Wednesday News: “Stop normalizing Trump;” What “Virginia Way?”

by Lowell

Here are a few national and Virginia news headlines, political and otherwise, for Wednesday, May 25. Also check out Sen. Elizabeth Warren explaining why Donald Trump must never be president.

• Stop normalizing Trump: He’s conditioned reporters to treat crazy nonsense as routine (“Somehow we’re at the point where one candidate obliquely implicating a rival in a murder conspiracy is no big deal”)
• How the media enabled the Trump nightmare: A toxic symbiosis reaches new heights of idiocy
• Trump: A Candidate More Provocateur Than Politician (“Donald J. Trump is defying the norms of presidential politics by promoting conspiracy theories without the help of the right-wing media.”)
• David Brooks has a weird theory about why Hillary Clinton isn’t more popular (Brooks has been wrong about everything, pretty much, this election cycle, and this is yet another case. I stopped taking him seriously a looong time ago.)
• Pay Attention To Libertarian Gary Johnson; He’s Pulling 10 Percent vs. Trump And Clinton (Any Republican with serious qualms about Trump – and that should be all of them – and who can’t bring themselves to vote for Hillary Clinton should vote for Johnson.)
• The worst mistake Hillary can make: Clinton can’t afford to alienate Sanders supporters
• Another day, another conspiracy theory propagated by Trump (The guy’s completely bonkers.)
• Republicans’ hopes for an Obama scandal crash and burn (“Another probe, another failure.”)
• It’s no time to panic: Ignore the national polls and the Democratic tensions — none of it matters (yet)
• A Letter to a Bernie-or-Bust Voter (“I get it. I was just like you once.”)
• Four months after fundraiser, Trump says he gave $1 million to veterans group (Dishonest Donald.)
• Dems discuss dropping Wasserman Schultz
• BREAKING: Major Court Ruling Restores Early Voting Days In Ohio
• Almost 5,000 felons registered to vote after rights restoration
• Sen. Tim Kaine Advocates Increase in TSA Funding
• Governor extends driver’s licenses renewals as state counts cost of IT outage
• Warner urges committee to OK leases for 18 new VA facilities
• Schapiro: Just when McAuliffe thought he was out, he’s pulled back in
• McAuliffe in ‘shock’ over FBI investigation of campaign money, personal finances (“The governor said his donations were ‘fully vetted’ by his legal team.”)
• Report: Virginia’s black students three times as likely as whites to face suspension
• DEQ letter to pipeline companies ‘a significant first step,’ say project opponents (“The state’s Department of Environmental Quality recently advised a Mountain Valley Pipeline partner that the agency could require the project to pay for hiring additional technical expertise to monitor erosion and sediment plans for pipeline const…”)
• Our view: McAuliffe and the feds – whatever happened to the Virginia way? (This is stupid on two counts: 1) the supposed “Virginia Way” was always bulls***; 2) no evidence, at least not yet, that McAuliffe did anything wrong.)
• Rights restoration of felons called irrelevant in trooper slaying case
• PolitiFact: Randy Forbes tells half the story about Scott Taylor’s court record
• Virginian-Pilot editorial: Feds take aim again at Virginia again
• VMRC changes cobia regulations to allow season to remain open (“The Virginia Marine Resources Commission on Tuesday opted to keep its cobia season open through the summer in state waters in defiance of a federal order to close the season June 20. But not without several drastic changes in regulation.”)
• Less carping, more funding, for Metro (“Congress provides posturing, but it needs to step up with funding for the transit system.”)
• Virginia will bill Portsmouth and John Rowe for the retirement checks he received while still city manager
• Fairfax to add bus service to assist in yearlong Metro SafeTrack disruptions
• Roanoke County supervisors pass budget, approve broadband expansion
• Settling right into summer, ahead of sketchy storm threat late this weekend