Staffers attacked
Two staffers were attacked with a metal bat in Virginia Rep. Gerry Connolly’s district office on Monday, May 15.
While police are still unsure of the attacker’s motive, the suspect was identified as Xuan Kha Tran Pham, a 49-year-old man from Fairfax.
The assailant reportedly entered the congressman’s office, hit the staffers, and went on a destructive rampage while looking for Connolly, a Democrat, who was not there. Both staffers were transferred to the hospital for “non-life threatening injuries.” One of the injured individuals was an intern who had started work that day.
Both the Capitol Police and Fairfax City Police Department are investigating the attack, and the USCP has announced that Pham faces charges of aggravated malicious wounding and malicious wounding. While Pham was not previously on the USCP’s radar, he had filed an odd complaint against the CIA in which he accused the agency of “wrongfully imprisoning [him] in a lower perspective based on physics,” and “brutally torturing [him] … from the fourth dimension.”
Following the attack, Pham’s father revealed that his son struggles with schizophrenia and had not taken his medication for three months.
In a press release following the attack, Connolly said, “I have the best team in Congress. My District Office staff make themselves available to constituents and members of the public every day. The thought that someone would take advantage of my staff’s accessibility to commit an act of violence is unconscionable and devastating.”
GBA expands
The Community Climate Collaborative has added 10 new members to its Green Business Alliance.
C3 announced the expansion of the alliance at a May 15 press conference with keynote speaker Virginia Rep. Jennifer McClellan. While it is McClellan’s first term in the House of Representatives, she strongly supported climate protection and environmental justice efforts during her time in the state Senate.
The expansion of the GBA is a part of C3’s larger goal of strengthening climate leadership among local businesses. While the first and second groups of GBA members have cohort-level goals of 45 percent and 35 percent collective reductions respectively, individual alliance members have targets ranging from 30 percent to 90 percent emissions reductions.
The new GBA members are: CATEC, East Point Energy, Martin Horn, Pediatric Associates of Charlottesville, Piedmont Housing Alliance, Red Light Management, Southern Environmental Law Center, Thistlerock Mead Company, UVA Community Credit Union, and Westminster Canterbury of the Blue Ridge.
In brief
School lockdowns
Greenbrier Elementary, Buford Middle School, and Charlottesville High School were all placed on lockdown following the discovery of a potential credible threat on May 9. Charlottesville Police Department have identified Dionte Tremaine Ruffin as a person of interest, but have not yet located him. While the initial threat was against a Buford student who was connected to Ruffin through her mother, all three campuses went into lockdown upon discovery that the woman had children at each school.
Affirmative action
The University of Virginia has released a statement in anticipation of a Supreme Court decision striking down affirmative action policies in university admissions. In the statement, President Jim Ryan and Executive Vice President and Provost Ian Baucom said, “We will continue to do everything within our legal authority to recruit a student body that is both extraordinarily talented and richly diverse across every imaginable dimension, including race. Those efforts reflect our commitment to serve the Commonwealth and beyond by making a UVA education as accessible as possible for all, including historically underrepresented students.”
Age requirements
Gov. Glenn Youngkin has signed legislation requiring Virginians to confirm they are at least 18 years old before viewing porn websites. The new law will require users to submit verification through advanced methods, including government-issued IDs, biometric scans, and age verification software, to access websites where more than a third of content is deemed “harmful to minors.” Popular adult website PornHub has warned Virginia that users in the state could be blocked from the site due to the legislation. The law is currently set to go into effect July 1, 2023.