by Lowell
Here are a few national and Virginia news headlines, political and otherwise, for Monday, April 9. Also check out the Alexandria Democratic Committee’s straw poll results from last night (click on the image to “embiggen”); Justin Wilson won (143-77) for mayor, while the top six finishers for City Council were Willie Bailey (132), John Chapman (131), Elizabeth Bennett-Parker (107), Dak Hardwick (105), Canek Aguirre (101) and Paul Smedberg (100).
- Syria says strike on military base carried out by Israeli warplanes
- Farmers who propelled Trump to presidency fear becoming pawns in trade war
- As Trump Seeks Way Out of Syria, New Attack Pulls Him Back In
- In John Bolton, Trump Finds a Fellow Political Blowtorch. Will Foreign Policy Burn?
- The Logic of Assad’s Brutality (“No meaningful American response will be forthcoming, no matter how hideous the war crime.”)
- Zuckerberg set for trial by fire in first testimony
- Democrats shouldn’t impose litmus tests on health care (Henry Waxman: “Demanding that all candidates support single-payer is counterproductive.”)
- Trump’s politics of outrage is failing him (“No matter how many hot buttons he pushes, he cannot arouse the passion he needs on his own side to counter the determination of those who loathe him.”)
- Juan Williams: Trump’s nest of hawks
- Judd Gregg: The GOP abandons fiscal responsibility (They haven’t had it since Reagan blew up the deficit and the debt, then George W. Bush did the same.)
- Trump’s top national security spokesman to leave White House
- How Trump thrives in ‘news deserts’ (“Relentless use of social media and partisan outlets helped him swamp Clinton and exceed Romney’s performance in places lacking trusted local news outlets.”)
- The race to replace Paul Ryan is on (“House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Whip Steve Scalise have started courting Republicans in case the speaker retires.”)
- Trump vs Putin? Time to Be ‘Scared’
- Unicorns of the Intellectual Right (“As others have pointed out, the real problem here is that media organizations are looking for unicorns: serious, honest, conservative intellectuals with real influence. Forty or fifty years ago, such people did exist. But now they don’t.”)
- Why Trump’s Threat to Make Assad Pay a “Big Price” Rings Hollow (“The only action that would change the course of the war is a ‘massive U.S.-led military intervention against Assad that would carry all kinds of military risks,’ Robert Ford, the last U.S. ambassador to Syria, told me. ‘Assad is going nowhere, and the war just grinds on.'”)
- President called victim of deadly Trump Tower fire a ‘crazy Jew’: report (“Art dealer Todd Brassner, a friend of Andy Warhol, who lived in the building for two decades, was killed in a blaze on Saturday. Trump Tower does not have sprinklers on its residential floors because the president lobbied to avoid having to install them.”)
- JC Hernandez column: Gov. Northam’s reckless insistence on Medicaid expansion threatens our state’s financial stability (This is the Koch brothers’ dude in Virginia. Ignore this. Or laugh at it. Or even better, do the exact opposite of what the Kochs want.)
- Bryant: The Fiscal Case for Medicaid Expansion (“Bryant is a Lynchburg native who served on Lynchburg City Council, represented this community in the House of Delegates and was Virginia Secretary of Natural Resources from 2006-2010.” Note that Bryant is a Republican.)
- Northam addresses Virginia Young Democrats Convention at U.Va. (“The 2018 convention was the largest VAYD convention in many years and hosted at the University for the first time since 2009. 280 people from 30 different chartered clubs attended the conference.”)
- Virginia law students push state panel to scrap mental health question on bar application
- Editorial: Why doesn’t Trump have a plan for rural America? (Because he doesn’t give a crap about rural America. Or urban America. Or suburban America. Or…)
- Fisher: Virginia legislators are hypocritical on marijuana (“Short-sighted Virginia legislators who justify the selling and use of one of the most lethal drugs, alcohol, but are unwilling to legalize, or at the very least decriminalize the use of, a fairly comparatively benign drug (marijuana), are the epitome disingenuousness.”)
- Motorcycle deaths see dramatic increase in Virginia
- Handful of Fredericksburg-area Democrats hope to ride ‘blue wave’ to victory in November
- Chesapeake candidates present a broad range of ideas at women’s forum (“Chesapeake will hold local elections May 1. Sixteen candidates are vying for seven seats on the nine-member City Council, including special election races for mayor and one council seat.”)
- Huge warm-up this week as winter finally starts to cave
