Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced funding to provide 20 predominantly rural, underserved communities with broadband access.
More than $59.5 million in grants will be made through the Virginia Telecommunications Initiative, supplying broadband access to nearly 30,000 homes, businesses and community institutions, such as schools, libraries, public safety centers and health care providers.
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Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia signed a bill requiring pornography sites to verify their users’ age Friday night, WTKR reported.
The bill, SB 1515, states that online providers who have a “substantial port” of sexual content on their sites are open to civil liability if they do not take steps to verify their users are above the age of 18. SB 1515, which passed the state senate by a 37-3 vote, and a 96-0 vote in the House of Delegates, defined “substantial portion” to be more than a third of the content on the site.
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Gov. Glenn Youngkin has issued an executive order to combat the fentanyl crisis in Virginia.
The executive action is a “first-of-its-kind comprehensive fentanyl strategy” titled Right Help, Right Now.
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Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin praised the new integrated plan released by Dominion Energy, touting his administration’s energy plan in comparison.
The energy company released its 2023 Integrated Resource Plan, which outlines “strategic pathways” to ensure the energy provider can consistently deliver power to residents and Virginia businesses.
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Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin took historic steps by signing an executive order establishing a foreign trade office while meeting with President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan in Taipei earlier today, kicking off his Asian tour.
This will be the commonwealth’s fourth international office; others are in Japan, South Korea and Germany. Youngkin is scheduled to visit Japan and South Korea during his Asian trip.
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Virginia lawmakers approved amendments proposed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin to a pair of bills establishing regulations on hemp-derived products in the commonwealth, which includes a provision allowing some products containing both THC and CBD that are used therapeutically to remain on store shelves.
The politically-divided General Assembly flocked to Richmond Wednesday to reconvene for a one-day session to consider the governor’s proposed amendments to 78 bills and three vetoes. Some of the governor’s amendments proposed technical changes to measures, while others proposed entire substitute bills.
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Virginia’s agricultural and forestry exports soared to a value of more than $5.1 billion in 2022, according to new data released this week by the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.
China is the state’s top export destination by far, purchasing $1.45 billion in agricultural and forestry products in 2022. Egypt, Taiwan, Venezuela and Canada are also in the top five destinations for Virginia’s agricultural exports. Soybeans and soybean meal are the state’s top exports, followed by pork, poultry and tobacco, according to data from VDACS.
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Virginia lawmakers will return to Richmond next week to consider Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s proposed amendments and recommendations to 78 bills sent to his desk during the legislative session.
Last week, Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed more than 700 bills into law, vetoed three bills and submitted recommendations for 78 others. The legislature is set to reconvene for a one-day session in Richmond April 12 to consider the governor’s proposed recommendations and take votes on whether to accept or reject the governor’s amendments.
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Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin is requesting changes to a pair of bills dealing with the regulation of hemp-derived products in the commonwealth, proposing an exemption that would allow some CBD products with THC to remain on store shelves.
After weeks of debate and several amendments, lawmakers in the General Assembly voted to pass a pair of bills that limits the amount of THC – a chemical found in the marijuana plant that can be intoxicating to consumers – included in a hemp product to a concentration of 0.3% and two milligrams per package. The bills also establish labeling, testing and packaging requirements for hemp-derived products.
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Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed more than 700 bills sent to his desk by the General Assembly by Monday’s action deadline, approving a slew of new laws that will take effect by July 1.
The governor approved 738 bills by Monday’s action deadline and vetoed three as of Tuesday at 3 p.m., according to the state’s bill tracking system. The governor has also issued recommendations and amendments to 78 other measures, which the General Assembly will consider when it reconvenes in Richmond April 12.
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Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed into law a pair of bills Monday aimed at providing greater financial flexibility for individuals with developmental disabilities who receive waiver services – a move supporters say will translate to greater “buying power” for people with disabilities to invest in technology that allows them to live independently.
Virginia currently offers several kinds of Disability Waivers – including Community Living, Family and Individual Supports, and Building Independence waivers – for individuals diagnosed with a developmental disability. The waivers offer long-term support for people with developmental disabilities and include access to services, including assistive technology and electronic home-based services.
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Facing a Monday deadline to act on bills passed by the Virginia General Assembly, Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed hundreds of bills into law this week.
Lawmakers in the Virginia General Assembly sent hundreds of bills to the governor’s desk during this legislative session.
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For the tens of thousands of Virginians whose guardianship case is served by a private guardian, existing law dictating how often their guardian is required to visit them is vague.
A bill that passed the General Assembly on a bipartisan basis this session aims to change that.
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Virginia revenue collections are running hundreds of millions of dollars above budget projections by state finance officials, according to a new revenue report published Friday.
It’s a sign Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin says confirms the state is correct in its projection of a “multi-billion dollar budget surplus.”
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The politically-divided Virginia General Assembly agreed on a “stopgap” budget bill before lawmakers adjourned the legislative session Saturday, with lawmakers indicating work remains to reach a final deal on amendments to the state’s two-year state spending plan.
Without an agreement reached on key aspects of proposed amendments to the state’s budget – including $1 billion in tax cuts proposed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin – the legislature agreed to pass what House Appropriations Committee Chair Del. Barry Knight described as a “stopgap” budget with just a few items.
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Virginia Democrats who voted to remove concerned parent Suparna Dutta from the state’s Board of Education on Tuesday should be “ashamed,” according to Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s office.
“In an appalling show of partisanship, Senate Democrats said the quiet part out loud: Parents aren’t qualified to advise on education in Virginia,” Youngkin spokeswoman Macaulay Porter told The Daily Signal. “Suparna Dutta immigrated from India, exemplifies the American dream, and is a Fairfax County public school parent, who has continually advocated for parents and students to have a voice in their education.”
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Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s office said the Black Lives Matter at School toolkit released by a Virginia teacher’s union “will not be tolerated.”
The Virginia Education Association’s Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action toolkit champions BLM’s 13 principles in the classroom. It uses kindergarten through 12th grade lesson plans made by the education branch of the Southern Poverty Law Center to teach students principles including “transgender affirming,” “queer affirming,” “restorative justice,” and “globalism.”
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With just a few weeks left in the legislative session, Virginia lawmakers in the House and Senate disagree on whether or not a key piece of Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s proposed budget amendments – $1 billion in tax cuts – should be included in the state’s amended spending plan.
Proposed amendments to the biennial budget presented by both the House and Senate money committees Sunday, reveals disagreement between the two chambers over the inclusion of Youngkin’s proposed $1 billion in tax reductions.
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Virginia GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin has a 56% approval rating among state voters, according to a recently released survey.
The Mason Dixon survey released Thursday shows Youngkin’s approval rating his highest since taking office last year.
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A committee of Virginia lawmakers advanced a bill Friday that seeks to establish a retail market for sales of recreational marijuana beginning next year – a measure lawmakers are mulling almost two years after the state legalized the substance.
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Growth in plants connected to electric vehicles has roared across the country. Not everyone, however, is quickly jumping in. When Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin said last week that he stopped efforts to establish a Ford Motors battery plant at a megasite in the state due to its Chinese partner, it was the first time University of Texas professor Nathan Jensen could recall a state rejecting an economic incentive deal for a battery plant.
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Gov. Glenn Youngkin will propose $230 million in his upcoming budget amendments to bolster Virginia’s behavioral health system and build crisis care capacity as part of a three-year plan unveiled Wednesday.
Youngkin’s plan, titled “Right Help, Right Now,” is aiming to reshape the state’s strained behavioral health care system. The plan outlines a six-pronged approach – ensuring same-day care for individuals in a behavioral health crisis, relieving the burden of law enforcement and decriminalizing behavioral health, building capacity for treatment beyond hospitals, targeting substance use disorder treatment, prioritizing the behavioral workforce in underserved communities and innovating crisis care services.
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Virginia companies and research universities will receive more than $1.5 million to fund 24 technology-related projects in the commonwealth.
The technology funding will be awarded through the Virginia Innovation Partnership Corporation’s Commonwealth Commercialization Fund. The program was launched in 2020 to promote technologies that could yield more economic development and job creation in the state, according to Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s office.
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Virginia GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin on Friday brushed off former President Trump’s criticism of him – which followed his lieutenant governor, Winsome Sears, saying Trump should remove himself from GOP electoral politics.
“Listen, you all know me,” Youngkin told reporters. “I do not call people names. I really work hard to bring people together … . That’s not the way I roll and not the way I behave.”
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Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin defended his policy regarding gender identity rules for the public school system, saying children don’t belong to the state.
Under the rules, student bathrooms and sports teams should be based on sex assigned at birth, not gender identity. Parental approval would be required if a student wants to change their name, according to the new policy.
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Recently, Virginia Democrats and dishonest mainstream media pundits have attempted to dunk on Governor Youngkin for saying that under Democrat rule, “Virginia is a border state.” But while Virginia doesn’t share a physical border with Mexico, Governor Youngkin’s comments nonetheless underscore a stark reality for Americans in Virginia and throughout the entire country – thanks to Joe Biden and failed Democrat policies, every state is now a border state.
Governor Youngkin’s comments on Fox News were in reference to the opioid crisis that is sweeping our nation – a crisis that Democrats are apparently oblivious to or unwilling to acknowledge is directly related to the surge of illegal immigration at our southern border. The entire country, not just border states, is experiencing a spike in fentanyl overdoses as thousands of pounds of the deadly narcotic pour into the country. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were more than 107,000 fatal drug overdoses in 2021, the highest number on record. In just the past two months, border patrol officers have seized more than 5 million fentanyl pills at just the border crossing in Nogales, Arizona.
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Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin wants the Washington Commanders to relocate to Virginia, but after funding plans fell apart during the last legislative session, the path forward is not yet clear.
“If the Commanders are going to relocate they should relocate to Virginia,” Youngkin recently said while visiting Annandale for a rally geared toward parents, according to ABC 7.
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The left denies it, but it’s truly happening – a massive realignment is underway in the American electorate as Latinos are leaning in with the GOP. This November, Republicans are running Hispanic nominees in key battleground districts, headlined by rising stars like Myra Flores, Cassy Garcia, and Monica De La Cruz in Texas, Michelle Garcia Holmes and Alexis Martinez Johnson in New Mexico, Lori Chavez-DeRemer in Oregon – and of course, Yesli Vega in Virginia. Over the past two years, the Old Dominion has been ground zero for this shift, providing a glimpse into what the future of the Republican Party might look like on a national scale.
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All but one public university in Virginia are taking steps to address students’ tuition burden after a call to action from the governor.
Earlier this year, Glenn Youngkin requested that the commonwealth’s public universities reverse their planned tuition increases, citing inflation.
The University of Virginia (UVA) is the only public university not to announce a plan to reverse its tuition increase. NBC29 reports that UVA students will see a 4.7% tuition and fee increase, raising rates for first-year in-state students to $14,878 and $50,348 for out-of-state students.
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After months of debate about Virginia’s biennium budget, lawmakers reached a deal to provide an income tax cut for the middle class, a reduction in the grocery tax and a pay raise for teachers.
The deal earned approval from Republicans and Democrats in a joint conference committee, but still needs to pass the House of Delegates and the Senate and be signed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin. Republicans narrowly control the House and Democrats narrowly control the Senate.
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Virginia’s Governor Tuesday reacted strongly to the news that the Supreme Court of the United States’ (SCOTUS) confidentiality had been violated, and a draft of its decision in a high-profile abortion case has been released.
“I am in utter disbelief that the sacred confidentiality of the Supreme Court would be violated in this manner,” said Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) in a press release.
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A new Virginia law prohibits school divisions from enforcing face mask mandates, but at least one school district and some parents are suing the commonwealth to overturn the legislation.
Senate Bill 739, which Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed into law in February, allows parents to opt their children out of any school-imposed mask rules. Under the legislation, which school districts were required to comply with beginning March 1, school officials are prohibited from using any disciplinary or academic punishments to enforce mask rules if a parent opted a student out.
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Virginia House and Senate Democrats are urging House Republicans to support resolutions to allow voters to decide the fate of two proposed constitutional amendments: the automatic restoration of voting rights for felons and same-sex marriage rights.
To adopt a constitutional amendment, both chambers of the General Assembly must pass two identical resolutions two years in a row, with a House of Delegates election in between those years. If approved in the Legislature, the proposed amendment would appear on the general ballot during the fall elections. If supported by the majority of voters, the proposed amendment would be adopted.
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Virginia House and Senate Democrats are urging House Republicans to support resolutions to allow voters to decide the fate of two proposed constitutional amendments: the automatic restoration of voting rights for felons and same-sex marriage rights.
To adopt a constitutional amendment, both chambers of the General Assembly must pass two identical resolutions two years in a row, with a House of Delegates election in between those years. If approved in the Legislature, the proposed amendment would appear on the general ballot during the fall elections. If supported by the majority of voters, the proposed amendment would be adopted.
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Virginia GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin on Friday followed through on his first official initiative after taking office in January to review, then rescind what his considers “inherently divisive concepts including Critical Race Theory” in commonwealth public school curricula.
Youngkin announced the move in a 19-page report in which he states: “Executive Order One charged the [commonwealth’s] superintendent of Public Instruction to begin the work of identifying and addressing inherently divisive concepts including ‘Critical Race Theory. … This interim report rescinds certain policies, programs and resources that promote discriminatory and divisive concepts as directed by Executive Order One.”
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A court ordered that Loudoun County, Virginia Public Schools cannot enforce its mask mandate on students and will need to expunge students’ records if they had been punished for not wearing masks.
Loudoun County schools had intended to end the mask mandate Feb. 22, but the court order requires them to end it immediately. The school district immediately complied with the order and sent a letter to the school community, students and staff that explained the new policy.
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The Chairwoman of the Montgomery County School Board says she intends to keep her job after storming out of a meeting earlier this week and offering the position to speaker at the meeting.
“I have not resigned,” Sue Kass told The Virginia Star by email Thursday.
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After a group of parents sued Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) for forcing students to continue wearing masks despite Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) issuing executive order banning that practice, LCPS declined to comment on the situation.
Wayde B. Byard, LCPS’ public information officer, told The Virginia Star Thursday that the only comment he could offer was already made by Superintendent Scott Ziegler.
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A Virginia mother addressed her children’s school board Thursday night regarding the district’s mask mandate, which subverts Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s executive order allowing parents to choose whether or not to mask their children in school.
A Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) mother, Carrie Lukas, condemned the school board for requiring children to mask up for school while “across Virginia, right now, adults are gathering in gyms, bars and clubs and laughing together maskless.”
“Yet my five kids spent all day today, eight hours, in masks in Fairfax County Public Schools,” she said. “My first grader has never been inside his school without a mask. He’s never had a chance to smile at his friends or hear his teachers’ unmuffled voice, and it is outrageous and ridiculous.”
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Virginia’s Attorney General released a legal opinion Friday saying that under Virginia law, vaccine mandates for college students are illegal.
“Absent specific authority conferred by the General Assembly, public institutions of higher education in Virginia may not require vaccination against COVID-19 as a general condition of students’ enrollment or in-person attendance,” Attorney General Jason Miyares said in his opinion.
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A source inside the Virginia Capitol Thursday spoke exclusively to The Virginia Star about Wednesday’s tiff between Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) and Del. Don Scott (D-Portsmouth), who claimed in an interview with the Washington Post that the Governor was not comporting himself in a manner consistent with his Christian faith.
At the time of Washington Post’s publication, Scott was expecting the governor to meet with him in his office.
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The office of Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) responded Wednesday to criticism it has drawn over an email Critical Race Theory (CRT) tip line it has made available to Virginia’s parents.
“The governor’s office set up [email protected] as a resource for parents, teachers, and students to relay any questions or concerns,” Youngkin spokesperson Macauley Porter told The Virginia Star. “Governor Youngkin was elected to serve all Virginians and has utilized a customary constituent service, to hear from Virginians and solicit feedback.”
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After a large group of students at Woodgrove High School, part of Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS), decided to defy the school’s mask mandate Monday, LCPS has responded.
“This morning 30 Woodgrove students (out of a student body of 1,585) refused to wear a mask. They were asked to move to the auditorium where they could use the Schoology platform to continue their studies,” Wayde B. Byard, LCPS’ Public Information Officer, told The Virginia Star by email. “Teachers dropped periodically in to help students with their work. A lunch period and bathroom breaks were arranged. Several students opted to go home and were allowed to do so.”
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Some of Virginia’s public universities have rescinded their vaccine mandates after Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) took office this week and signed a flurry of executive orders on his first day.
One of those orders banned vaccine mandates by employers.
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Newly inaugurated Gov. Glenn Yougkin (R) spoke about the future of Virginia Monday afternoon in his first address to the Virginia General Assembly.
In his speech, Youngkin said the sate is ready to be finished with the pandemic, noting that he was elected to “turn the page” on COVID-19.
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After inaugurated Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) banned schools from establishing mask mandates on his first day as Virginia governor, four major school districts say they won’t abide by his new rule.
Executive Order Number Two (2022) and Order of Public Health Emergency One banned the mandates.
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