FXBG ADVANCE Monday 7/13/26 NEWSLETTER
Steve Watkins: Nova Builder Wants to Erect Towers Next to City School, Ballpark. Edie Gross: I Don’t Have the Words. Phil Huber: We Are at War Over Your Right to Vote.
NOVA Builder Wants to Erect 15-Story Telecom Towers Next to City School, Kids’ Baseball Park
By Steve Watkins, ADVANCE EDITOR
A Northern Virginia company is seeking approval from the city of Fredericksburg for two 150-foot wireless telecom towers, one next door to Walker-Grant Middle School and the Idlewild subdivision, the other a block from the Sunshine Ballpark and a neighborhood just north of Fall Hill Avenue.
The company, Milestone Towers, has scheduled two online “Town Hall” meetings for neighbors who live in proximity to the proposed projects, which they’ve dubbed “Gateway Boulevard Wireless” and “Sunshine Park Wireless.”
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I Don’t Have the Words
By Edie Gross, ADVANCE COLUMNIST
My husband and I were attending a party to celebrate the high school graduation of one of our nieces when he pulled me aside, nodded gently at a woman across the room and whispered, “Can you please remind me of her name?”
I glanced casually in the direction of his nod and spied the familiar face of a long-time friend of our extended family, a woman we’d sat next to or across the table from during countless holiday dinners and special occasions over the last two decades.
But try as I might, I couldn’t come up with her name either. I plumbed the depths of my memory bank to no avail. File not found.
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We Are at War Over Your Right to Vote
By Phil Huber, ADVANCE COLUMNIST
I took an oath more than once in my career. Each time, the words were the same: to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. I said those words as a young officer, and again years later, both in uniform with the Army and as a federal civil servant. That oath doesn’t expire when you retire, and it carries no partisan label. So let me say something plainly to my neighbors here in the Fredericksburg region: The machinery that protects your right to vote is being dismantled, piece by piece, on purpose. This isn’t a metaphor. It resembles a military campaign, with a strategic plan, an operational buildup, and tactics already landing in real communities. Look at the evidence; the facts carry their own weight.
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New News from Around the State
VaNews/VIRGINIA PUBLIC ACCESS PROJECT
Virginia Democrats question DOJ’s plan to monitor primaries in two counties
By DEAN MIRSHAHI, VPM
The U.S. Department of Justice will send federal election monitors to Fairfax and Prince William counties for Virginia’s Aug. 4 congressional primaries, the DOJ confirmed to VPM News on Wednesday. Election monitors have previously been deployed to Virginia and around the country under Democratic and Republican administrations. They are sent only to monitor whether federal laws are being violated, not enforce them. But this time, Virginia Democrats are accusing President Donald Trump’s DOJ of using monitors to undermine voters’ confidence in the commonwealth’s elections.
Spanberger gains 5-4 majority on Va. Board of Education
By ANNA BRYSON, Richmond Times-Dispatch (Subscription Required)
Gov. Abigail Spanberger has appointed her fifth member to the Virginia Board of Education, giving her a majority over the four remaining appointees of former Gov. Glenn Youngkin. The Virginia Board of Education is constitutionally charged with overseeing the state’s public school system. Its members vote on statewide education policy, including academic standards, testing, school accountability and teacher licensure, among other issues.
The lawsuits that could stop 3 major Virginia laws
By SABRINA MORENO, Axios
Three of Virginia’s major new laws around guns and immigration are caught in legal battles with no resolution in sight. The courtroom is becoming the next battleground for some of Virginia’s biggest policy changes, with judges determining whether — and ultimately, to what extent — they can be enforced. Virginia is facing at least seven lawsuits over Democrat-led bills slated to take effect on July 1, including: Six in state and federal court over the assault weapons ban, resulting in conflicting injunctions and confusion over where the law can be enforced. One from the Justice Department challenging Virginia’s new restrictions on local cooperation with federal immigration enforcement — known as 287(g) agreements — and ICE officers using masks.
Richmond police accessed public housing surveillance cameras 827 times in 11 months
By SAMUEL B. PARKER, Richmond Times-Dispatch (Subscription Required)
In September, Detective Garrick Danko made a somewhat unusual request. Under an agreement between the Richmond Police Department and the Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority, Danko asked housing officials for access to their sprawling network of surveillance cameras scattered throughout the city’s public housing projects. The reason? Social media posts. ... According to police and to records obtained by The Times-Dispatch, detectives in the Capital City Intelligence Center viewed the RRHA’s Tsunami camera feeds at least 827 times during the 11-month period between Aug. 1 and June 30.
Less than 1% of overdose deaths in Hampton Roads result in prosecutions. Who’s to blame?
By PETER DUJARDIN, Virginian-Pilot (Metered Paywall - 2 articles a month)
Just before midnight on July 4, 2019, Tonya Miller went to her 20-year-old daughter’s bedroom to retrieve a phone charger the daughter had borrowed about an hour earlier. She found Kendall Miller on her bed, sitting upright but tilted over and unresponsive. Tonya, and then a police officer and medics, tried to resuscitate her, but Kendall was gone. She had died of a fentanyl overdose. Later that day, Tonya figured out the password to her daughter’s Facebook Messenger account, finding messages between Kendall and the man from whom she apparently bought drugs on July 4. ... No one has been arrested in Kendall’s death — and police have provided no indication that they ever talked to the man in the truck. Tonya Miller has spent much of the seven years since urging police and prosecutors to act.
Even if drought evaporated, other problems plague Pittsylvania farmers
By CHARLES WILBORN, Danville Register & Bee
Even if the skies opened up with enough rain to quench what’s shaping up to be a historic drought, other issues — from interest rates to commodity prices — not related to the weather are putting a pinch on Southside farmers. All localities in Southside Virginia are still in an extreme drought, as defined by the United States Drought Monitor’s Thursday morning update. The weekly report uses data from the previous Tuesday to show what direction a drought is moving. For Pittsylvania County, it’s at a standstill. ... However, Mills told the Register & Bee that the dry and hot weather is far from the only issue impacting those who make a living off of the land. “Commodity prices are horrific,” he told the Register & Bee on a June 19 tour of his 2,200-acre Briar View Farms in Callands.
Articles from newspapers throughout the Commonwealth and Washington D.C. Firewalls will block you from reading some, but you’ll at least have some idea about what’s going on from the headlines and summaries. CLICK HERE.
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