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.
In an interview, George Yin, a professor of law and taxation at the UVA School of Law, said a law passed in 1924 authorizes the House Ways and Means Committee to obtain a president’s returns from the IRS without his consent.
George Yin, the former executive director of the Joint Committee on Taxation who is now a UVA professor of law and taxation, said in an interview Wednesday that he doesn’t believe there is any legal basis for the White House to assert executive privilege in attempting to block the release of tax returns.
Larry Sabato, director of UVA’s Center for Politics, called them “snap-back” states. Trump’s small 2016 margin means there are many voters “who have a party ID not aligned with the president.”
The barriers to women’s decisions to run are backed up by research from UVA’s Jennifer Lawless and Loyola Marymount’s Richard Fox; women tend to be more risk-averse and may be less inclined to run given negative perceptions of how other women politicians are treated.
Jennifer L. Lawless, UVA’s Commonwealth Professor of Politics, said Republican incumbent Will Hurd’s win over Gina Jones in Texas’ 23rd Congressional District race demonstrates three important lessons about the midterms.
Clarke County School District Superintendent Demond Means told the Clarke County Board of Education at its Thursday work session that the University of Virginia School Turnaround Program is a “unique, strong program” that involves both the university’s business school and its education school, one recognized by the federal government as one of the best in the country.
(Subscription required) New campus polling places, organizing strategies, and anti-Trump energy helped drive vote totals in college towns and counties with large student populations. About 7,000 more voters in Charlottesville, home of the University of Virginia, cast ballots in that state’s U.S. Senate race in 2018 compared with 2014, according to data gathered by the Associated Press.
“Stars are powered by nuclear reactions that create new chemical elements,” said Thomas Bisbas, a UVA postdoctoral researcher and the lead author on the paper describing these new results. “The very existence of life on earth is the product of a star that exploded billions of years ago, but we still don't know how these stars – including our own sun – form.”