Richmond School Board Representative Emmett Jafari (8th District) owes his former election opponent Patrick Henry “Cruz” Sherman $100 in compensatory damages for a disparaging Facebook post Jafari made during the 2024 election season. Judge Claire G. Cardwell wrote in her order that while the court acknowledges Jafari’s statements were “defamation per se,” Sherman presented proof of little to no real loss or harm from the statements. At the center of the case was a since-deleted post that was made on Jafari’s campaign Facebook page on Oct. 30. Jafari described Sherman as an ex-felon – a “One-Man Crimewave” – with “an evasive and elusive history,” before coming to Virginia from Tennessee in 1995.

Deana L. Griffiths is the first Loudoun County School Board member to exceed the annual $100,000 yearly allowance for board members since those budget lines started in 2024. Griffiths, of the Ashburn District, exceeded the $100,000 budget for her office for fiscal 2026 by about $2,000, according to division spokesman Dan Adams. Heavily redacted emails obtained by the Times-Mirror through a Freedom of Information Act request state that the money was transferred from Catoctin member Karen “Kari” LaBell’s board budget to Griffiths’, a transfer that board members are allowed to make. In a July 28 email to the Times-Mirror, Griffiths said the deficit was a “minor error.” She said her office budget is solely for board aides and board memberships. Griffiths added that it was important to distinguish between her office budget and the school division budget. … No other board member spent more than $76,000 of their $100,000 in FY26.

In a year when every region of Virginia faces drought conditions, hundreds of data centers are withdrawing about 6 million gallons of water every day from the state’s waterways and reservoirs. Collectively, data centers use over 2 billion gallons of water a year in Virginia.  … A report by the Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin, established by Congress, said unrestrained data center growth, combined with population growth and global warming, could threaten drinking water supplies by 2050. But government authorities and conservationists can only guess at data centers’ impact on water supply: No regulations require data centers to disclose water use, and data centers regularly use nondisclosure agreements to block government officials from making those figures public. 

A federal judge has tossed out the Energy Department’s proposed policy that would have required people to re-confirm their interest in older Freedom of Information Act requests. In an Aug. 5 order, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson vacated Energy’s “Still Interested Inquiry” notice from nearly a year ago. DOE had proposed requiring anyone with a FOIA request submitted prior to Oct. 1, 2024, to email the agency if they were still interested in having their request processed. Otherwise, Energy said it could close out the request. … Lawyers representing DOE had argued the court would have to find the entire practice of using “still interested” letters to be unlawful to throw the agency’s proposed policy. But Jackson pointed to the Justice Department Office of Information Policy’s (OIP) guidance that advises agencies to make “limited” use of such letters and process the vast majority of requests to completion.