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    Virginia budget negotiators and Gov. Glenn Youngkin have reached a compromise on the next two-year state spending plan. The agreement would include 3% raises for state employees and teachers while not raising taxes and risking a potential veto by Youngkin. House Appropriations Chairman Luke Torian confirmed Thursday that the General Assembly’s budget leaders have reached a deal with Youngkin that they hope lawamkers will approve during a special session scheduled to begin Monday. Torian told the Richmond Times-Dispatch that the agreement includes additional state revenues to pay for raises for teachers and state employees, as well as money to help people with mental illness and pay for increased costs to Virginia’s Medicaid program.

      At least one person is dead in Florida as powerful storms continue to pummel the South during a week of severe weather across the U.S. The sheriff's office in Leon County, Florida, says in a Facebook post Friday that a falling tree killed a woman inside her family's home in the Tallahassee area. Some of the strongest storms early Friday rolled through Tallahassee, toppling trees across the state’s capital city. Florida State University closed its campus amid damage. And in Mississippi’s capital of Jackson, authorities were asking residents to conserve and boil water after a power outage at one of its major water treatment plants.

        Rosemary Ketchum became West Virginia's first openly transgender lawmaker when she was elected to the Wheeling City Council in 2020. Now, she's running for mayor of the city of around 26,000 in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. Ketchum says her time in local politics has given her hope for American democracy. While leaders nationwide may be focused on divisive social issues, she said most of her work has to do with quelling traffic, filling potholes and developing the local economy. During her time in office, she helped establish the city's first internal position focused on forging relationships with people experiencing homelessness.

        A Virginia school board has voted to restore the names of Confederate military leaders to a high school and an elementary school four years after the names had been removed. Shenandoah County’s school board voted 5-1 early Friday to rename Mountain View High School as Stonewall Jackson High School and Honey Run Elementary as Ashby Lee Elementary. Friday’s vote reverses a decision by the school board in 2020, a time when  school systems across Virginia and the South were removing Confederate names from schools in response to the Black Lives Matter movement. Board members who voted Friday to restore the Confederate names say the previous school board ignored popular sentiment and due process when the names were stripped.

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