WASHINGTON — The COVID-19 pandemic hasn’t upended President Donald Trump’s plans to hold another contentious Fourth of July celebration in the nation’s capital this summer.The White House told the Associated Press this week that Trump intends to move ahead with a scaled-back version of last year’s massive “Salute to...
No black woman has ever been elected governor of any state.Jennifer Carroll Foy, a 38-year-old attorney and member of the Virginia General Assembly, thinks she could be the first.“The road to politics is a difficult one,” Carroll Foy said in a recent interview when asked about that statistic. “And...
As states seek to loosen wide-ranging restrictions imposed to constrain the novel coronavirus, they’re also looking to deploy a huge new fleet of workers to keep cases under control.Enter the contact tracers.With interpersonal contact certain to increase as states lift COVID-19 restrictions, tracing who infected people had contact with...
Voters in several localities around the commonwealth participated in last week’s local elections, even if they didn’t queue up at their regular precincts. Given the chance to vote absentee by mail – something state officials had encouraged during the coronavirus pandemic – Virginians did so in droves.That implies two...
The consequences of disobeying Virginia’s new mask requirement?That’s a question for later, according to Gov. Ralph Northam, who announced the new executive order on Tuesday with few specifics on how it would be enforced. “It gets into a lot of the legalities of this and can get complicated in a...
At first, it seemed like a promising lead.In late March, the Virginia Department of Health — a key player in the state’s unified command team responding to the COVID-19 pandemic — reached out to the U.S. Navy, which operates its largest base in Norfolk.Bob Mauskapf, the director of VDH’s...
WASHINGTON — U.S. EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler on Wednesday accused the top attorneys from Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia of pursuing a “frivolous lawsuit” against his agency, warning that the legal action will hamstring efforts to clean up the Chesapeake Bay.
Wheeler testified Wednesday before the U.S. Senate...
Alongside an interminable back and forth concerning elephant rides at a roadside zoo, it was one of the stranger subplots of this year’s legislative session: A freshman Republican lawmaker proposed a bill to remove a statue of Harry Byrd Sr. from Capitol Square.He said he only did it because...
At a news conference on Monday, Gov. Ralph Northam called nursing homes, which have accounted for more than half of the state's COVID-19 deaths, a "top priority," adding that his administration is doing "everything we can" to take care of them, including the provision of personal protective equipment.“If they...
To hold safe elections later this year, local officials in Virginia say they’ll need about 41,000 bottles of hand sanitizer, almost 600,000 pairs of gloves, 172,000 face masks and 45,000 face shields.In preparation for the opening of polling places throughout the state in June’s congressional primaries and the November...
