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Last weekend, the Democratic National Committee approved its early 2028 primary schedule, which places Virginia in a prime spot: Feb. 29 — the last primary before Super Tuesday.

Ken Martin, Democratic National Committee chair, spoke with VPM News after the vote. He said the primary goal of the committee in overhauling the schedule is “winning the White House in November of 2028.”

“It’s going to make sure that our nominee, whoever they are, has to actually visit with voters from throughout this country, from all walks of life, and that’s going to make them a better candidate as a result,” Martin said.

Martin pointed to a population boom across the South as a reason for making two Southern states part of the early lineup going forward. Future elections “will be determined in the South, not in the ‘blue wall’ of the North, but in the Black Belt of the South,” he said.

Martin said Virginia’s diverse economy and population were part of its draw. Greater Richmond, Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads all present opportunities that will force the candidates to “get out of their comfort zone.”

Read more here.

Virginia's Department of Social Services spent $52 million on a failed IT project to overhaul the state's outdated child support enforcement system, Gov. Abigail Spanberger said Wednesday.

In June, VPM News reported on DSS shutting down a two-year project to modernize its child support mainframe system — the Automated Program to Enforce Child Support (APECS) — that records showed had cost more than $50 million.

DSS did not confirm the total cost at the time, but Spanberger revealed the price tag Wednesday while addressing the General Assembly’s joint money committees for the first time as governor.

“We uncovered a $52 million loss at the Department of Social Services on a failed effort to replace the commonwealth's antiquated child support enforcement system,” Spanberger said. “Virginia paid serious money, and all we got were tools that barely worked.”

Spanberger’s remarks about the child support system project came as she criticized actions taken by her predecessor, Republican Glenn Youngkin.

“My predecessor might have thought it was okay to just write off losses like this one, but I don't,” Spanberger said about the project. “It's not a corporate balance sheet that we're dealing with. It is taxpayer dollars.”

Read more here.

10:35 AM UPDATE: Emmet Street has been reopened in both directions following the earlier gas leak. The situation is under control, and there is no ongoing threat to public safety.  

From the latest city email blast:

Emmet Street is currently closed in both directions in the area of John Paul Jones Arena due to a reported gas leak near 400 Emmet Street.

The Charlottesville Fire Department and Charlottesville Utilities are on the scene responding to the incident. 

Motorists are asked to avoid the area and use alternate routes until further notice.

The City will provide an update when the roadway has reopened or as additional information becomes available.

As a part of celebrating America’s 250th anniversary, VPM Media Corp. released Declarations: Black Americans and the Revolutionary War by Director Stacey L. Holman earlier this summer.

Four Black Americans are highlighted in the hourlong documentary, which chronicled their push for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for themselves and their communities as the young country fought for independence from England.

Featured are Elizabeth Freeman — formerly known as Mum Bet — a Massachusetts woman who successfully sued for her freedom; James Lafayette, a double agent who helped shepherd the British surrender at Yorktown; Harry Washington, who escaped George Washington’s Mount Vernon and fought with British troops; and Abraham Peyton Skipwith, a Richmonder who petitioned for his freedom and became one of the first Black landowners in the city.

Skipwith's home recently was returned to Jackson Ward from Goochland County after construction of what’s now Interstate 95/64 in the 1950s ripped the historically Black neighborhood in half.

Declarations can be found on both the PBS app and YouTube.

Holman, along with producer Maya Tepler, spoke with VPM News Director Elliott Robinson about the documentary.

Read more here.

Disclosure: VPM Media Corp. is the FCC license holder of VPM PBS and VPM News, which operates as 88.9 FM in Richmond, 89.1 FM in the Northern Neck (Heathsville) and 90.1 FM in Southside Virginia (Chase City). VPM Media Corp. acquired Style Weekly in 2021.

As a newsroom, VPM News does not use generative AI in its content creation and maintains editorial independence — this article went through our usual fact-checking and editing process. Station leadership did not receive questions prior to their interviews, nor view this article prior to publication. Questions about this article and VPM News' overall editorial policy should be directed to Managing Editor Dawnthea M. Price Lisco.

Virginia health officials say President Donald Trump's new executive order on childhood vaccines doesn't change the state's policies.

However, doctors warn that Trump's order presents a troubling issue: It could sow doubt about vaccines and increase risks for children as measles cases continue to rise.

Trump's order recommends fewer routine vaccines for children and that "to the maximum extent feasible," all of their immunizations be done separately.

It also calls for the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine to be separated into three different shots, a regimen that is currently not possible because the vaccines are administered in a combined formula.

"As measles cases reach a 35-year high in the U.S. and with cold and flu season quickly approaching, today's executive order on vaccines is not only disheartening but dangerous," said Dr. Andrew Racine, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, in an Aug. 10 statement.

States have authority over their vaccine policies; the Virginia Department of Health says it will continue to recommend that children are vaccinated in line with the AAP's immunization schedule instead of federal recommendations.

Read more here.

Bryan Watts looked troubled as he gazed over the Ware River in Gloucester County, leaning against the long, extendable staff he uses to inspect osprey nests from below.

At the top is a baby mirror that he has attached to a paint roller handle — its convex shape ensures good visibility.

The method is simple enough: Take a small boat out to tall, human-made nesting platforms sitting in the river, use the extendable mirror to take a quick look at the nest and any eggs or chicks inside, and move along to the next one.

"What we're seeing in here is a lot of failures, and this has been going on for several years now," Watts said.

As director of the Center for Conservation Biology at William and Mary, Watts has surveyed these nests for years to track ospreys' reproductive health. He released a study in June with nine other researchers describing their findings.

The Ware River drains into Mobjack Bay, a sub-estuary of the Chesapeake Bay that sits on the end of Virginia's Middle Peninsula. Of 10 nests on this brackish stretch of river, ospreys successfully produced one chick this year. In 2023, 81 nests on Mobjack Bay and its tributaries produced three chicks.

Watts compared those numbers to the DDT era — that pesticide, banned in 1972 for agricultural use in the US, wreaked havoc on bird populations by causing them to lay eggs with dangerously thin shells. Osprey populations fell by 80% to 90%, with an average of fewer than one chick per breeding pair, Watts said.

Now, Mobjack Bay osprey are producing even fewer chicks on average.

Read more here.

In 2026, Virginians are voting on whether to make three changes to the state's constitution. Voters will decide the future of felon voting rights, marriage equality and reproductive rights in the commonwealth.

To help you better understand the proposed changes, VPM News' State Politics Reporter Jahd Khalil is speaking to advocates who support and oppose each of the constitutional amendments.

You can hear the arguments for and against each of the measures in the VPM News limited series Amending Virginia. In this episode, we're talking about reproductive rights.

Click the link above to watch the second episode of Amending Virginia, or check it out on VPM's YouTube channel.

And keep an eye out for the next two, which will drop before early voting opens on Sept. 18

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Our award-winning work is made possible with your support. Visit vpm.org/givenow to support local journalism. If you’d like to learn more about our news coverage and meet the team, visit https://www.vpm.org/newsroom 

VPM Media Corporation has officially opened its new home in Downtown Richmond, bringing its workforce into the heart of Virginia's capital city and adding another major employer to a corridor Richmond leaders are focused on revitalizing.

The five-story, 53,000-square-foot facility opened in late spring to employees, bringing all of VPM's teams together under one roof. A ribbon-cutting ceremony and block party was held Thursday afternoon to celebrate with neighbors and community partners.

Jayme Swain, president and CEO of VPM and the Virginia Foundation for Public Media, told VPM News in July that plans for the move started in 2020. Swain toured 70 sites in Greater Richmond before landing on a lot in the Monroe Ward Historic District.

VPM purchased the lot — which was previously a department store and parking lot — located at 15 E. Broad St. for $4.2 million in 2024.

"When I found it, it was like when you find your new home. I felt it in my heart. This is where VPM should be," Swain said. "Of course, we're on Broad Street, which is a historic connector in this community, and it felt right for us to be here."

Disclosure: VPM Media Corp. is the FCC license holder of VPM PBS and VPM News, which operates as 88.9 FM in Richmond, 89.1 FM in the Northern Neck (Heathsville) and 90.1 FM in Southside Virginia (Chase City). VPM Media Corp. acquired Style Weekly in 2021.

As a newsroom, VPM News maintains editorial independence — this article went through our usual fact-checking and editing process. Station leadership did not receive questions prior to their interviews nor view this article prior to publication. Questions about this article and VPM News' overall editorial policy should be directed to Managing Editor Dawnthea M. Price Lisco and News Director Elliott Robinson.

It would cost nearly $1.7 billion to expand access to subsidized childcare in Virginia and pay early childhood educators more, according to a new study.

The new research comes as the commonwealth recently took steps to fund — and clear — the waitlist for one popular program. But experts and advocates say that the waitlist is only one indicator of demand for subsidized childcare.

State officials recently presented data showing that the average cost of childcare for birth to kindergarten in Virginia costs more than a four-year degree at many of the state's public colleges and universities.

The Virginia Early Childhood Foundation commissioned the research on behalf of a coalition of early childhood education groups that want to ensure all Virginia families can access affordable, quality childcare by 2030.

Karin Bowles, a vice president for the foundation, said that while a lot of progress has been made in recent years toward providing greater access to affordable childcare, the state still has a long way to go.

She pointed to recent analysis showing that about 60% of eligible families still don't have access to subsidized childcare: "That's still a huge hill to climb."

The new study estimates Virginia would have to double the number of slots in the Child Care Subsidy Program to serve 70% of all eligible kids — a benchmark that represents the highest percentage of families likely to sign up for subsidized childcare, based on uptake data from other states.

Read more here.

In our latest VPM News Short, Dean Mirshahi spoke to Quadaire Patterson, a criminal justice reform advocate who was formerly incarcerated, about the moment he learned his rights were restored by Gov. Abigail Spanberger.

You can catch our shorts on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok!

Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall recently celebrated its 50th anniversary — so did many of its trees. And as the mostly willow oaks and maples age, nearly half of them are showing signs of decline.

Over the next 25 years, the city’s parks and recreation department is planning phased tree replacements, starting with returning trees to the currently-open area beside the Paramount Theater.

“The Charlottesville Downtown Mall is a significant part of the cultural and economic activity here in the city,” said Rob Mathes, landscape division manager for the department. “The trees play a big part of that because they create this really unique space.”

The mall was designed with 125 trees in total. As of late July, only 108 remain — 17 have been removed due to poor health. Without improvements, the city could expect further loss of nearly half of its trees by 2041.

Click here to read more.

Since taking office in January, Gov. Abigail Spanberger has restored the voting rights of more than 66,000 Virginians who lost them due to felony convictions, her office announced Friday.

“The right to vote is foundational to who we are as Americans,” Spanberger said in a statement accompanying the announcement.

Virginia is one of three states that automatically strip someone’s right to vote after they’re convicted of a felony. The governor has sole authority to give someone these rights back, either through the restoration process once they’ve completed their felony sentence or via a pardon.

Spanberger sharply criticized the process used by her predecessor, Republican Glenn Youngkin, who faced intense scrutiny over a case-by-case review system that led to significantly fewer restorations each year he was in office.

Read more here.

Attorney General Jay Jones' office asked a Washington County court to put lawsuits challenging Virginia's ban on new sales of the AR-15 rifle and other guns on hold until after the US Supreme Court rules on similar restrictions in other states.

"Staying the four pending lawsuits will support the equal and fair application of the law and prevent conflicting outcomes," Rae Pickett, Jones' communications director, said in a Wednesday statement.

In an interview with VPM News, a spokesperson for the National Rifle Association hailed the decision as a victory: "We stopped this insane, radical gun-grab in its tracks."

The ban, originally set to go into effect July 1, was immediately met with multiple legal challenges from the NRA and other pro-gun rights groups, and a Washington County judge overseeing one of the cases granted a preliminary injunction earlier this month blocking enforcement of the law.

In June, the Supreme Court announced that it planned to take up assault weapons bans in Connecticut and Illinois, though it is not yet clear when it will hear those cases. The high court's next term begins in October.

Click here to read more.

After nearly five years of development, the Henrico County Board of Supervisors approved the county’s 2045 comprehensive plan Tuesday, along with several amendments to the long-term land use document.  

However, some residents still carry some concerns over details of the planning guide, which will shape the county’s development process going forward. 

Community activist Aileen Rivera wrote to the board, asking to delay the plan’s approval so that residents have additional time to review the document and have their voices heard. 

“Residents have repeatedly asked the county to postpone the vote on the comprehensive plan until September to allow more time for public review and participation,” she wrote. “Instead, the final draft is moving forward on an accelerated timeline.” 

Varina Supervisor Tyrone Nelson stood by the county’s process. “I feel pretty confident in the five-year discussion we started,” he said. “We've had several public meetings about this, and I really feel like the misnomer we are rushing, I don't fully understand.”

Click here to read more.

Chesterfield residents say recent attempts at dialog by Google and county leadership have fallen short.

Google hosted two open houses this month to answer questions about its three ongoing data center projects: Project Peanut, Project Loch and Project Skye.

Zoning changes for two of the projects were approved in public hearings by county supervisors on May 28, 2025. Those two sites had been unveiled for public input earlier that year.

But the name of the entity behind those parcels’ purchases, plus a third in the county’s eastern portion, was not revealed to be Google until August 2025. And as VPM News reported in June 2026, the company’s $9 billion investment is substantial: a cumulative 1,500 acres are slated for development.

Residents at the hearings and unveilings said they weren’t satisfied with the answers to questions about water and energy usage or transparency at these sites. Their concerns stem from a 2018 non-disclosure agreement between Chesterfield’s Economic Development Authority and Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, and from the scale of the projects.

Enter Data Center Defiance Central Virginia, a group organizing for more transparency in future data center deals. Members handed a petition thatwhich now has over 2,500 signatures to county officials at the July 22, 2026 Board of Supervisors meeting, calling for Chesterfield to stop signing NDAs for data center projects, and organized a sit-in demonstration with signs and placards outside that board meeting.

Read more here.

Beneath a white festival tent on a grassy hill at the REED Center for Ecosystem Reintegration in Middletown, Maryland, Linda Black Elk shares a recipe for homemade Doritos that uses a native spice mix she calls "Indige-dash."

"Salt, chili powder, and sumac powder," she tells the crowd. "Spray the corn chips with avocado oil, and then sprinkle this spice blend. … It is so crazy delicious."

The event, the Forest, Food, & Fire Ecological Summit, is a celebration of indigenous foodways native to the Eastern Woodlands, a region that stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the eastern Great Plains, and from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico.

Participants can choose between foraging walks, mushroom hunts and informational sessions on rewilding — an effort to increase biodiversity and restore natural ecosystems. Later, three indigenous chefs will compete in a cooking contest, turning local ingredients like milkweed flower, rainbow trout and lion's mane mushrooms into several-course meals.

The summit was organized by Troy Wiipongwii, the director of innovation and entrepreneurship at the College of William & Mary's Institute for Integrative Conservation.

Wiipongwii also directs the Traditional Eastern Woodlands Foodways Alliance, a group which includes members of the Chickahominy, Eastern Chickahominy, Lumbee, Monacan, Nansemond, Pamunkey, Rappahannock and Upper Mattaponi tribes. In 2024, the alliance won a nearly half-million dollar grant from the US Department of Agriculture to train school nutritionists on how to procure and prepare indigenous meals from the region.

The group has worked with chefs, school nutritionists and K-12 students to create an indigenous lunch menu. Their USDA-approved recipes — which include turkey wild rice soup, a three sisters stew with bison or venison, rabbit wild rice stew, bison empanadas and a fiddlehead wrap — are available to public school cafeterias in Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina.

Read more here.

Funds generated from the tax would be collected by the state and then returned back to the city for the school district’s use.

Monday’s vote does not automatically enact a new city tax; Richmond voters will have a local referendum on their ballots — alongside the proposed state constitutional amendments — when general election voting opens in September.

The ability to levy this specific sales tax came with the latest state budget, which went into effect on July 1. Prior to that, nine school districts established local ballots on the tax through the Virginia General Assembly.

Regionally, Chesterfield County last week passed a similar resolution to Richmond’s; voters in the county will determine its outcome later this year.

Over the years, Richmond leaders have called attention to the condition of RPS facilities, with several of the district’s school buildings being at least 100 years old.

“Richmond voters will get the decision,” Council President Cynthia Newbille said Monday. “I hope that we will have support for that. Our children deserve the best.”

Click here to read the full article.

At least eight referendum committees have been formed in the lead-up to this fall's vote on three proposed amendments to the Virginia Constitution. State law requires organizations or individuals that spend more than $10,000 advocating in a statewide referendum to register with the Department of Elections (ELECT). 

While referendum committees technically register under one specific amendment, it appears that some committees may be campaigning on more than one issue in 2026. 

The Virginia Catholic Conference, for instance, has campaign materials on its website for all three amendments, encouraging Virginians to vote "yes" on same-sex marriage and reproductive rights amendments, but "no" on automatic restoration of voting rights for people who have completed felony sentences. 

That’s not necessarily illegal. Referendum committees only need to register or amend campaign finance forms if they spend more than $10,000. And advocacy-related advertisements about ballot referendums are "exempt from Political Advertisement disclaimer requirements," according to state guidance.

Click here to read more.