Senate Finance Chair Louise Lucas and House Appropriations Chairman Luke Torian announced late Tuesday that they plan to introduce identical legislation to repeal changes to the Virginia Military Survivors and Dependents Education Program in the two-year budget that took effect on Monday. Members of the Senate and the House of Delegates will return to Richmond on July 18 to vote on the agreement.

The new legislation will propose an additional $90 million in taxpayer funds to pay for the program, in addition to the $40 million already included in the budget. The program’s costs have risen from $12 million to $65 million in five years. Previously, state colleges and universities have covered the costs with state funds and tuition from other students.

Lucas said the new proposal would set aside $65 million each year for the program, while the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission studies it, along with a task force appointed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin and a Senate work group.

“This study and the allocation of what now will be $65 million per year for the program provides me with the comfort that we will not place the burden of the escalating cost of the program on other students through their tuition charges,” Lucas said in a statement.

To rein in the program’s rising costs, the budget deal passed by the General Assembly in May restricted eligibility to associate and undergraduate degrees, required participants to apply for other forms of financial aid and tightened residency requirements.

After vehement protests from military families, the House of Delegates voted last week to repeal the new restrictions, but the Senate took no action after meeting twice in two weeks to work on the issue.

Youngkin praised the agreement.

“A full, clean repeal with additional financial support for the VMSDEP program, unencumbered by any other provisions, is great news for our military heroes, first responders, and their families,” Youngkin posted on the social platform X.

Nearly 240 members of the Guard participated, making almost 15,000 safe pickups and dropoffs and traveling about 300,000 miles during the two-month program, the state Executive Office of Public Safety and Security said in a statement.

With the 13 districts the program served able to hire enough civilian drivers to meet student transportation needs, the Guard was able to end the mission, the statement said.

“By working collaboratively with local districts who requested assistance, the Guard was able to provide critical school transportation support at a time when schools, students and families needed it most,” Gov. Charlie Baker said in a statement.

About 200 Guard members were trained to drive the so-called 7D vehicles, vans designed to carry about 10 passengers. Another 40 provided operational support.

The 13 districts that participated in the program were Brockton, Chelsea, Framingham, Haverhill, Holyoke, Lawrence, Lowell, Lynn, Quincy, Revere, Wachusett Regional, Woburn, and Worcester.

The group was “adequately supplied with food, water, shelter, and necessary supplies” before they were rescued Thursday night, troopers said.

U.S. Army helicopters had been expected to “extract” the individuals Friday morning, troopers had said. But a Coast Guard helicopter was able to make the trip from Nome after overcoming mechanical issues and getting a weather window, said Petty Officer 1st Class Ali Blackburn, a Coast Guard spokesperson.

“Safely extracting the group as quickly as possible was a top priority for all of the agencies involved in this operation,” said Austin McDaniel, a troopers spokesperson.

Blackburn said no injuries were reported at the time of the rescue. Blackburn said the individuals were taken to Nome.

KYUK Public Media reported the group was composed of hunters from Pilot Station that got stuck outside Emmonak on their way home. Hunters from lower Yukon River villages traditionally travel to the coast in the fall to hunt for seal, without problems. But as they were making their way back, ice began forming on the water.

Four of the hunters are volunteers with the Pilot Station search and rescue team and contacted Emmonak Search and Rescue with an emergency communication device. According to Emmonak Search and Rescue, the hunters provided their location and were directed to the nearest fish camp, KYUK reported.

McDaniel had said the group stopped at the fish camp cabin for the night on Oct. 28. “While they were there overnight, the river iced over. So the ice on the river is too thick to run a boat, and it’s not thick enough to run snowmachine there, and there’s no overland route to get to this spot,” he said Tuesday.

Troopers said they were notified the individuals were “stuck” at the camp around 5:15 p.m. last Friday and that a supply drop of food and needed medications was made on Sunday.

Authorities had been pursuing use of a helicopter to pick the individuals up, McDaniel said. Weather conditions between the area and some hub communities, however, had previously hampered efforts to reach the site, he said earlier this week.

Blackburn said the Coast Guard also dropped supplies, including a radio, to the group before the rescue.

Paul Fancyboy, head of the Pilot Station search and rescue group, had told KYUK he was concerned with how long it was taking for the individuals to be rescued, calling it unacceptable.

The replenishment oiler USNS Harvey Milk slid down the shipyard ways after a bottle of champagne was smashed on the bow by former Navy officer Paula M. Neira, clinical program director for the John Hopkins Center for Transgender Health.

Milk’s nephew, Stuart Milk, and Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro watched the traditional ceremony.

“The secretary of the Navy needed to be here today, not just to amend the wrongs of the past, but to give inspiration to all of our LGBTQ community leaders who served in the Navy, in uniform today and in the civilian workforce as well too, and to tell them that we’re committed to them in the future,” Del Toro said.

Del Toro said that, like many others, Milk had to “mask that very important part of his life” while he served in the Navy.

“For far too long, sailors like Lt. Milk were forced into the shadows or, worse yet, forced out of our beloved Navy,” Del Toro said. “That injustice is part of our Navy history, but so is the perseverance of all who continue to serve in the face of injustice.”

Milk was one of the first openly gay candidates elected to public office. He was serving on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1978 when a former political colleague, Dan White, assassinated him and Mayor George Moscone at City Hall.

In 2016, then-Navy Secretary Ray Mabus decided that six new oilers scheduled to be built would be named after civil and human rights leaders. In addition to Milk, they include Sojourner Truth, Chief Justice Earl Warren, Robert F. Kennedy, suffragist Lucy Stone and Rep. John Lewis of Georgia.

Del Toro told Mabus, who attended the christening, that it was a courageous decision.

“Ship names are important because they express what we value as a Navy and as a nation and communicate those values around the globe in every port of call,” Del Toro said.

Stuart Milk, co-founder and president of the Harvey Milk Foundation, thanked Mabus for providing the family details of his uncle’s discharge from the Navy.

“He has a less-than-honorable discharge. He was forced to resign because he was gay,” Stuart Milk said, adding that “we have to teach our history to prevent ourselves from going backwards and repeating it.”

Although there is a process for reversing such discharges, he said it was important to not do that for his late uncle in order “to keep the memory of how we did not honor everyone in this very honorable service.”

The naval tradition of having ship “sponsors” went to Neira and U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who was unable to attend.

Feinstein was in San Francisco City Hall when Milk and Moscone were shot and then made the stunning announcement of their deaths. The ship “will carry a rich legacy of civic leadership,” Feinstein said in a letter read at the ceremony.

“When the Harvey Milk sails, she will send a very strong message both domestically and around the globe to everybody that believes in freedom and justice and liberty, that there is a place for you in this family,” said co-sponsor Neira.

General Dynamics NASSCO began construction of the six oilers in San Diego in 2018 under a $3.2 billion Navy contract. The first ship in the class, the John Lewis, was christened this summer.

“I’m used to Italian cooking,” Biden told the culinary class at Naples Middle High School, a U.S. Defense Department school at U.S. Naval Support Activity Naples. The base is home to more than 50 separate military commands.

She visited the school as part of her work supporting military families through an initiative named Joining Forces. She also dropped by a robotics class and praised the fortitude of military kids and their parents at a pep rally held in the gymnasium.

“I used to make homemade pasta all the time for dinner,” Biden said after she and a female student showed off their tray of cheese ravioli for news cameras trailing the first lady.

Her paternal grandparents were Italian and she spoke of how her grandmother would hang the fresh noodles in her kitchen. Sometimes she helped make the pasta.

In the robotics class, she listened as students described the robots they had built and watched as two traced a black line on a table. When a third robot malfunctioned, she said: “Sometimes that’s life.”

At the pep rally, the first lady praised military children for being strong enough to constantly adjust to new homes, new schools and new friends.

She talked about how hard it was for her now-teenage granddaughter Natalie when her father — Biden’s late son Beau — was sent to Iraq for a year with the Delaware Army National Guard in fall 2008.

She told the adults their choice to enlist in the military had helped their children become “people who are ready for whatever the world has in store for them. Isn’t that what all parents want for our children?”

After one girl told Biden she “almost cried” during the speech, Biden pulled her into an embrace.

Biden accompanied her husband, President Joe Biden, to Rome to participate in the Group of 20 nations summit that ended on Sunday. He flew to Glasgow, Scotland, on Monday to attend a major U.N. climate conference. She boarded her plane back to Washington after the school visit.

“The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office continues to evaluate administrative needs in the office and if those needs can be met, temporarily, by the Arizona National Guard,” Sgt. Calbert Gillett told the Arizona Republic.

The sheriff’s office on Wednesday sent a request through county emergency officials for 135 state National Guard personnel to fill jail staffing needs but rescinded the request Thursday, county spokesman Fields Moseley said.

Gilbert said the request was a draft copy sent inadvertently “before evaluation by Command Staff.”

The request said the sheriff’s office “has reached critical staffing levels across multiple departments. Multiple jails are reaching maximum capacity with manpower shortages and a deficit in overtime funding causing the Sheriff’s Office to use badged field personnel to fill vacancies and help with the backlog in numerous departments. Due to this situation, MCSO is requesting National Guard Members to assist with the most critical vacant positions.”

According to Gillett, the sheriff’s office has over 775 vacant positions, including civilian jobs, detention officers and deputies.

The office is still evaluating how the National Guard could “augment operations within the MCSO to include sworn, detention, and civilian operations,” he said.

The county Board of Supervisors “doesn’t have a role in this process” but board members “are very concerned about the shortage of detention officers and jail staff which is not a new issue,” Moseley said.

Actions taken in recent years to bolster jail staffing included providing money for hazard pays, performance-based retention increases, market pay adjustments and other incentives, Moseley said.

Republican Sen. Susan Collins and independent Sen. Angus King said they’re helping introduce the Save Our Servicemembers Act, which is also called the SOS Act. The senators said military suicides increased by 15 percent last year.

The proposal would direct the Pentagon to evaluate the effectiveness of its suicide prevention efforts, the senators said. They said it would also seek to improve data collection and cut down red tape.

The senators said the proposal “will help ensure that our heroes can access the mental health resources they deserve and that no servicemember is left without the support we owe them.”

The proposal was co-sponsored by more than 30 senators and has the support of Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion.

Many of the Marines were members of the 20-year-old McCollum’s unit serving in Afghanistan when he was killed on Aug. 26. McCollum, a Marine lance corporal, grew up, went to school and enlisted for the Corps in the mountain valley area known as Jackson Hole, home to the town of Jackson. He was honored during Saturday’s Jackson service attended by more than 400 people.

“We knew his potential,” said Staff Sgt. Luis Diaz, who recruited McCollum into the Corps. “I knew he had the mindset. I knew he had the spirit to accomplish anything he wanted.”

McCollum was a dedicated Marine, enthusiastic and funny, said Cpl. Wyatt Wilson. When something had to be done, Wilson told the Jackson gathering, “I always grabbed Rylee because I knew it would be done right the first time,” the Jackson Hole News & Guide reported.

Ten other Marines, a U.S. Army soldier and a Navy corpsman also died in the explosion as they guarded a gate at Hamid Karzai International Airport. Twenty other service members were wounded, and dozens of civilians were killed.

Mourners remembered McCollum as a “roly-poly” boy who became a dominant high school wrestler, a young man who always told people he wanted to become a U.S. Marine.

Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon, who attended with U.S. Sen. John Barrasso, said Americans “should rejoice that heroes like Rylee are born.” Gordon ordered U.S. flags in the state to be flown at half-staff to honor McCollum, who died in his first deployment.

On Sept. 13, Jiennah Crayton, McCollum’s widow, gave birth to a girl, Levi Rylee Rose McCollum. Online fundraising efforts have raised over $1 million for the baby’s education and mother.

McCollum’s widow, his father, Jim, and sisters Cheyenne, Roice and Stephenie attended Saturday’s service.

McCollum died almost 20 years after the death of another Wyoming soldier drew national attention. Army Ranger Spc. Jonn Edmunds, 20, of Cheyenne, was one of the war’s first two casualties when a Black Hawk helicopter crashed Oct. 19, 2001, during a search-and-rescue mission.

The agency said Emmet Schwartz, 24, of Dover, was killed in an artillery blast on Dec. 27, 1944, as his 8th Infantry Division unit attempted to capture Obermaubach, Germany. Active minefields in the area prevented the recovery of his body.

Unidentified remains were found in a foxhole by the American Graves Registration Command in 1946 and were buried at a U.S. military cemetery in France.

An analysis led to remains believed to belong to Schwartz being disinterred from the cemetery in 2019 and sent to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska for examination. Dental and anthropological records along with mitochondrial DNA inherited from his mother led to his identification in July 2019.

Schwarz is scheduled to be buried Nov. 18 in New Philadelphia, Ohio.

Lawyers for Diana Toebbe had argued for her release during a detention hearing Wednesday. She and her husband, Jonathan, a Navy nuclear engineer, were arrested earlier this month on charges that they violated the Atomic Energy Act.

U.S. authorities say Jonathan Toebbe had tried to pass secrets about sophisticated Virginia-class submarines to someone he thought was a representative of a foreign government but who was actually an undercover FBI agent. Diana Toebbe is accused of serving as a lookout on three separate occasions in which her husband deposited memory cards containing sensitive information at pre-arranged, “dead-drop” locations.

In a ruling Thursday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert Trumble rejected arguments from defense lawyers that Diana Toebbe could be released under certain conditions to her Annapolis home.

“Although Defendant has no prior criminal history, the nature and circumstances of the charges against her and her actions demonstrate that Defendant is a danger to every community and to our national security by clear and convincing evidence,” Trumble wrote, also describing her as a flight risk.

The judge also cited evidence found at the couple’s Annapolis home that he said suggested they had been preparing to leave the country on short notice, as well as messages between them in which they had discussed the possibility of fleeing.

Lawyers for Diana Toebbe argued that prosecutors had no evidence that she was aware of her husband’s activities.