Vice President JD Vance is traveling to southwest Virginia today to check on Hurricane Helene clean-up efforts. A social media post yesterday announced the planned visit to Damascus. Vance said he plans to keep visiting the area until residents are fully recovered from the damage caused by Helene. His post also said that "Americans ought to expect more out of their federal government" when disaster strikes.
Two Virginia lawmakers want to halt Appalachian Power rate hikes for 2 years.Preview: An effort is underway to help those impacted by the recent water crisis. The city of Richmond announced on Saturday it has started a Water Recovery Fund with The United Way of Greater Richmond and Petersburg. You can donate to the fund to help those who suffered financially during the outage this month. Those looking to apply for aid from the fund can do so starting on Friday. You can use the money for rent, mortgage, health-related expenses, childcare, utilities and missed car loan payments. Mayor Danny Avula says helping our friends and neighbors is how we continue to build thriving communities that leave no one behind. You can get more info at RVA.gov.
A new Credit Karma survey finds that nearly 40 percent of taxpayers rely on their refund to get by. Among millennials, that number goes up to 50 percent. More than half said they need the money because everything is getting so expensive. According to the IRS, the average refund in 2024 was a little over 31-hundred dollars.