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In February 2025, Goodyear announced that 850 workers would be laid off from their Danville, Virginia, plant. The layoffs here were part of a larger trend across the state as manufacturing took a down turn. Photo by Christopher Tyree//VCIJ
In most years, the Commonwealth has gained federal civilian workers. The Trump administration’s cuts took away more than 20,000 government jobs last year.
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Julie Xirau, in her Newport News, VA apartment, holds her phone showing a picture of her son Josh Sikes. Photo taken in March 2025. File photo by William Tiernan.
The mother of Joshua Sikes, 11, claims her son was injured in a classroom run by Southeastern Cooperative Educational Programs days before his death. A wrongful death suit seeks $150 million
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Alex De Paula, former program director of Safer Together, speaks about the anti-violence initiative in April 2024, at Chrysler Hall in Norfolk, Virginia. The three-year, $2 million program was cancelled this year after the Trump administration stopped funding its federal grant. (handout photo)
A Portsmouth nonprofit built a program to aid victims of gun violence in Hampton Roads. It was one of several anti-crime projects in Virginia to lose its funding to the Trump administration’s cuts this year.
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Tanna Price helped governments around the world build their economies and root out corruption. News of USAID cuts reached her in Sri Lanka. Almost a year later, Price and thousands of other professionals like her look toward an uncertain future.
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U.S. tariffs and immigration enforcement have challenged Virginia farmers as the harvest season ends. For one Virginia farmer growing soybeans and tobacco, the next season seems uncertain.
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A sign noting the acceptance of electronic benefit transfer (EBT) cards, which SNAP beneficiaries use to pay for food, is displayed at a grocery store. Photo by Justin Sullivan
The federal shutdown is over, but thousands of Virginians who rely on food stamps are now being told to reapply for SNAP — a process that could leave families without assistance for weeks.
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Pansy Frye and other volunteers load boxes of nonperishable goods for area seniors as part of a federal program at the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank distribution center in Charlottesville, Tuesday, November 12th. Photo by Christopher Tyree
The Trump administration canceled 94 million pounds of food aid in recent months. Here’s what didn’t make it to Virginia charities.
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SNAP beneficiaries will temporarily receive assistance through the Virginia Emergency Nutrition Assistance as government shutdown locks up funding for the federal program. Photo by: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Federal actions hit hardest on needy families in small cities and rural, southwest counties, according to a VCIJ at WHRO analysis.
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First day of early voting in Virginia Beach on September 19, 2025. Photo by Zach D. Roberts.
Since 1967, Job Corps has been a fixture in Marion, Va. The residential campus on Main Street has trained generations in health care skills. Despite bipartisan support under previous administrations, the Trump administration is trying to close it.
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Fundraising by Democrats and Republicans has pushed the cost of some Virginia House races over $2 million, according to public filings.
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Kenney Barnard, 75, oversees migrant workers at Hoot Owl Hollow Farm in Amelia Court House, Va. on August 4, 2025. Many of the seasonal employees, coming from Mexico on H-2A visas, have worked on Hoot Owl Farm for years.
President Donald Trump’s tariffs and aggressive immigration enforcement have shaken markets and migrant labor.
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Virginia’s businesses, nonprofits and schools employ thousands of foreign professionals. President Trump’s proclamation raising the cost of H-1B visas to $100,000 could send shockwaves through tech companies, universities and even public schools
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A Flock camera on South Main Street in Bridgwater, Virginia, captures the comings and goings of traffic. The town has five strategically placed Flock cameras. They capture images of nearly 60,000 vehicles every month. Photo by Christopher Tyree // VCIJ
As federal immigration enforcement accelerated, police agencies outside of Virginia searched the Commonwealth’s network of Flock Safety cameras thousands of times over a 12-month period, according to an exclusive analysis by the Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism at WHRO.
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A Flock automatic license plate reading camera overlooks Colley Avenue in Norfolk, Va. on Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2024. A federal lawsuit argues the city's 172 Flock cameras are an unconstitutional violation of privacy. File Photo: Cianna Morales/WHRO News
Surveillance network data obtained by the Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism at WHRO shows how widely outside law enforcement agencies searched Flock Safety systems in Virginia for immigration-related offenses.
VCIJ at WHRO’s analysis of network data from Flock Safety’s Automatic License Plate Reader systems in Virginia was queried by more than 4,000 agencies across the U.S. About 3,000 of the searches conducted by those agencies appear related to immigration enforcement. – despite local agencies promising not to share or use the data for that purpose.
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Christopher Newport University in Newport News is one of three Virginia universities acknowledging “extensive acquisitions” in Black neighborhoods, sometimes through eminent domain, according to a state commission. Photo: VCIJ at WHRO
More research from Virginia’s Uprooting Commission will explore the use of eminent domain for campus expansions in majority-Black neighborhoods.
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A Flock camera on South Main Street in Bridgwater, Virginia, captures the comings and goings of traffic. The town has five strategically placed Flock cameras. They capture images of nearly 60,000 vehicles every month. Photo by Christopher Tyree // VCIJ
Thousands of Flock Safety surveillance cameras captured Virginia travelers in a small Shenandoah Valley town with an unblinking eye. Their data was shared and searched around the country millions of times.
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Greg Meade, who directs TNC’s overarching Cumberland Forest Project, visits the Knott Hollow site in Dickenson County, Virginia, last December. TerraForm Power has the solar lease option, but the development timeline is uncertain because of permitting issues. Photo by Elizabeth McGowan // VCIJ
The state’s milestone Clean Economy Act spurred impressive growth in renewable power. Now, that future is at risk.
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U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement assisted by the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, apprehended three illegally present aliens during a routine enforcement operation in Arlington, Feb. 11, 2025. Source// US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The Trump administration's enforcement has targeted thousands of foreign nationals - most from Central and South America and without criminal records.
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The Nature Conservancy is partnering with Charlottesville-based TerraForm Power to build a 10-megawatt solar array on a reclaimed surface mine near Pound in Wise County, Va. Wildcats Solar, scheduled to go online within two years, would be the first solar project to rise on TNC’s 253,000-acre, tri-state Cumberland Forest Project.
Renewable energy developers planned dozens of projects on property owned by The Nature Conservancy. Then President Donald Trump signed H.R. 1, upending an unprecedented effort to revitalize Appalachia.
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