the book at a Montgomery County School Board meeting this week. A decision on which English textbooks to purchase for the county’s elementary school students was delayed after school board members learned that two competing vendors were not treated equally – both made offers, but only one was asked to revise its proposal and lower the price tag. “This opens up a lawsuit,” board member Derek Rountree said Tuesday.
Fears grow as Mountain Valley Pipeline nears completion
The most visible scars from the Mountain Valley Pipeline are gone now from the pastoral property that Anne and Steve Bernard call home. But the Bernards remain troubled by what they can’t see. “Bottom line: I’m scared to death of that pipe sitting out there,” Steve Bernard said of the buried steel pipe, through which highly pressurized natural gas could soon begin flowing along a route that passes about 150 feet from the couple’s white frame house and adjacent art studio.
Schapiro: Where were friends when Jews needed them?
A Colonial-era farm in Virginia’s tobacco belt is an emblem of Jewish survival at a time when much of the world — now gripped by an Israel-Hamas war in Gaza that, depending on one’s perspective, was caused by, or is causing, antisemitism — was clueless that a huge swath of the Jewish world was doomed. Hyde Park Farm — in Nottoway County, about an hour’s drive south of Richmond — was for several years immediately preceding World War II a peaceful sanctuary for about two dozen German-Jewish teenagers and several adults who fled there as Adolf Hitler’s murderous persecution of European Jews was beginning in earnest.
What we know about how UVa’s narrative differs from eyewitness accounts of May 4
University of Virginia officials have cited a number of justifications for their decision to have state police wearing tactical gear break up a small encampment of anti-war protesters on May 4, arresting 27 people and deploying pepper-spray into a crowd of students, faculty and members of the public. But witnesses and video footage raise questions about the claims made by President Jim Ryan, UVa Police Chief Tim Longo and other top officials.
Gibson: Online sexual abuse against women is imperiling our democracy
Last month, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s painful experiences as the victim of AI-driven sexual abuse appeared in a piece in Rolling Stone. Titled “Fake Photos, Real Harm: AOC and the Fight Against AI Porn,” the article explores how U.S. Rep. Ocasio-Cortez first discovered the artificially generated explicit images of her, and her effort to amend the Violence Against Women Act in order to create civil liability in response to this new form of sexual abuse. Like so many people who read it, I was both horrified and motivated.
U-Va. officials defend arrests at protest as faculty seek review of decision
University of Virginia faculty on Friday called for an independent review of the use of police to clear a pro-Palestinian demonstration, but stopped short of condemning the decision to bring in state law enforcement officers. More than 25 people were arrested. University President James E. Ryan said he was sorry for the way things escalated as police moved in on demonstrators, and some faculty members said they were concerned the response was too heavy-handed. Ryan, though, did not say outright he would have acted differently, and the university’s police chief said officials felt compelled to disperse a group that included people with no connection to U-Va.
Hunter: State funding for school-to-work pipeline is crucial to VA’s success
From the data, we know that young women are significantly under-represented in STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering and math) even though many businesses struggle to find qualified workers in those high-demand fields. We also know that in recent years more young people have been leaving Virginia than have been moving into the area, contributing to an out-migration trend that our new speaker of the House of Delegates, Don Scott, has labeled a “brain drain.” Fortunately, these statistics did not control Kinsey Ebel’s career or destination. Something more powerful intervened: a life-changing internship experience with a Virginia employer.