(Podcast) Dr. Ebony Hilton-Buchholz, a UVA associate professor of anesthesiology, talks about everything you need to know about the COVID-19 vaccine, including how it works, whether it will protect against mutations in the virus and why it is so important that the vaccine is distributed equitably.
(Commentary by Daniell Citron, law professor) Even before Donald Trump took the office of president, we knew that his social media presence would be chaotic and undisciplined. Once inaugurated, Trump quickly outdid himself, doubling down on all of his destructive tendencies. Ever since, he has fomented a toxic brew of poisonous disinformation, harassment, and calls for vengeance.
Two New England Revolution players got the nod for the United States Men’s National Team January camp, which begins Jan. 9, including former UVA standout Henry Kessler. This is a major step in Kessler’s career as it’s his first call-up for the United States at any age level.
Staging a debate over the outcome of an election, meanwhile, with the loser pressing unsubstantiated claims from the White House and asking at least one election official in Georgia to help him find the votes to reverse the outcome, seems far different. “On this one, it’s just going to the fundamentals,” said Larry Sabato, editor in chief of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a political handicapping site at UVA’s Center for Politics. “Are we going to maintain a democratic republic? … This is serious business and people are starting to wake up to it.”
Sabato’s Crystal Ball, which is housed within UVA’s Center for Politics, still considers both of Georgia’s Senate races toss-ups. “If Democrats have done better in the pre-Election Day vote this time, then Republicans either need to win the Election Day vote by more than Trump did, or have the Election Day electorate make up a bigger share of the total votes cast (and still vote heavily Republican),” Kyle Kondik writes for the political preview published today.
(Audio) Today on “All Sides With Ann Fisher”: a runoff preview and how changing demographics have turned Georgia purple after two decades of Republican control. Guests include Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the UVA Center for Politics.
“I am so impressed by the turnout,” Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at UVA, said. “This has to be one of the most engaged electorates of any non-presidential races in modern history.”
Georgia smashed its turnout record for a runoff even before most polls closed at 7 p.m. on Election Day, with more than 3 million votes cast by mail or during early in-person voting in December. “Both sides are very highly energized,” UVA Center for Politics analyst J. Miles Coleman said.
James Coan, a neuroscientist and UVA psychology professor, has decidedly mixed feelings about the experiment he inadvertently spearheaded. “I’m slow enough on the uptake that it took me a while to realize that the study I was doing was making people who had been sexually abused feel like I was their enemy,” he said. “That was completely devastating to me.” Although he has been asked to testify about false memory in countless court cases, Coan has always refused.
Susan A. Saliba, a professor of kinesiology in the School of Education and Human Development, is featured.
Our sources are Aseem Mulji, a legal counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, and Sai Prakash, a constitutional law professor at the UVA School of Law, as well as the federal statute about counting electoral votes. For an objection to pass, a senator and house representative must put it in writing. Then the two chambers would split off to debate the objection and vote. For an objection to be accepted, both the Senate and the House of Representatives have to approve it.
According to 3 U.S. Code § 15, only Congress can object to electors, if both chambers of Congress agree to the objection. There is “zero chance such a maneuver by Pence or the Republicans will succeed if they are bold enough to try this,” Larry Sabato, director of UVA’s Center for Politics, said.
(Commentary co-written by Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, practitioner senior fellow at UVA’s Miller Center) Since the early days of the republic, presidents have had the ability to temporarily fill federal roles that need Senate confirmation with acting officials, a vital practice in the transition from one leader to the next. But serious flaws with the law that governs federal vacancies, combined with Senate inaction, have enabled Donald Trump to fill numerous critical jobs with acting officials indefinitely, a practice that has destabilized the work of federal agencies and undermined the role of the S...
Today, we unveil the 2021 RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings, ranking the university-based scholars in the U.S. who did the most last year to shape educational practice and policy. Stanford placed two scholars in the top five and five in the top 20. Harvard, USC, the University of Virginia and the University of Pennsylvania all had multiple scholars in the top 20.
If it seems like there’s a lack of informed and intelligent debate in politics these days, UVA’s Center for Politics is hoping to change that impression with its new Democracy Dialogues series. Larry Sabato, a nationally known political pundit and the center’s director, will host the first installment in its series Wednesday at 6 p.m.
(Podcast) UVA alumnus Matt Olsen held so many important and difficult jobs in federal law enforcement and national security that it is hard to know where to begin, but his work as a civil rights prosecutor was particularly fascinating and vital. There, he focused on enforcing the Voting Rights Act – a landmark civil rights statute – in several Southern states to ensure that minority citizens were not disenfranchised.
(Commentary by Russell L. Riley, Miller Center professor of ethics and institutions and co-chair of the Presidential Oral History Program) Presidential transitions have become major productions.
In a 2020 paper, Shigehiro Oishi, a UVA professor of psychology, proposed a new dimension for understanding a life well lived: psychological richness. That term underscores the value of variety, interest and novelty.
Sporting Kansas City and the Kansas City soccer community lost one of their own this past week as former Kansas City Wizards defender and local youth soccer coach, Scott Vermillion passed away on Christmas at the age of 44. Vermillion had joined the Wizards in 1998 as a Project 40 (the precursor to Generation Adidas) allocation out of the University of Virginia.
Author Ed Tarkington, a graduate of Furman University with advanced degrees from UVA and Florida State, teaches English at the Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville. Working at one of Nashville’s oldest private schools provided him with plenty of detail, and his portrayals of quirky teachers, black tie galas and mysterious benefactors are biting and real.