FREDLINES
Claire Marshall Watkins, ADVANCE CONTRIBUTOR
Fredericksburg Free Press
King George School Board votes to permit non-curricular organizations at middle school level
By Adele Uphaus 09/11/2026
The King George County School Board approved updates to its policy governing student organizations and a regulation governing non-curriculum-related student organizations following a closed session that began at 8 a.m. Friday.
The updated policy allows secondary school students to organize and conduct meetings of non-curriculum-related groups — a change to language the board adopted last November that restricted such groups to high school students only.
With prototype complete, planning for Micah’s Jeremiah Community builds toward home stretch
By Adele Uphaus 09/11/2026
Last weekend, the small parcel of land at 404 Willis Street, across from the Oberle Academy in Fredericksburg, sat vacant.
This weekend, a cozy, red, fully-furnished house is settled on a permanent foundation on the parcel.
It’s a prototype home for Micah Ecumenical Ministries’ Jeremiah Community, a neighborhood of small homes with a community center and wrap-around support services for people experiencing chronic homelessness that will be built off Bragg Road in Fredericksburg.
The Free Lance-Star
Spotsylvania man who tortured wife sentenced to 12 years
By Keith Epps 09/11/2026
A Spotsylvania man who “tortured and imprisoned” his wife over two months last year was ordered Friday to serve 12 years in prison.
Jason Louis Robbins, 42, was sentenced in Spotsylvania Circuit Court to a total of 62 years in prison with all but 12 years suspended. He had previously pleaded guilty to child endangerment and three counts of malicious wounding.
Judge Sarah Deneke called Robbins’ actions “horrendous” and added that “the cruelty goes beyond anything I’ve seen in recent years.” Deneke’s sentence exceeded the recommended state sentencing guidelines, which called for a maximum active prison term of just over seven years.
Court records show student sent sexual images to teacher
By Keith Epps 09/11/2026
The Spotsylvania Sheriff’s Office is investigating a case involving sexually explicit images sent to a county high school teacher from a student at the school, court records show.
According to an affidavit for a search warrant filed in Spotsylvania Circuit Court, Detective M.L. Goosman began an investigation on Tuesday after getting a report from the school resource officer at Massaponax High School. The resource officer, Sgt. F. C. Belcher, told Goosman that the teacher claimed to have received inappropriate messages and images from a juvenile student.
Potomac Local News
Stafford supervisors set Sept. 15 hearing on bringing back BPOL tax
By PLN News 09/11/2026
Stafford County is the largest locality in Virginia without a Business, Professional and Occupational License tax. On Tuesday, Sept. 15, supervisors will hold a public hearing on whether to bring BPOL back.
Listen to the audio version above, or watch the full Potomac Local News Podcast at the bottom of this story. The interviews with Commissioner of the Revenue Scott Mayausky and former supervisor Paul Milde are the source for what follows. The episode is also on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, RSS.com, and wherever you already get podcasts.
BPOL is a local tax on a business’s gross receipts — total revenue — not profit. A firm can lose money after rent, payroll, and inventory and still owe the tax. Stafford repealed its version around 2008 and has since collected a merchants’ capital tax on retailers’ inventory, which Mayausky said brings in about $1.1 million a year.
Dog Krazy leases downtown HQ; William Street store stays put
By PLNS News 09/11/2026
Dog Krazy has leased a second downtown Fredericksburg building for corporate headquarters and franchise training, founder Nancy Guinn said, while stressing that the William Street retail store is not moving.
The company is already in at 1600 Princess Anne St. Guinn said in an on-the-record email Sept. 6 that the space will house corporate offices, training for new franchise owners and their teams, product and vendor sessions, and systems used across Dog Krazy stores. It is not a retail shop.
By PLN News 09/11/2026
Fredericksburg took a first step Tuesday toward letting factory-built manufactured homes sit on ordinary house lots, the same way a house framed on the site can.
ADVANCE READS
Hank Silverberg, Phil Huber, Bruce Saller
9/11: A Reporter’s Journal
Hank Silverberg, ADVANCE CORRESPONDENT
At the radio station, calm chaos. Almost everyone had reported in or had headed to key points of the disaster. All commercials had been scratched, and it was full speed ahead.
Shortly after I arrived, I received a tip from a friend I knew in the Senate Press gallery on Capitol Hill. The entire complex was being evacuated. We learned later that was because they thought Flight 93, which crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania at 10:03 a.m., was headed for the Capitol. I believe we were the first to report it.
My assignment that day was to go on the air live every 20 minutes and give a summary of the latest information which was coming in fast. I did that for 15 hours straight. Many of my colleagues worked much longer hours.
The Court They Built—and the Monster It Unleashed
Phil Huber, ADVANCE COLUMNIST
Donald Trump did not create America’s constitutional crisis alone. He inherited a political system already weakened by leaders who treated constitutional duty as a partisan tool, then learned how to exploit every loose bolt, broken guardrail, and act of institutional cowardice.
Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans did not set out to create a Trump monster. They set out to create what they considered the perfect conservative Supreme Court: Ideologically reliable, durable, insulated from voters, hostile to regulation, and ready to reverse decades of legal precedent.
They succeeded.
Second life for Electric Vehicle Batteries
Bruce Saller, ADVANCE CONTRIBUTOR
Large-scale battery storage facilities have been installed around the U.S. at a 70 percent annual growth rate since 2021. During the first half of 2026, 8.3 billion watts of battery storage were added. Besides providing backup power to solar and wind generation, batteries help stabilize the electric grid. A generator’s ramp rate measures how fast it can increase or decrease its power output. The ramp rate is measured in either millions of watts per minute, or percentage change per minute. Nuclear plants have the lowest ramp rate (1-3 percent), followed by coal (2-6 percent), natural gas (8-10 percent) and battery storage (100 percent).
The recent Dominion transmission-line fault resulted in a 3-billion-watt power reduction by data centers, causing significant voltage fluctuations in the eastern U.S. Data centers will continue to cause significant power swings as they switch their loads on and off for testing, peak demand reduction. and other reasons. So, adding battery storage to the grid will greatly reduce the voltage fluctuations.
STATE OF THE STATE
VaNews/VIRGINIA PUBLIC ACCESS PROJECT
In rare move, SCC orders three in-person hearings for NextEra-Dominion merger case
By SHANNON HECKT, Virginia Mercury
The State Corporation Commission has ordered additional chances for the public to officially testify in the case to approve or reject the proposed $67 billion NextEra-Dominion merger, Virginia regulators said Thursday. In addition to the three days for telephonic testimony already planned at the beginning of the case, the commissioners mandated three in-person hearings across Dominion’s Virginia coverage area. This will allow additional opportunities for residents to weigh in on the merger that could create the largest regulated utility in the world, as the public and state lawmakers heighten their scrutiny of the deal.
Virginia ponders lessons 25 years after Sept. 11 attacks
By MICHAEL MARTZ, Richmond Times-Dispatch (Subscription Required)
When Arlington County Fire Chief Ed Plaugher arrived at the burning Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, he made an unusual decision about who would take charge of the emergency response to a terrorist attack on the center of the United States military establishment. Deputy Fire Chief Jim Schwartz was already on the scene, along with a regional special agent for the FBI with whom he worked closely, minutes after Al-Qaida terrorists slammed a hijacked passenger plane into the massive, five-sided building, killing 184 employees, passengers and flight crew members.
Virginia nursing homes are short-staffed. So are the agencies tasked with watching them.
By YIQING WANG, WHRO
When Susan Fanning broke her ankle, she could no longer use the bathroom on her own. At her Chesapeake nursing home, she recalled waiting more than three hours in a wet incontinence brief for someone to change it. Other times, she said, medication she expected at 9 p.m. did not arrive until around midnight. Fanning has lived at Chesapeake Health and Rehabilitation Center for about a year. She said the employees in her unit and the facility’s physical therapists are great. But her concern is whether enough people are available to provide care. “There’s no loyalty here, so people come and go, come and go all the time,” Fanning said.
How trout fishers in Virginia are using FOIA to beat the competition
By ANDREW KERLEY, Cardinal News
Anglers are using the Freedom of Information Act to jump the gun on fishing trout as soon as they are released into Virginia’s many freshwater creeks, rivers and lakes. The exploit was brought up during a Department of Wildlife Resources meeting in August by Kent Sylvester, a retired Army aviator living in Virginia who enjoys fly-fishing. “I would talk to guys [in Bath County], and they’re like, ‘Yeah, the trout truck is going to come tomorrow,’” Sylvester recalled. “And I’m like, ‘How do you know about it tomorrow?’ … Well, it’s called FOIA.” Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, is often used by journalists. But it allows any citizen to request public records held by state or local officials. As it turns out, that includes the exact schedule for when the department plans to stock bodies of water with trout.
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