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From VPAP Sample Ballot for June 17 Elections
Our easy-to-use tool provides a complete list of candidates on Virginia ballots for the June 17 primary elections. Enter your address to see the candidates seeking a party's nomination for statewide office, the Virginia House of Delegates, and local offices, along with your polling location.
VPAP Visual Measures of Legislator Wealth: 2025
Annual reports filed by members of the Virginia General Assembly are meant to disclose possible conflicts of interest, but they also provide a look at the wealth of elected officials. See how Republican and Democratic legislators compare across four different measures from the latest reports.
National parks face ‘cloud of uncertainty’ in face of cuts
Visitors to Shenandoah National Park over the Memorial Day weekend could not use the parking area for Old Rag Mountain in Madison County because of damage from flash flooding after recent heavy rains. Entering the holiday weekend, three trails remained closed to hikers temporarily and three other trails and parking areas reopened just in time on Thursday. Those closures were casualties of nature, but keeping trails open for hikers also requires people. In Shenandoah, just two employees of the National Park Service have the task of overseeing 500 miles of trails in the 198,000-acre park straddling the Blue Ridge Mountains and parts of eight counties, said Jim Schaberl, a Page County resident who retired early last year after 35 years in the National Park Service ...
Trump pardons former Virginia sheriff convicted of taking $75K in bribes
President Donald Trump on Monday announced that he will pardon a former Virginia sheriff convicted of taking more than $75,000 in bribes in exchange for appointing businessmen as auxiliary deputy sheriffs within his department. In a Truth Social post, Trump said Scott Howard Jenkins, 53, of Culpeper, Virginia, was supposed to report to jail Tuesday but "instead will have a wonderful and productive life." Jenkins, the former sheriff of Culpeper County, was convicted last year of one count of conspiracy, four counts of honest services fraud, and seven counts of bribery concerning programs receiving federal funds. He was sentenced in March to 10 years in prison.
Loudoun Co. sheriff renews call for elementary school resource officers
Loudoun County Sheriff Michael Chapman wants to begin expanding the school resource officer program to the Virginia county’s 65 elementary schools, as part of the agency’s first public strategic plan. “We certainly have made a request to expand our SRO program to elementary schools — we’ve done that for several years now — but unfortunately, we haven’t met with success,” Chapman told WTOP. As recently as last year, Loudoun County Public Schools Superintendent Aaron Spence, while supporting the current SRO program, has stated he didn’t think expanding the armed officers in elementary schools would be beneficial.
Yancey: 2 Virginians helped cover up how incapacitated the president was. This wasn’t Biden, though.
A Democratic president is in such poor health that he can no longer run the country. A small circle of advisers keeps even his own cabinet secretaries in the dark about his true condition. Republicans start to publicly question the president’s fitness, and eventually, even the president decides it’s best not to run for another term. The scenario describes very recent events, as documented in the new book “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again” by Jake Tapper of CNN and Alex Thompson of Axios. However, this scenario also describes the situation more than a century ago involving Woodrow Wilson — a cover-up of a health condition that involved a president born in Staunton, a first lady born in Wytheville and a doctor born in Culpeper County.
Youngkin vetoed bill to make Black history classes count toward graduation. What’s next?
A Northern Virginia faith leader and parent said she will continue asking state lawmakers to make two African-American history courses count toward the state’s graduation requirements for history, after the governor — who vetoed the measure and whose four-year term is sunsetting — leaves office. Pastor Michelle Thomas, president of the NAACP Loudoun Branch, and Robin Reaves Burke of the Loudoun Freedom Center proposed the concept to state Del. David Reid, D-Loudoun, shortly after the commonwealth added African American History and AP African American Studies to the list of courses permitted to be taught in public high schools.
More Hampton Roads drivers use toll discounts, but millions of dollars are still available
Enrollment is growing in a program that offers millions of dollars of toll relief to Hampton Roads drivers who traverse the Downtown and Midtown tunnels. But the amount of money being used is just a fraction of what state lawmakers secured in the commonwealth’s fiscal budget. Virginia’s 2024-26 biennium budget includes $101 million in toll relief at the Downtown and Midtown tunnels connecting Norfolk and Portsmouth ...
UVa vowed to crack down on criminal students after Yeardley Love’s murder. Did it?
Nearly 15 years ago, after one student-athlete beat another one to death, the University of Virginia intensified its reporting process for students to divulge their arrests and convictions. Had UVa administrators known that lacrosse player George Huguely V had a prior conviction for attacking a police officer, they might have intervened. ... But three more lives would be lost to violence in 2022, when another UVa student with an undisclosed criminal conviction shot five schoolmates.
Treacy, Agee, Martin and Stottlemyer: Is college worth it? Virginians certainly think so
People seem to disagree passionately about everything these days. But we found a big exception. In a newly released public opinion survey conducted for the Virginia Business Higher Education Council — a nonprofit, nonpartisan partnership that it’s our privilege to lead — more than 90% of Virginians agreed on this: “The most important investment our state can make is to ensure that every Virginia resident is able to achieve the highest level of education that suits their aspirations and abilities, whether that is a skilled trade certificate, an associate’s or bachelor’s degree, or a graduate or professional degree.”