Public School Unions, Payday Lenders, and Virginia's White Supremacists

IN THE NEWS:

Empty Seats: Several members of the General Assembly are moving to new addresses so they can run later this year under new district maps, as some incumbents may no longer live in the districts they represent. But a line in the Virginia Constitution means those members can't participate in any special session to deal with the budget this year.

Collective Bargaining: Teachers and support staff and cafeteria workers across Virginia are trying to hammer out new collective bargaining agreements. It's happening in Albemarle, Arlington, Charlottesville, Fairfax and Prince William. Union leaders say groups considering collective bargaining in their local school divisions should be on the lookout for unreasonable requirements for union elections.

Return of Payday Lending: A new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office recommends that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau decide whether "earned wage access" cash advance qualifies as a loan.

At the Watercooler:

- White Supremacist propaganda is hitting an all-time high, especially in Virginia. According to the ADL, Virginia ranks #3 in incidents of hate, extremism, antisemitism and terrorism by state.
- The March 20 issue of the New Yorker has an article by Virginia local D.T. Max about a famous Cuban author who turned out to be a compulsive liar, drawing parallels to Congressman George Santos.

Trivia: What document is former Governor Terry McAuliffe signing in his official portrait?

Episode Transcript

Michael Pope: I'm Michael Pope.

Thomas Bowman: I'm Tom Bowman.

Michael Pope: And this is Pod Virginia, a podcast. That is, are you ready for this, Thomas? Today? March 20th is the first day of the rest of your life because today is the first day that you can file to run as a General Assembly candidate. If you wanna run in the June primary. So the window is today, all the way through April 6th, and 2023 is officially open, and people are running.

Thomas Bowman: Yeah. And that's also causing a bunch of people to shuffle the deck chairs on the Titanic slightly. And they have to very quickly decide if they want to run for election again. File in a new district move, and hopefully, if there's, in some cases, there's no overlap between the old district and the new district, that's requiring people to completely move out and resign their seat according to the constitution.

Michael Pope: That gets us right into our first news story, empty seats. Several members of the General Assembly are packing their bags and moving to a new home address so that they can run for office later this year when candidates will have new district maps thanks to redistricting. Now, some of the incumbent members. May no longer live in the districts they currently represent, and Carl Tobias at the University of Richmond Law School says that probably means those members cannot participate in any special session to deal with the budget.

Carl Tobias: They might not be able to participate and vote and represent those areas if they no longer live there. It seems like it's a very strong constitution. Command that if you are not living in that district, you are not representing it and probably should not be participating.

Thomas Bowman: According to the Virginia Constitution. And this is a quote, a Senator or Delegate who moves his residence from the district for which he is elected shall thereby vacate his office. You know, note that shitty sexist language that they're trying to fix but haven't yet. So Virginia legal expert Rich Kelsey says that doesn't leave any wiggle room.

Rich Kelsey: If one of these delegates is going to file paperwork that says that they have moved, have already moved outside of the district they represent, then they are required to resign their seat, and that requirement isn't at the end of this term. That is now.

Michael Pope: Yeah. Now as of March 20th, today is the first day that all these people are filing paperwork. And some of that paperwork might say, Hey, I have moved. As a related note, Thomas, today is a day when you've got all these campaigns that are hitting up their party officials becaCFPBuse they wanna be first on the ballot. And the only way to do that is to be the first person to submit your paperwork. So today, people are jockeying for positions on the ballot, but then you also have people submitting paperwork to say, Hey, I might actually move, and I might be moving to a district that I don't currently represent, which of course, there would be a constitutional requirement to resign. The most prominent person to find himself in this position is Nadarius Clark, who has already announced his intention to resign. But Thomas, there are other names that people are talking about, right? 

Thomas Bowman: Yeah. The good news is that there are not that many people as far as the delegates and senators who are moving. They are moving out of old district lines for new district lines. There's enough. Most of the districts have some overlap. In the Nadarius Clark case, it did not. I don't really wanna get into the, like, individual names of people talking about moving because they're just talking about it, and they haven't actually necessarily done it yet. But that's definitely something that's coming into play right now that the caucuses are trying to figure out. Most notably though, on the Republican side, there is some discussion that Emmett Hanger. May actually move to the neighboring district to take on Delegate Chris Head, who is running for Senate and is already up on Fox News. You told me before we started recording.

Michael Pope: Yeah, definitely one to keep an eye out for. Hangar has already been public about not wanting to run against Obenshain. So, you know, the redistricting maps put him in a district with Obenshain. That, you know, that's, that's a non-starter for a Hanger, so he might move to this neighboring district where Chris Head is running. So I guess, you know, Hangar's looking in the mirror and asking himself a question, do I really wanna run in this really competitive, you know, primary fight against a, you know, prominent Republican? So yeah, these are people who are having to make these decisions right now because we are actually in the window of time that people have to file paperwork for this.

Thomas Bowman: Yeah, another one who is already out publicly, having already moved and gotten an apartment somewhere in their new district, is AC Cordoza. And so there is an open question, too, if AC Cordoza will or won't have to resign. Similar to Nadarius Clark. So, as I said, the good news is we're only talking about a handful of people. Most likely, your Delegate or your senator hasn't had to leave the district. There are no Democrats in the Senate, so the Democrats are not looking at having to lose their majority going into this veto session or any potential special session. The House Dems might lose one for Clark, potentially one more. You could make an argument for someone like Guzman. But they're definitely working all that out right now.

Michael Pope: Well, if you're thinking about the whip count on the house dem side, don't forget the seat currently held by Lamont Bagby, who will have to resign soon. So, I mean, you got an empty seat there in terms of the caucus. Over on. On the Senate side, it's interesting to look at Dave LaRock moving out of Loudoun County. So you know, he's fine in terms of representing his current constituents. However, his move out of Loudoun County does something really interesting to planning District eight, which I'm sure many of our listeners know love planning District eight. But it's basically like, it's, it's saying here is Northern Virginia as a group of jurisdictions; so, you know, LA Rock's move out of Loudoun County, I think, is really interesting in terms of movement of Republicans who are now no longer in planning district eight, the delegation there for planning dis District eight does not have any republicans who live in planning district eight So interesting trend there as well.

Thomas Bowman: I do think that the judiciary, if they were to rule on this, would probably hold it harmless cuz we're talking about it. Like a few months before going into the sessions on the new districts, which were already delayed. So the whole process from start to finish has been a complete mess on redistricting. And this is just the latest instance. But it is technically illegal, and there is a lot of very smart discussion happening about it right now and a lot of blog posts going out from Virginia government watchers. And it's true that that is what the constitution.

Michael Pope: Mm-hmm. Well, we should move on to our next story, collective bargaining in the classroom. Now, teachers and support staff, and cafeteria workers across Virginia are trying to hammer out new collective bargaining agreements. Now, this is happening in Almar, Arlington, Charlottesville, Fairfax, and Prince William County. The idea is that public school employees will have more of a say in what happens at their workplace. Arlington Union leader, June Prakash.

June Prakash: So I think we've become accustomed to stagnant pay and being overworked, taking away planning time, and that's becoming the norm. And collective bargaining will help make that better. They won't be able to pile on or not raise the pay as they have been doing for so long.

Thomas Bowman: Union leaders say groups considering collective bargaining in their local school divisions should be on the lookout for unreasonable requirements for union elections in Prince William. More than half the workers participating in the union election are required to vote in favor of joining the union. Here's SEIU Virginia 512 president David Broder.

David Broder: Essentially, they passed an anti-Democratic standard that they themselves couldn't meet if they held themselves to the same standard they required of their workers. No one on the Prince Liam County School Board would be in office today.

Michael Pope: So yeah, keep in mind the only school system that actually has a contract in Richmond. So there's only one that has really completed this process. All these other others that we're talking about are jurisdictions that have passed a resolution to begin the process of moving toward unionization. So the most recent of which was Fairfax County. Just earlier this month passed its resolution, starting collective bargaining. I think Falls Church is about to follow suit, you know, so you got all these jurisdictions right now that are trying to hammer out how these agreements are gonna work in Albemarle, Arlington, Charlottesville, Fairfax, and Prince William County. So yeah, like this is, these discussions are going on across Virginia right now and will only continue into jurisdictions that we're not even talking about.

Thomas Bowman: And it was a big win for unions to be able to bargain collectively in Virginia at the local level. But those unions had planned to come back and ask the General Assembly to standardize some of that language, and some of the localities want that too. Because they're having to reinvent the wheel from one locality to the next and renegotiate things that, by the way, there's a lot of science and academic research behind some of these best practices and also over a hundred years of history on some of these best practices that most people in Virginia don't have exposure to. So they really wanted to standardize the language and scopes to make sure that the collective bargaining agreements were consistent and consistently fair across Virginia's public schools. That's gonna prevent, you know, disparities in working conditions and compensation and promote overall a more equitable education system. So that's what they wanted, but that couldn't happen once Republicans won the house and Glenn Youngkin and the other statewide candidates. For the Republicans also won. But one important element to this, Michael, is about the impact on teacher retention and recruitment, which all localities are struggling with right now. So the localities across the country, States that have collective bargaining and recognize their teachers. Unions are mostly in the top 10 states for teacher pay, retention, and all of that stuff. States like Virginia that traditionally have been right-to-work states, or they're either non-union or not strong unions, they're gonna be in the bottom 10 of the, which Virginia is for teacher pay and retention. And so, unions are a free market way to make. That your workers are getting what they need so that you can, big picture, stay competitive as a locality. Especially a lot of families make their resident's decisions based on the local school districts. And so, you know, if you're in a county that has poor-performing schools or, or like teachers making 30 or 40 grand a year, that is not gonna cut it cuz you're just not gonna, again, broad brush here specifically, I'm sure that there are individuals. You're not gonna attract the talent systemically that you will in places like Fairfax and Loudon and other places where they start doing local collective bargaining agreements. That up standards for everyone.

Michael Pope: Well, I, we heard it in the audio there from June Prash, the Arlington Union leader, who was saying, you know, so many of our members have become accustomed to all these things, the stagnant pay and the overwork, and oh, you have to do this on your planning time. You know, you have to do this during your lunch break. And collective bargaining is a way to say, no, we don't; we get a lunch break. Do you know? So I also find it interesting that we're even having this discussion, Thomas, because for so long Virginia was like an anti-union state, and there were, there were no unions really to speak of. And so, I mean, this is actually a historical moment that we're at here With these handfuls of jurisdictions moving toward unionization in Virginia.

Thomas Bowman: Not only are teachers being asked to do more with less overall, even when there are pay raises proportionally, but it is also less relative to inflation. So, The teachers are also concerned about things like having adequate planning time to be able to teach. Certainly, political attacks do not help morale, you know, in these discussions about book banning. But they do also need access to necessary supplies and resources. Some anecdotal stories from teachers I've heard in the Commonwealth say things like, They get a $200 classroom budget for supplies, and they laugh at that because that's basically like all your tissues and stuff for the year.

Michael Pope: Mm-hmm.

Thomas Bowman: That's it. Like that doesn't include any of the signs or reading materials. You know, think about all those, like classroom posters, teaching kids how to read and, and all that stuff that's paid for out of pocket in many cases.

Michael Pope: Well, speaking of people struggling to make ends meet, that takes us to our next story, the Return of Payday Loans. Now, a new report from the US Government Accountability Office recommends that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau answer a really important question. It's about whether or not a new. Cash Advance qualifies as a loan. Earlier this year, Republican Delegate Amanda Batten of James City County introduced a bill in the General Assembly supported by business interests to offer something called earned wage access.

Amanda Batten: The employee could use this service to access the wages that they've earned but not yet been paid during the current pay cycle. So this is not a loan. These are wages that have already, in fact, been earned.

Thomas Bowman: All right? So it's not a loan, but it's also not a gift, right? And so pay very careful attention to that framing because. That framing the idea that it's not a loan avoids the legal responsibility associated with loaning money. At least that's according to the Virginia Poverty Law Center Executive Director Jay Speer.

Jay Spper: When somebody advances you money that you then need to repay at a cost, that sure sounds like a loan to me.

Michael Pope: Yeah, if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck, it's probably a duck. And so you've got all these people, the business interests who say, Hey, no, it's not alone. Don't make us follow all the lending laws. And you got Amanda Baton saying, Hey, no, this is not a loan. So now we're at a point where the g o is telling the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Hey, you know, let's, let's solve, Question here. Let's answer this once and for all. Are these things loans or not? Should they follow the lending laws, or should they not? And you know, Virginia's not the only state that has been having this discussion. That you just heard the audio thereof Amanda Batten introducing a bill on this issue. There are states across the country actually have been debating this. So yeah, this is a question that needs to be answered. And you know, the industry is making an argument that it's not a loan because I don't know, Thomas, what is their argument exactly? Why is this thing not alone from their perspective?

Thomas Bowman: So it does help to understand generally how it works here, right? So you sign up for this service. And it costs you a small fee.

Michael Pope: This is like FinTech. Something you could do is an app on your phone.

Thomas Bowman: Yes. You pay a small fee, and they take your employer's direct deposit, right? So they're not charging interest, but they are taking service fees off the top. So it does cost you money.

Michael Pope: and they have access to your bank account. One of the things that Jay Speer was telling me that is like, actually, really in my mind, a red flag. They have access to your bank account and can make withdrawals whenever they want in whatever amount they want.

Thomas Bowman: Well, and they would say that you're just accessing, in many cases, the wages you've already earned but haven't been paid yet. So say you get paid every other Friday, right, and you need something. A bridge loan is what it's called traditionally to float you for a few days or weeks or whatever. So you do not necessarily have to pay anything back, but you are because you're sending your direct deposit straight to them, and by the way, you're giving them a fee, and they can act like a bank and lend out the money that is in that account. You know, if it's a regulated financial. Or, like a bank, they can lend that out. Fractionally reserved at 90% of it. So they don't, you could have a situation where there's a cash flow problem for them. But also I would say this generally to the people that are considering using this product. While it is true, we don't want to stifle it. For any innovation, especially in this rapidly moving environment with tech, we also need to make sure people have access to capital. That's really important. Access to capital in an environment like this, it's really important to do your due diligence and not participate in any newfangled financial schemes like this because they're untested, and we are in a period of prolonged economic instability in this country and around the world.

Michael Pope: Yeah. And the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has a very important role to play here by, you know, making a determination so that next year in 2024, When somebody in the General Assembly introduces something similar to this Amanda Batten bill, they can hold up that CFPB report and say, Hey, look, no, this is actually a loan, because that's what the CFPB has determined. So this is a deter, deter determination, actually, that will be very important for the future of the Virginia General Assembly.

Thomas Bowman: Yeah, I agree. Well, you wanna move on to trivia, Michael?

Michael Pope: Yeah. Let's play some trivia. Last week we asked you about the Arlington-based Nazi who ran for Governor of Virginia in 1965. Who was that? Arlington-based Nazi who ran for Governor of Virginia in 1965.

Thomas Bowman: Well, we got a lot of people chiming in on this that have the right answer, but only one of them was first, and that was William Gutierrez, the first one to guess.

George Lincoln Rockwell.

Michael Pope: Yes. George Lincoln Rockwell is the answer. Fascinating guy. A fascinating part of Arlington's history. So William Gutierrez, thank you for playing. Thank you for getting it right. Also, shout out to my friend Boyd Walker, who texted me with the right answer after he heard it on the. Boyd Walker added that Rockwell was assassinated in Arlington. Fascinating story. Thomas, you can read about it in a book called Wicked Northern Virginia, available on Amazon. Only a mere price. And you can learn all about the life and death of George Lincoln Rockwell, who was assassinated while doing his laundry at a strip mall in Arlington. That still exists, by the way. So some of our listeners in the Arlington area might actually drive by the assassination site of George Lincoln Rockwell. Our trivia question for next week involves the portraits that you see all around the Capitol building. So we've got a new portrait, the brand new portrait of house speaker Eileen Filler-Corn. Thomas, have you seen the images here of filler corn posing with her new portrait?

Thomas Bowman: Yes, it's well done, and it also has a fun picture of her family there at the speaker's podium next to the gave.

Michael Pope: Yeah, those portraits are always fun because sometimes they're Easter eggs that are hidden in them. So like, you know, Kirk Cox has like a baseball field, and Ralph Northam has like these newspaper headlines in the corner of the portrait, and then like a covid manual in the background. And he's not wearing a tie, which apparently he didn't wear ties during, you know, while he was governor during the pandemic. And like that was his pandemic uniform is not wearing a tie. Interesting stuff in the Terry McCollough portrait at the Capitol. Thomas, have you seen the Terry McAuliffe portrait?

Thomas Bowman: I have. And I think that's gonna be the fodder for our next trivia question, Michael.

Michael Pope: Yeah, he's signing a document in his official portrait as governor. What did that document do?

Thomas Bowman: And shout out to a listener who recommended this Question.

Michael Pope: Okay. Let's head over to the water cooler. Thomas, what's the latest you hear around the water cooler?

Thomas Bowman: Well, as far as Virginia goes, white supremacist propaganda is apparently hitting an old-time high. Virginia's actually one of the places, Michael, where the problem is most acute. So the Anti-Defamation Leagues Center on extremism recently created an interactive map showing incidents of, you know, hate, racism, anti-Semitism, and terrorism by state. And guess what? Sports fans, Virginia ranks number three.

Michael Pope: So that database has more than 400 incidents of white supremacist propaganda in Virginia in 2022. So like the database looked at for the calendar year 2022, Richmond has the most incidents by far, with 34 incidents last year. So Fairfax and Virginia Beach are not far behind, with more than a dozen incidents. And so the busiest group here, they actually have like the KKK is one, and White Lives Matter is a group that they have received incidents about. But there's one group that really stands out here because they have the vast majority of incidents in Virginia as a group called Patriot Front, with more than 300 documented incidents of this white supremacist group distributing propaganda across Virginia. So the messages here included in the propaganda included messages like Better red than dead. America first. Strong families make strong nations. No foreign wars. And here's the kicker, Thomas, defend American labor. What do you make of that Last one? Defend American labor.

Thomas Bowman: What I make of it is they know exactly who their target audience is, and look, Patriot Front's current leader was actually one of the key organizers of the Unite the right devastation in Charlottesville back in 2017. And like a lot of the incidents that the ADL reported revolved around support for Kanye West, bizarrely, including a group from the National Justice Party distributing stickers in Mechanicsville that said Kanye was right.

Michael Pope: Oh man. There was, Kayne was, right. So Kanye expressed support for Hitler, right? Kanye was Right is basically support for Adolf Hitler. Correct.

Thomas Bowman: Yeah. And that's the theme for a lot of this stuff. There's also this anti-Semitic group called the Goam Defense League that distributed propaganda in Harrisonburg that said, you know, every single aspect of the LGBTQ plus movement is Jewish.

Michael Pope: Oof. Okay, so homophobic and anti-Semitic. All right.

Thomas Bowman: Yeah. Then, the total package and, you know, the high-tech award, I guess, goes to a student in Arlington who airdropped an image of a swastika to their fellow students. So, stay classy, guys.

Michael Pope: Stay classy. Arlington, nazis. Okay, so, woo.

Thomas Bowman: What about you, Michael? What do you hear around the water cooler?

Michael Pope: Well, I have to do a shout-out to my neighbor, DT Max, who is a writer who writes for The New Yorker. And so you definitely wanna check out the March 20th. Issue of the New Yorker. The cover image is a really great basketball image. So that's the issue of the New Yorker. He wanted to check it out, and he wrote this really awesome article. It's called Magic Realism. That's about this famous novelist. After his death, it turns out everything he made up about himself was a complete fabrication. Like he was a serial liar to the extent that even his obituary in the Washington Post was full of fabrications that he made up about himself in his lifetime. And the Post had to actually correct the obituary, which as. Thomas as a former obituary writer, this got my attention, you know, because I always think about, you know, I'm putting this down in print, you know, for the rest of time better be right. And so better fact-check all this stuff. So, you know, to have an obituary that was full of fabrications, wow. It's really something. And yeah, it's just, it's it, you know, obviously, it's a, at the moment now where we're talking about George Santos. And, you know, there's part of the New Yorker story where DT Max is mentioning flourishes. Like he would not just lie, he would lie fabulously, right? So like, he would make up things, for example, about eating cornflakes for breakfast. Well, he didn't eat cornflakes for breakfast. He just made that up, right? So some of the lies had flourished. So DT Max mentions this one lie that was like a flourish worthy of George Santos. Yeah, it is interesting how George Santos has really captured the imagination of the American people. And so this Cuban author, who, as it turns out, wasn't even Cuban, you know, has pulled the wall over everybody's eyes to the extent that, you know, after his death, it all kind of unravels. Fascinating story. Magic realism by DT Max and the latest issue of the New Yorker.

Thomas Bowman: You know, as my Baptist family would say, you can be sure your sins will find you out.

Michael Pope: All right, Thomas, open up that Pod Virginia Mailbag. What are our listeners talking about?

Thomas Bowman: Hey, our discussion about all the recent retirements, which at the time ends up not being complete even, it's really sparked some hot takes.

Michael Pope: Yeah. So since we recorded our last podcast, Senator Steve Newman has announced that he's now retiring. He is one of the more senior senators. So that really leaves a very big. And so our discussion about all the retirements has really got people talking on Twitter. So one of those people is Danville City Councilman Lee Vogler. He heard our discussion about James Edmonds deciding to retire instead of facing a primary fight with Danny Marshall. And he put this on Twitter, quote, Danny Marshall is well-respected by Rs and Ds here; he will be in that seat until he chooses not to anymore. And. Whenever that time comes, dot, dot, dot.

Thomas Bowman: That almost sounds like teasing an announcement.

Michael Pope: Yeah. Pod Virginia listener Lee Vogler may be running for the seat that Danny Marshall currently occupies, but only after Danny Marshall decides he wants to do something else.

Thomas Bowman: Well, a lot can happen between now and then in politics, so, but you heard it first.

Michael Pope: Heard first in that you heard it here first.

Thomas Bowman: Thanks for listening.

Michael Pope: Speaking of announced candidates, Monica Gary is an independent candidate running for an open seat in Senate District 27. That's a Republican-leaning district in the Fredericksburg area. So she heard our discussion of that math error, that Department of Education math error, and said this quote, localities are left to cover the deficit causing more stress in the relationship between supervisors and school boards on how to provide for the already underfunded school.

Thomas Bowman: Yeah, that one. I don't think you need to worry about the partisanship or the letter that comes after your name. That's bs, no matter who you are. And by the way, that tweet from Monica Gary prompted a response from former Democratic candidate for Delegate Brent Finnegan, and he said this quote, love to live in a Dillion Rule state that holds local governments underwater and blames them for not pulling themselves up by their own bootstrap.

Michael Pope: Hmm, the Dillon rule. Always fun to talk about on Twitter. Also, hey, the Commonwealth Institute gave us a shout-out about that math error episode and said quote, we could talk about spreadsheets for days, but check out this episode of Pod Virginia, which I love Thomas, because you know, like as someone who's loves to go through spreadsheets, it's also fun to take that stuff and put it in a podcast in a way that makes sense to people. So thank you to the Commonwealth Institute. We also heard some feedback from. Senator Scott cave wanted to clarify our discussion about the S E C judges. So, Thomas, you may remember we had this discussion about these two open positions on the S E c. Well, the governor does have some appointment power here, but CLL was saying that he can't make any appointments while the general assembly is in a special session. And the special session has been ongoing for more than a year. So that prevents, you know, his ability to fill these seats right now, at some point in the not too distant future, the special session might not be in a special session. And at that time, according to Surovell, he would have the power. So I just, he wanted to clarify that discussion about, you know, when and where does the governor have. The authority to fill these positions.

Thomas Bowman: You know, that's a buried lead for most people listening to this right now, that we're still in a special session over a year later. And that when the legislature previously adjourned Sine Die from the regular session, it did not adjourn the special session. Also, Sine Die. That's definitely a buried lead for most people, and gonna be news to a lot of them. A lot of listeners.

Michael Pope: Thank you, Scott Surovell.

Thomas Bowman: We also, just this morning, Michael heard from Dafna Repeta. She gave us a bunch of really good information about, you know, our discussion about milk and whether nut juice can count as milk and all that stuff. Just really interesting stuff. And,

Michael Pope: Please excuse the juvenile humor.

Thomas Bowman: Yeah, but that's actually what it's called. But it's worthy of a laugh. She says thank you again for your perceptive commentary and, of course, for choosing plant-based milks.

Michael Pope: Plant-based milks. I'm a strong fan. Oat milk's pretty good. Yeah. Gimme some oat milk. All right, well, let's celebrate some birthdays. You know, we do this every week, Thomas, this week. We've only got one, but it's a good one. Delegate. Michelle Maldonado of Prince William County.

Thomas Bowman: Happy birthday. Happy birthday, Delegate. Michelle Maldonado. And if you've got anything that you're celebrating, let us know so we can celebrate. And that's it for this week's episode of Pod Virginia. Don't forget to check out our website and follow us on social media for more on Virginia Politics.