WORK

Three months before the start of Virginia’s 2018 legislative session, a gunman killed 58 people at a concert in Las Vegas. Midway through the session, 17 people died in a mass shooting at a high school in Florida. But by the time the session ended on Saturday, the Virginia General Assembly had passed just one bill on the subject.

The statues of Confederate Gens. Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson astride horses were plucked from their perches in downtown Charlottesville early Saturday morning and hauled off by truck to an undisclosed storage location. 

Former Charlottesville Police Chief RaShall Brackney disbanded the city’s SWAT team this summer, but it’s now uncertain whether the specialized law enforcement unit will remain dissolved.

Brackney has accused the department of secretly planning to reinstate the specialty.

Despite years of lobbying for redistricting reform achieving bipartisan support, the fruit of that labor is tasting sour for some Democratic lawmakers and longtime advocates.
With the passage of a constitutional amendment that could create a redistricting commission now out of their hands and onto ballots this year, some legislators are urging their constituents to vote no.

The dogwood beside the lime green house in 10th & Page doesn’t look like much — yet. 

Planted this past fall, the baby tree is still supported by a bamboo post and needs careful watering. But one day, decades from now, this tree will provide much needed shade to a yard in one of Charlottesville’s hottest residential neighborhoods. 

In this year’s governor’s race, Virginia’s Republican Party is harnessing an energy similar to that felt in the Democratic Party in 2017 , and it has Democrats nervous. 

Much like how President Donald Trump’s win in 2016 angered and energized the Democratic base in Virginia, his loss in 2020 is also firing up Republicans. And the pattern is not new. 

 An unassuming and unmarked small brick building has managed to hold the attention of protesters in the year since Bristol Women’s Health set up shop on the Virginia side of Bristol, just across the state line from Bristol, Tennessee.

Sitting across from a smiling Cortney Whanger in her Henrico County living room, where numerous family photos adorn the walls and a very fluffy, protective house cat watches, it would be hard to guess that Whanger is a survivor of America’s deadliest mass shooting.