Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen, in the first week of the Senate’s two-week recess, risked his life to try to bring home Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

Virginia’s senior senator, Mark Warner has been puttering around the state doing grip-and-grins with locals around the occasional roundtable discussion with important people in business suits.

Tim Kaine, the junior senator, spent the week in Europe.

He did make a stop in Ukraine, which is something.

Advantage: yeah, obviously, Chris Van Hollen.

MAGA Gov. Glenn Youngkin is claiming that an outfit called the Virginia Homeland Security Task Force has made more than 500 arrests as of Monday, though the governor’s office isn’t able to give us much detail on the nature of the arrests.

Are White MAGA voters in Virginia ready to cast their lots with a Black immigrant woman for governor, a gay White man for lieutenant governor, and a Latino for attorney general?

Have to wonder how Democrats are going to play this in the fall.

I mean, it’s the MAGAs who are the anti-“woke,” anti-DEI crowd.

This one seems to be playing into Democrats’ hands, big time.

Whiny White liberals are complaining to me about how they felt penned in at a local protest in Staunton on Saturday.

My message: one, stop being a whiny White liberal.

Seriously, not a good look.

Your problems with being protected from people who would rather run you over with a truck as they would spit on you are what we call First World problems.

Two, and this one should be obvious: if you want to take your protest to other people and to elected leaders, you don’t need anybody’s permission.

A magistrate has issued an arrest warrant for the driver in the “rolling coal” incident that disrupted an April 5 protest rally in front of the Augusta County Courthouse in Staunton.

It literally took me swearing out a complaint and presenting evidence to the magistrate on Tuesday to get this to happen, because Staunton Police had no interest in the case.

Jeffrey Wayne Armentrout, the owner of the Staunton-based Armentrout Towing/Old Dixie Towing, was identified as the driver of the 2000 Ford Bronco F-350 with neo-Nazi insignia on the front bumper that blew a tower of smoke through a modified smokestack located in the bed of the truck, then drove at a high rate of speed and squealed tires past the rally site on West Johnson Street around 12:40 p.m. on April 5.

Story link: click here.

#TeamAFP staff writer Rod Mullins spent the weekend down at Bristol Motor Speedway, where he was witness to a historic weekend of dominance from Kyle Larson, who won two of the three races, and was second in the third.

As much fun as that was, Rod, a lifelong Cincinnati Reds fan, was able to talk for a few minutes with Baseball Hall of Famer Johnny Bench, who was one of the marshals for Sunday’s Cup Series race, and was also on hand to help promote the Aug. 2 game between the Reds and Atlanta Braves that will be played at Bristol Motor Speedway in front of what is expected to be a record crowd.

Among the items that came up in the interview with Bench was the subject of some of his Reds teammates left out of the Hall of Fame – Rod asked specifically about Vada Pinson and Dave Concepcion.

So, NASCAR and baseball.

NASCAR will settle in at Bristol Motor Speedway this weekend for racing action that will begin Friday night with the Craftsman Truck Series.

#TeamAFP’s Rod Mullins will carry the Augusta Free Press flag for us at Bristol this weekend.

Rod joins the “Street Knowledge” podcast to get us ready for the short-track mayhem.

Ryan Odom is getting heat for the mass exodus from the UVA Basketball program, but the reality is, the Tony Bennett/Ron Sanchez guys that are leaving aren’t fits in the new Odom system.

Let me break it down for you, with analysis of the six commits that Odom has been able to pick up from the transfer portal and the April prep signing window.

Staunton Police confirmed that they are investigating a reported incident involving a man with a gun at the April 5 Hands Off! protest rally, and one of the witnesses to the incident told AFP on Wednesday that he intends to press charges against the man.

The search is over, and UVA Basketball has its guy, Ryan Odom, who was introduced to the world on Monday with a public press conference at JPJ.

Odom said hello by offering the observation “I love offense,” and that he want to “play fast,” which might take some getting used to by the Embrace the Pace set.