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Virginian-Pilot
Editorial
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Solemn ceremonies scheduled for Tuesday will mark the 17th anniversary of the tragic shooting at Virginia Tech that claimed the lives of 32 students and faculty members. As time passes and memory fades, it’s important to remember those lives, young and old, cruelly stolen from the commonwealth by a troubled young man with access to firearms and a determination to use them.
Gun violence remains a crisis in Virginia and the nation, one that demands every tool available and the courage to use them. We should not accept that the thousands of gun deaths each year are required for the preservation of liberty, recognizing that inaction allows the bloodshed to continue.
VaNews April 16, 2024
By GRAHAM MOOMAW,
Virginia Mercury
At Krunal Patel’s convenience store outside Richmond, a row of Queen of Virginia skill games has been powered off and turned around against a wall. On Monday, in response to what he sees as unfair treatment in a state that’s embraced legalized gambling, Patel also turned off the Virginia Lottery machines in his store.
He posted signs on his front doors and above the checkout counter explaining the one-day shutdown of lottery sales was a protest against Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s proposed changes to a pending Virginia bill that would legalize, tax and regulate skill games instead of leaving them banned as a type of illegal gambling.
VaNews April 16, 2024
By TAD DICKENS,
Cardinal News
Sen. Tim Kaine, in a Friday letter to the Federal Trade Commission’s chairwoman, called on the agency to investigate the failure of Google and Meta to remove videos showing the 2015 murders of two Roanoke television journalists and the wounding of a third person.
WDBJ-TV reporter Alison Parker and photographer Adam Ward died in August 2015 during a report from Smith Mountain Lake, after a former co-worker attacked them. Vicki Gardner, whom the two were interviewing at Bridgewater Plaza, was seriously wounded.
VaNews April 15, 2024
By IVY MAIN,
published in
Daily Progress
(Metered Paywall - 25 articles a month)
Virginia’s 2024 legislative session wrapped up last month without any action to avert the energy crisis that is hurtling towards us. Crisis is not too strong a word to describe the unchecked proliferation of power-hungry data centers in Northern Virginia and around the state. Virginia utilities do not have the energy or transmission capacity to handle the enormous increases in energy consumption. Dominion Energy projects a doubling of CO2 and a new fossil fuel buildout. Drinking water sources are imperiled.
Main is a lawyer and a longtime volunteer with the Sierra Club’s Virginia chapter.
VaNews April 15, 2024
By KARINA ELWOOD,
Washington Post
(Metered Paywall - 3 articles a month)
When April Hu heard that the admissions process at her alma mater was being legally challenged, she knew she wanted to help.
She had seen affirmative action being challenged at universities around the country, but this was different. The challenge wasn’t against her college, it was against Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, a prestigious magnet school in Northern Virginia. And the case wasn’t challenging affirmative action — it was challenging a new “race-neutral” approach for admissions. Hu, a lawyer, thought the new admissions policy was admirable, and deserved to stay in place. She and her colleague, Mica Moore, a fellow TJ alum and lifelong friend, started brainstorming how they could help defend the new policy.
VaNews April 15, 2024
By CONNOR WORLEY,
WHRO
Day after day of the same back-breaking, laborious routine: Load. Lift. Secure. Seal.
Monotonous, but little-by-little the progress on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel was visible.
It’s formally known as the Lucius J. Kellam Jr. Bridge Tunnel; named after the man who spearheaded the project. It opened 60 years ago on April 15, 1964.
Prior to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, travelers had two options to navigate between Tidewater Virginia and the Eastern Shore: take a ferry across the Chesapeake Bay or take a circuitous seven-hour drive up, over and down.
VaNews April 15, 2024
By NATHANIEL CLINE,
Virginia Mercury
While Gov. Glenn Youngkin did not veto a measure to repeal two license plates connected to the controversial history of the Confederacy, he is staving off Democrats’ effort to do so by requiring lawmakers to vote again on the measure next year. The governor also amended the bill, which received bipartisan support from the General Assembly last month and would repeal the special Sons of Confederate Veterans and Gen. Robert E. Lee license plates, by directing the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles to study when special license plates should expire.
VaNews April 15, 2024
By MICHAEL MARTZ AND DAVE RESS,
Richmond Times-Dispatch
(Metered Paywall - 7 articles a month)
When the General Assembly comes back to town Wednesday, the big question is about compromise – whether one is possible on Gov. Glenn Youngkin‘s proposal to reject the legislature’s $1 billion sales tax on digital services or whether his record 153 vetoes means finding accord on a state budget is out of reach.
Legislators are unlikely to overturn any vetoes – most were on legislation that passed on essentially partisan lines in a nearly evenly divided House of Delegates and state Senate. It takes a two-thirds vote to override a veto.
VaNews April 15, 2024
By ELIZABETH BEYER,
News Leader
(Metered Paywall - 3 to 4 articles a month)
Robert Landrum thought he was supporting Republicans in Virginia’s statehouse elections that year, when he donated $500 to a federal super PAC in April 2023. The super PAC, Unleash America, had one stated goal: To get Republicans elected during Virginia’s 2023 statehouse contests to support Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s agenda. “That’s how he represented the PAC. That’s what he said,” Landrum said in a phone interview with USA Today. He was referring to the PAC’s then “honorary chairman,” Hung Cao, a failed 2022 Congressional candidate from northern Virginia.
VaNews April 15, 2024
By EVAN VISCONTI,
Virginia Mercury
Throughout Virginia, scientists are documenting significant warming of water temperatures, from inland freshwater streams and rivers to the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, which experts say has “huge cascading effects on ecosystems.”
“Even though it might not seem like a big deal, sustained higher temperatures can really damage the intricate balance of species that call those water bodies home,” said Jeremy Hoffman, director of Climate Justice and Impact at Groundwork USA and affiliate faculty in the Department of Geography, Environment and Sustainability at the University of Richmond.
VaNews April 15, 2024
