Wednesday News: “Catholic Priests Abused 1,000 Children in Pennsylvania”; “Groundbreaking Night for Women and Diversity, While a Trump Critic Falls”; “We don’t need a tape to tell us that Trump’s a racist”

by Lowell

Here are a few national and Virginia news headlines, political and otherwise, for Wednesday, August 15.

• Italy bridge collapse: 37 dead as minister calls for resignations
• Catholic Priests Abused 1,000 Children in Pennsylvania, Report Says (Beyond appalling.)
• More than 300 accused priests listed in Pennsylvania report on Catholic Church sex abuse
• Cardinal Wuerl’s actions in Pittsburgh scrutinized by Catholic sexual abuse investigation
• Pittsburgh had ‘ring of predatory priests’ who manufactured child porn: grand jury report
• Christine Hallquist, a Transgender Woman, Wins Vermont Governor’s Primary
• Groundbreaking Night for Women and Diversity, While a Trump Critic Falls (“Former Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota was soundly defeated Tuesday in his bid to reclaim the Republican nomination for governor, a remarkable upset that demonstrated President Trump’s tightening grip on his party and the difficulty those who have criticized him in the past are facing with today’s primary voters.”)
• 5 winners and 3 losers from primaries in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Vermont, and Connecticut (“Ned Lamont makes a comeback! T-Paw does not!”)
• Top takeaways from a groundbreaking election night for Democrats
• White Nationalist Paul Nehlen Loses GOP Primary For Paul Ryan’s House Seat (“Until HuffPost confronted Nehlen over his explicitly racist and anti-Semitic views, he was the preferred candidate of Steve Bannon and Breitbart News.” And Corey Stewart!)
• Rep. Keith Ellison wins Democratic primary for Minnesota attorney general, despite domestic abuse allegations
• Ilhan Omar Wins Democratic Primary For Congress In Minnesota
• With little fanfare, Trump and McConnell reshape the nation’s circuit courts (I feel like I said a million times in 2016 that even if you HATED Hillary Clinton, you had to vote for her, if for no other reason than THE COURTS. Why so many people don’t get this is beyond me.)
• We don’t need a tape to tell us that Trump’s a racist (“Whether he said the n-word on a tape hardly matters. His constant, reflexive racist rhetoric is public knowledge at this point”)
• Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ brazenly false attempt to say Trump isn’t racist completely backfired spectacularly
• The White House’s Striking Equivocation on a Trump N-Word Tape (“The president’s spokeswoman has risked her credibility for him time and again, but on Tuesday she wouldn’t give a direct answer about whether he was recorded using a racist slur.” She has no credibility to risk!)
• The Defense Spending Bill Is an Abomination (It’s an “environmental disaster,” also “is going to hand a graft-ridden and completely incompetent administration $717 billion to squander and grift, or $82 billion more than the 2018 bill ladled out.”)
• Colbert mocks Sarah Sanders’ claim Trump hasn’t said the N-word: ‘Is there a special room’ for racism?
• Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer concedes GOP primary to Trump ally Kris Kobach
• The Country’s Most Notorious Vote Suppressor Is the GOP Nominee for Kansas Governor (Kobach absolutely should NOT hold public office. Of any kind.)
• Stoplight Skeptic Gary Johnson Just Decided the Senate Is in Need of a Libertarian Loon (“The stellar presidential candidate plots another path to federal government—and to causing trouble for another Democrat.”)
• Tucker Carlson claims there’s no white nationalism. His show’s obsessive racism suggests otherwise (“Fox host’s claim that virulent racism is a myth is belied by the millions who tune into his show every night”)
• Why Trump will pardon Paul Manafort (“He has obviously calculated, and rightly so, that if he can keep that base firmly behind him, Republicans in the House will never vote to impeach him, and even if Democrats took control of the chamber and did so, Republicans in the Senate would never vote to convict.”)
• White House Falsely Says Trump Beat Obama on Black Employment (In fact, “African-American employment grew by 3 million under Obama”)
• ‘People are terrified’: Trump staffers live in fear of Omarosa’s next tape (“Trump aides are suffering from the same type of psychological warfare that gripped Clinton’s campaign during the WikiLeaks dumps.”)
• Trump Campaign Says It Has Filed Case Against Omarosa Manigault Newman
• ‘He created Omarosa’: How Trump’s protegee turned his tactics against him
• Dog Days: Trump and His Toxic Twitter Insults of Omarosa
• Twitter suspends Infowars’ Alex Jones for abuse (“Far-right conspiracy theorist will not be able to tweet, retweet or favourite tweets for seven days”)
• Alex Jones threatens Sandy Hook parents with cease and desist letters if they keep talking about his conspiracy theories (“In video posted to Twitter, Jones tells parents to stop talking about him ‘in the memory of your children'” This guy is utterly evil.)
• Roger Stone’s swastika meme previously appeared on 4chan, Twitter and Reddit
• As more women run for office, U.S. state legislatures are poised to change
• Do Recent Headlines Hurt Scott Taylor? (“Maybe now we view Taylor as a little bit more vulnerable relatively speaking compared to some other Republicans in toss-up races.”)
• Legislation targets teacher shortage (“The Preparing and Retaining Education Professionals (PREP) Act, introduced by United States Sen. Tim Kaine, would help ensure that enough teachers and principals with the right skills are available to educate students, according to a statement from Kaine’s office.”)
• Schapiro: Virginia’s taxing debate over taxes
• Taylor: sure I’ll debate, just not at WHRO (What a joke this guy is.)
• Northam: Working to build a Virginia economy for everyone (“The recent federal tax changes have benefited mainly higher earners. These tax policy changes from Washington will result in additional revenues to Virginia. We can use this opportunity to invest in those who need it most— hard working Virginians. We can do this by making Virginia’s existing earned income tax credit refundable, ensuring that 600,000 working Virginians, including thousands of veteran and military families, can get the full tax benefit for which they qualify.”)
• Editorial: Lots of Virginia schools are outdated. Why that matters.
  
• Virginia report clears child detention center of abuse, but youths’ lawyer says investigation was insufficient (“Attorneys for the immigrant youths slammed the report as a whitewash. ‘It was a shockingly inadequate investigation,’ said Jonathan M. Smith, executive director of the Washington Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, which represents the youths in the class-action lawsuit. He said the report was insufficiently reported and misleading…Had investigators spoken with us, we could have pointed them to the public record that would have disputed the one-sided report they got from the facility.”)
• Watchdog group says more investigation needed at Staunton-area jail where immigrant teens alleged abuse
• Opinion/Editorial: Ryan apology should assist UVa to heal
• Keepers pleads guilty to concealment of body in Lovell murder case
• Newport News City Council votes to designate City Farm ‘park’ following outpouring of advocacy
• Twenty-eight Richmond-area businesses make this year’s Inc. 5000 list of the nation’s fastest-growing companies
• A few showers or a storm through evening, then turning hotter for a dry Wednesday