Across Virginia

(From Governor’s office) RICHMOND—The 13th cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station successfully launched today at 3:21 p.m. from Wallops Island. The mission will deliver 8,009 pounds of cargo to the space station. The “NG-13” mission is a partnership of the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority (Virginia Space), NASA Wallops Flight Facility, and Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems. The spacecraft launched from Virginia Space’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) Pad 0A. Northrop Grumman named the NG-13 spacecraft after former astronaut Robert H. Lawrence, Jr. He became the first African American astronaut in 1967.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Democratic presidential hopeful Michael Bloomberg is set to address Virginia Democrats at their biggest fundraising event of the year.

The billionaire former New York City mayor is set to be a featured speaker at the Democratic Party of Virginia’s annual gala Saturday. His campaign is also listed as a top donor to the event on the party’s website.

Bloomberg had made multiple visits to Virginia, which is part of a group of Super Tuesday states that will hold their primary elections on March 3. Bloomberg is skipping the early voting states and focusing on later delegate-rich contests like Virginia, California and Texas in his bid for the Democratic nomination.

Gun control and clean-energy groups affiliated with Bloomberg spent several million dollars last year helping Virginia Democrats win full control of the General Assembly for the first time in more than two decades.

Other presidential candidates are sending surrogate speakers, according to a published list of speakers. That includes Valerie Biden Owen, the sister of former Vice President Joe Biden.

Gov. Ralph Northam and Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax are set to speak as well. The Democratic Party of Virginia called on both men to resign last year after a racist picture surfaced in Northam’s medical school yearbook and two women accused Fairfax of sexual assault, which he denies.

Amtrak’s Roanoke service appears to be a success by almost any measure in its first 21 months, but another state-sponsored public transportation project is also doing well — so much so that new routes are coming this year. It’s the Virginia Breeze bus service, a daily round-trip between Blacksburg and Washington, with an additional run on weekends. The response is leading the state to adding routes from Southside Virginia to Richmond, and from Danville to Washington. WFIR’s Evan Jones has more:

Wildlife Center of Va. via AP

BRISTOL, Va. (AP) — An orphaned black bear cub has been placed with a substitute mother this week after being saved by a dog and brought to safety.

The rescue effort unfolded after the dog turned up at its owner’s home in Washington County with a cub in its mouth on Feb. 5, Bill Bassinger, wildlife biologist with the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, told news outlets. The male cub wasn’t hurt by the dog, he added.

The cub, estimated to be two to three weeks old, was taken to the Virginia Wildlife Center in Waynesboro for treatment and eventual resettlement with his own species. The center keeps female bears with monitoring collars on for this purpose, according to Bassinger. Conservation officers use the collars to locate the bears, then track them and listen for cubs making sounds in their dens, the center’s website says. If they find a good match, staff members place orphaned cubs outside the dens, and mother bears usually adopt them as their own, Bassinger and experts said.

“The mothering instinct is just very strong in most animals,” Bassinger told the Wytheville Enterprise. “Generally, most females will take the young back, even after it has been handled by humans.”

The male cub was settled into an incubator earlier this week where he received constant care and feeding, an update on the wildlife center’s website said. He was described as bright, alert and “vocalizing readily.” The center said the cub was placed with a new mother who was nursing three cubs of her own on Wednesday.

MGN

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — More than 1,000 people rallied at the Virginia Capitol on Thursday, protesting legislation advancing in the Democratic-controlled General Assembly that would ease restrictions on abortion access.

Speakers urged the crowd that gathered in a steady rain to pressure lawmakers to vote against bills that they say would undo regulations that protect pregnant women. They encouraged attendees to join anti-abortion advocacy groups to push back against Democrats who retook control of the General Assembly in November, and they vowed to unseat members of the new majority.

“Virginia has taken a wrong left turn. But we’re here today to let all inside this Capitol know that we will never rest and we will never relent in our commitment to putting this Commonwealth back on the right course,” said Republican Del. Kathy Byron.

Both the House and Senate have passed bills to undo restrictions on abortion access that were enacted when the legislature was under GOP control, including a 24-hour waiting period before an abortion and a requirement that women seeking an abortion undergo an ultrasound and counseling.

The bills, which Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam supports, would also roll back the requirement that an abortion be provided by a physician and undo strict building code requirements on facilities where abortions are performed. Each chamber must pass the other’s before they could be sent to Northam for his signature.

Abortion-rights advocates say the restrictions injected politics into a health care decision and made obtaining an abortion overly burdensome.

“Medical decisions should be between a woman and her health care providers. Medical professionals know the proper protocol for each individual patient, not politicians,” said House Democratic Majority Leader Charniele Herring, who is sponsoring that chamber’s bill.

Democrats have also defeated some Republican-sponsored bills this session that would have enacted abortion restrictions.

Abortion opponents say the existing restrictions protect pregnant women’s health and safety and are prudent, given the gravity of the decision to obtain an abortion.

Attendee Patty Raehn, from Colonial Beach, said the issue became critically important to her when she became pregnant at a young age and was encouraged to have an abortion. She said she went on to give birth to a son, now 27, whom she called her “saving grace.”

Raehn said she opposes the Democrats’ legislation and that abortion is her No. 1 issue when deciding how to vote.

“I will not look at other issues. If you don’t stand for life, I can’t vote for you,” she said.

Speakers at the rally included leaders of conservative and anti-abortion advocacy groups, including March for Life President Jeanne Mancini, and women who said they had obtained abortions they later regretted.

After the rally concluded, attendees marched through downtown streets. Some carried signs that said “unborn lives matter” and “abortion is murder.”

Capitol police spokesman Joe Macenka said the crowd numbered over 1,000, though he said the department could not provide an exact count.

A new study finds that Virginia is the state with the rudest drivers – ahead of states you might expect to top the list like New York. The study comes from Insurify, which used a citation database for things like:

  • Failure to yield violations (failure to yield the right of way, failure to yield to a pedestrian)
  • Failure to stop violations (failure to stop for a red light, school bus, or stop sign)
  • Improper backing
  • Passing where prohibited
  • Tailgating, street racing, and hit-and-runs.

The study does not differentiate between the various regions of Virginia.

Click here to see the full Insurify study

Hendricks Co. Sheriff’s Office

PLAINFIELD, Ind. (AP) — A Virginia woman accused of abducting her four children and leading authorities on a nationwide chase for several months was taken into custody Wednesday morning in Indiana, authorities said.

Melody Bannister, 34, of Henrico, Virginia, was arrested at a gas station in Hendricks County, Indiana, by U.S. Marshals and local authorities after being on the run for more than four months, news outlets reported. Her children were found safe inside her car and were taken by the Indiana Department of Child Services.

Bannister was wanted in Stafford County, Virginia, on four counts of abduction, filing a false police report, and violating a court order.

The Stafford County Sheriff’s Office said an investigation into Bannister began last June when she told deputies her children were being abused by a family member. The investigation by the sheriff’s office and Child Protection Services determined that the accusations were baseless.

Bannister went on a planned vacation shortly before the Stafford County Juvenile Domestic & Relations Court granted custody of the children to their father. Bannister refused to give the children up.

She later petitioned for custody in Alabama but was ordered to return the children. Bannister fled and led authorities on a chase through at least eight states, including Wisconsin, Texas and Colorado.

Bannister was being held in Indiana until she could be extradited to Virginia.

It’s unclear whether Bannister had an attorney who could comment on her behalf.

MGN

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — The House of Delegates passed a bill this week that would allocate the commonwealth’s electoral college votes to the candidate who received the national popular vote.

The bill would join Virginia into the National Popular Vote Compact, which ensures the presidential candidate with the most votes nationally is elected once states comprising 270 out of 538 electoral votes sign onto the pact. The House passed the bill by a vote of 51-46.

Passage of House Bill 177, introduced by Del. Mark Levine, D-Alexandria, comes less than two weeks after the bill was originally defeated in the Privileges and Elections committee by a vote of 10-12. After being reconsidered in the same committee last week, the bill reported out on a 12-9 vote. Del. Paul Krizek, D-Fairfax, and Del. Alex Askew, D-Virginia Beach, who initially voted against the bill voted in favor of it the second time. Del. Kelly Convirs-Fowler, D-Virginia Beach, who initially also voted against the bill did not vote the second time.

The bill incorporates HB 199, introduced by Del. Marcia Price, D-Newport News.

“The people of the United States should choose the president of the United States, no matter where they live in each individual state,” Levine said when questioned during the committee hearing. “It gives every American equal weight under the law.”

Levine tried to pass similar legislation the past three consecutive sessions.

A similar Senate bill, introduced by Sen. Adam Ebbin, D-Alexandria, was pulled from consideration by Ebbin, who did not identify the reason he pulled the bill.

Since the campaign began in 2006, 15 states and the District of Columbia have passed the National Popular Vote bill — a total of 196 electoral votes. If the bill passes the state Senate, Virginia’s 13 electoral votes would bring that total to 209. That leaves 61 electoral votes needed for the compacte to take effect. At least one chamber in eight additional states, with a combined 75 more electoral votes, have passed the bill.

“We are grateful to our sponsors in the Virginia General Assembly, and to citizens across the state who are making it clear that they prefer a national popular vote for president,” said John Koza, chairman of National Popular Vote, in a released statement.

A candidate winning the electoral votes and the presidential race despite losing the national popular vote has occurred five times in American history: John Quincy Adams in 1824, Rutherford Hayes in 1876, Benjamin Harris in 1888, George W. Bush in 2000 and Donald Trump in 2016.

“It is really hard to predict how campaigns would respond to this change,” said Alex Keena, assistant professor of political science at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. “We would probably see less campaigning in the smaller swing states and there would be less emphasis on winning states, per se.”

The bill stipulates that a state can exit the compact, but a withdrawal occurring six months or less before the end of a president’s term shall not become effective until a president or vice president have been qualified to serve the next term.

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This article was provided to The Associated Press by Virginia Commonwealth University Capital News Service.

STAFFORD COURTHOUSE, Va. (AP) — A black man seen wearing a Ku Klux Klan robe and hood at a Virginia shopping center Tuesday told sheriff’s deputies that he was performing a social experiment, according to authorities.

The Stafford County Sheriff’s Office was called to a Target store at the Stafford Marketplace around 2:30 p.m. to investigate reports of someone wearing the costume, Maj. Shawn Kimmitz said in a video statement posted to social media. Deputies found the person in the robe, identified him as a black man and determined he didn’t live in the area, he added.

Deputies warned him about wearing a mask in public and he left the scene, Kimmitz said. Virginia law prohibits wearing masks with the intent to conceal identity in public.

A photo posted to Twitter by a witness at the shopping center showed someone dressed in the white robe and hood talking to deputies while others looked on.

The sheriff’s office didn’t identify the man.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Local Virginia governments may soon have the power to remove Confederate monuments in their public spaces under legislation approved Tuesday by state lawmakers.

On Tuesday, largely along party lines, the Democrat-led House and Senate passed measures that would give cities and counties the autonomy to “remove, relocate, contextualize, cover or alter” the monuments in their public spaces.

Del. Delores McQuinn, a Democrat from Richmond who sponsored the House bill, said it would let local communities decide for themselves “how they want to memorialize history, whether it’s right in your face or they want to memorialize it in another way.”

Del. Jay Jones, who is black, said in a speech Monday that many of the monuments were erected in the 20th century, decades after the Civil War had ended and during the “throes of Jim Crow.” He said people in Norfolk, his district, overwhelmingly want a “Johnny Reb” statue removed from a downtown square.

“Every time I drive past it — which is every day to get to my law office — my heart breaks a little bit,” he said.

The measures’ opponents, who compare removing Confederate monuments to erasing history, have raised concerns that the legislation could lead to a push to take down memorials to other controversial conflicts, such as the Vietnam War.

“I do not believe this will end well,” said Republican Del. Charles Poindexter, who added that the bill sent a “tough message” to every veteran or dead veteran’s family.

Each chamber advanced different versions of the legislation. The House and Senate may next conform the language of the bills to match or advance them to a conference committee that will work out the differences.

The Senate’s bill imposes several hurdles not included in the House version that a local government must take before removing a monument. Under the measure, local leaders must first pass a resolution stating its intention to remove the monument, then request a report from the Virginia Department of Historic Resources with background about the person depicted and the circumstances under which the monument was established.

The locality would then have to make that report public and then hold a public hearing before it could vote. A decision to remove a monument would require a 2/3 vote or could be sent to voters for a referendum.

Under both the House and Senate bills, the locality would have to offer the monument to a “museum, historical society, government, or military battlefield” for a period of 30 days, though both measures say the local government has the “sole authority” to determine its final disposition.

Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam said at the start of this year’s legislative session that he supports lifting the existing prohibition on the removal of Confederate war memorials. He also said he backs a measure advancing through both chambers that lays out a process for removing a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee that Virginia contributed to the U.S. Capitol grounds.

That legislation, which establishes a commission that would recommend a prominent Virginian who could replace Lee as one of the state’s two contributions in the National Statuary Hall Collection, passed the Senate on Monday and the House on Tuesday.

After the 2017 white supremacist rally, which was convened in part to protest Charlottesville’s attempt to remove a statue of Lee from a downtown park, many places around the country quickly started taking Confederate monuments down. The event descended into chaos and a white supremacist plowed his car into a crowd, killing a woman and injuring dozens more.

But in Virginia, a state that was home to two Confederate capitals, localities were hamstrung by the existing law.

Charlottesville, which later also sought to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, has been fighting the issue in court. A judge prevented the city from even covering the Lee statue with tarps amid the litigation.

Charlottesville is encouraged by the progress on the legislation, city spokesman Brian Wheeler said.

“Should legislation be signed by the Governor, the City will identify the procedural steps it needs to complete in order to remove the statues of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson from its public parks,” Wheeler wrote in an email.

Other city governments that have signaled their intent to remove a Confederate monument include Alexandria, Portsmouth and Norfolk, which voted to move the “Johnny Reb” statue to a cemetery and has also sued over the law. In Richmond, where a commission convened by the mayor recommended removing one of five Confederate statues along the city’s famed Monument Avenue, the City Council passed a resolution last month asking the General Assembly for local control.

One of those five statues, a soaring tribute to Lee, is state property. Northam has said there’s an “ongoing discussion” about that statue’s future, though his office has declined to answer further questions.