Hi, this is Justin from Old Claire, Wisconsin, where my wife Cassandra, our son Graham, our two guinea pigs, Lloyd and Linus, and I are currently enduring negative 50 degree Fahrenheit windshield weather.

This episode of the podcast was recorded at.

Good thing you don't need to walk a pet guinea pig, uh, 232 Eastern on Monday, February 4.

Things may have changed by the time you hear this, including the temperature.

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Okay, here's the show.

Hey there, it's the NPR politics podcast for junior governor Ralph Northam is resisting calls for his resignation, despite continuing controversy over a racist photo in his medical school yearbook.

Plus President Trump is set to deliver his second state of the union address. We will preview what he's expected to talk about and how we expect Democrats to respond.

I'm Scott Detro, I cover Congress.

I'm Ron Elving, Editor correspondent.

I'm Aisha Roscoe, I cover the White House, and I'm Sarah McCammon, National correspondent.

Hey Sarah.

Hi, good to talk to you guys.

We always love having you on the podcast, but usually, uh, that means you are in the middle of one crazy national story or another.

We're in Richmond, Virginia, and let's just rewind to Friday because this is a complicated story that has gotten lots of twists and turns.

As we've said, as of right now, as of this taping seemingly every politician in Virginia is calling on Ralph Northam to resign because of a photograph that was on the page of his medical school yearbook showing one person in blackface and another person in a Ku Klux Klan robe.

I think that's what our recap on Friday afternoon when a conservative website publishes this and you get in your car and you go to that medical school library.

Yeah, I jumped in my car and I went to the Eastern Virginia Medical School Library, which is a North folk Virginia, not far from where I live and went up to the circulation desk where they put it on hold for me and flipped it open and there was.

What was it like to turn the page and see that photo because I think one of the striking elements of the story is just how like shockingly blunt this is.

Yeah, I mean, I'd seen it online right like we all had, but to open up the book and they kind of earmarked it for me because a couple of reporters were starting to come in as well and to open it up and see that image on, you know, it's just your normal yearbook with the kind of grainy cover and the glossy pages and it says Ralph's here or northern and it's got, you know, ordinary looking portraits and then this.

It was pretty shocking and the governor said it was shocking to him too. So let's start with this a couple hours after the story first comes out Ralph, Northam apologizes and basically says this is him in the picture. Let's listen to that.

That photo and the racist and offensive attitudes it represents does not reflect that person I am today or the way that I have conducted myself as a soldier, a doctor and a public servant. I'm deeply sorry.

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