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Judge rules for former Accomack superintendent in FOIA court hearing
The Accomack County School Board violated state open meetings law when it met Oct. 23, 2024, and voted to fire then-Superintendent Rhonda Hall, a circuit judge has ruled. Judge Afshin Farashahi said the special meeting in question, called with just four days’ notice, didn’t constitute an emergency and was held in a room not big enough to accommodate a crowd. The meeting’s announcement also didn’t include the address and indicated that the meeting would be closed.
Amid Reid controversy, Moran steps away as head of Youngkin’s PAC
Matthew Moran, the political aide at the center of the controversy over John Reid, the GOP nominee for lieutenant governor, has "stepped away" as head of Gov. Glenn Youngkin's Spirit of Virginia PAC, according to two sources with knowledge of the situation. The news, which Politico first reported Thursday evening, comes less than a week after Youngkin called Reid — the first openly gay candidate nominated to statewide office — and asked him to withdraw from the race.
Youngkin adviser reportedly steps down over lieutenant governor race controversy
One of Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s top advisers has stepped down amid a growing fissure in the state’s Republican Party over its presumptive nominee for lieutenant governor, according to the website Politico. Citing an anonymous source, Politico reported Thursday evening that Matt Moran, who oversees Youngkin’s PAC, was resigning after getting caught up in a controversy surrounding John Reid’s campaign for lieutenant governor.
Amherst, Nelson County GOP committees sign on as co-plaintiffs in suit challenging primary law
Amherst County Republicans voted to join a lawsuit that Virginia’s 6th District Republican Committee is planning to file in federal court challenging the constitutionality of a state law that has been interpreted to require political parties to nominate candidates through primaries. The Amherst Republicans’ decision on Monday to join the lawsuit followed a vote by Nelson County Republicans on April 24 to sign on as co-plaintiffs to the lawsuit.
Recent immigration arrests at courthouses around the country have advocates worried
Inside a Virginia courthouse, three immigration agents in plainclothes — one masked — detained a man who had just had misdemeanor assault charges dismissed. They declined to show identification or a warrant to the man, and one threatened to prosecute horrified witnesses who tried to intervene, cellphone video shows. . . . The flurry of immigration enforcement at courthouses around the country in the past month — already heavily criticized by judicial officials and lawyers — has renewed a legal battle from President Donald Trump’s first term as advocates fear people might avoid coming to court.
Loudoun Community Effort Launches to Mitigate Dulles Noise Concerns
Efforts to mitigate the impact of airplane noise on homes near Dulles International Airport are making headway after years of work to get the project started. A community-led process is beginning to find ways to disperse some of the concentrated noise coming from planes departing from Runway 30, the airport’s western most runway. The initiative follows the 2023 adoption by the Board of Supervisors of an updated Airport Impact Overlay District, which lays out noise contours based on plane flight paths.
Alexandria City Council approves changes to Policing Review Board, auditor
Alexandria City Council voted 5-2 to give the Independent Policing Auditor limited subpoena power and grant Council authority in case of an impasse between the auditor and the Independent Community Policing Review Board at Saturday’s public hearing. Councilors Jacinta Greene and Abdel Elnoubi, who favored granting full subpoena authority, voted in opposition. . . . The Policing Review Board has been unable to fully operate without the final changes made by Council.
Patrick Co. Board of Supervisors votes to censure member
In a majority vote on Monday, the Patrick County Board of Supervisors voted to censure Steve Marshall, Blue Ridge District representative. . . . Overby read the resolution, which stated in part that the board “expresses their displeasure with the consistent display of unprofessional behavior of Board of Supervisors member Steve Marshall by his repeated attempts to silence, harass, intimidate, bully, threaten and defame other members of the Board of Supervisors as well as appointed members of the board’s committees, commissions, and authorities and citizens of Patrick County.
Toscano: Trump’s tariffs could devastate Virginia’s soybean farmers — and the GOP
Virginia’s Republican leaders are stuck. Their continued support of President Donald Trump’s mass firings of federal employees and “freezes” in federal funding do not play well in a state where federal jobs and contracting equal 16.1% of all full-time and part-time jobs. Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s insistence that these cuts are necessary and gubernatorial candidate Winsome Earle-Sears’ assertion that job loss “happens ... all the time” have won them few supporters, especially in vote-rich Northern Virginia, where unemployment claims ticked up 7.1% in February.
Salgado: Va. is in urgent need of campaign finance reform
George Nader was sentenced in federal court in July 2023, and I was the federal prosecutor who represented the United States in that case. Before sentencing, Nader was known for his role as a witness in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report, in which Nader was alleged to have arranged meetings between a Russian national and individuals close to then President-elect Donald Trump. . . . As nefarious as Nader’s conduct may strike most Americans, all of it would have been legal had Nader done it to get a candidate elected to state or local office under Virginia’s campaign finance laws.