RIP Kiah Duggins; Lawmakers React to Fed Funding Freeze; Appreciation: Henry Marsh III
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Kiah Duggins: Harvard Law Grad, Howard Professor on Flight 5342
Dr. Ana Araujo:🌹“Professor Kiah Duggins was among those lost in the mid-air plane collision at Reagan National Airport. Professor Duggins was set to begin a new chapter as a professor at Howard University School of Law this fall. May her memory be a blessing.”
Lawmakers React to Funding Freeze, Medicaid Access
By Seraina Caviezel, Sophie Dulog, Nick Mossman and Juliet Zucker of the Richmond Capital News Service
Two Virginia legislators called out Congress for jeopardizing Medicaid access in Virginia and across the country.
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump ordered a temporary freeze on all federal funding, including funds that supported Medicaid in Virginia. The order was subsequently blocked by a federal judge until Feb. 3 and prompted the Trump administration to rescind its controversial memo announcing the freeze.
Still, Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Charlottesville, and Sen. Ghazala Hashmi, D-Chesterfield, aren’t happy about it. Hashmi’s Chief of Staff June Laffey spoke about the threat to Medicaid access in a press conference on Thursday.
“Let us be crystal clear:” Laffey said. “We are here today because Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans prioritize themselves and their ultra wealthy friends over hardworking people.”
Virginia is one of the six states that has trigger laws that go into effect if the federal government’s funding of Medicaid falls below 90%. If this were to happen under the current budget, the state would start disenrolling recipients who received coverage as a result of the Affordable Care Act.
A budget amendment introduced by Deeds and Hashmi would eliminate the automatic Medicaid expansion termination language in the budget. The amendment would task a General Assembly joint subcommittee, on which Deeds serves as vice chair, to make recommendations for the preservation of health care access to “as many Medicaid members as possible.”
“Over 600,000 people are at risk of losing access to healthcare because of this irresponsible act, this is something that is gonna affect real Virginians,” Deeds said.
Approximately two million people in Virginia are covered by Medicaid and 630,000 are covered under the Medicaid expansion program. In 2018, Virginia expanded its Medicaid program to include more low-income adults. Medicaid expansions cover adults younger than 65 whose income is 138% below the federal poverty level.
“Over one in 10 adults have access to healthcare thanks to expansion,” said Ashley Kenneth, President and CEO of the Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis, “and it has been a lifeline for rural hospitals.”
Katina Moss, a Richmond resident, lived without health insurance before the GA Medicaid expansion in 2018.
“Cost was no longer a barrier to seeking the care that I needed. No person in Virginia should have to choose between affording care for themselves or providing for their family,” Moss said.
In 2023, Virginia funded around $692 million on Medicaid expansion while the federal government covered the remaining 90%, or $6.2 billion, according to KFF.
“If the federal share is trimmed from 90% to 50%, which is the federal share of the remainder of Medicaid, that’s $2.5 billion, I don’t know where that money would come from,” Deeds said. “This is on the federal government to fix.”
If the federal government does roll back support for Medicaid, Deeds did not rule out the possibility of holding a special session to address the consequential fallout.
“If we are faced with that circumstance, we will just have to deal with it,” he said.
Latest 🎙️ Podcast: Tributes to Henry Marsh
Podcast 🎙️ Speaker Don Scott is pardoned by President Joseph Biden
Appreciation: Henry L. Marsh III
By Bob Lewis for the Virginia Mercury. It could be easy at times to forget that Sen. Henry Marsh was even there, listening quietly from his back-row desk in the Senate of Virginia.
Photos by Paulette Shipman Singleton
Marsh, who died last week at the age of 91, wasn’t flashy or given to florid oratory. He had long ago tilted at his share of windmills in a consequential career as a civil rights lawyer and political leader who cut a wide swath on behalf of people of color.
The years had taught Henry L. Marsh III to listen harder than he spoke. It served him well as he continued his fight at an age when most people who have achieved as greatly as he had were peacefully retired.
When he did speak, it was softly — just above a whisper — and sometimes haltingly, but his words were heard. They were rooted in the bitter experience of a Black man who had spent most of his life casting Jim Crow’s yoke off his people, so he commanded the attention of friends and adversaries alike.
In a time before political parties became intractable redoubts of hardened and sometimes extreme conflicting ideologies, Marsh’s gentle voice made a difference. Few people brought the sort of portfolio to the General Assembly that Marsh did.
He had been a classmate and roommate of Doug Wilder at Howard University’s School of Law. Both would become Virginia trailblazers. In 1989, Wilder became the nation’s first elected Black governor.
In 1977, Marsh became the first Black mayor of Richmond, once the seat of a seditious breakaway government formed to perpetuate the enslavement of Black people.
Before that, Marsh had taken up the causes of African Americans’ rights as a young attorney in the small Richmond firm established by his role model, Oliver Hill, a legendary Black litigator whose work led to the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision that ended segregated public schools in America.
Alongside Hill, Spottswood W. Robinson III and Samuel Tucker, Marsh was part of the legal dream team that attacked institutionalized discrimination in housing, employment, voting rights and Massive Resistance, Virginia’s shameful bid to circumvent Brown.
Marsh not only helped bury the lie of “separate but equal” in the middle years of the 20th century, he had endured disparate levels of public school funding: first-rate facilities, plentiful faculty and brand new textbooks for all-white schools; leaky, substandard buildings where Black children and teachers using textbooks cast off from white schools shivered in winters and sweltered every summer.
That’s why Marsh, a Democrat, was a steadfast foe of Republican efforts to use public school funds for vouchers to help pay the costs of attending private schools and privately run but publicly funded charter schools that operated independently of public school regulations.
In 2000, for the first time since Reconstruction, the GOP held majorities in both the House of Delegates and the Senate. Charter schools legislation, which had floundered in the 1990s, was on track to finally pass.
The Senate was a more collegial place then. The charter schools bill was up for third reading and a final Senate floor vote. The most anticipated words on the bill would come from a genuine lion of the Civil Rights movement.
Marsh could have thundered against what he regarded as a latter-day form of segregation. He could have banged his fist on his desk and recounted his own compelling childhood story of walking to school while his white contemporaries rode buses, of third- and fourth-hand books and of a cramped one-room school. He could have gone for the jugular emotionally. He didn’t.
I’ve long since lost my clips and notes from that day. My faded and dusty recollection is that his floor remarks were brief and direct, noting his opposition to diverting public resources away from those with the least. The bill passed the Senate 21-18 and eventually became law.
I do, however, remember asking him in a Capitol hallway afterward why he didn’t invoke his considerable personal history and fill his speech with fury and pathos. His response was so soft I missed it the first time, begged his indulgence and asked him to repeat it. I leaned forward so as not to miss it the second time.
“I said I didn’t need to,” he said. “This isn’t about me.”
A quarter of a century later, those two sentences abide with me as the essence of Henry Marsh. It never was about him. It was about others — the poor, the voiceless, the forgotten.
No life could have a better epitaph.
Bob Lewis covered Virginia government and politics for 20 years for The Associated Press. Now retired from a public relations career at McGuireWoods, he is a columnist for the Virginia Mercury. He can be reached at blewis@virginiamercury.com. Twitter: @BobLewisOfRVA
Feb. 8: Pre-Super Bowl Party
Newport News: Black History Month Celebrations
Newport News Public Library’s (NNPL) hosts the annual We Stand for Justice event scheduled for Saturday, Feb. 8, Main Street Library, 11 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. The library is located at 110 Main St. The program honors African Americans whose activism inspired an enduring historical legacy, and who have contributed to the cause of social justice in the City of Newport News.
The new honorees’ posters will be on display at the Main Street Library throughout the month of February. Refreshments will follow the ceremony. The event is free and open to the public, no registration required.
Black History programs will be offered all month, at all NNPL branches. All of the programs are free, and registration is required for some. To learn more, visit the NNPL website.
Feb. 3, 5 p.m. - Family Movie Night - Pearl Bailey Library - The Color of Friendship. Enjoy a movie and light refreshments. Children of all ages. No registration.
Feb. 5, 12, 19 & 26, 11 a.m. - Falling for Fine Arts- Grissom Library - Children ages 3-7 will create art inspired by the works of Clementine Hunter, Alma Thomas, Romare Bearden, and Jean-Michael Basquiat. No registration.
Feb. 8, 11 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. - We Stand for Justice - Main Street Library - We will honor local African Americans whose activism has produced an enduring historical legacy, and who have contributed to the cause of social justice in the City of Newport News. A reception will follow the ceremony. No registration.
Feb. 8, 2 p.m. - Mudcloths with Camille- Pearl Bailey Library - Make mudcloths with artist Camille. For all ages. Registration is now open.
Feb. 9, 1–3:30 p.m. - Head Wrap Workshop - Grissom Library - Learn how to fold and tie fabrics for incredibly beautiful head wraps. For adults. Registration is now open.
Feb. 11, 6–7:30 p.m. - Celebrate Black History Month - Pearl Bailey Library - Sheila Arnold will perform stories and songs. African cross stitch materials will also be on display. For all ages. No registration.
Feb. 12, 5 p.m. - Art Club with Miss Camille - Main Street Library - Ages 9–17 will celebrate African American artist, Tyree Guyton, a Detroit-based American Neo-Expressionist artist, by making their own pieces of art with pieces of recycled items and other odds and ends. No registration.
Feb. 13, 11 a.m. - Creative Aging: Black History Month - Pearl Bailey Library - Celebrate Love Day and Black History month with make and take crafts and light refreshments. For ages 55 and better. No registration.
Feb. 13, 4:30 p.m. - Bet You Can’t Eat Just One - Grissom Library - Children in grades 6-12 will celebrate George Crum, inventor of the potato chip, with a taste test challenge. Registration opens Thursday, Jan. 30.
Feb. 19, 5 p.m. - Celebrate Art - Pearl Bailey Library - Children ages 6–11 will learn about the renowned artist Reggie Laurent and his vibrant abstract art, then create a collage painting inspired by this amazing artist. No registration.
Feb. 23, 1–3:30 p.m. - Mermaids of Africa and the Caribbean Fabric Collage Workshop - Grissom Library - Hear the myths and legends of mermaids and water spirits from the Caribbean and African cultures. Then be inspired to create a one-of-a-kind fabric art collage. For adults. Registration opens Sunday, Feb. 9.
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