RICHMOND, Va. — Local Virginia governments may soon have the power to remove Confederate monuments in their public spaces.
After a violent 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Republican lawmakers had rejected renewed calls for the controversial statues to be removed from public places. But the GOP recently lost full control of the General Assembly. That gave Democrats an opportunity to take another look at the statues that critics say distastefully glorify Virginia's history as a slaveholding state.
On Tuesday, both the Democrat-led House and Senate approved measures that would give cities and counties the autonomy to "remove, relocate, contextualize, cover or alter” the monuments in their public spaces.