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Certain Aetna health insurance plans leaving the Affordable Care Act marketplace next year
Starting next year, Aetna clients in Virginia and other states will no longer be able to purchase individual or family health insurance plans through the Affordable Care Act marketplace. The ACA is a 15-year-old federal law that allows people who don’t have employer-provided insurance to purchase their own through the ACA marketplace. Congress also created associated tax credits that have helped some offset those costs even further. Over 261,000 people in Virginia have Aetna healthcare, according to the Virginia Department of Medical Assistance Services.
Mother of teen killed in York County crash has spearheaded new state safety laws — and she’s not done
If you let someone drive your car without a license — and they cause an accident that injures or kills someone — you could now face up to a year behind bars. A new state law says if you knowingly authorize someone to drive a car when they have no legal right to do so, you’re guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor “if the offense results in a motor vehicle accident that causes injury or death.” That includes parents who let minors drive without a license or while breaking the state’s rules on learner’s permits. It’s the fourth state law that Tammy McGee has spearheaded to passage since her son, Conner, was killed in a York County car crash nearly six years ago.
General Assembly prepares for potential September special session
General Assembly leadership has advised legislators that they could be called back to a special session the second week of September, lobbyists, delegates and state senators told VPM News. At the end of the 2025 session, legislators amended the rules for a still-active special session from 2024 to “address the impacts” of actions taken by the federal government. The special session would come after trillions of dollars in changes to the federal tax structure . . .
Inside the Conservative Campaign That Took Down the U.Va. President
The Jefferson Council, a band of conservative-leaning University of Virginia alumni, was impatient and fed up. For years, the group had railed against the university’s president, James E. Ryan, for his robust promotion of campus diversity initiatives. They had counted on Glenn Youngkin, the state’s Republican governor who vocally opposed D.E.I., to force a new direction at one of the country’s most prestigious public universities. But as 2025, the final year of Mr. Youngkin’s term, began, the university’s diversity, equity and inclusion apparatus was still in place. And time was running out, with polls showing that the governor’s race would be an uphill battle for a Republican candidate.
Williams: George Mason must take a stand against federal overreach
You didn’t think they’d stop at UVa, did you? The U.S. Department of Education is coming after George Mason University, alleging the use of race in the hiring and promotion of faculty members, part of its latest, legally dubious attack on diversity, equity and inclusion. And a second civil rights investigation, also launched this month, alleges that the Fairfax-based school “discriminated on the basis of national origin (shared Jewish ancestry) by failing to respond effectively to a pervasive hostile environment for Jewish students and faculty.”
Lund: ‘Go see’ Virginia exhibit about the Vietnam War
A Vietnam veteran and I met in a small-town, fast-food restaurant in Southside Virginia some years ago to talk about his military experience. He wanted someone to listen; I wanted someone to write. I direct Home and Abroad, a free writing program for the veteran community that offers writing seminars, individual coaching and professional printing of participants’ work. We both felt what he had to say was important enough to be shared.
Atkinson: Halt menhaden harvest until studies determine its effects
With summer in full swing, Chesapeake Bay fishermen, birders and environmentalists are once again faced with the harsh reality that menhaden, the most important fish in the sea, are scarce. Even Omega Protein, the Canadian-owned menhaden reduction fishery (i.e. reduces the fish to animal feed), and its partner Ocean Harvesters, with its spotter planes and huge purse seine nets, is having trouble finding them.
Holbrook and Williams: Sentara should invest more to improve regional health
A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you’re talking real money,” said the late Sen.Everett Dirksen. Now comes the shocking news that Sentara Health System lost $1.5 billion on health insurance ventures according to its 2024 publicly available audited financials. One of these was Sentara Holdings Florida, an HMO bought for $225 million in December 2022 which lost $290 million over the next two years. All that “real money” would have made a profound impact if it had been invested back into Hampton Roads where it came from. Yes, we are thankful for Sentara’s pledge to give $35 million annually for 10 years to the Macon and Joan Brock Virginia Health Sciences at Old Dominion University, but it should have been much more and should have been given much earlier.
Lt. Governor Winsome Earle-Sears visits Newport News Shipbuilding
When Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears arrived at the Victory Arch near Newport News Shipbuilding Friday, she couldn’t help but feel like she was back home again. It was in 2001 when she emerged on the political landscape, taking down longtime Democratic Del. Billy Robinson. “I feel like in my old stomping ground — this is where my children grew up,” Earle-Sears said. “People really need to see you, so that is why I am in our great Hampton Roads.”
Bearinger: What, exactly, are we pledging allegiance to?
It’s a few minutes before 10 a.m. on July 4, and I’m sitting in the Robins Family Forum at the Virginia Museum of History and Culture in Richmond, feeling the anticipation. Every seat in the auditorium is filled; and the museum staff are busy outside, directing visitors into a second room across the lobby where they can watch the event on livestream. We’ve all come to witness and be part of a “Ceremony to Honor New Citizens,” otherwise known as “naturalization.” Most of us in the room are citizens by right, having been born in the United States. But in the center of the auditorium are 82 men and women from 39 countries who are here to become citizens by choice.