Several minutes after it was set to begin, a special meeting of the University of Virginia’s governing Board of Visitors over a “resignation faculty matter” was abruptly canceled “as it was no longer needed,” according to school officials. … The virtual meeting scheduled for 11:30 a.m. Wednesday was called to “discuss a faculty resignation personnel matter,” as announced on the board’s website on Tuesday evening. At around 11:35 a.m. — with more than 300 people waiting online for the meeting’s livestream to begin — the link suddenly stopped functioning. The meeting was then listed as canceled on the board’s calendar.

Martinsville City Manager Aretha Ferrell-Benavides claims she cannot be held liable in a civil rights lawsuit filed by Martinsville Councilman Aaron Rawls by “virtue of doctrines of sovereign, qualified, or governmental immunity. Ferrell-Benavides denied most of the allegations in her response, but there were some exceptions. Ferrell-Benavides admitted that it is the custom and practice for the mayor to preside at meetings of City Council and that practice was followed during the meeting where Rawls was ejected. She added that the “mayor presides over council meetings by law.” Ferrell-Benavides also admitted that Mayor LC Jones not only took the floor from Rawls in the meeting, but that Rawls “went beyond the reasonable stance of courtesy in his remarks.” Rawls, who opposed a pay raise that had been given to the city manager, was using a portion of his time noted on the agenda as “Comments by Members of City Council” to express his displeasure of the decision, the lawsuit states. 

For the majority of citizens not quite packing the Warren County Government Center (WCGC) main meeting room on a rainy, thunder-stormy day headed into evening, what they were there for would take a while to be addressed. And get the popcorn, sports fans, the dueling realities battle got off to a lengthy start as North River District Supervisor Richard Jamieson approached a half hour of reading a prepared statement on his perspective on the board majority and its appointed Warren County Library Board’s conflict with Samuels Public Library, its Board of Trustees, and wide-based citizen support. Here Jamieson quoted a comment made by someone he only identified as a “candidate” then proceeded by making an “Orwellian” analogy to the famous nightmarish, anti-totalitarian novel “1984” by George Orwell. In fact, second Public Comments speaker number 5, Sydney Patton, turned Jamieson’s “Orwellian doublespeak” analogy around on him. “I would like to note that I am also a big fan of ‘1984’. I actually checked it out from Samuels Public Library and wrote a paper on it as I attended Laurel Ridge Community College,” Patton began.

Two weeks after the Purcellville Town Council passed its Fiscal Year 2026 budget, questions remain over whether a super-majority vote was required to pass it — and specifically the annual tax rate ordinance. During the June 17 budget discussion, Council Member Kevin Wright asked why town attorney John Cafferky had told the council in 2024 at least five members were needed to have a super-majority vote when passing the tax ordinance for the budget. Wright said he was concerned that since every other town in Loudoun uses a super-majority vote, Purcellville could be put in a legal situation where a resident could question the viability of the tax law. “Could not any citizen sue us because we did not pass a budget with a super majority?” he asked. If council members wanted to pursue the issue, Cafferky suggested that they ask for an opinion from the Virginia Attorney General’s office.

President Donald Trump has routinely taken umbrage with journalists exercising their freedom of expression to report on the news, which the First Amendment absolutely protects. CNN is the president’s latest target. At a Tuesday press conference, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said that her agency was “working with the Department of Justice” to see if the administration could prosecute CNN for its reporting on an app that alerts users about federal immigration enforcement activity in their area. Noem said CNN “is actively encouraging people to avoid law enforcement.” Trump immediately followed Noem’s comments by saying, “We’ll maybe prosecute them also for having given false reports on the attack in Iran.” The First Amendment protects ICEBlock, just as it does Waze and Google Maps. Even if it didn’t, it still would protect CNN’s coverage of it. Aaron Terr, director of public advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), tells Reason that prosecuting CNN for reporting on ICEBlock “would be like prosecuting a news outlet for reporting on Virginia drivers illegally using radar detectors to avoid speeding tickets.”