Rejoining RGGI, Voting Rights Rulings, and Governor Spanberger's First Week

From Red Oak to Greenville, Bluefield to Orange, and Goldvein to Silver Beach, the Virginia Press Room features the voices of Virginia's press corps from every corner of Virginia. The podcast is a joint production of the Virginia Public Access Project and VPM News. Now, here's the host of the press room, Michael Pope. And the press room this week, we are joined by an all-star panel of journalists from the Virginia Press Corps. First up is the Statehouse reporter for the Virginian pilot, Kate Seltzer. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. We are also joined by the Statehouse reporter for Courthouse News, Joe Dodson. Thanks for joining us. Happy to be here. Rounding out our all-star panel is the news editor for VPM News, Sean McGowey. Thanks for joining us. Psyched to be here. Psyched to get started. Let's get right into it with our headlines of the week. Kate Seltzer of the Virginian Pilot. You're first with us. What's your headline of the week? My headline of the week is that it looks like Virginia is going to be rejoining Reggie. That's the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. Probably my favorite acronym in Virginia politics is Reggie. Are Reggie and Eric friends? I would think so. I think they get along. More of a dumbstep guy myself. And I've always said that about you. So Reggie, for those who don't know, and I wasn't here when this happened, so I was doing a lot of backgrounding, but it's this interstate agreement between there's 10 states in it right now. And what it does is it says if you are an energy producer like Dominion, who is going to be putting carbon dioxide out into the world in emissions through your natural gas power plant, you've got to pay for an allowance to do that. Virginia was a part of this agreement. And then at the time, then Governor Glenn Youngkin pulled Virginia out in 2023. A judge later ruled that that move was illegal, but because it was still making its way through the court system, Virginia remains out of Reggie. The other important thing to know is where the proceeds from the sale of these allowances go, and that's to the Community Flood Prevention Fund, which funds grants to do flood mitigation and prevention, particularly in places like Hampton Roads. And then the other thing it goes to is making energy upgrades specifically for low-income Virginians to try and lower some of those energy bills. So we've been out of the agreement for a couple of years. And last week, now Governor Abigail Spanberger has indicated that Virginia will be rejoining. and Attorney General Jay Jones has also said that his team is working on it to try to make sure what they're doing, what they need to be doing legally because there was this ongoing court case that was headed up by former Attorney General Jason Miaris. Well, one question I would just have is, you know, how does this kind of fit into the messaging that Democrats are doing this session about affordability. Republicans, you know, they kind of critique Reggie as something that pushes cost onto consumers from these utility companies. So have you heard at all about how this kind of fits into their narrative about pushing for affordability? Yeah, it's a good question. Part of what's associated with this is the energy producers like Dominion can feel free to pass the cost of the credits onto consumers. Dominion has said that when Virginia left, the average residential customer was paying about $4.40 to cover the cost of the allowances. I think that Democrats are making the case that all of this, that cleaner energy and more and efficient energy is part of the affordability agenda. That goes to with the fund that helps improve energy efficiency for low-income Virginians. But conservatives definitely say that it's way too expensive, particularly for energy consumers, average people like you and me, and not enough payoff. Kate, I'm curious about where this money is going. You said that a lot of this money from Reggie goes to the Hampton Roads area. I know that a lot of the money from Reggie goes to the Southwest districts that are represented by Republicans. I always think it's kind of interesting that you have all these Republican lawmakers in the General Assembly whose districts have benefited by Reggie, and yet they don't support it and they don't want to be part of it. I'm wondering, Kate, have you taken a look at where this money goes? I mean, like, give us a good sense of what is being accomplished with this money. Sure. So some of the grants that cities in Hampton Roads have benefited from are things like building flood wall protections. There's lots of grants that have benefited from this. I think the other thing to keep in mind is that to put money in the Community Flood Prevention Fund in the years that we've been out of RGGI, the state has had to kind of bankroll that and that money comes from the general fund. And there's a big ask this year from Norfolk and Virginia Beach. They're asking for like $200 million in flood prevention. Things like sunny day flooding where like there's no storm. There's just water on the ground is happening more and more frequently in cities and Hampton roads. So where that money comes from, if it comes from Reggie, if it comes from the general fund, you know, it promises to be a tight budget year. I think critics of pulling out of Reggie said that that used to be like a really consistent source of funding. And now it's a strain on the state budget as well to try and come up with money. Sunny day flooding sounds like a really depressing jazz band. You know, like maybe we should get them to perform at the VCCA. Sunny and share and flooding. Joe Dunson of Courthouse News, you're next with us. What's your headline of the week? So yeah, last Thursday, Barack Obama appointee ruled in a Richmond-based federal court that Virginia has been violating the Virginia Readmission Act of 1870 for over 150 years. So after the Civil War, Congress required Southern states to comply with certain terms if they wanted to rejoin Congress, including in that was to not disenfranchise anyone besides rebels and common law felons. Since then, Virginia has made a handful of new constitutions and changes to the constitutions, most recently in 1971, which has expanded those it disenfranchises to anyone with a felony conviction. Judge Gibney ruled the act prohibits Virginia from disenfranchising anyone whose conviction stems from felonies that weren't around in 1870. So this most notably impacts people with drug-related felony charges or convictions. So Gibney ordered an injunction that automatically restored voting rights to those who weren't convicted of crimes like murder, arson, burglary, which were around in 1870. One of the constitutional amendments that I've been watching, I think we're all kind of tracking, is would automatically restore the right to vote for people convicted of felonies who have already completed their sentence. How does that kind of play with this ruling? So, I mean, most folks that get convicted of murder, I would imagine aren't going to be out, but those convicted of arson and burglary and other things, it's a list of 11 crimes that were considered felonies at this time. That constitutional amendment would expand this ruling to those folks as well. But right now, this ruling really helps a lot of, especially black Virginians who during the war on drugs were convicted for drug possession and drug manufacturing and drug selling convictions. How long has this push been going on? Because you say something like, it has been violating the law for 150 years. You automatically think, well, hasn't somebody spoken up and kind of waved the flag about this before? That's a good question. I would say that there's been a lot of attacks in courts for different, they've tried different ways to approach this and to litigate this issue in particular. But I'm not sure about the history of using the Readmissions Act. I do know that last week I spoke with an attorney from Protect Democracy, which was one of the groups that represented the plaintiffs in this case. And they talked about how they're excited that this is a roadmap they can use for other southern states because all of the southern states have a readmission act. So they can do this playbook in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, wherever. and again be like, hey, you guys aren't following this rule that Congress put on you in the 1870s. Anytime Reconstruction is in the headlines, I'm game for that. Okay, let's learn more about the 1870s. Like we could do a Virginia Press Room circa 1870 That be kind of interesting to get those guys in the room Maybe Sean McGowey of EPM News you next with us What your headline of the week All right. Kate talked about the push to rejoin Reggie, and that is really one aspect of the Spanberger administration really kind of flexing its political muscle on, as soon as its first day in office. Most new jobs, you've got a probationary period of a couple months where you're still doing trainings and kind of learning the ropes. Nope. Day one, 10 executive orders, 27 university board appointments, and things like push for affordability, kind of reconsidering a lot of Governor Glenn Youngkin's previous orders, rescinding the directive to state and local law enforcement agencies to cooperate with ICE. And then Attorney General Jay Jones, who told VPM News back in the summer when he was still just a primary candidate, that his plan was to sue the Trump administration into oblivion on day one, really put his foot down and said, yep, I'm going to do that. he's announced that there's going to be plans to join several multi-state lawsuits already in progress. Things like pushback against the dismantling of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the dismantling of other cabinet agencies like the Department of Education, and suits over Trump's executive orders on birthright citizenship and voting rights. Yeah, I got to say, as someone who covers appellate courts, it was kind of odd the last year having all these lawsuits where there's states like Maryland, all our neighboring states, right, especially Maryland, suing over different policies from the Trump administration that cut back on federal employees and not seeing Virginia listed as a plaintiff in those suits. Yeah. And it gets even stranger. There's another proclamation from OAG that they're going to reverse course on a position that Jason Miara has took as attorney general to actually side with the federal government in a suit against Virginia over a policy that allowed certain undocumented immigrants to get in-state tuition at colleges. So lots of joining lots of proactive lawsuits and actually moving to now defend the state from a suit by the federal government. I mean, the Democrats spent the whole campaign season talking about pushing back on Trump and using Trump as kind of their villain that they wanted to get people out to the polls for. So it makes sense that immediately they would do things to address Trump. Yep. Sean, you mentioned the directive to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement to state and local law agencies. My understanding is that executive order doesn't void any of the existing agreements. Is that right? Yes, that is correct. So Youngin's executive order was directing the Virginia State Police and other local law enforcement agencies to enter into these Section 287G agreements to cooperate with ICE in federal enforcement actions. Any of those agreements are still in place. I think it's not crazy to say that the governor doesn't necessarily have the power to stroke a pen and tell the localities they can't have these existing agreements. but it's no longer going to be a top-down directive from the state to proactively enter into them. One of the criticisms we heard about Spanberger from Republicans is that it's a lot of talk and not a lot of action. On the executive order specifically, one of them was about creating a study. This is a criticism you often hear from people is that people will say that they've accomplished things, but what they really did is create a committee to study it. Right. So specifically, we're looking at studying housing, health care, energy, education, child care, grocery prices. Those are all things worth studying. But it's not really like action has been taken on those things quite yet. It's that they are being studied. And there probably is some utility to that. Also, similarly, a task force, right? The task force to look at health care, managed care, Medicaid. That's, I mean, creating a task force is important and creating, I guess, study committees are important. But what do you make of this Republican criticism? to say, well, you're creating study committees and task force, task forces, and this is the affordability agenda at work? Well, yeah, I think there's some validity to that, but there's only so many, there are only so many avenues that you can take. And I think that, I don't know, I'm a guy that a little fact-finding mission at the beginning is kind of never a bad thing to me. i like a task force i'm i'm starting a studied on like you know studying doing my dishes and that kind of thing well perhaps we should create a study committee to look at learning some insider info this is when our top reporters create a study commission to reveal the story behind the story giving us an inside scoop on virginia politics joe dodson of courthouse news you're first with us. What's your insider info? So as we prepare this Wednesday for the Brunswick tourism board to come and lobby, uh, I thought I'd do a deep dive on everyone's favorite Virginia liquid based food item Brunswick stew. Oh man. So yeah, Brunswick stew. Uh, does it have squirrel in it? Let me get to it. Nowadays, the tomato based stew includes chicken. It has a lot of local veggies like lima beans and corn. But historically, chicken was substituted for squirrel, as you so passionately mentioned. Squirrel. Or rabbit meat. The history of this stew is really contentious. To say the least, there's a lot of localities that claim it, but there's two main localities that claim it, and that's Brunswick County in Virginia and Brunswick City in Georgia. So there's two origin stories that I'd love to bestow upon you. Sure, yeah. the Virginia story goes like this. In 1828, Dr. Creed Haskins, a prominent Virginia legislator, Michael, I'm sure you remember covering him, took a group of friends on a hunting expedition. Their cook, a man named James Matthew, was tasked with preparing a meal for the hungry hunters. Legend has it that Uncle Jim, that was his nickname, using whatever ingredients he could find squirrel, stale bread, vegetables and spices. So like Kate's cupboard concocted a thick hearty stew. That was an instant hit. It sounds like a gumbo. The way you describe it is like a Virginia version of gumbo. I would not say that to uncle Jim or anyone else that has strong feelings about it. Um, but yeah, to this day, Brunswick, Virginia holds annual stew offs and they even have a mascot named Stewie. So that's the Virginia story, which obviously on this podcast, I'm inclined to believe, but there's also a Georgia origin story. And Georgia claims the origins come from a Confederate soldier named Jimmy Matthews, much like James Matthews, who during the civil war was tasked with feeding a large group of soldiers. He faced a scarcity of supplies. So he gathered whatever he could find, including game meats like squirrel or rabbit, along with vegetables, and create a stew that sustained the troops. So the only real key difference between a Georgia Brunswick stew and a Virginia one, the Virginia one emphasizes the smoky, gamey flavors, and the Georgia one leans towards a sweeter, more tangy profile. Oh, and other states, including Kentucky and North and South Carolina, have their own versions. but I like to think that it came right here from the Commonwealth. And then we're going to see all of the Brunswick stew people out here in front of the Capitol on Wednesday, right? Handing out the free Brunswick stew. I have always wished that I just, for my own personal use, I've always wished that they had a vegetarian version. So, I mean, can't you get some like a tofu chicken in there or something? I mean, does it, does it have to be gamey and smoke? I mean, smoky's fine. You know, I like the smoky Tabasco sauce, but gamey? Does it have to be game? Can we have a non-gamey version of Brunswick stew? Is there soybean squirrels out there? Is there soybean rabbits? I'm not sure. They call it impossible for a reason. Impossible Brunswick stew. Sean McGowey, VPM News, you're next in this. What's your insider info? Well, I do not really lay claim to being an insider myself, but the cool thing about that is that means I get to big up the work that all of my magnificent colleagues at VPM News are doing. And one of my favorite things to work on every year is our photographer, Shaban Ataman, does a series of photo essays, calls them the dispatch. And he, in my eyes, you know, there's arguably no bigger capital insider than Shaban because he's, he knows everybody. He's shaken every hand. He is, you know, been in every corner of the building and several that he's probably not really supposed to be in. Um, and he does these kind of regular updates throughout the session. He does it during election season two. He does this really beautiful job of capturing not just the kind of key votes on the floor and the actual legislative action that going on but of finding these little pockets and moments of humanity that illustrate that your delegate or your senator is not just the person that you send angry emails to when you're mad about something, but like they're, you know, they're a person working a job and they have to juggle priorities in their lives and they have real emotional connection to the work that they do. So, uh, he's done some updates that included photos of, uh, delegate Kathy Tran, uh, sitting on the house floor and you can see, uh, under her desk, her kids are playing and it's just like this, you know, this nice moment. And, um, I was really moved that he got some photos of Adam Turk's parents, uh, the Richmond theater actor who was killed last year when he intervened in a domestic dispute in Chaco Bottom. Um, they were there being, uh, recognized by the Senate for their advocacy on gun reforms. And just, I, uh, we, we joke that I'm his ghost writer because he, uh, does these beautiful images and then, uh, I help kind of translate the stories into, uh, into a narrative. Yeah. Somebody's got to write the cut line. Yeah. Um, so that's, uh, he's, he's doing those throughout the session and it truly is just like my favorite thing to work on all year. Yeah. Shout out Siobhan. He's awesome. And he's so good at what he does. I don't know if you've ever been in an elevator with him at the general assembly building. He has this uncanny ability to make friends with everybody everywhere all the time, including in the elevator. It's so impressive. I love watching it. It's also really incredibly annoying if you are trying to get on or off the elevator. Yes. This sounds extremely familiar to me. Yeah. Shout out to Siobhan. One thing I like about being around him is that if you're standing next to him, all the lawmakers, not only do they really like him personally, but they also all want good photographs of themselves. So, I mean, they've got no incentive to talk to me or be nice to me, but they've got a huge incentive to be nice to Siobhan. And he knows them. He knows all them, as you just pointed out. And so it's always very helpful to be around him, especially in an elevator where, you know, he's going to be friend. By the time the doors open up, he's going to have all the friends in the elevator. All right. Kate Seltzer, the Virginia pilot. You're next with us. What's your insider info? So I've been watching some of the we'd call them shenanigans, I'd say. That's fair. Thank you for for the house pushing through this. So we've been following this redistricting amendment. We finally have a date on when a special election might occur to for where the voters can decide if they want to give the General Assembly the opportunity to do this mid decade redistricting to draw redraw congressional maps in favor of Democrats. We've heard, you know, 10 districts favoring Democrats, one district favoring Republicans. The current breakdown is 6-5. So that would be a pretty substantial change. We've yet to see a map, but we do have a possible election date of April 21st. To establish a special election, to establish this voter referendum, you've got to pass some legislation to do that. And last week, it was kind of just interesting to watch because the meeting was kind of unexpectedly in a House Appropriations Committee, which is sort of an unusual place for that kind of thing to go. The other constitutional amendment we were talking about earlier about restoring the right to vote, that's got an election date set for November. And the legislation that establishes that went through the Senate Privileges and Elections Committee. So kind of an unusual committee. Kind of an unusual time. Wasn't it kind of last minute? I mean, it feels like everybody found out it was happening as it was beginning. Correct. It was one of those things. You know, we were all kind of balancing the snow updates as well last week. So if you were like me and thought, I've got to go check out the snow update at 1230, I'm not going down to the General Assembly until after lunch, which is when I think this committee meeting is happening. You are suddenly scrambling at 945. So that that was all last week. And the meeting itself lasted like less than 15 minutes. So they are they're pushing it through quickly. Republicans have been critical and they're saying that there's not a lot of transparency going on around setting stuff like that up. And speaking of transparency, one thing that creates a lot of transparency is our game show segment by seller hold. i'll present a topic and our panelists will make a choice do they want to buy sell or hold our topic today another tool in the toolbox is this the most hackneyed phrase ever i'm so sick of hearing about people talk about tools in the toolbox just shut up about your tools in the toolbox all right joe dodson of courthouse news you're first with this buy sell or hold on another tool in the toolbox. We're kind of like four tools talking. Um, not think for yourself, buddy, not to throw a wrench into the proceedings. I'll let that one sit for a minute. Okay. Siobhan is going to love this podcast. Are you guys done laughing? All right. Now I'll go back to talking. Okay. So yeah, not to throw a wrench in the proceedings, but I don't have any super strong opinions about this, but Michael, you know me, I can have strong opinions about anything. So I will make one up. I'm anti this. I'm a sell on the toolkit terminology. My hands are very soft. They haven't touched a lot of tools. I'm not somebody who's good with my hands, so I don't know much about it. I'm no handy-mandy myself. So yeah, I'm anti tools in the toolbox. Kate Seltzer of the Virginia Toolhouse Pilot. You're next with this buy, sell, or hold on another tool in the toolbox. Yeah. Uh, I'm a, I'm a sell on tools in the toolbox. At some point you just got enough tools, but I do think we should start using that kind of the formula to, to do other things. So like, that's another egg in your egg carton. Yeah. I like it. Yeah. That's another, that's another reporter in your price score. all right all right that's another donut in your box something there's something there uh i'm gonna workshop it i'm gonna get back to you you know you could also have a situation where when you said that you were more specific about the tool right i mean you know what this bill needs is not just another tool in the toolbox what this bill needs is a wrench or what this bill needs is a screwdriver because it's screwed up or maybe what this legislation really needs is the hammer All right. Sean McGowey of EPM News, you're last on this. Buy, sell, or hold on. Another tool in the toolbox. So I, with apologies to a few journalism teachers at the University of Maryland who would probably disagree with this, I guess I'll say I'm no longer a fan and serial abuser of using cliches. I am, however, an inveterate collector of things. And I think that I have accumulated many things in my life, including tools that you don't really learn that you're never going to use until it's like seven years later and you're trying to make room in the toolbox for another new tool. I think that means definitionally i have to be a hold uh-oh i i failed to warn you but i hate to take this sean mccoey when contestants come on the show and they hold their social stigma attached with that you're you're gonna be a hold silly you're gonna be a hold you know i i i am willing to risk my status. I don't have to show my face around GAB nearly as much as everyone else. I like the philosophy behind, do we really need another tool in the toolbox? Because the toolbox is full. No, but I didn't need another book on my bookshelf and I bought two last week. So it happens. I feel your pain, dude. All right. Now it's time to open up our reporter's notebook. this is when our top journalists tell us what to be on the lookout for this week sean mcgoey vpm news your first with his what's in your editor's notebook well kate and i have clearly been on a journalism brainwave today uh because the thing that i am really looking forward to the most is that we have been told that the planned redistricting maps could be available as soon as the end of January, which is fast approaching. So that's the thing that I'm most looking forward to is actually seeing the proposals, whether it's a 9-2 or a 10-1 in favor of Democrats, and kind of seeing how those are going to affect some of the races on the ballot. You know, we've got VPM's coverage area includes a large swath of the fifth district, and how those boundaries get redrawn could really affect whether some of the candidates who are currently on the ballot are are even going to be eligible to run in that district going forward Yeah Sean and I uh on the the same wavelength I think in part because we share uh a collegial history I also went to the university of Maryland go Terps Um so yeah, if you, if you go there, then they're going to tell you, you should really pay attention to redistricting in Virginia. Kate Seltzer of the Virginian pilot. What's in your reporter's notebook. Okay. So this is kind of an annoying and complicated thing, but I think it's important. In general, what I am paying attention to and what I think a lot of us are paying attention to is the budget. We've been told it's going to be a tight budget year. There's a couple of mandatory spending things they've got to get through. We've also seen Governor Youngkin's first draft of the budget. The governor gets the first crack at the budget and the General Assembly spent session hashing it out. And we've heard from Democratic leadership to expect some major surgery on the budget. So the final version will likely look pretty different than what we've seen so far. Does major surgery require new tools? Surgical tools. Okay. All right. Okay. Everybody calm down. No, that was very good. I liked it. The thing I want to talk about is disability services. So essentially like a decade and a half ago at this point, the U S government sued the state of Virginia essentially for poor mistreatment of people with disabilities. Um, often in these like group home settings, they were called training centers. Those have since shut down and they've said, this is a violation of the Americans with disabilities act, which says that people with disabilities are entitled to like an inclusive life. That's part of the community. You cannot just put them in a room. And in some cases, like there was some serious neglect. Last year, a judge or a court said that though Virginia is far from perfect and it's taken a decade for us to get to this point, they think they've made substantial enough progress in meeting this goal of being compliant with the ADA that the feds were taking a little bit of a step back. They're like, you're still going to have to report to us. You're still going to have to tell us you're making all this progress. but this is kind of the first step to less federal oversight. All of that happened as part of this deal. They said, you've got to go look at the services that people with disabilities use. So things like nursing and life coaching, like if helping people get a job, that kind of thing, you got to go look at all of that and make sure that we're paying these people enough. There's like 11 kinds of those services. So they did this study earlier this year that sure enough found that. And in fact, we're not paying those people enough. And part of the deal says like, you've got to, um, with to the best of your ability, make every effort to within two years of conducting this rate study, come up with the money in the budget to, to fix it, to make sure we're paying providers enough. Missing from Governor Youngkin's budget is four kind of buckets of those services, uh, that are unfunded. So a couple of weeks ago, a judge hauled kind of everybody involved with this case back to court and was asking why it's not in the budget. And the state's response was, one, this is the first draft of the budget, so things could change. The other thing they were saying is that that price tag was like a billion dollars that the state just does not have. That could change that billion dollars includes services that goes broader than the range of disability, but it could be a big deal in terms of federal oversight and what happens with this budget. Yeah, I covered last week, there was a press conference with some caregivers and the SEIU, the Service Employees International Union, where they're talking about these exact issues. I believe of, so yeah, as you said, there's four priorities they aren't funding right now. And that includes nursing and respite care. So yeah, I know that's a big concern. And I also just wanted to say that at that press conference, they told us that the current rate that the department of, I'm going to get this wrong. I think it's department of medical assistance. Yeah. DMAS is what everyone calls it. DMAS set the rate for most of the state at $13.88 for caregivers. And that is just not going to be enough, especially to meet the growing demand of Virginia's aging population. It's expected that by 2032, we're going to need an estimated over 120,000 caregivers. We currently have about 28,000 caregivers. So definitely going to need to raise the rates if we want anybody to do what is a really thankless and hard job. that was an extremely detailed budget presentation thank you kid seltzer for illuminating our listeners to that you know one word i did not hear in your presentation was the word caboose i love the fact that virginia has a two-year budget and the second year we get to call it the caboose budget because then you can talk about the caboose budget derailing or getting off the tracks or being late or being early or that's coming from the guy who's anti-tool in the toolbox pro derailing but this is not caboose budget is not a hackneyed phrase people don't use it enough we didn't she didn't say the word caboose once in her thing about the budget it should be this is the word caboose should become hackneyed because we should all love talking about the caboose budget so much i'm am i the only one on board for this another caboose on the train I love that your passions are like the caboose and reconstruction. You're like, those are what people was made for the 19th century and closing out our podcast with a strong finish. Joe Dodson of courthouse news. What's in your reporter's notebook. So don't be too sad, but this week I will be down from the hill of the Capitol. I'll be covering the fourth circuit court of appeals. So I know you guys are going to miss me in the press room. I'm sure I'll still have some wisecracks over text. But on Thursday, three judges are going to hear argument over whether the Trump administration can withhold funding for Fairfax County and Arlington school divisions on the basis of them allowing transgender and non-binary students to use the bathrooms of their choosing. So in 2025, the Department of Education placed the divisions on high risk where they imposed requirements if they wanted to continue getting and using federal grants that basically said they needed to comply with the current administration's interpretation of Title IX, which they believe does not allow for transgender and non-binary students to use the bathrooms of their choosing. The division cite Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board, a 2020 case where the Fourth Circuit held Title IX compels school divisions to grant access to sex-segregated facilities that correspond with students' gender identities. The district court in this case dismissed the division's claims that the Trump administration's action violates the Administrative Procedures Act because they opined that the court of federal claims is actually the proper venue since the school divisions aren't seeking monetary damages. They're instead seeking to question a federal policy. that's it for this episode of the virginia press room a joint production of the virginia public access project and vpm news if you enjoyed the show please consider supporting vpap and supporting vpm hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcasting app and hey write a review on apple podcasts it really helps people find the show in fact joe dodson i think it's time for you to write a review on Apple podcasts. Michael, I'm going to let everyone in on a little secret. And that's that every time I'm on this broadcast, I'm instructed to talk, to say some type of joke about how I'm going to leave a bad review. Zero stars, right? Zero star review. And, and I'm not going to do that because I want to continue being on this podcast. So I hope everyone leaves a 10 out of 10, five out of five, and even a hundred out of a hundred, if they have to a hundred out of 100. Okay, vote of support. You heard it here first, folks. Write your review on Apple Podcasts, not Spotify, just Apple. All right, that's enough of my begging. We'll be back next week for the next episode of the Virginia Press Room. I'm Danny Noakes, and here's a look at some exciting things happening at VPM. This month, VPM is excited to expand its When Then 90 by 5 Children's Education Initiative into the Charlottesville region, a collaboration with the Robbins Foundation and Thrive Birth to Five, the 90 by 5 initiative provides parents and caregivers who have children under the age of five with resources that encourage positive daily interactions to influence future learning. Learn more at vpm.org.