The Virginia State Corporation Commission (SCC) denied Governor Ralph Northam’s Thursday request to again extend a moratorium on utilities shutoffs until December. The moratorium will end October 5. The SCC had previously warned that they would not consider any further extensions.
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Virginia’s fiscal year 2020 sales tax revenue performed well all the way up until April 2020 when sales tax revenue decreased 0.4 percent from April 2019; May saw sales tax revenue drop 12.5 percent from May 2019, indicating harm to Virginia’s retailers. At the same time, online sales were booming.
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Friday morning on The John Fredericks Show, host Fredericks welcomed political strategist Stephen K. Bannon back to the show to discuss how the Trump administration should handle the president’s coronavirus situation.
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The Charlottesville City Council convened on Wednesday to continue discussing plans for relocating the Lewis & Clark and Sacagawea statue.
Activists take issue with Sacagawea’s posture: she crouches behind Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, a positioning some say is demeaning for depicting the appearance of subservience.
Henrico County Manager John Vithoulkas has withdrawn funding for a new position in the Commonwealth’s Attorney Shannon Taylor’s office. The new deputy attorney would have be tasked with oversight of police-community relations as part of a general push in Henrico to make sure citizens’ concerns are being heard and shift towards a community-policing model. Taylor and Henrico County Human Resources had already offered the position to Misty Whitehead, who had accepted the role.
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Thursday morning on The John Fredericks Show, host Fredericks welcomed Founder and Editor in Chief of Inside Arabia Elisabeth Myers to the program to discuss the United States’ continuation of sending Egypt $1.3 billion annually for military aid.
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Welcome to the Friday edition of our daily Virginia Trump campaign update! We will provide our readers with daily updates on the Trump Virginia campaign from today to November 3 (and after…if need be!).
It’s officially 32 days until the election on November 3 – and 29 days until early voting in Virginia closes. The deadline to register to vote in time for the 2020 election is October 13.
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Thales Academy Glen Allen will add the third grade to their K-2 programs in the 2021-2022 school year, after a successful first quarter. Applications are accepted on a first-come, first-serve basis.
The Glen Allen location first opened on July 20 of this year – it is the first Thales Academy in Virginia.
The Republican Party of Virginia (RPV) filed a lawsuit last week against Virginia’s Attorney General (AG) Mark Herring for failing to communicate changes to the witness voter requirement.
In August, Herring agreed with a federal judge to drop the witness voter requirement. It appears that these changes weren’t communicated well across the state. The RPV cites accounts of voters confused because their ballot language contradicts their voter instructions.
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Thursday morning on The John Fredericks Show, host Fredericks welcomed Republican congressional candidate Nick Freitas to the show to discuss the lack of campaigning by his opponent Abigail Spamberger.
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The Democratic-controlled Virginia Senate rejected almost all budget amendment proposals from Republican members during a lengthy session Thursday afternoon.
As the Senate moves closer to a passage vote on its comprehensive budget, Thursday’s session made it clear that Senate Democrats are ultimately running the show.
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Since the start of early voting on September 18, 482,674 Virginians have already cast their ballots for the rapidly-approaching November general election.
Of the almost half a million votes, 285,805 were in-person and 196,869 were through the mail, according to the Virginia Public Access Project’s (VPAP) early voting daily dashboard.
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Dennis Ferrier of Fox News 17 continues his reporting on Nashville Mayor John Cooper’s overreach in closing restaurants and bars, which account for only a fraction of coronavirus cases even as that industry continues to suffer.
Ferrier has been digging into the story for some time to gain the actual number of cases.
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The Virginia House of Delegates passed its two-year $134 billion budget on Tuesday with specific funding for rental and utility assistance, public education, internet access, affordable housing, criminal justice and police reform.
The revised budget from the House does not perfectly lineup with the proposed budget Governor Ralph Northam presented to the General Assembly at the beginning of the 2020 special session.
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Dennis Ferrier of Fox News 17 continues his reporting on Nashville Mayor John Cooper’s overreach in closing restaurants and bars, which account for only a fraction of coronavirus cases even as that industry continues to suffer.
Ferrier has been digging into the story for some time to gain the actual number of cases.
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Enrollment in Virginia’s public and private nonprofit colleges and universities for the fall semester declined by 1.3 percent or 6,658 students, according to early enrollment estimates from the State Council of Higher Education in Virginia (SCHEV) released Tuesday.
The data used by SCHEV is directly provided by 64 colleges and universities located in the Commonwealth, including some of the state’s most prestigious and largest schools such as William and Mary, Virginia Tech, University of Virginia, Virginia Commonwealth University and Washington and Lee University.
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Elections officials report that Virginia’s critical election system is malfunctioning during early voting, and worry it could fail on or before Election Day.
This isn’t the first time the Virginia Election and Registration Information System (VERIS) has presented issues. A 2018 report recommended the legislature replace VERIS. Specifically, the report stated that the system couldn’t be relied upon for elections.
Wednesday morning on The John Fredericks Show, host Fredericks welcomed political strategist and the host of War Room Pandemic Steve Bannon to the program to weigh in on the first presidential debate.
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Wednesday morning on The John Fredericks Show, host Fredericks welcomed U.S. Representative of Virginia’s Ninth District Morgan Griffith to discuss the first presidential debate and a second coronavirus relief package.
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The Virginia Department of Historical Resources (DHR) has approved 15 new historical highway markers, many of them focusing on African-American and women’s history in Virginia.
Five of the fifteen markers were proposed by students during a historical marker contest. One marker in Hampton commemorates Katherine Coleman Goble Johnson, a mathematician who worked for NASA and was featured in Hidden Figures. Johnson died at 101 earlier this year. Another marker, in Lynchburg, honors Elizabeth Langhorne Lewis; who was “one of the most influential women’s suffrage activists in Virginia,” according to the proposed sign text.
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Welcome to the Thursday edition of our daily Virginia Trump campaign update! We will provide our readers with daily updates on the Trump Virginia campaign from today to November 3 (and after…if need be!).
It’s officially 33 days until the election on November 3 – and 30 days until early voting in Virginia closes. The deadline to register to vote in time for the 2020 election is October 13.
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A Christian wedding photographer and two churches, three Christian schools, and a pro-life ministry sued Virginia for its LGBTQ discrimination law. The plaintiffs argue that the law is a violation of religious freedom in the First Amendment.
The Christian plaintiffs say the state law forces their hand. If they don’t forsake God’s commandments, they could endure hundreds of thousands or more in fines and litigation fees. And, they could face a court order to adhere to the law. These individuals are also prohibited from expressing any religious beliefs that may be perceived as discriminatory.
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Governor Ralph Northam joined 10 other Democratic governors issuing a joint statement on Wednesday defending American democracy, vowing that every valid ballot will be counted in the election.
The statement comes after a contentious debate where President Trump expressed skepticism of mail voting. Trump also called on his backers to scrutinize voting procedures at the polls, which critics said could cross into voter intimidation. Without mentioning Trump by name, the governors noted his refusal last week to commit to a peaceful transition of power.
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Mayoral candidate Kim Gray is running to increase transparency in Richmond’s government, return to a community-based planning model, and improve Richmond’s schools. Her resume includes jobs for two former governors, eight years as a school board member, and four years as council member of Richmond’s Second District. Her political roots run to her childhood.
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Welcome to the Wednesday edition of our daily Virginia Trump campaign update! We will provide our readers with daily updates on the Trump Virginia campaign from today to November 3 (and after…if need be!).
It’s officially 34 days until the election on November 3 – and 31 days until early voting in Virginia closes. The deadline to register to vote in time for the 2020 election is October 13.
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Faculty at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) are currently considering making a change to the university’s general education requirements by adding a courses on racism.
The classes would be required for all freshman and grouped under the subject diversities of human experiences, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
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The Virginia Department of Health (VDH) on Monday launched a new pandemic metrics dashboard with more specific, aggregated data to show where COVID-19 is spreading in Virginia’s different regions and any changes occurring over time.
The new dashboard will be updated weekly and features three different tabs: About the Data, Daily Region Metrics, Weekly Transmission Extent. Additionally, School Metrics from the CDC are included within the dashboard.
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Tuesday morning on The John Fredericks Show, host Fredericks welcomed political consultant Chris LaCivita to the show to discuss his super PAC Preserve America and their focus on moving the needle for President Trump in the upcoming election.
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Tuesday morning on The John Fredericks Show, host Fredericks welcomed political figure and strategist Steve Bannon to the show to discuss the Trump campaign’s response to the Trump tax hit pieces and that his focus was now on the election in Pennsylvania and Florida.
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The Portsmouth Magistrate has again rebuffed Portsmouth NAACP leaders in attempts to file charges against Portsmouth council members Bill Moody and Elizabeth Psimas. NAACP branch President James Boyd and Vice President Louie Gibbs went to the magistrate on Friday to present emails that they said showed Moody and Psimas committing a misdemeanor violation of the city charter.
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Richmond Mayor Levi Stoney proposed a “racially equitable” affordable housing plan on Tuesday.
The mayor will give a majority of the city-owned land parcels to Maggie Walker Community Land Trust. The organization’s mission statement is “to foster racially equitable communities” within their constructed affordable housing.
Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) issued an apology for operating segregated schools and for resisting efforts to integrate their schools for over a decade after the 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education that made segregated schools illegal. The apology is part of the district’s “Action Plans to Combat Systemic Racism.” The apology coincides with the 57th anniversary of the 1963 march where Martin Luther King, Jr. declared, “I have a dream.”
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Welcome to the Tuesday edition of our daily Virginia Trump campaign update! We will provide our readers with daily updates on the Trump Virginia campaign from today to November 3 (and after…if need be!).
It’s officially 35 days until the election on November 3 – and 33 days until early voting in Virginia closes. The deadline to register to vote in time for the 2020 election is October 13.
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In an interview with The Virginia Star, Kilgore shared that Barrett’s nomination was a long time coming.
“A lot of us were looking to the President, hoping he would nominate her last time instead of Kavanaugh [in 2018]. She carried herself so well during her 2017 hearing for the 7th Circuit Court, and she was a former clerk for Justice Scalia. She is a favorite justice for many conservatives throughout the nation.”
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Almost 1,400 Virginia voters have recently received duplicate absentee ballots in the mail because of printing errors.
So far, voters in three jurisdictions – Fairfax and Henrico counties as well as the City of Richmond – have reportedly received duplicates ballots as the November 3rd election quickly approaches.
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