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House Speaker Kirk Cox, R-Colonial Heights, said in a statement that Democratic leader Eileen Filler-Corn, D-Fairfax, has repeatedly spurned offers by House Courts Committee Chairman Rob Bell, R-Albemarle, to hold a bipartisan hearing that would allow the two women to testify. “There should be no mistake about what has happened here: the alleged victims are seeking a bipartisan hearing; Republicans are seeking a bipartisan hearing; Democrats in the House of Delegates are refusing to allow that to happen,” Cox said.

More than a dozen state lawmakers filed onto the stage, summoned by the smiling leader of their state: Ralph S. Northam, the governor of Virginia. On the governor’s right were a handful of House Democrats, who as a group in February said they were “no longer confident in the governor’s representation of Virginians,” after learning of a shocking racist photo on Mr. Northam’s medical-school yearbook page. On his left were mostly Republicans, including the speaker of the House, Delegate Kirk Cox, who’d declared that Mr. Northam’s “ability to lead and govern is permanently impaired.” Some on stage were members of...

A federal court gave final approval Thursday to the redrawn Virginia House of Delegates map that a court-appointed expert created to resolve the state’s long-running racial gerrymandering case. In a 2-1 opinion, judges for the Richmond-based Eastern District of Virginia ordered the state to adopt the map created by University of California-Irvine political science professor Bernard Grofman. The map could boost Democrats’ chances of taking control of the House later this year by tilting six GOP-held districts toward Democrats and imperiling the re-election campaigns of two top Republicans. Republicans had called Grofman’s map “legally indefensible,” saying it “attempts to give...

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — The head of Virginia’s House of Delegates is calling for the resignation of Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax. House of Delegates Speaker Kirk Cox said in a statement Saturday that Fairfax’s ability to govern has been “permanently impaired” by “multiple, serious credible allegations” of sexual assault made recently by two women.

Washington (CNN)Virginia GOP Speaker Kirk Cox expressed skepticism on Monday that the legislature should try to force Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam out of office, highlighting a potential constitutional impasse the commonwealth could face should Northam decline to step down. "I think there's a rightful hesitation about removal from office, because obviously you have to consider that to some degree you're overturning an election," Cox said. "I think the constitutional provisions are very specific on the succession of office. It really does call for mental or physical incapacitation. That's what it was meant to do." Pressure has grown on Northam to...

RICHMOND The speaker of Virginia’s House of Delegates renewed his call for Gov. Ralph Northam’s resignation Monday, but stopped short of saying the House would start any efforts to force the governor out. “I think there’s a rightful hesitation about a removal from office,” Speaker Kirk Cox, R-Colonial Heights, said. “Impeachment — that’s a very high standard.” He said he hasn’t spoken to Northam since the Democratic governor admitted he posed in either blackface or in Ku Klux Klan robes when he was a student at Eastern Virginia Medical School in 1984 — an admission Northam recanted less than 24...