In particular, changes in regulation and legislation have allowed MA health plans, such as Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in Virginia, more flexibility in designing specially tailored benefits that support a person’s overall health and wellbeing. These supplemental benefits are unique to MA and can help address gaps in traditional Medicare. Supplemental benefits historically included “primarily health related” benefits such as dental, vision and hearing services, and more recently include services that support health-related needs, such as help purchasing nutritious food and transportation to access plan benefits.

According to the National Academy of Medicine, what’s typically considered “medical care” only accounts for 10-20% of contributors to health outcomes. Other factors that have an impact on health include a person’s access to grocery stores, relationships with friends and family, and home and workplace environments. These are known as social drivers of health, and they account for the remaining 80-90%. Recognizing the profound impact of social drivers on a person’s health, it’s important to shift the lens through which we view health care. Addressing these aspects will help us transition toward a more holistic view, one that takes into account our whole health.

Whole health is an approach to health care that recognizes health must be evaluated as a bigger picture, one that includes physical, behavioral and social drivers. We must move beyond the traditional scope of simply addressing physical health and find ways to positively influence behavioral and social drivers of health. This involves a focus on health equity and using data to tailor our efforts to individuals, taking a big picture view of their health needs. Only by understanding this big picture can people start to view their own health as something that is both influenced by the world around them and within their control to shape and change.

Thanks to the expansion of MA supplemental benefits, plan members are now better able to get the help they need to improve their whole health. For example, while medically tailored meals have been offered as a conventional supplemental benefit for a while, some MA plans are now able to offer additional nutrition benefits such as grocery cards, which provide a monthly allowance that give members the ability to purchase produce and other food items at participating grocery stores.

A study published last year found that a vast majority of a MA health plan’s members used at least one supplemental benefit in 2022, with many accessing more than one benefit. In addition, members who used at least one supplemental benefit were more likely to live in areas with fewer resources, such as food deserts and areas with lower socioeconomic status, suggesting that these benefits are helping to address social drivers of health.

Another recent study suggested that use of supplemental benefits is associated with an increased likelihood of having a preventative screening or annual wellness visit and a decreased likelihood of having a hospitalization or emergency room visit for a non-emergent issue.

Today, more than 32 million people have chosen to enroll in a MA plan. That’s more than half of all eligible Medicare members, showcasing the critical value that MA plans, including supplemental benefits, provide for older adults and people with disabilities.

With the Medicare Annual Enrollment Period fast approaching, from Oct. 15 to Dec. 7, it’s a crucial time for all Medicare-eligible individuals. Take this opportunity to review your options carefully to ensure that your MA plan is working for you. Don’t overlook the supplemental benefits, as these can significantly contribute to overall health and wellbeing.

Neil Steffens is Medicare president of Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield’s East Region, which includes Virginia.

The 922-page plan authored by The Heritage Foundation details what former President Donald Trump’s administration will do if he becomes president again. The agenda is sweeping and would change our nation as well as our commonwealth: raising taxes on working- and middle-class people; gutting Medicaid, veterans benefits and funding for schools; and replacing members of the civil service with Trump loyalists. These policy proposals are extreme and deeply unpopular, but they could be very real very soon and have profound impact on Virginia.

A majority of Virginians make less than $87,500 per year and are particularly in the crosshairs of the plan. Simply put, your income taxes are going to go up. At the same time, if you get health insurance through your job, your benefits and coverage will go down. As conceived, the plan calls for the federal government to tax health insurance and other related benefits. These “Trump taxes” would squeeze already tight middle-class family budgets.

The most vulnerable Virginians, many of whom rely on Medicaid and Medicare as a backstop for health care costs, would lose critical benefits or be kicked off their plans altogether. Project 2025 puts time limits and lifetime caps on Medicaid, which could kick 900,000 Virginians out of the program. If you’re on Medicare, prices are going up. Under the Biden-Harris administration, Medicare is finally able to negotiate prescription drug prices, saving seniors (including the 1.3 million Virginians on Medicare) $1.5 billion in prescription drug costs. Project 2025 would reverse this historic achievement.

Virginia has a significant military population. Sadly, your service to the country would not shield you from this plan, which calls for reducing spending on veterans, arguing that some conditions covered by the Veterans Administration are only “tenuously related” to military service and thus should not be the government’s responsibility. These cuts would be devastating for the 12% of Virginians who are veterans but they plan to go further, calling for ending “concurrent receipt of retirement and disability payments.”  The plan’s authors believe that honoring the debt to those who served our nation and came back with a disability is simply not worth the expense.

Project 2025 would also eliminate the Department of Education, moving programs to different departments and cutting others entirely. One program, known as Title I, provides funding to low-income schools, sending $277 million to Virginia in 2020 — funding that would be cut under Project 2025. This might only be the beginning. Trump has proposed cutting all federal funding to school districts with vaccine mandates — which includes every school in Virginia. The lack of federal funds in our schools would likely be offset by local taxes that would be passed onto all Virginians.

One throughline of Project 2025 is a deep skepticism of the nonpartisan federal civil service. Trump believes that federal employees should be loyal to him over the country. At the end of his term, Trump signed an executive order to give himself more control over positions that are currently nonpartisan and nonpolitical. This was reversed by President Joe Biden but will return under a second Trump term putting tens of thousands of civil service employees in Virginia at risk of losing their jobs. Even if you survive these cuts, Trump believes that government workers make too much money and have health insurance and retirement benefits that are too generous. The 140,000 federal employees who live in Virginia, would be directly affected by these cuts.

The authors of Project 2025 have a worldview that is fundamentally at odds with the values of Virginians. From the elimination of the civil service to higher taxes on the middle class, cuts to health care and education, and less funding for our nation’s veterans, the commonwealth cannot afford to participate in this draconian experiment that fundamentally changes who we are as Virginians and Americans.

Nick Rathod of Arlington is the director of the Virginian Peoples PAC. 

During the presidential primaries, a fake Biden robocall urged New Hampshire voters to wait until November to cast their votes. In July, Elon Musk shared a video that included a voice mimicking Harris’ saying things she did not say. Originally labeled as a parody, the clip readily morphed to an unlabeled post on X with more than 130 million views.

More recently, Trump weaponized concerns about AI by falsely claiming that a photo of a Harris rally was generated by AI, suggesting the crowd wasn’t real. And a deepfake photo of the attempted assassination of the former president altered the faces of Secret Service agents so they appear to be smiling, promoting the false theory that the shooting was staged.

Clearly, when it comes to AI manipulation, the voting public has to be ready for anything.

Voters wouldn’t be in this predicament if candidates had clear policies on the use of AI in their campaigns. Written guidelines about when and how campaigns intend to use AI would allow people to compare candidates’ use of the technology to their stated policies. This would help voters assess whether candidates practice what they preach.

AI policy statements can also help people protect themselves from bad actors trying to manipulate their votes. And a lack of trustworthy means for assessing the use of AI undermines the value the technology could bring to elections if deployed properly, fairly and with full transparency.

It’s not as if politicians aren’t using AI. Indeed, companies such as Google and Microsoft have acknowledged that they have trained dozens of campaigns and political groups on using generative AI tools.

Major technology firms released a set of principles earlier this year guiding the use of AI in elections. They also promised to develop technology to detect and label realistic content created with generative AI and educate the public about its use. However, these commitments lack any means of enforcement.

Government regulators have responded to concerns about AI’s effect on elections. In February, following the rogue New Hampshire robocall, the Federal Communications Commission moved to make such tactics illegal. The consultant who masterminded the call was fined $6 million, and the telecommunications company that placed the calls was fined $2 million. But even though the FCC wants to require that use of AI in broadcast ads be disclosed, the Federal Election Commission’s chair announced last month that the agency was ending its consideration of regulating AI in political ads. FEC officials said that would exceed their authority and that they would await direction from Congress on the issue.

It’s likely too late in this election cycle to expect campaigns to start disclosing their AI practices. So the onus lies with voters to remain vigilant about AI — in much the same way that other technologies, such as self-checkout in grocery and other stores, have transferred responsibility to consumers.

Voters can’t rely on the election information that comes to their mailboxes, inboxes and social media platforms to be free of technological manipulation. They need to take note of who has funded the distribution of such materials and look for obvious signs of AI use in images, such as missing fingers or mismatched earrings. Voters should know the source of information they are consuming, how it was vetted and how it is being shared. All of this will contribute to more information literacy, which, along with critical thinking, is a skill voters will need to fill out their ballots this fall.

Ann G. Skeet is the senior director of leadership ethics and John P. Pelissero is the director of government ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University. They are among the co-authors of “Voting for Ethics: A Guide for U.S. Voters,” from which portions of this piece were adapted for the Los Angeles Times. 

Suicide rates in the U.S. are higher than they’ve been in 80 years. Nearly 50,000 Americans killed themselves last year, and more than 1.2 million Americans tried to do so. Globally, one person dies from suicide every 40 seconds.

It’s time to take a more scientific approach to suicide prevention.

To begin with, we don’t know who is most at risk of attempting suicide. The centerpiece of suicide risk assessment today is asking suicidal patients to honestly tell us about their plans to kill themselves. This is absurd.

Studies tell us that 75% of people attempting suicide do not answer this question truthfully because they can’t process their own mental state, or they’re determined to die and do not want to be stopped.

Suicidal mental state is an acute, potentially deadly psychiatric illness. A growing number of researchers now call this condition suicide crisis syndrome. Yet, incredibly, there is no formal medical description or diagnosis for this condition.

Without a formal medical description or diagnosis, there can be no clinical trials, no approved pharmaceutical treatments and no health insurance reimbursement for this condition. Doctors are uncertain about how to treat suicidal patients and fearful of lawsuits caused by a lack of clear protocols. The result: Suicidal patients usually do not receive treatment and are often rejected by the medical system and psychiatric community.

We can change this.

Working with researchers from 15 countries, our lab has developed the construct of suicide crisis syndrome. It is an intense, emotional state, characterized by an intense sense of entrapment, emotional pain and loss of cognitive control. We have shown that this syndrome is similar across multiple cultures and languages and is predictive of near-term suicidal thoughts and behaviors. When it is included in emergency room suicide assessments, clinicians make full use of the diagnosis and patients have better outcomes.

Suicide crisis syndrome needs to be added to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the standard reference book used by health care professionals to diagnose mental disorders.

Making this change to the DSM will help health care professionals more easily diagnose and treat those at most risk and create a paradigm shift in suicide prevention. Risk assessment will finally be based on an objective illness description rather than unreliable and misleading suicidal ideation.

Last year, our lab made a 1,000-page submission to include suicide crisis syndrome in the DSM. I am hopeful that this condition will soon be incorporated in the manual.

But formal changes to the DSM are not enough. Mandatory training on suicide crisis syndrome should be provided in medical and nursing schools, hospitals and other health care institutions. Lay people should also be given access to information about this syndrome.

I know from the work at our center that suicide crisis syndrome can be recognized if you know what to look for.

I also know that treatment can make a huge difference. Our lab has seen promising results with a short regimen of medicines. The key is to treat suicide crisis syndrome like other medical conditions and provide optimum treatment in the early stages before it develops. Our lab has used a staging framework that helps identify those most in need of treatment and care.

As a psychiatrist working with patients at high risk for suicide, I’ve faced many emotionally challenging moments. I’ve also been privileged to work with courageous and inspiring people who’ve recovered from the depths of despair. We owe it to these patients and all those at risk to take a different approach to preventing suicide. We have the knowledge and tools to do it.

If you or a loved one is struggling, help is available. Call 988 to reach the suicide and crisis lifeline.

Dr. Igor Galynker, Ph.D., is a professor of psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine and director of the Suicide Prevention Research Lab at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. He wrote this for the Chicago Tribune. 

But while mass shootings make national news, we know that community gun violence is just as destructive — particularly here in Hampton Roads. In March, a 14-year-old boy was shot and killed in Virginia Beach, according to police, by a 16-year-old after a firearm was not properly secured. In May, a 15-year-old girl was killed and an 18-year-old critically injured in a shooting at the Mt. Trashmore Summer Carnival. And this week, a 15-year-old boy was fatally shot waiting for the school bus in Newport News.

In our region and nationwide, the threat of gun violence disproportionately devastates Black and Brown communities. Black Virginians are 8 times more likely to be killed by gun violence than our white counterparts, a horrifying statistic that carries even greater implications. Each life lost to guns means one fewer graduation, one fewer family gathering and more funerals instead of celebrations. And we know that violent crime is more likely to occur in neighborhoods where systemic inequalities, lack of opportunity and economic disparities exist.

As a Hampton Roads resident and director of Brady’s Combating Crime Guns Program, I’ve been encouraged by state and local efforts to combat this type of gun violence. But our commonwealth is not an island, and we can’t do this work alone.

To reduce gun violence in Hampton Roads, we need comprehensive gun safety measures at the national level — and legislators in Washington, D.C., who will fight to make this happen.

A big part of that is congressional support for community violence intervention (CVI) programs. CVI programs reduce gun violence through conflict mediation, direct counseling and support for victims and would-be-perpetrators, and by connecting at-risk-individuals to the economic or social services they need.

But while Virginia legislators are starting to recognize the urgency of CVI, many of these programs remain underfunded. That’s why federal support — including from the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA) — is so critical. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’s BSCA put a historic $250 million towards CVI programs across the country, including $2 million in funding for the regional “Safer Together” program in Hampton Roads. As program director Alex DePaula noted last year, this was among the largest federal grants ever given to a community-based organization in Virginia.

Unfortunately, this federal funding is far from guaranteed. If elected, former President Donald Trump has promised to repeal the BSCA — a move that would eliminate critical funding for CVI programs such as ours. To keep this and similar programs going, we need representatives in Congress who will fight to protect them.

And while Virginia has prioritized gun safety in recent years, many of our neighboring states have moved in the opposite direction. To combat gun violence in Hampton Roads, we need legislators in Congress who will expand background checks, implement national  red flag laws and pass an assault weapons ban. Stronger national laws protect all of us — and this is particularly true for state border communities such as ours.

It can be tempting to think our representatives in D.C. don’t matter, particularly when it comes to seemingly-local issues such as summer gun violence on the Virginia Beach Boardwalk. But gun safety votes in Congress tend to pass or fail on razor-thin margins — which means just one vote in the U.S. House can make the difference in whether a child makes it home from school, whether a parent makes it home from work, or whether another family in our community is devastated by a preventable gun violence tragedy.

To stop the violence here and nationwide, Hampton Roads needs representatives in D.C. who will vote to make it happen.

Rachelle Hunley of Newport News is the director of Brady’s Combating Crime Guns Program.

The biggest difference between the platforms is the position that the Democratic platform takes for improving access to health care by continuing to support subsidies for the Affordable Care Act (ACA). This law has reduced the number of uninsured Americans by half, from 16% before its passage to 8% currently. More than 21 million Americans have enrolled in the ACA programs this past year. Additionally, Democrats have traditionally supported Medicaid expansion and they want to expand it in the 10 states that have not done so. They also strongly support the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIPS), which provides health insurance to millions of American children.

By contrast, the Republican platform mentions nothing about expanding access to health care. Republicans have generally been against Medicaid expansion and frequently offer plans to cut Medicaid funding. During former President Donald Trump’s term, he was unsuccessful in repealing the ACA, but undermined it by cutting the subsidies that have allowed it to thrive. Sixty percent of Americans are now in favor of the ACA.

There are areas of agreement between the two parties. Both want to control prescription drug costs. Neither party wants to decrease Medicare benefits. Republicans have been in favor of expansion of Medicare Advantage programs that have been shown to be more expensive than traditional Medicare; this could hasten Medicare’s projected insolvency. Democrats plan to increase taxes on those making more than $400,000 per year, partly to keep Medicare solvent.

Another area of general agreement of the two parties is the need to control health care costs, since this is a significant contributor to inflation. The Trump administration enacted by executive order the Hospital Price Transparency Rule requiring hospitals to make their prices public to promote competition and thereby lower costs. The Biden-Harris administration has attempted to stop some health care mergers (which raise costs to consumers by eliminating competition) through the Federal Trade Commission. Unfortunately, these cost-control measures have had limited success, given the political lobbying power of the health care organizations involved.

The Democratic Party platform has some additional plans to improve health care. Democrats would like to double the financial support for federally qualified health centers in rural and underserved areas. Additional funding would be provided to grow the health care workforce, especially primary care physicians, nurses and mental health providers. Vice President Kamala Harris has already been successful in expanding Medicaid benefits in 46 states for new mothers to one year post-delivery. She is a major advocate for women’s health issues.

These are some additional ideas that either party is welcome to adopt to help control health care costs. They should eliminate pharmacy benefit managers, expensive and unneeded middlemen who raise drug costs. Billions could be saved by focusing on rational palliative care at the end of life instead of expensive hospital care (which most people do not want). Most importantly, future policy should fund a more robust primary care system where every American has access to a medical home. Specifically, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) should fund more residency training positions for primary care physicians and increase payments to these doctors. This focus on primary care is used by all other wealthy nations, which spend an average of 12% of their health care dollars on primary care compared to our 5%. Many studies have shown that more primary care leads to better health outcomes and lower costs.

Dr. Bob Newman is a clinical professor of family medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk. He is the author of “Patient’s Compass,” which is a guide to navigating the U.S. health care system, available online at yourpatientcompass.wordpress.com.

The planning for this historic celebration two years from now has given me a thought-provoking lens as I consider the presidential election only two months away. Our next president will preside over the festivities associated with this momentous achievement.

I am reminded of the French historian Alexis de Tocqueville, who wrote “Democracy in America,” a prescient, perhaps even uncomfortable, analysis of the great potential, as well as the fragility, of the fledgling political system he observed in the United States during the 1830s.

Tocqueville admired Americans for their courage and energy, but he found room for improvement with both the people and their leaders, particularly in their adherence to the scourge of slavery. Still, he was hopeful that Americans’ true character — steeped in their love for liberty and fairness — would guide them to fully realize the principles that bound them together as a nation.

Despite stumbles along the way, our overall trajectory for nearly 250 years has moved us closer to that vision of a uniquely American democratic republic. We have achieved progress by choosing leaders with the character and the ability to bring out the best in the American people. During my lifetime, President John Kennedy’s call to public service and President Ronald Reagan’s “morning in America” come to mind.

It is my conviction that character still matters today.

As a fiscal conservative, I have voted for both Republican and Democratic candidates. I am a political independent who has worked closely with governors from both parties on transportation and state financial matters.

Each governor I have served faced a crisis during his term that could not have been imagined at the time of his election. Whether the crisis was related to their official duties or personal in nature, there were no partisan playbooks or talking points to fall back on. History will record each man’s response as a reflection of his character.

The next president will face consequential challenges, including life-and-death decisions. And yet, too many Americans are likely to cast their votes this fall without thought to the character of the individual who would confront these critical issues.

Why is it that character no longer seems to matter in today’s electorate? There is no single answer. Gerrymandering has generated a bleak cynicism. Social media spreads coarse insults, distortions and outright falsehoods. Fragmented news media are drowned out by ideologues peddling fear and paranoia.

Many of us are disturbed by the erosion of civility that permeates our political narrative. But we must not let divisive discourse alter our reasoning and judgment. Therefore, I am committing to ask myself one crucial question as I consider the presidential candidates: Is this the type of person I want to lead this nation?

I measure the candidates’ character based on whether I consider them to be trustworthy, honorable and responsible. Our Founding Fathers would have referred to these characteristics as virtue. They considered virtue and honor as key to being a qualified public leader.

To be honest, I find fault with both major-party candidates and believe many of their policies are pandering for votes. Tocqueville contemplated this situation. In the publication of the first volume of “Democracy in America,” he wrote, “It is not the conditions of candidacy, but the number and the capacity of the candidates that often limit the choice of voters.”

For Tocqueville, the ultimate test for America’s democratic republic rested on whether its citizens would reflexively vote for the lowest common denominator candidate who told them what they wanted to hear or whether they would select candidates with the character to lead.

Consequently, I suggest we consider voting for the candidate who more often demonstrates the characteristics that give our nation the best chance of continuing our uniquely American journey of becoming a “more perfect union.”

Aubrey Layne is a member of the Virginia American Revolution 250 Commission. He is a former Virginia secretary of Transportation and Finance. He serves as executive vice president and chief administrative officer for Sentara Health.

In an ABC News encounter as one-sided as the Biden-Trump clash in June, Harris forcefully argued Tuesday night that it’s time for America “to turn the page.” She emotionally defended her support of abortion rights and constantly goaded Trump into a shouting, disorganized defense of his own familiar positions.

At the same time, the former president did a poor job of prosecuting the GOP case against his Democratic rival on issues such as her changes in positions from her 2020 candidacy and the current administration’s problems in coping with inflation and multiple crises abroad.

Though each presidential debate is unique, this one at Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center fit the frequent pattern in which the lesser-known candidate outperformed the better-known one. But it will take a few days before post-debate polling confirms the ultimate impact in an election where pre-debate surveys showed Harris and Trump almost even, nationally and in battleground states.

Several independent measurements exemplified the vice president’s strong showing. A CNN poll of debate watchers showed 63% said she won. A CNN focus group in Erie, Pennsylvania, produced a similar 2-to-1 margin.

And even some Republicans and conservatives conceded that Harris did well. “She passed the test,” Republican strategist David Urban said on CNN. “She looked presidential.”

“Make no mistake about it,” veteran Fox News analyst Brit Hume concluded. “Trump had a bad night.”

“I thought that was my best debate, ever,” Trump told reporters. But when asked about the Harris campaign’s call for another debate, he replied, “We’ll look at it, but they want a second debate because they lost.”

CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale found that Trump made more than 30 false claims during the debate, while Harris made just one. ABC moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis corrected the former president on several occasions.

One was in the exchange that typified the inaccurate claims Trump made through the night, as he repeatedly contended that illegal immigrants “are destroying the fabric of our country.”

“In Springfield (Ohio), they’re eating the dogs,” he said. “The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country.”

Muir said Springfield’s city manager told ABC News “there have been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.”

“But the people on television say their dog was eaten by the people that went there,” Trump persisted. “Again,” Muir noted, “the Springfield city manager says there’s no evidence of that.”

When the debate turned to foreign policy, Trump refused to answer Muir’s question about whether he wanted Ukraine to win its war against Russia.

“I want the war to stop,” he said. “I want to save lives that are being uselessly — people being killed by the millions.” He repeated his claim that, if he wins, he could settle the war even before his inauguration, deriding Biden as “a president that doesn’t know he’s alive.”

When Muir asked Harris how she would deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin, she said that “first of all, it’s important to remind the former president, you’re not running against Joe Biden, you’re running against me.

“I believe the reason that Donald Trump says that this war would be over within 24 hours is because he would just give it up,” she said. “Putin would be sitting in Kyiv with his eyes on the rest of Europe. Starting with Poland.

“Why don’t you tell the 800,000 Polish Americans right here in Pennsylvania how quickly you would give up for the sake of favor and what you think is a friendship with what is known to be a dictator who would eat you for lunch?” she asked Trump.

In all, it was a very good night for Harris, and it ended with yet another boost: the endorsement of iconic pop music star Taylor Swift — a native Pennsylvanian.

Carl P. Leubsdorf is the former Washington bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News. Email him at carl.p.leubsdorf@gmail.com.

An aggressive Harris looked much stronger than Joe Biden’s pathetic performance that got him toppled from the Democratic ticket. Trump at times faltered and Harris was never really pressed to explain her flip-flops or record by two anti-Trump ABC moderators.

“It’s important to remind the former president, you’re not running against Joe Biden, you’re running against me,” Harris said in her best line of the night.

“She’s worse than Biden,” Trump said.

Despite getting push back from Harris, the former president tried to hold his own and not get baited by Harris, but at times he looked irked and frustrated as he repeatedly pressed Harris on inflation, the broken border and crime.

It took 40 minutes for Harris to finally bring up Trump’s criminal trials, prompting some of the sharpest exchanges of the night.

“I think this is so rich coming from someone who has been prosecuted for national security crime, economic crime, election interference, has been found liable for sexual assault and his next big court appearance is in November at his own criminal sentencing,” Harris said.

“It’s called weaponization. They weaponized the Justice Department,” Trump replied. “They used it to try and win the election. They’re fake cases…I probably took a bullet to the head because of the things they said about me.”

Asked by moderator David Muir whether he regretted anything about Jan. 6, Trump pivoted to asking why rioters in cities haven’t been arrested and prosecuted like those involved in the Jan. 6 riot.

“When are those people going to be prosecuted?” Trump said.

“The president of the United States incited a violent mob,” Harris said.

Trump cited reports that migrants were stealing pets for food — a charge that authorities have denied.

“In Springfield (Ohio) they’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats,” Trump said as Harris smiled incredulously.

Both candidates showcased vastly different styles. Trump for the most part looked straight ahead and did not react to Harris talking. But Harris often looked at Trump, smiled smugly and shook her head as he talked, almost as if she was trying to goad him into reacting.

Trump criticized Harris for flip-flopping her economic positions.

“She’s going to my philosophy now. In fact I was going to send her a MAGA hat,” he said, prompting Harris to openly laugh.

“She’s a Marxist. Everybody knows she’s a Marxist,” Trump added.

Harris was strongest and most focused when she was talking about defending abortion rights, though polls show voters care more about the economy and immigration.

Harris accused Trump of supporting an abortion ban, and Trump refused to say whether he’d veto one.

“There she goes again, It’s a lie,” Trump said, stealing Ronald Reagan’s famous line against Jimmy Carter. “I’m not signing a ban and there’s no reason to sign a ban.”

Harris started off the debate looking nervous and rushing her delivery, but settled in as the night wore on to her prosecutorial style of aggressively attacking.

“In this debate tonight, you’re gonna hear from the same old tired playbook, a bunch of lies, grievances and name calling,” she said.

With the race virtually tied in the polls, Harris and Trump desperately tried to get an edge that could propel them to the White House.

This was Trump’s seventh presidential debate of his life and Harris’s first. She has held no formal press conferences since being propelled to the top of the ticket and her inexperience at talking without a teleprompter at times showed.

Harris also struggled Tuesday night to position herself as the candidate of change — a difficult feat for an incumbent vice president whose administration has been in charge for the last four years.

Polls consistently show that voters want change, not more of the same and that could be the Democrats’ biggest challenge.

But Trump also has a tough sell in arguing for change, since he was the president for four years and is 78 years old.

Joe Battenfeld is a political columnist for the Boston Herald.

Landownership and hunting in general are an intertwined heritage and tradition. Landowners permitted and held hunts on their land and even hunted for food along with raising crops, livestock and poultry. Landowners conducted turkey shoots, archery competitions and even shooting contests, and gathered as friends and neighbors.

Landowners are wrongfully being accused of being anti-hunting, anti-hound/dog hunting, wanting to hoard all the deer for themselves, wanting to use our land for “commercial hunting,” wanting to end hunting, “come heres,” “city people,” and more. That is far from true. There are many issues that have arisen and caused landowners to speak up with calls to address them.

In actuality, landowners want to exercise their right to use and enjoy our deeded property or to hunt our respective properties in a peaceful and safe manner without the impedance or interference, or threat of interference or impedance, by trespassers, dogs/hounds or hound hunters. Landowners don’t want their livestock, poultry or companion animals maimed, chased or killed. Landowners don’t want stray hounds running at large without tags, collars or microchips, leaving no way of contacting the dogs’ owners.

In reality, some landowners lease their land to hound hunters and still hunters. Some of these landowners even allow clubhouses to be established and used on their land. Landowners also hunt and this includes hound hunting. Landowners are also Virginians, born and raised in rural communities and in areas that are known for hound/dog hunting.

Landowners want hunters to get their permission to hunt, retrieve and track game on their property. The responsible, ethical and respectful thing to do is to seek and get permission from landowners to retrieve hunting dogs/hounds from the landowner’s property, or to use them for field trials.

Still hunting has been practiced in Virginia and other states by Native Americans, colonists and landowners long before, during and after George Washington bred, raised and hunted with fox hounds. There are more landowners than hound hunters, and more still hunters than hound hunters. Hunting will exist, as it does in many states, without hound hunters.

The right to hunt on permitted property leased by hound hunters, hunt clubs or hunters in general, and their privilege to use hounds/dogs for hunting, does not supersede the right of any landowner to use or enjoy our deeded property or to hunt our respective properties in a peaceful and safe manner without the impedance or interference, or threat of interference or impedance, by trespassers, hunters, hunting dogs/hounds or hound hunters.

The basic responsibility and common courtesy of hunters is to seek and get permission from landowners to hunt, retrieve and track game on their property. The moral, responsible, ethical and respectful thing to do is to seek and get permission from landowners to retrieve hunting dogs/hounds from the landowner’s property.

Without landowners or landowner permission there would be no land to lease for hunting with or without dogs/hounds, or land to place or operate their clubs on, or hold field trials. It is time to get back to the basics of being good neighbors and seeking and getting landowner permission to come onto their property.

Raymond Carter Jr. is a resident and landowner in King William County.