Republicans will continue to run the Senate, but come January, Democrats will run the House. Still up in the air: what this all means for the Trump administration's legislative agenda. We called someone we think can speak to the challenge: Marc Short, the former director of legislative affairs for the Trump administration and now a senior fellow at UVA’s Miller Center.
UVA Director of Athletics Carla Williams gave hundreds of Cavalier fans some insight into the landscape of college sports at a pregame event at Alumni Hall.
Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the UVA Center for Politics, says many people used the election to voice their opinions about the current president. “I think Trump is just driving all of this,” he said. “There are people just coming out of the woodwork to support him and his candidates and others to oppose him and support candidates who oppose the president, and we saw that in the kind of mixed results across the country.”
Doug Jones is the most vulnerable Democrat running after he won the Alabama Senate seat last year, defeating GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore, who had been accused of sexual misconduct with teenage girls from when he was in his 30s. Larry Sabato and Kyle Kondik at UVA’s Center for Politics said it’s “a very bad sign” for Jones that Democrats lost in Indiana, Missouri and North Dakota, and that there were narrow Democratic wins in West Virginia and Montana.
A provision in the federal tax code gives the chairs of the congressional panels with jurisdiction on tax policy the ability to request tax returns from the Treasury Department. That means the Democratic chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee will have the authority in January to demand Trump’s tax returns. George Yin, a UVA law professor, said that in the past when there have been conflicts involving someone resisting requests for information from Congress, courts have ruled that there needs to be a legitimate legislative purpose for Congress’s request.
Against a backdrop of worldwide political turmoil and in the wake of a mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue, an international conference on Holocaust education held here over the weekend has taken on special meaning. “It is very important to make what we teach relevant for our students,” said Finder, who is director of UVA’s Jewish Studies Program. “I think students are particularly interested in questions such as, ‘What would I have done if I had been in the shoes of someone of that time?’”
A physics professor and three engineering professors at UVA are members of new multi-disciplinary, multi-university teams working on a new understanding of quantum science. The teams want to develop practical and extremely high-tech tools, like the long-sought quantum computer.
The construction team working on the UVA Medical Center expansion project paused Friday morning to salute veterans. Hundreds gathered for a short ceremony at the project gate entrance along Crispell Drive.
The festival, a program of UVA and its Office of the Provost and Vice Provost for the Arts, featured nearly 200 films plus a guest list highlighted by two-time Academy Award-winning actor Christoph Waltz snf civil rights leader Martin Luther King III.
"Just as the rural vote revolt has continued to benefit Trump and Republicans, a new suburban revolt, especially among college-educated women, has worked to the benefit of the Democratic Party and will probably continue," said Larry Sabato, founder and director of UVA’s Center for Politics.
Donald Trump has fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions and also handed oversight of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election hacking to a political staffer who has previously called for Mueller to be reined in. Whether such interference is seen as permissible is likely to be a political question, said Saikrishna Prakash, a constitutional law expert at the University of Virginia. “Some people will think that will be obstruction and some will think it’s just inappropriate,” he said.
"For Democrats, winning the House is not necessarily about advancing a major agenda of their own, it's about preventing the Republicans from advancing their agenda," explains Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato's Crystal Ball at UVA’s Center for Politics. "The only things that would get passed is 'must-pass' legislation to deal with the debt ceiling or preventing a government shutdown. Democrats would pass a number of bills that would be messaging bills that would die in the Senate."
The University of Virginia is proposing undergraduate tuition increases of between 2 and 3.5 percent for the 2019-20 school year, according to a notice posted Wednesday. The increases for incoming and returning students come in addition to stair-step increases for some schools within the University that were approved last year and will continue for several more years. The proposal also includes a recommendation to implement, in the fall of 2021, a new, higher tuition bracket for College of Arts & Sciences upperclassmen.
Electricity has begun flowing from the UVA Hollyfield Solar facility, an innovative partnership between the University of Virginia, its Darden School of Business and Dominion Energy. The University says the arrangement calls for the University and the business school to buy the entire output of electricity produced at the 160-acre solar facility for the next 25 years.
While Larry Hogan’s political ascent in Maryland “is one impressive feat,” it may not provide a helpful road map elsewhere, said Kyle Kondik, who analyzes races for UVA’s Center for Politics. Like the two other popular Republican governors in Democratic states – Charlie Baker in Massachusetts and Phil Scott in Vermont – Hogan is not a “culture warrior,” he said.
Guian McKee of UVA’s Miller Center says to expect gridlock in Washington after the midterm elections. "The 2020 campaign starts now and both sides will be positioning their agendas and platforms," he said. "I don't have a lot of optimism that we will see nothing but gridlock the next two years."
It's fitting that Tina Thompson will make her UVA head coaching debut against a top 10 opponent, No. 6 Mississippi State, on Friday. Thompson embraces challenges, having worked hard for every accolade that has come her way.
After not attempting a punt in his first three seasons, Lester Coleman, now a graduate student, has 111 to his credit. That includes 31 of 50 yards or more and 42 that have been downed inside the 20.
Spanberger, a former CIA operations officer and University of Virginia graduate, won 50.1 percent of the vote to unseat Rep. Dave Brat, the district's representative since 2014.
UVA first-year student Jayden Nixon is among those Americans casting a ballot for the first time. “I feel like we all send a message by doing this,” Nixon said outside Cale Elementary School where he cast his ballot. He was motivated in part, he said, by the political climate.