🎸 Good morning, RVA: No special election, Outstanding Women, and Gallery5

Good morning, RVA! It’s 55 ºF, and today looks amazing. Upgrade all of yesterday’s forecasted temperatures by a handful of degrees, because, starting today, you can expect highs in the 80s for the next little while. In fact, tomorrow may be just plain hot. Remember, it’s never too early to hydrate!
 

Water cooler

VPM reports that “the state medical examiner on Monday ruled Irvo Otieno’s death a homicide.“ I’m not sure what the next steps are in this process, but 10 total people have been indicted on second-degree murder charges, including seven Henrico County sheriff’s deputies. I’m still processing this whole situation, but I’m surprised about the lack of public protests and the lack of reporting on and about the Sheriff’s Office.
 

The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Michael Martz reports that the Governor will not call a special election to fill Lamont Bagby’s now-vacant House of Delegates seat. Tap through to read a bunch of thoughts from various people on whether or not this is a good decision. While I kind of wanted to see how many electoral dominoes we could knock over in a single year, I think I mostly agree with the elections folks who feel overwhelmed and ready to focus on June’s primaries. It’ll be the first time the Commonwealth votes in these newly drawn districts, which, while exciting for me, is probably incredibly stressful for people running the elections. Early voting in these elections starts in just 31 days!
 

Sean Jones, also at the RTD, reports on the affordable(ish) housing coming to the site of the old Virginia Center Commons mall. Out of 275 units, developers hope to reserve 55 for families making 80% of the area median income (that’s about $80,000). Not what I would call super affordable, and this is why we’ve started to see 60% AMI used as a target for affordable housing in more recent conversations. Definitely related, the header image on this article about affordable housing made me chuckle: A rendering of the apartments with two exotic sports cars and two fancy SUVs parked in the parking lot.
 

The YWCA of Richmond announced their 2023 class of Outstanding Women Awards honorees, the “local women leading our region and inspiring future leaders.” Honestly, there’s a very, very good chance you’ll get inspired just by reading through the aforelinked list honorees and their accompanying bios. You can help celebrate these women on April 11th, for the OWA Leadership Forum Breakfast, or on May 4th for the 43rd Annual OWA Celebration. Learn more about each and get tickets over on the YWCA’s website.
 

Peter McElhinney at Style Weekly has a nice piece about Prabir Mehta’s fond farewell to Gallery5. The work Prabir has done over the last couple of decades to establish Gallery5 as one of our city’s cultural centers has just been so impressive to watch. Lots of folks contribute to Richmond’s stone soup, but I think Prabir’s contribution has probably been larger and more generous than most.
 

Virginia Mercury’s Wyatt Gordon reports on the frustrating process localities have to wade through to provide simple amenities at bus stops. Getting bus service going in the first place is nearly impossible, approving bus stops at all often a challenge, but to also have to battle the state over details like the thickness of a concrete pad? Absolutely brutal. It sounds like, though, that the Department of Rail and Public Transportation is working on improving the process as well as lending a hand to smaller localities who may not have the resources to get into it with VDOT.
 

Unless things go way off the rails, today Donald Trump will turn himself in at the Manhattan District Attorney’s office. After that, he’ll be arraigned and we’ll all learn a lot more about whatever charges he’s facing. There will be a lot of content created today! However, I still think indictment.fyi, an as-needed but no-more-than-daily newsletter, is the best way to follow this sort of thing. Spend the day outside in the beautiful weather, not pull-to-refreshing a chaotic doomfeed.
 

This morning’s longread

The porn star, the checks and the president: Trump’s tawdry path to peril

Given today’s…festivities…I figured this piece in the WaPo recapping the whole Stormy Daniels situation would provide good context for those of us who got lost during the “more than four years of newer Trump material.”
 

Those payments are now at the heart of the investigation led by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, an elected Democrat, who could bring charges against Trump as early as this week for allegedly falsifying business records related to the payments. Cohen described meeting with Trump repeatedly to discuss the payments and provided Congress two of the 11 reimbursement checks he received, each for $35,000 — one signed by Trump and the other by his son, Donald Trump Jr. Cohen’s testimony came a few months before he reported to federal prison after pleading guilty to various charges, including violating campaign finance laws with his pre-election payment to Daniels. His narrative of the saga was delivered to a rapt nation, but the details of that scandal have now been overwritten by more than four years of newer Trump material — two impeachments, an insurrection, an unrelated FBI raid of Trump’s Florida home.
 

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Picture of the Day

Buzzzzzz.