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NEWS TO KNOWOur daily roundup of headlines from Virginia and elsewhere.

More kids are hospitalized with COVID-19 than at any point during the pandemic, with at least 252 confirmed or suspected cases reported by hospitals last week. Now were seeing children who are coming in with pneumonia and the need for oxygen. Its very serious.Richmond Times-Dispatch

The Virginia Department of Health rolled out a QR code program aimed at making it easier for people to show proof of vaccination to employers and businesses. Because the QR code is digitally signed by the Virginia Department of Health, it cannot be altered or forged. Information from QR codes is only available if and when the individual chooses to share it, the department said in a statement.Richmond Times-Dispatch

Early voting begins today.WTOP

Virginia gubernatorial candidates Terry McAuliffe and Glenn Youngkin each raised more than $11 million in the latest reporting period, but a $4.5 million loan Youngkin gave his campaign left the GOP candidate with a significant fundraising advantage.Associated Press

The gubernatorial debate was marked by insults, jabs and constant interruptions, with each campaign falling back on familiar lines of attack. Princess Blanding, who will be on the ballot representing the Liberation Party, was not invited to participate.Washington Post, VPM

Dominion Energy is moving forward with plans for 15 solar and energy storage projects to comply with requirements of a 2020 clean energy law, the company said Thursday.Richmond Times-Dispatch

The city of Roanoke named its first youth and gang violence prevention coordinator, who will be responsible for the awareness, suppression, intervention and prevention of youth and gang-related activity.Roanoke Times

The family of a girl who authorities say suffered years of sexual abuse by a relative is taking the unusual step of waging a legal fight against a Virginia prosecutor to try to win a longer sentence for the defendant.Washington Post

Virginia Beach City Council members are beginning to think it may no longer be appropriate to share a lawyer with the School Board as the two bodies begin to find themselves in conflict over issues like collective bargaining and Second Amendment rights.Virginian-Pilot

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More children hospitalized with COVID-19 than ever before and more Virginia headlines - Virginia Mercury

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The University of Texas at San Antonio is taking heat from the UT Systems board of regents for its recent decision to stop displaying the famous Come and take it flag at football games after some in the university community argued the slogan has a racist history.

Regents Chair Kevin Eltife said in a statement last week that he was disappointed by UTSA President Taylor Eighmys decision to end the six-year tradition, which included unfurling an enormous flag with the slogan across the student section during the fourth quarter of football games and firing a cannon.

The Board of Regents does not support abandoning traditions and history that mean much to students, alumni, and other Texans, Eltife said. I am very disappointed with this decision and will immediately ask our Board to establish policies that ensure that the governing body of the UT System will have the opportunity in the future to be consulted before important university traditions and observances are changed.

Eltife and a system spokesperson did not provide additional details as to what policies hes seeking.

UTSA started displaying the flag in 2011, the schools first football season, and it became an official tradition in 2016 to inspire fans and challenge opponents on the field.

The origins of the flag, which includes the slogan and an image of a cannon under a star, stem from the Battle of Gonzales during the Texas Revolution in 1835. As the story goes, Mexican authorities loaned a small cannon to the town of Gonzales for protection from Native American tribes. When the Mexican troops asked for the return of the cannon, the people of Gonzales responded by raising a handmade flag with the words Come and take it.

The flag has long been a symbol of Texas pride and has commonly been adopted by groups sending a message of defiance or protesting government overreach, such as Second Amendment supporters and abortion rights advocates.

Opponents of the tradition at UTSA raised concerns that versions of the motto were superimposed onto Confederate flags and flown at the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and had been co-opted by groups that expressed anti-Mexican and anti-immigrant sentiments.

Nearly 60% of the almost 35,000 UTSA student body is Hispanic, and the school is designated a Hispanic-Serving Institution by the federal government. The university has also emphasized its desire to be a Hispanic thriving institution.

Some historians said that while this particular moment in history sparked a feeling of rebellion toward the Mexican government, it also resulted in anti-Mexican sentiment that carried into the Texas Republic. The eventual creation of the Texas Republic also led to the re-legalization of slavery in that territory.

Tejanos lost land, lost political offices, lost economic power, UTSA history professor Omar Valerio-Jimenez said of this period in history. Its not a time when Tejanos did well.

Eighmy declined a request for an interview, but he said in a statement to The Texas Tribune on Monday that he appreciated the boards perspective.

We look forward to continuing our work together to advance education, research and service for the public good, Eighmy said.

UTSA administrators started getting pushback to the tradition in August when the school unveiled a new, $40 million sports facility, called the Roadrunner Athletics Center of Excellence, and decorated it with the flag and slogan.

A former UTSA professor started a petition, which garnered around 960 signatures, arguing UTSA should remove the phrase because it is anti-Mexican and pro slavery.

Sarah Zenaida Gould, executive director of the Mexican American Civil Rights Institute in San Antonio, said she thinks that part of the history has been lost over time for some, and commended the university for its decision.

I think the more that the public is starting to understand the context of things like the Battle of the Alamo and racial politics embedded in the Texas Revolution, I think that flag is only going to become more problematic if they let it stay, she said.

Initially, Eighmy said in early August that the meaning of the flag might be different for different people, and he announced a plan for a task force to explore current and future traditions.

But last week, he said in a letter to the UTSA community that he was ending the tradition and not proceeding with the task force.

Eighmy said in the note that an online search revealed multiple groups had adopted the slogan for particular causes over the past few years, many of which have values and agendas that differ from UTSAs mission as a public university.

The phrase as well intended as it was upon inception and adoption has increasingly become incongruent with UTSA Athletics and our institutions mission and core values, he wrote. For our athletics program and our university each with so much promise and upward momentum there is no benefit to becoming embroiled in a divisive issue that could carry well into the future and negatively affect our progress.

He tasked the vice president for intercollegiate athletics to work with football players, students, faculty, staff and alumni to create a new fourth-quarter tradition that will launch during the fall 2022 football season.

Since Eighmy announced his decision, a new petition urging the school to keep the tradition has circulated online with more than 3,000 signatures as of Tuesday morning. Lindee Fiedler, chair of the Young Americans for Freedom chapter at UTSA, said there is confusion among students in her organization about how the use of the flag is offensive. She wishes there had been a vote among the school community about what to do.

We are really wary [of erasing] history, Fiedler said. We dont want to get rid of that historical context of our state and of our school. ... It inspires a lot of pride for most of the students. And anybody who I guess is offended by it is probably a small amount of people.

This isnt the first time the UT System Board of Regents has intervened to side with university tradition.

The regents supported the University of Texas at Austins decision to keep The Eyes of Texas after students and faculty at the flagship university called on the school to stop singing the song because of their concerns with its origins at a campus minstrel show at the turn of the 20th century where students likely wore blackface.

Eltife worked closely with UT-Austin President Jay Hartzell to develop a list of initiatives to improve diversity on campus and stood by Hartzells decision to keep the song.

The Eyes of Texas has been UT Austins official school song for almost 120 years, Eltife said in an October statement. To be clear, the UT System Board of Regents stands unequivocally and unanimously in support of President Hartzells announcement that The Eyes of Texas is, and will remain, the official school song.

In San Antonio this past weekend, UTSA football fans continued the tradition in different ways, including waving smaller Come and take it flags and chanting the phrase in the stands.

Disclosure: The University of Texas at San Antonio, the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Texas System have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

Join us Sept. 20-25 at the 2021 Texas Tribune Festival. Tickets are on sale now for this multi-day celebration of big, bold ideas about politics, public policy and the days news, curated by The Texas Tribunes award-winning journalists. Learn more.

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UTSA stopped displaying Come and take it flag at football games and now faces criticism from its Board of Regents - The Texas Tribune

Senate Bill 8, the Texas anti-abortion law that went into effect this month, was expressly designed so that state officials could dodge accountability for the state's law in federal court. In a new legal filing, the U.S. Department of Justice has offered a potentially winning strategy for overcoming that legal ruse.

The Texas law seeks to avoid legal accountability for state officials by outsourcing the enforcement of the anti-abortion law to private actors. Under its terms, "any person" may sue "any person whoaids or abets the performance or inducement of abortion" and win a $10,000 bounty plus legal fees if the civil suit is successful. In the state's eyes, this means that no state official needs to answer in federal court since no state official is enforcing the state law.

The Justice Department has offered a different view. In an emergency motion for a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction filed in United States v. Texas, the federal government stresses the many ways in which the Texas law "impermissibly regulates the Federal Governmentand poses unlawful obstacles to the accomplishment of federal objectives." In other words, because federal sovereignty and federal interests are being harmed by the state, the federal government may lawfully sue the state over those injuries in federal court.

How does the Texas abortion law injure federal sovereignty and interests? For one thing, the state law undermines Section 1983 of Title 42 of the U.S. Code, a federal statute which says that state officials may be sued for constitutional rights violations. If you have been following the roiling national debate over qualified immunity, you have probably heard of Section 1983 since it is the law under which federal civil rights lawsuits are filed against abusive cops.

There is no question that banning pre-viability abortions, as the Texas law does, is flatly unconstitutional under existing Supreme Court precedent. What that means is that those parties impacted by the state law are entitled to seek legal recourse in federal court by filing Section 1983 lawsuitsexcept that the Texas law was specifically designed to block those parties from seeking that very recourse.

Forget abortion. Say a progun control state legislature did the same thing. Namely, it passed a law banning handguns but then outsourced the law's enforcement to private gun control activists in an attempt to shield state officials from facing Section 1983 lawsuits over the state's blatant Second Amendment violation. Either way, the state's scheme would be a menace to both constitutional rights that have been clearly recognized by the Supreme Court and to congressionally authorized federal judicial action against those rights violations.

The Texas abortion law also runs afoul of a longstanding rule that says that states may not impose civil or criminal penalties on federal officials for carrying out their federal duties. That rule applies here because the Texas law, as the U.S. motion notes, "purports to prohibit federal personnel and contractors from carrying out their federal obligations to assist in providing access to abortion-related services to persons in the care and custody of federal agencies." Likewise, the law "purports to impede the Department of Defense's implementation of its statutory obligation to provide such medical services [abortion] to service members."

These are not far-fetched legal arguments. As the federal government's motion points out, "the Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized the authority of the United States, even without an express statutory cause of action, to seek equitable relief to vindicate various federal interests and constitutional guarantees." Such federal arguments have prevailed before and they may prevail here again.

Link:
The Justice Department May Have Found a Winning Argument Against the Texas Abortion Law - Reason

When I was the Union-Tribunes politics reporter, one of the most alarming things I covered was a discussion two candidates had with a local group that included extremists.

The fact that two congressional candidates, Rep. Darrell Issa and Ammar Campa-Najjar, chose to meet with the group was surprising, given the groups reputation and habit for celebrating violence against racial justice protesters in an online Facebook group. Besides that, Issa made a jarring comment to the group in which he promoted citizen groups taking up arms to defend their communities.

The freedom to enjoy your own life, your own home, to not have your banks or your churches burned down or vandalized is in fact something we cede much of our right to law enforcement, but we dont cede the right, we only cede the responsibility, Issa said. If government fails to meet the obligations youve given them, you take it back.

I found it striking at the time because you dont often hear elected officials promoting potential violence and vigilantism after all, it does run counter to the whole idea of our justice system and the notion of law and order. Beyond that though, it was alarming because that comment came just days after a thwarted plot by self-styled militia members to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and weeks after a teenager drove across state lines to confront racial justice protesters in Kenosha, Wis., where he shot and killed two people and wounded a third.

Issa defended his comment as being based on an accurate reading of the Second Amendment, but experts in extremism cautioned that his interpretation was dangerously close to the insurrectionist view of the Second Amendment being used by unsavory groups to foment a civil war.

In fact, Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University San Bernardino, told me then that such rhetoric emboldens bad actors and provides potential vigilantes a sense of legitimacy.

Bottom line: the insurrectionist view of the Second Amendment the idea that somehow if the government is tyrannical it gives armed citizenry a right to rebellion is, I think, a dangerous one because we actually now have what we didnt have back before, the ability to throw out elected officials through the power of the ballot, not the bullet, said Levin, who wrote a book about armed civilian militias.

That exchange has been on my mind a lot this year.

I thought about it on Jan. 6, when we saw a violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol; I thought about it during recent San Diego County Board of Supervisors meetings where we heard anti-mask, anti-vax individuals threaten supervisors and compare them to Nazis, and I thought about it Monday when an Oceanside man was arrested in Washington, D.C., outside of the Democratic National Committee headquarters driving a pickup truck that bore a swastika and carried a machete and bayonet inside.

Ive also found myself thinking about it quite a bit as we head into the final day of voting for Californias gubernatorial recall election.

Im hoping and praying this election will not end with some kind of violent reaction or pushback. I certainly fear it might though, and it continues to be odd how often Im having that fear ahead of an election.

Apparently Im not the only one with that anxiety.

In March, CNN released a poll that showed an increasing number of Americans expect some kind of political violence in response to election results in the coming years, with 71 percent of respondents saying political violence in response to election results is at least somewhat likely, including 34 percent who said it is very likely. Notably, one of the few things Democrats and Republicans agree on today is the notion that some kind of political violence is on the horizon 78 percent of Democrats, 65 percent of Republicans and 70 percent of independents describe it as likely.

Although some may feel those numbers are exacerbated by a series of high profile attempts at political violence such as Jan. 6 or the attempted kidnapping of Michigans governor, theres also polling that shows more Americans are getting comfortable justifying the use of violence in the face of political opposition.

In February, a poll by The Survey Center on American Life, a research group connected with the conservative American Enterprise Institute, found that more than 36 percent of Americans agree with the statement: The traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it.

Additionally, nearly 30 percent of those surveyed completely or somewhat agree with the statement: If elected leaders will not protect America, the people must do it themselves even if it requires taking violent actions.

The notion of taking violent actions if elected leaders fail to act was more prominent among Republicans, 39 percent, but 17 percent of Democrats and 31 percent of independents also supported the idea.

These findings follow another Survey Center poll that discovered a growing sense of viewing opposing parties as legitimate threats. About 75 percent of Republicans say Democratic policies pose a clear and present danger, while 64 percent of Democrats say the same about Republican policies. That is a 20 percent and 10 percent uptick from the view Republicans and Democrats had of each other as recently as 2017, respectively.

In a piece for Business Insider describing the groups polls, Daniel Cox, director of the Survey Center on American Life and a research fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, raised the alarm about what these attitudes suggest.

In the wake of the Capitol uprising, we have been forced to reckon with the uncomfortable truth that political violence is no longer a theoretical concern, he wrote. If political leaders weaponize concerns about demographic change and undermine trust in democratic institutions, some members of the public may seek to achieve their political goals through non-democratic means including the use of force.

Im not sure where that leaves us. Its all just a deeply disturbing position.

But hope is something you give to yourself during the dark times, so Im just going to hope that cooler heads prevail in the end. I hope every Democrat, Republican and independent is a bit more mindful of the rhetoric we use when we talk about politics. Because whether its Tuesdays election or the election in November 2022, political violence is a reality we should all hope to avoid.

Continued here:
Column: Political violence is a growing fear; let's watch the rhetoric during elections - The San Diego Union-Tribune

Today, the Herndon Town Council will hold a public hearing at 7PM on an ordinance to restrict firearms in certain public places. Second Amendment supporters are encouraged to OPPOSE the proposed Ordinance 21-O-10. If you wish to attend the hearing, you may find information here.

Please click the Take Action button below to contact the Town Council.

The proposed Ordinance 21-O-10 prohibits firearms, ammunition, and components in public buildings, public parks, and on public streets and sidewalks where, or adjacent to where, town-sponsored events are occurring. There are exemptions for concealed handguns by concealed handgun permit holders as well as for firearms, ammunition, and components stored out of sight in locked vehicles lawfully parked in these areas.

Despite these exemptions, individuals who live in an area where a town-sponsored event is occurring will not be able to cross a public right of way to enter or leave their property with any firearm other than a concealed handgun with a permit. In addition, they may find themselves in legal trouble for accidentally leaving something as simple as a shell casing visible in a vehicle parked at one of these public buildings or parks, or leaving it parked in an area prior to a town-sponsored event occurring there.

Nothing in the proposed ordinance requires the town to implement security measures to ensure that armed criminals do not ignore such arbitrary boundaries and enter anyway. It simply says they may implement security measures.

Again, please contact the Town Council and ask them to OPPOSE the proposed Ordinance 21-O-10.

Go here to see the original:
Virginia: Herndon Considering Carry Restrictions - NRA ILA