Voting rights restoration, new childcare center and indigenous food for schools

• Spanberger has restored voting rights to more than 66,000 Virginians
• Lawmakers move forward with plans for childcare center for state employees
• Indigenous food program to bring culturally appropriate lunches to Virginia schools
• Committees lay groundwork to campaign on constitutional amendments
• Chesterfield residents call for more transparency on Google data centers

Curious Commonwealth asks: Why is there a herd of elk in North Chesterfield?

Hi, it’s Sean McGoey, your friendly neighborhood editor who produces the Saturday edition of the Morning Monitor most weeks.

With this year’s congressional primary elections concluding on Tuesday, I had every intention of sharing last year’s Curious Commonwealth digging into why Virginia has off-cycle elections, requiring people to head to the polls every single year.

But then I realized that we’ve been giving you so much election coverage — and will be continuing to do so between now and November’s general elections — that our wonderful audience (that’s you!) deserves a brief respite, a calm before the storm.

So, instead, please enjoy a silly little treat: Reporter Billy Shields’ exploration into why there’s a herd of elk living at a military logistics hub just off of US Route 1 in Chesterfield County.

If you have a question about what makes Virginia interesting, please submit it to the Curious Commonwealth team.

BizSense Beat: Thermo Fisher, Westover Place, Sippa, Baltik’s Bagel

BizSense Beat is a weekly collaboration between VPM News and Richmond BizSense that recaps the region’s top business stories.

This week, BizSense’s Jack Jacobs and host Lyndon German discuss a Massachusetts pharmaceutical company’s failure to hit expansion target in the Richmond area, mixed-use construction underway in Forest Hill, a new beverage craze coming to Henrico County and Baltik’s Bagel exploring an expansion to Church Hill.

Listen in and read more here.

This week in VPM News Shorts: Richmond sales tax vote; primary races

What happened this week in VPM News Shorts?

On Tuesday, Keyris Manzanares unpacked her reporting on Richmond considering a 1% sales tax increase to fund new school construction. And Jahd Khalil closed the week with a look ahead to the congressional primary elections that wrap up next Tuesday.

Don’t forget, you can watch all our Shorts on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.

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