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Youngkin urges vigilance to combat antisemitism
A new executive order will expand Virginia's fight against antisemitism, Gov. Glenn Youngkin said Monday night at the Combat Antisemitism Movement's Faith, Freedom, and Legacy: Honoring Virginia’s Jewish Heritage dinner in Richmond. "Antisemitism exists, and we must acknowledge it, we must educate people to it, and we must go to work to eradicate it," Youngkin said at the dinner, held at The Commonwealth Club.
‘It’s going to be tough’: Virginia Republicans brace for a grim November
Virginia Republicans are bracing for November with a growing sense of doom. The GOP already faced a tough climate in this year’s elections thanks to tech billionaire Elon Musk’s war on the state’s robust federal workforce. Then came a bitter, intraparty feud over Republicans’ lieutenant governor candidate. Now, some Republicans are privately expressing concerns about the viability of their gubernatorial nominee, Winsome Earle-Sears. “With the demographics of Richmond, in an off year with the Republican White House, it’s going to be tough,” said longtime Virginia Republican strategist Jimmy Keady. “To be a Republican to win in Virginia, you have to run a very good campaign. You’ve got to have [tailwinds] and the Democratic candidate’s got to make a mistake.”
Virginia’s budget surplus grows as revenues beat expectations despite national slowdown
Virginia’s general fund revenues rose sharply in April, bucking signs of a national economic cooldown as the state continues to post steady long-time job growth and rake in more tax dollars than projected. Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced Monday that general fund revenues are up 6.3% — nearly $1.5 billion — compared to the same 10-month period last fiscal year. April alone brought in $322.4 million more than the same month in 2024, marking an 8.8% jump.
Despite federal backlash, Albemarle County teaching students ‘whole truth history’
“Remember, your listeners are from Mars,” teacher Susan Greenwood told one of her fifth graders at Brownsville Elementary. “They know nothing about slavery, they know nothing about the Civil War.” Greenwood was circulating the classroom on February 4, giving pointed feedback on students’ writing for an assignment in her Virginia Studies class. The goal was to develop arguments to answer the core question in this unit on the Civil War: Was violence justified to resist slavery? Educators in Albemarle County, such as Greenwood, are practicing a new approach to teaching social studies that requires students to think critically and understand key events from a range of perspectives, including those whose voices are often omitted from standard accounts.
Lewis: Va. statewide GOP nominees refuse to buck Trump in a state where he’s a proven albatross
This is primary season and candidates have to double down on what the truest of your party’s true believers truly believe. The common logic is that you steer as far as you can to the right (for Republicans) or left (among Democrats) to rouse their base voters until they’re ready to chew barbed wire and spit out roofing nails. Then, after the preseason scrimmage is over, it’s time to tack back toward the center — where the dispositive mass of Virginia’s electorate has repeatedly proved it resides — and, if you still can, appear less the wild-eyed zealot and more the measured, moderate and sane candidate of November. But something weird is happening this year ...
Yancey: 5 new factors that are shaping the governor’s race
We’re expecting a new Roanoke College poll before the month ends, and that will give us some numerical sense of where Virginia’s governor’s race stands. However, we don’t need polls to tell us about some of the forces that are shaping the contest that will put a woman in the governor’s office for the first time in Virginia history. Some things we knew all along: how voters feel about President Donald Trump, how they feel about Governor Glenn Youngkin, how they feel about lots of other things. Here are five new factors: 1. Spanberger tries to take ‘right-to-work’ off the table, but Earle-Sears presses the attack anyway.
Jenkins: Academic freedom means rejecting book bans
While grading narrative essays in the school library when I was teaching, a parent tour entered. The parents focused on a bookcase full of books on display in the front of the library, with yellow caution tape draped across it — the same type you would see at a police crime scene. “Why is there caution tape across these books?” asked a parent.
Local food banks have lost 1.4M meals to Trump’s cuts
Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains area is largely rural and conservative, with Donald Trump carrying all but two counties that checker the central and western part of the state in the 2024 election. It is also a place where it has become increasingly difficult for people to find enough to eat. Every free meal counts there, said Michael McKee, the CEO of Blue Ridge Area Food Bank, which is the main provider of food assistance to 25 counties in the region. But after the U.S. Department of Agriculture paused $500 million in funding for programs related to food in March, Blue Ridge and other food banks have been struggling to meet the growing needs of their communities.
Jennifer McDonald attorneys say judge’s errors at trial are grounds for appeal
Attorneys for Jennifer McDonald, the former executive director of the Front Royal-Warren County Economic Development Authority, are asking that an appellate judge vacate the judgment against her and remand her case back to the lower court. U.S. District Judge Elizabeth K. Dillon sentenced McDonald on May 29 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia to 14 years in prison for committing financial crimes while she was head of the EDA. ... Dillon also ordered McDonald as part of the sentence to pay $2,744,268.60 in restitution to the EDA and to forfeit $5,201,329 to the government.
It’s past time to prohibit personal enrichment by office holders
So many Americans seem to reflexively believe their elected officials are corrupt — at least two-thirds of adults, according to a recent poll by YouGov — it sometimes seems as if such suspicions are a requirement of citizenship. It certainly doesn’t help, though, when the president and lawmakers do less and less to avoid the appearance of wrongdoing or commit acts that, by any reasonable standard, defy the responsibilities of holding elected office. One of the most egregious examples of potential corruption lately is President Donald Trump’s direct involvement in peddling a meme coin called $Trump.