News from our Public Broadcasting Partners

The November election is coming into focus.Radio IQ politics analyst Jeff Schapiro and Michael Pope recap the week in politics and state government.

When former president Joe Biden was diagnosed with prostate cancer, Randy Jones was not surprised. He’s a professor of nursing at the University of Virginia, and he knows that one in eight American men will eventually get the disease.

“What we would call the working poor, who are contributing to the withholdings, the sales tax, the income tax," Sen. Barbara Favola asked. "I would just love to see where that falls.”

The Democratic field now appears to be set for the November election.

“We’ve lowered the cost of living with 9 billion, with a b, dollars in tax relief for all of us Virginians,” Winsome Earle-Sears said.

Since 2020, at least 20 localities in Virginia have had active militia groups, according to media reports, though Southern Poverty Law Center researcher Rachel Goldwasser says that number’s a bit higher.

As the Senate works through the budget reconciliation bill, it’s unclear at this time how much funding may be cut from food programs, like the supplemental nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Food banks are already seeing an increase in the number of people in need of food assistance and fewer resources.

Hundreds, maybe thousands, of people in Charlottesville lined both sides of a busy highway for half a mile Saturday as part of a protest against Trump administration actions and policies while many drivers signaled their agreement by honking horns.

According to the Association of International Educators, international students contributed over $800 million dollars to Virginia colleges in 2023 and over $43 billion nationally.

Democrats are hopeful that they'll be able to capitalize on sentiment against President Trump in the statewide election this year.