Saturday News: “Manafort Folds. Now What?”; “Florence swamps Carolinas”; “How Little Has Changed Since Anita Hill Spoke Out Against Clarence Thomas” TX Erases Hillary Clinton from History Books;

by Lowell

Here are a few national and Virginia news headlines, political and otherwise, for Saturday, September 15.

• Manafort to cooperate with Mueller in plea deal that could answer key questions in Russia probe (“Flipping the former Trump campaign chairman gives the special counsel a cooperating witness who was at key events relevant to the investigation, including a Trump Tower meeting attended by a Russian lawyer and a host of other behind-the-scenes discussions.”)
• Guilty plea exposes hardball tactics Manafort used to thrive in ‘swamp’ (“Before he was the Trump campaign chairman, the lobbyist went to extreme lengths in a secret effort to help a Ukrainian politician, court papers show.”)
• Manafort Folds. Now What? (“His cooperation agreement with Robert Mueller is the start of a new chapter in the special counsel’s investigation.”)
• Five takeaways from Manafort’s plea deal (“Manafort is widely viewed as an important witness for Mueller as he seeks to answer the central question in his investigation: whether the Trump campaign colluded with Moscow.”)
• What Manafort’s plea agreement could mean for Trump (“Cooperation deals typically are offered to those who can deliver the goods on someone higher up the food chain.”)
• Parsing Paul Manafort’s Plea Agreement for How Much Dirt He Has on Trump
• Trump can start panicking now: Manafort will cooperate with the special counsel
• Manafort’s deal reins in a pardon’s impact (“Several aspects of the Mueller Russia probe’s latest bombshell plea deal could stymie any pardon granted by the president. But Trump may not care.”)
• Manafort’s surrender shows Mueller probe’s overwhelming force (“A surprise guilty plea from Trump’s former campaign chairman shows that Mueller’s high-powered probe has been nearly impossible to resist.”)
• All the Ways Paul Manafort’s Guilty Plea Will Hurt Donald Trump
• Manafort cooperation could energize Mueller probe: legal experts
• Paul Manafort knows some of Trump’s deepest secrets. And now he works for Mueller.
• At least five dead, hundreds of thousands without power as Florence swamps Carolinas
• Republicans are tripping on Trump’s coattails — bigly
• What Paul Manafort Knows (“Paul Manafort’s decision to cooperate with Robert Mueller could clarify several of the biggest mysteries of the Russia investigation.”)
• Pompeo, Kerry clash in remarkable stand-off over Iran (“Kerry and his aides dismissed such allegations as utter bunk, pointing out that Kerry had briefed Pompeo and the State Department about his discussions with Zarif. Kerry twisted the knife even more on Twitter by raising Trump’s legal woes, saying the president should ‘be more worried about Paul Manafort meeting with Robert Mueller than me meeting with Iran’s [foreign minister].'”)
• Donald Trump Continues Puerto Rico Rant As Five Confirmed Dead In Hurricane Florence
• ‘There never is a strategy’: Trump confronts twin Manafort and Kavanaugh crises (“After canceling rallies ahead of Hurricane Florence, the president hunkered down in the White House amid a fresh wave of setbacks.”)
• Sexual assault claim leaves Kavanaugh nomination in limbo (“Other than Dianne Feinstein, members of both parties said they were blindsided by the decades-old allegation.”)
• Our System Is Too Broken to Assess the Sexual Assault Claim Against Kavanaugh
• Michael Cohen Is the Latest Former Trump Ally to Talk to Mueller (“In the wake of Manafort’s plea deal, sources confirm that it is now common knowledge among Cohen’s inner circle that Trump’s former lawyer has been in contact with the special counsel’s office.”)
• We don’t need more doomsday climate predictions. We need solutions — like this one. (“Capping total carbon dioxide emissions nationwide and allowing producers to trade emission permits are not an intrusion on the free market, as some conservatives have complained of the trailblazing program underway in California. Instead, cap and trade empowers the market…When carbon-dioxide emissions reflect what most of us agree to be their true costs, capitalists throughout the economy will turn their resources to cutting those costs. They will discover greater efficiencies. They will invest in alternative energy. They will sink money into inventions and technologies undreamed of today. They will move with speed and agility no government bureaucracy can match.”)
• I Believe Brett Kavanaugh Doesn’t Belong on the Supreme Court as Strongly as I Believe He’ll Be There (“Everything new we learn about him further undermines his fitness.”)
• The Hacking of America (“Political and technological disruption have fed off each other since the nation’s founding. Now they are dangerously out of whack…the rules that prevail on the internet were devised by people who fundamentally don’t believe in government.”)
• The oceans are in danger. We need to do more than ban plastic straws. (” To truly save the ocean, we must take serious action to halt climate change on a global scale — and soon. Our oceans are critical to every part of our lives — they feed us, transport us, secure our borders, employ us, give us oxygen and inspire us — but week after week, headlines reflect gloom and doom…We can’t let a president who doesn’t believe in science or care about climate change stop us.”)
• By announcing California’s first satellite launch, Gov. Jerry Brown ends climate summit with a cosmic boom
• It Takes More Than ‘Adults in the Room’ to Control a Petulant Leader Like Trump (“Nazism, which several generations of Americans have grown accustomed to thinking of as an exotic symbol of pure, abstract evil, in reality represents a political faction. Trump is not a Nazi. Nor, even, is Steve Bannon. They are, however, Nazi-adjacent, and actual neo-Nazis are excited about Trump, who has emboldened and empowered white nationalists in a way nobody could have fathomed until recently. They are just another part of the party coalition now.”)
• Fraying Ties With Trump Put Mattis’s Fate in Doubt (That’s scary.)
• ‘Vanity project’: Cynthia Nixon gets The Gong Show treatment (“For all the sense that a new age of democratic socialism was dawning in New York, Andrew Cuomo won in a landslide…she barely outperformed Zephyr Teachout when Teachout ran against Andrew Cuomo in 2014 as a complete unknown, before Bernie Sanders’ candidacy and Donald Trump’s presidency. There wasn’t another Democratic primary challenger in the country who got as much attention but such a small share of the vote — 35 percent.” And her attempts to blame high voter turnout show why she richly deserved to lose.)
• It’s Not Just the President* Who Ought to Be Sweating Today (“Don’t forget Paul Manafort got Mike Pence the VP job.”)
• The Massachusetts Explosions Are a Grim Reminder That Our Infrastructure Is Failing (“One person is dead. It could have been far worse.”)
• Republicans’ gross responses to assault allegation against Brett Kavanaugh (“The GOP reacted by pointing out there are women Kavanaugh didn’t rape.”)
• All this Team Trump praise of Manafort is now extremely awkward (“Paul Manafort has done an amazing job.”)
• There is no bottom (“Free of oversight and enabled by toadies, the president disappears Puerto Rico’s dead” Trump is utter scum, as are his sons, as are his enablers and apologists.)
• Cruz-O’Rourke increasingly looks like Allen-Webb (” The 2006 Virginia race proved anything could happen, even in a race widely deemed to favor the incumbent. Cruz needs to take note. There is one huge difference. Cruz has made some silly statements about O’Rourke’s name, but has yet to commit a major gaffe.” Yeah, I don’t think Allen lost because of the “gaffe,” per se. Also, I’d argue that every time Cruz opens his mouth, he says something crazy, offensive, ridiculous, etc. I guess our standards have really declined since 2006.)
• USA Today publishes climate denial on its opinion page, nine months after saying it wouldn’t (USA Today just lost all credibility.)
• The Secret to Cracking Trump’s Base (“New polls show that some of the most hard-core Trumpsters are starting to get a clue. It might be because he finally crossed a line: He’s now insulting them.”)
• Texas State Board of Education votes to erase Hillary Clinton from history curriculum (WTF???)
• Super Typhoon Mangkhut Slams Into The Philippines
• Some Republicans Stick By Brett Kavanaugh In Face Of Attempted Sexual Assault Accusation
• How Little Has Changed Since Anita Hill Spoke Out Against Clarence Thomas (“A Supreme Court justice is once again on track to be confirmed despite facing sexual misconduct allegations.” Thomas has absolutely no business being on the Supreme Court.)
• At Miller Center, Kaine discusses religion in public life (“Kaine, who is seeking his second Senate term, says his Roman Catholic faith draws him to be out among people, to listen without assuming and to see the humanity in each person he encounters.”)
• Tim Kaine honors Matthew Shepard in ‘The Laramie Project’
• Former Va. governor Terry McAuliffe, potential 2020 contender, is heading to Iowa (“‘People want to talk 2020, I say forget it,’ he tweeted on Sept. 3. ‘Let’s focus on 2018.'” So much for that?)
• Court won’t immediately take over Va. redistricting, but sets contingency plan in motion
• Two describe state police interviews in ballot fraud case in Rep. Scott Taylor’s district(Also behind a paywall, but the VA Dem Party sent it out. In short, Lindsey Terry is heroic, while slimeball Scott Taylor “was trying to play the good guy while intimidating [her].” Also, unfortunately, the special prosecutor in Taylor’s #petitiongate scandal says his investigation “will not be complete prior to the election.” Bummer.)
• U.S. District Court Orders “Special Master” Names in “Racial Packing” Case by 9/20; Progress Reports on 9/28, 10/5, 10/19, 11/2
• Schapiro: Democrats should hedge their bets in the Spanberger-Brat race (Behind a strict paywall, but someone sent it to me, and it basically says either candidate could win, that they’re both trying to thread needles with suburban and rural voters, etc.)
• Rep. Brat Shouldn’t Breathe Easy, Despite Polling Data That Shows Him Ahead (This is basically a better-written version of Schapiro’s column.)
• 6th Congressional District: Cline, Lewis Will Debate in Penn Laird
• Pipeline work continues on Bent Mountain as storm approaches, angering opponents
• Northam lifts evacuation order for low-lying areas of Virginia as storm threat recedes
• GOP Senate candidate Stewart’s supporters close to home ask: Where is the Corey we know? (Corey’s gone completely to the dark side of the force and needs to be severely punished for doing so.)
• Why Virginia can’t draw a fair map
• Senators Help Raise Money for Harris Staffer’s Cancer Battle (Tim Kaine: “In 2012, @TyroneGayle was one of my closest campaign aides. We drove all over Virginia together. A former Clemson track star, he hasn’t run much since his cancer diagnosis. Now his friends run for him and have set up this cool fundraiser. Give if you can!https://www.gofundme.com/gayle-nation”)
• Peninsula area escapes Hurricane Florence’s wrath (“Hurricane Florence lashed out violently at the Carolina coast but left Virginia largely unscathed. Instead of the anticipated hum of emergency generators, local residents mostly heard stillness, perhaps interrupted by the sounds of children whose schools had been closed.”)
• Virginia attorney general says it’s too late for Shaun Brown to get name on ballot
• “We got really lucky again”: Florence fizzled in Hampton Roads
• Peninsula area businesses, schools reopen, plus here’s what’s still closed
• Cloudy but mostly dry today, chance of rain increases starting Sunday due to Florence