Hey there,

Virginia news, as someone recently put it to me, is really popping off.

This election season has been a rollercoaster of scandals playing out in the long shadow of the Trump 2.0 era. And now, there’s word Virginia may be joining the redistricting fight (more on that below).

This past week or so has been a constant reminder, at least to me, that we are in a new political age. I think my tipping point was the AI video of President Donald Trump in a jet dumping brown sludge on protestors.

Growing up, I was always taught that protesting was as American as apple pie. Almost a sacred act that’s part of why the country was founded. So for a sitting president to dismiss it so obscenely kind of got to me in a way I didn’t expect.

I am consoled by the fact that every time I sit down to write or go cover an event, I have an opportunity to push back on this soulless ironic nihilism (more on that below, too) and promote a more humane, meaningful way of existing in this timeline.

Below, I share some stories from working Virginia families battling hunger and look at what’s going on with Virginia’s possible redistricting fight.

Plus, a new essay in Harper’s Magazine has all the details you did not need about how a certain subset of young men are using a very strange NSFW corner of the internet.

Michael O’Connor

Reporter, Dogwood

Shoppers check out and get their groceries bagged during the grand opening of a Lidl grocery store, Thursday, June 15, 2017, in Virginia Beach, Va. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

Ariele Robinson works two retail jobs and recently got another in nursing taking care of the elderly. But it’s still not enough for the mother of four to get by in Richmond.

“Whenever I get an extra $20 or $30, it goes to food,” Robinson said. “I go to Dollar General and try to get noodles, things for like $1.25 to stock up.”

Audrey Cunningham faces a similar situation in Tazewell County, where she and her fiance deliver Walmart groceries and take care of their three children. But with their van in the shop, their main source of income is on hold for the moment.

“We really want to get back to doing our deliveries to get money to buy food,” Cunningham said.

Both Robinson and Cunningham rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to help them make ends meet. They shared their stories on a press call yesterday along with Democratic elected officials to urge political leaders to make sure SNAP has enough funding next month.

That’s because the Trump administration has warned that because of the government shutdown, SNAP funding risks running out in November. Over 850,000 people in Virginia rely on SNAP.

They got some measure of assurance today when Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin declared a state of emergency that allows him to tap into funds to help with the SNAP program. But it’s not clear, at least to me, how much funding Youngkin can tap into and whether the funds will backfill what’s needed in full or only partly.

Such are the questions facing working people in Virginia as they make their holiday plans and elites carry on with their private jets and massive tax cuts. Not to mention obsessing over the development of ball rooms while many working people struggle to afford stays in motel rooms.

You can read my coverage here.

Sarah Dolgin at the Fauquier Times reports on Virginia soybean farmers who are hurting because of the Trump administration’s tariffs, but still support the president.
Louis Hansen and Kunle Falayi at the Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism at WHRO examine the millions of dollars flowing into Virginia House of Delegates races.
Angela Woolsey at FFXnow offers an update on the vote that’s underway to ratify a union contract for Fairfax County workers.

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, center, greets legislators as he arrives to deliver his annual State of the Commonwealth address before a joint session of the Virginia General Assembly at the Capitol, Monday Jan. 13, 2025 in Richmond, Va. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

A special session of the Virginia General Assembly focused on redistricting appears to be on the books the week before Election Day.

That’s the news Brandon Jarvis of Virginia Scope broke yesterday, citing unnamed sources, and was then confirmed today in The New York Times.

“We are coming back to address actions by the Trump administration,” Scott Surovell, the majority leader of the Virginia Senate, told the Times.

News of Virginia Democrats’ plan comes just days after North Carolina Republicans passed a new congressional map that will almost certainly eliminate a Democratic seat, the latest front in President Trump’s push to strongarm Republicans into redrawing congressional maps to the party’s benefit.

Trump first convinced Texas Republicans to redraw their maps, bypassing the usual once-a-decade redistricting to eliminate five Democratic-held seats.

California Democrats responded by drawing a new map that could eliminate five Republican-held seats, but that map must be approved by voters in November.

Missouri Republicans also redrew their state’s map to eliminate a Democratic seat, and other states like Indiana and New York are considering drawing new maps too.

It’s this all out battle for control of the US House that Virginia Democrats appear poised to enter next week.

I’ll be in Richmond on Monday when the lawmakers meet for this special session.

(Rebekah Yip/Unsplash)

The new viral Harper’s Magazine essay on a disturbing internet subculture is not for the faint of heart.

I’m referring to Daniel Kolitz’s essay The Goon Squad, which explores the world of gooning, where young men obsess—to put it mildly—over pornography in disturbing fashion.

But in chronicling this bleak, strange underbelly of male loneliness, Kolitz captures something important about the way algorithms have hijacked all of our minds, not to say our souls.

As Kolitz puts it towards the end of his piece: “It’s hard not to see goonerism as just an intensification, almost a burlesque, of prevailing cultural trends.”

And later, “Peering into Goonworld’s darkest corners has convinced me that what we are dealing with here may well be a structural flaw of networked communication itself.”

It’s worth reading, though I’ve seen some online who wished they hadn’t.

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