by Lowell
Here are a few national and Virginia news headlines, political and otherwise, for Thursday, July 20.
- McCain diagnosed with brain cancer, sending a jolt through Congress (“The Mayo Clinic said tests revealed an aggressive type of cancer with a poor prognosis. John McCain’s significance in Congress is hard to overstate — and his absence, however long, will reverberate across the Capitol.”)
- Senate ‘repeal only’ bill would leave 32 million more uninsured, CBO says (Anyone who votes for this is evil.)
- President halts covert arming of Syria rebels, a move likely to please Russia
- Citing Recusal, Trump Says He Wouldn’t Have Hired Sessions (“In a rebuke of one of his staunchest supporters, President Trump said he ‘would have picked somebody else’ had he known Attorney General Jeff Sessions was going to recuse himself from the Russia investigation. In a wide-ranging interview with The Times, Mr. Trump also criticized the special counsel on the Russia inquiry and warned him about delving into his family finances.”)
- Trump goes off-script and fumes about Sessions and Russia probe (“The president’s harsh criticism of his attorney general and the Russia probe came amid a last-ditch effort to salvage health care reform, and startled many in the West Wing.”)
- Blow: Trump Is His Own Worst Enemy (“I have finally found something about Donald Trump’s arrogation of the presidency in which to take comfort: his absolute ineptitude at legislative advancement. The country may well be saved from some of Trump’s most draconian impulses by some of Trump’s most pronounced flaws: his lack of seriousness, his aversion to tedium and his gnat-like attention span.”)
- Kristof: If Dr. Trump Were Your Surgeon … (Basically, you’d be dead.)
- Trump sees electoral consequences for senators who oppose Obamacare repeal (“But there was no new evidence of additional support for the recently abandoned repeal-and-replace measure or a repeal-only approach, which the Congressional Budget Office now estimates would result in 32 million more uninsured people within 10 years.”)
- Trump Struggles to Sell Health Bill to Balky Senators (“The president has proved too unpopular nationally, and too weak in many lawmakers’ home states, to scare senators into supporting the bill to repeal and replace Obamacare.”)
- Senate panel to interview Kushner; subpoenas possible for Manafort and Trump Jr.
- Senate Republicans still at impasse after late-night health care meeting (“GOP senators engaged in talks late Wednesday night to try to revive their bill to repeal and replace Obamacare after Trump told senators they shouldn’t leave town without action.”)
- Why Trump’s chat with Putin is not just a chat (“The problem is the deeply troubling and unresolved questions about the U.S. president’s relationship with Russia.”)
- Source: Senate leaders to offer $200 billion to win over moderates (“The figure is likely to outrage conservatives who would prefer to use the savings from the Senate healthcare bill to pay down the deficit.”)
- Democrats finally have an agenda. Here’s what it looks like. (“The party is trying to fix the perception that it ‘just stands against Trump.'”)
- Dems see huge field emerging to take on Trump
- The one area where Trump has been wildly successful (“The president is naming (young, right-wing) judges at an unprecedented rate.”)
- Why Obamacare won and Trump lost (“The Affordable Care Act’s core provisions are broadly popular.”)
- I’m a scientist. I’m blowing the whistle on the Trump administration. (“I was reassigned to an unrelated job in the accounting office that collects royalty checks from fossil fuel companies.”)
- Pro-Trump media are pushing a new voter fraud conspiracy theory (“Far-right sources are claiming that thousands of voters ‘unregistering’ in Colorado are evidence of ‘mass voter fraud'”)
- Trump can’t make a health care deal because he doesn’t understand health care (“Trump is uninformed, underprepared, and unclear — and this is is the result.”)
- Trump is mad Democrats didn’t work with him on health care, but he never tried
- The NRA is race-baiting its members (The “nutjob, extremist organization” strikes again.)
- Poll: 8 In 10 Americans Want GOP To Negotiate With Dems On Health Care
- You Can Draw a Straight Line from the 2000 Recount to 2016 Voter Suppression (“The American voting system is broken—on purpose.”)
- Now They’re Eating Their Own (“The Republicans are beginning to turn on each other.”)
- A Top Rohrabacher Aide Is Ousted After Russia Revelations (“Paul Behrends, a controversial staffer associated with the California congressman’s pro-Russia stances, was pushed out of his role on a subcommittee after questions were raised about a recent trip to Moscow.”)
- Conservative group to give GOP healthcare holdouts ‘Freedom Traitors Award’ (“Cuccinelli, a former Virginia Attorney General, warned that his group is willing to recruit Republican challengers in upcoming elections.”)
- President of the Senate Conservatives Fund, Ken Cuccinelli On The Republican Senators Who Voted Against An Obamacare Repeal: We Are Coming After You! (“Ken Cuccinelli went on to call out several Republicans saying a lot of the ‘left’ is in the Republican party in Congress, including Steve Scalise. Cuccinelli said, ‘god help him recover from his gun shot wounds, but he sold his conservative soul to be in the leadership’.” Cooch, insane as always.)
- Tim Kaine: We Won’t Let Donald Trump Sabotage Health Care
- McAuliffe: Trump has ‘abdicated his responsibility as president’
- McAuliffe invites McConnell to health clinic for poor
- Sierra Club seeks reversal of emergency Yorktown power plant order
- Do small donations to Va campaigns offer early signal of voter interest?
- Editorial: Budget surplus nice, but not all is well
- Virginia’s heat climbs while leaders nap (“Virginia Democrats and Republicans have a serious case of the slows though, perhaps hoping the problem will just go away. Maybe that’s explained, in part, by where much of their campaign donations come from: fossil fuel corporations, Dominion Energy, Appalachian Power…Gov. Terry McAuliffe has indeed told the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality to propose regulations to reduce carbon pollution at power plants — but not until just before he leaves office in January, and with no set goals for those cuts.”)
- Editorial: Richmond must find the money to fix its schools
- Richmond refuses to disclose terms of city auditor’s ‘voluntary’ resignation, citing employment dispute
- Several Petersburg school employees fired following investigation into SOL cheating
- Richmond School Board cuts ties with division’s HR director, chief of staff as start date looms
- Vicious Raccoon Attack In Arlington: Report
- Chipotle says Virginia restaurant reopening after cleaning (“Chipotle says a Virginia store that was temporarily closed because of a suspected case of norovirus will reopen Wednesday.”)
- Scorching hot through the weekend, when storm chances rise
