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Here’s a recap of the top stories on the morning of Aug. 21, 2025:
Earle-Sears touts her role in Youngkin policy wins — but is light on details
Reported by VPM News’ Jahd Khalil
At a barbecue restaurant in Hopewell earlier this month, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears unveiled her new campaign theme as the Republican nominee for governor. “Operation Defend and Deliver” would defend policy wins of the past four years that she and Gov. Glenn Youngkin had made, she told the audience.
“You know what we’ve done in Virginia. We’ve given you back your tax money, $9 billion worth, and that’s after we’ve also raised teacher pay,” she said, also citing job creation and mental health funding. “We are on the job. We are doing the work.”
But when asked, her office and campaign have been unable to show what kind of role she has had in Youngkin’s administration.
“I’m not going to divulge what we talk about. But remember that I’m a former legislator as well, and I understand the legislative process,” she said. “We’ve talked about some things, and I’m just going to leave it at that. I’ve given him advice on certain things … we just have things that we’ve discussed on how to move certain things and how certain things will move.”
VPM News also filed a FOIA request with the lieutenant governor’s office for her schedule, a record that is required to be maintained and permanently held. In response, the office produced a largely-blank, 297-page PDF that excluded “approximately 297 records,” citing the exemption covering “confidential correspondence and working papers of the Office of the Lieutenant Governor.”
Chesterfield Planning Commission greenlights nuclear fusion plant
Reported by VPM News’ Billy Shields
The Chesterfield Planning Commission greenlit an application for a conditional use permit that would allow Commonwealth Fusion Systems to build a fusion power plant in the county, the first of its kind in the world.
Ben Byboth, CFS’ director of business development and strategy, took the Planning Commission through his company’s plans Tuesday afternoon.
He talked the commission through the central engine of a fusion reactor, a doughnut-shaped, magnet-lined container known as a tokamak. A tokamak accelerates plasma particles of a hydrogen isotope to force together the nuclei of atoms that naturally repel each other. That generates heat that converts water to steam that turns turbines to generate power.
“There’s been over 150 tokamaks around the world, but this will be the first used to generate electricity,” Byboth told VPM News after his presentation.
Byboth told VPM News that fusion is a safer form of power generation than nuclear fission: “Fusion is very different from the way you think of traditional nuclear power. Fusion is the opposite process. There’s no chance of a meltdown, no runaway reaction, there’s no uranium or plutonium, it’s an inherently safe machine.”
News you might have missed from around the commonwealth:
- City’s attorneys ask judge to block FOIA requests from city’s former FOIA officer (Richmond Times-Dispatch)*
- Richmond’s $20M East End center to open with rooftop basketball (Axios Richmond)
*This outlet utilizes a paywall.
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