Controversial and combative Greene County Supervisor Francis McGuigan stepped down Thursday without warning. The supervisor, who held an at-large seat on the county board, told county administrators his resignation would be effective immediately, according to a statement issued by the county itself, and not McGuigan, on Thursday. McGuigan’s term was not supposed to end until 2027. … Because of McGuigan’s unfiltered online commentary, the county moved to restrict all supervisors’ social media activity. Most of the board, including McGuigan, did not approve of the policy. Instead, the board imposed a gag order on county employees in a flagrant attempt to censor civil servants — a violation of the U.S. Constitution. It was only after The Daily Progress covered the gag order and contacted First Amendment attorneys to speak on its behalf that Greene relented and county employees were permitted to speak to the press again.

If you were to ask company executives with OpenAI, they’d warn against using ChatGPT for legal counsel. “You cannot use our services for … provision of tailored advice that requires a license, such as legal or medical advice,” according to the company’s policy for its increasingly ubiquitous chatbot. “We don’t allow our services to be used for … automation of high-stakes decisions in sensitive areas without human review: legal, … essential government services (or) law enforcement.” Of course, that doesn’t stop users from asking ChatGPT questions about what federal, state and local laws mean and how they work — and records show Richmond police Chief Rick Edwards has done just that. In early January, the Times-Dispatch submitted requests under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act for the 2025 ChatGPT chat sessions of multiple senior city officials.

Suffolk Public School Board Chair Sean McGee announced at the Jan. 15 meeting that after awarding Cherry Bekart a contract to perform a forensic audit, it was brought to his attention that “all fifteen audit proposals were reviewed as required by the Virginia Public Procurement Act, but there was an inadvertent omission to submit paperwork showing that the mandatory rubric was considered when reviewing all fifteen proposals.” Board member Tyron Riddick asked what other members really want to see from an audit. “The reason why I’m asking that is because you hid behind the fact of what the citizens want, and even in this RFP, you don’t really fully address what the citizens came to the dais and said they wanted,” Riddick said. McGee said that anyone who wants to know the reasons can look through previous agendas and watch old meetings where the audit was discussed.

Though we had a recent rain in Fredericksburg, we’ve been in a long dry spell. The Department of Environmental Quality recently declared a drought watch for our region. So it makes sense that the Rappahannock River has been running low all year. Virginia’s booming data center industry didn’t cause this situation. Our region’s growing population, combined with natural variability in rainfall, is quite enough to stress a river all on its own. But our region has been a major focus of the data center industry. And data centers can be very water-intensive. So it’s important to ask what the potential impacts might be in the future, both for the Rappahannock and across the commonwealth. Secrecy on this issue, unfortunately, makes this already complex question even more difficult to answer.

The U.S. Department of Justice’s seizure of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson’s phone, laptops and a smart watch last week represents an unacceptable and unconstitutional intrusion on the rights of journalists. The First Amendment affords members of the media specific protections against laws infringing on their work, and court cases throughout the nation’s history have confirmed the importance of a free and independent press to a thriving and healthy democracy. In this case, the actions of the FBI and Department of Justice are indefensible.