After an inquiry from the right-wing media outlet Daily Wire this May about two websites listed on a Virginia Department of Health webpage offering resources for LGBTQ youth, internal agency emails indicate Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration took the entire page down, leaving agency employees who oversaw it bewildered. “Did someone request this?” asked Emily Yeatts, a supervisor for the Department of Health’s Division of Child and Family Health, in a May 31 email to other staff members. “This request did not come from the program.” At roughly the same time, Vanessa Walker Harris, director of the Office of Family Health Services — the office responsible for managing content on the page — also sent out an email to employees in the division, as well as communications staff and Deputy VDH Commissioner Robert Hicks. “I’m noticing that the referenced webpage is no longer accessible and I’m having a bad case of deja vu,” wrote Walker Harris. “What am I missing? I’m very concerned that staff were directed to remove the webpage without engaging [subject matter experts] in response to a politically motivated inquiry, yet again.” When the Mercury asked VDH on June 5 about the removal of the Resources for LGBTQ Youth page, internal emails obtained under Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act show agency Chief Operating Officer Christopher Lindsay initially drafted a response noting it was “part of an overall project to look at areas of the VDH website that can use redesign.”
It was not until the tail end of their monthly meeting that Iris Lane, who had been appointed the School Board’s Vice Chair at the start of her current term, announced she was resigning from her seat, which would take effect at the start of July. This story had one more twist to deliver the week after the meeting as Lane decided to go through a proverbial revolving door and withdraw her resignation. She stated in a letter that due to both recent conversations with certain individuals and a commitment to serve the community and its students, she decided she would instead see out the rest of her elected term of office.
Madison Town Council members made quick work of the agenda at its regular monthly meeting on July 6. There were two questions on the minutes and two questions on the financial statement. With a short report from the Board of Supervisors, no public comments, and no new business, the meeting adjourned after 15 minutes.
A conservative media outlet and an activist group won’t be allowed access to records related to President Joe Biden’s gift of his Senate papers to the University of Delaware, after the state Supreme Court on Thursday affirmed a judge’s ruling in favor of the university. The records have been the subject of multiple Freedom of Information Act requests, and the legal battle is playing out amid increased scrutiny of the handling of government documents by elected officials. The FBI searched the University of Delaware earlier this year for classified documents as part of its investigation into the potential mishandling of government records by Biden.
