John Waller has lived a notable life in Virginia Beach. The architect designed City Hall, several school buildings and dozens of homes. He grew up on a farm outside of Lynchburg, studied architecture at UVA and moved to Virginia Beach in 1953.
UVA law students are gearing up to act as “poll observers” at polling places in Charlottesville and Albemarle County on Election Day. Their main objective: To prevent voter intimidation and harassment.
Sarah Kearney found her mission right out of high school. That summer, a wealthy family asked her to help launch a philanthropy focused on fighting climate change. She’d so impressed Arunas Chesonis, who made his fortune in telecommunications, during her internship at his company that he promised her the job once she graduated from UVA. Seventeen years later, Kearney has not only mastered the skills needed to run a charitable organization and a venture capital fund worth around $50 million, she’s pioneered a new way of financing clean technology startups and emerging technologies.
The Athletic’s Britt Ghiroli reported on Thursday that the team plans to trim staff in scouting, baseball operations, and research and development. That doesn’t include Mike Cubbage, a long-time assistant to general manager Mike Rizzo. Cubbage, a former UVA standout, confirmed Thursday that he was retiring at the end of this month.
A big member of the Charlottesville and UVA community is battling a brain tumor. Mark Mincer, owner of Mincer’s University of Virginia Imprinted Sportswear, is set to undergo surgery at the UVA Medical Center Friday. According to his family, Mincer went to the hospital Tuesday evening after exhibiting symptoms of a stroke.
Selena Johnson, a 20-year-old student studying computer science at the University of Virginia, is concerned with police violence, reproductive rights and climate change. “I want to see some sort of regulation on the big companies that are contributing to like 70% of the world’s pollution,” she said.
(Commentary by Evan Sandsmark, Ph.D. candidate in religious studies) There has been much debate about how different forms of government have handled the pandemic. In the early stages of the crisis, it appeared that authoritarian governments may have had an advantage over open, democratic societies.
Albemarle County has seen one of the biggest spikes in early voting commonwealth-wide. UVA Center for Politics Director Larry Sabato says that’s not surprising. “Just like wearing masks has become partisan, how you vote has become partisan,” he said.
The race for the Fifth Congressional District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives is now considered one of the most competitive races in Virginia. J. Miles Coleman at UVA’s Center for Politics also says one of the candidates, Democrat Dr. Cameron Webb, has been moving toward the center. “Something that’s sort of rare, in his ads, he’ll really try to frame himself as a business-friendly type of Democrat, which is not something you normally see,” he said.
Fringe candidates with unusual beliefs can be found in every election, of course, but this cohort of QAnon followers on the ballot is somewhat unique. “People with crazy beliefs run for Congress all the time, it’s just a question of whether there’s a unifying force among candidates of their crazy beliefs,” said Kyle Kondik, the managing editor at Sabato’s Crystal Ball at UVA’s Center for Politics.
“In all likelihood, Senate control may come down to Iowa and North Carolina,” said Kyle Kondik, an analyst at UVA’S Center for Politics.
Biden's campaign and groups backing him have collected $101 million from donors in the financial, insurance and real estate industries, according to data from the CRP, a nonpartisan research group. That compares with $59.9 million in industry donations for Trump and groups backing him. "Minorities, women and younger employees are pushing for a new direction" on Wall Street, Larry Sabato, a UVA politics professor who also runs the University's Center for Politics, said.
Experts believed that Biden’s chances of victory in these areas were slim. However, his team are now feeling confident, and, as things currently stand in the national polls, Trump is still ahead of Biden in Georgia, but his lead is little more than 0.4%, whilst Biden holds a slender lead in Iowa – with an advantage of 1.4%. “It is an acknowledgment from the Biden campaign that they think they can win those states,” Kyle Kondik from UVA’s Center for Politics said. “Ultimately the candidate’s time is their most valuable resource, and sending [Biden] to Georgia and Iowa is a recognition that they...
Political analysts say they are more certain about polls this year because the public appears to be much more certain about their vote. "The polls are much more reminiscent of 2012, when there was an incumbent on the ballot and the electorate was much more decided," UVA political analyst Kyle Kondik said. "And since there are fewer undecided voters, Biden is more consistently hitting above 50% support. And to me, that is a higher-quality lead than Clinton's was because it suggests Biden has majority support."
For Biden to understand why Unite the Right happened in Charlottesville goes beyond just the statues, UVA professor Jalane Schmidt said. She noted the connection between Charlottesville’s racist past, President Donald Trump’s rhetoric during his last campaign, and the growing rise of white supremacy and neo-Nazism from fringe into mainstream in recent years.
Douglas Laycock, a preeminent church-state scholar and UVA law professor, argues in an amicus brief for the Christian Legal Society and other groups that Smith should be overruled. “Free exercise without exemptions … fails to avert the historic evils that religious liberty is meant to avert: coercion of conscience, suffering for one’s faith, and social conflict,” Laycock wrote.
Jalane Schmidt, an associate professor at the University of Virginia, said the Virginia Flaggers represent a fading ideology, even if they follow through with pledges to add flags elsewhere. “It’s like mushrooms. It’ll probably just pop up somewhere else. This is how they do it,” Schmidt said. “The thing is, what’s happening with this cultural change in Virginia – the former capital of the confederacy – is fewer and fewer people are on board with valorizing the Lost Cause.”
According to research published Wednesday in the journal Lighting Research & Technology, billboards, stadiums, and parking lots are all wasting tons of energy – amounting to $3 billion annually across the U.S. – on excessive, poorly-managed lighting. These lights block out the stars, contribute to climate change, and even throw migrating animals off of their course. “We waste tremendous resources on light that goes out into space and doesn’t do anyone any good,” UVA astronomer Kelsey Johnson, who didn’t work on the project, said.
In one sense, it’s not surprising that Americans don’t know much about how hegemony shapes other countries’ politics and societies. As UVA political scientist Brantly Womack explains in his book, “Asymmetry and International Relations,” hegemonic powers like the United States have the privilege of treating their relations with weaker countries more or less as hobbies simply because there’s rarely much at stake for them.
Dr. Taison Bell, assistant professor of medicine in the divisions of infectious disease and pulmonary/critical care medicine at the University of Virginia, joins Yahoo Finance’s Kristin Myers to discuss the recent COVID-19 case spikes.