Saturday News: “Fake Trump Emergency,” Rambling Press Conference Filled with Lies; “‘I Didn’t Need to Do This’ Sums Up the Entire Trump Presidency”; “Virginia Democrats Now Look To Women of Color For Leadership”

by Lowell

Here are a few national and Virginia news headlines, political and otherwise, for Saturday, February 16.

• Europe says it will stick with the Iran deal, defying a U.S. demand
• A Weak and Rambling President Declares a Fake National Emergency (“Trump’s description of the situation at the border is almost entirely fictitious, of course, but in one sense it is real. It’s a central element of the political narrative he has constructed for his white-nationalist base over the past three and a half years, and, as he helpfully sought to explain, it’s one he can’t easily back away from at this stage.”)
• Trump’s Emergency Declaration Shows He Is Unfit for Office (“At worst, President Trump’s claim of emergency powers that would allow him to expand barriers on the southern border is a gross violation of democratic norms. At best, it is a craven ploy to cover his own blundering. Either way, it is a devastating indictment of his capacity to handle his job.”)
• This Trump performance is why people talk about the 25th Amendment
• Don’t be fooled by Trump’s make-believe crisis
• Phony Wall, Phony Emergency (“The president plans to manage the border crisis from the golf course at Mar-a-Lago this weekend.”)
• Trump Declares a National Emergency, and Provokes a Constitutional Clash
• Trump’s ‘National Emergency’ Is a Purely Dictatorial Action (“It is an abuse of power. It is an assault on Congress’s Article I powers. Mitch McConnell is complicit.”)
• Trump just plunged the country into dangerous new territory. Here’s what’s really at stake. (“What’s at stake in this battle is a simple dilemma: Can the president declare a national emergency, and appropriate all the powers that this confers on him, when there isn’t any national emergency?”)
• Trump’s Emergency Declaration Is Contemptuous of the Rule of Law
• Trump Isn’t Just Defying the Constitution. He’s Undermining SCOTUS. (“The president defended his national emergency by boasting that he’ll win at the Supreme Court because it’s full of his judges.”)
• Trump’s National Emergency Just Got Its First Legal Challenge (“Legal advocacy group Public Citizen filed suit on behalf of landowners in Texas and an environmental group. More lawsuits are expected.”)
• ‘I Didn’t Need to Do This’ Sums Up the Entire Trump Presidency (“Trump’s national emergency declaration to build a southern border wall will be met with fierce Democratic opposition, both legally and in Congress”)
• ‘A recipe for disaster’? Trump’s border emergency drags the GOP into a risky fight ahead of 2020. (“If they back Trump’s emergency declaration, many lawmakers worry, they will be greenlighting a White House power grab that infringes on Congress’s constitutional power over spending. But if they oppose it, they risk attracting the wrath of Trump’s political base — and perhaps a primary challenge.”)
• 5 ways Trump’s national emergency declaration could be stopped
• Fact-checking Trump’s announcement of a national emergency (“It was chock-full of false and misleading claims, many of which we’ve previously highlighted, either in our database of Trump claims or our list of Bottomless Pinocchios. Here’s a summary of 14 of the most noteworthy claims, starting with immigration ones first.”)
• Why Trump’s Going to Win on the National Emergency (“There’s one arena where the president always succeeds: getting the Republican Party to abandon its principles.”)
• Trump’s Emergency Declaration Proves He Isn’t a Political Savant — He’s Just Addicted to Fox News
• Trump Promised to ‘Build That Wall,’ Then Ran Out of Time and Options (“The president’s declaration of a national emergency to fund a southern border barrier comes after divisions and competing priorities in the White House allowed the project to languish”)
• Ann Coulter Fires Back at Trump: ‘The Only National Emergency Is That Our President Is an Idiot’ (Wait, I actually agree with right-wing extremist Ann Coulter for once? Except for totally different reasons.)
• During national emergency declaration, Trump praises Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Tucker Carlson for supporting him (That might be the most demented thing Trump did yesterday, among his torrent of lies and violation of democratic norms.)
• Fox’s Bill Hemmer calls Trump’s national emergency speech “a tour de force” (Speaking of demented – Bill Hemmer.)
• Rambling Trump calls an emergency in speech that goes on and on and on (“Trump’s White House screed was him at his Trumpiest – the old man at the bar sounding off about the world’s ills”)
• Trump’s emergency declaration is unconstitutional – ask his lawyers (“When Obama used executive powers on immigration, Jay Sekulow and Noel Francisco cried tyranny”)
• Munich or a Requiem for the West (“It’s no longer worth pretending Trump is not in the authoritarian camp. The shock has passed. European powers are thinking again.”)
• Moments after declaring national emergency, Trump admits there’s no emergency (“I didn’t need to do this.”)
• A quote Trump may come to regret: ‘I didn’t need to do this’
• Dems ready aggressive response to Trump emergency order, as GOP splinters
• Trump’s Rose Garden Fiasco Was a Commercial for the 25th Amendment (“If your uncle behaved like this, you’d hide the car keys.”)
• Trump’s emergency declaration is a ‘looming disaster’ for McConnell and Republicans in 2020: GOP donor
• How Schumer and McConnell kept Trump out of the shutdown talks (“While the president claims he’s the dealmaker-in-chief, it was veteran lawmakers who got it done.”)
• Paul Manafort should be sentenced to up to 24 years in prison, Mueller says
• Trump’s bewildering national emergency press conference, annotated (“President Trump declared a national emergency at the southern border on Friday — but not without making a scene full of false claims, offbeat comments and tense exchanges.”)
• Six dead, seven injured in mass shooting near Chicago (How about gun violence as a real national emergency?)
• Words are a president’s strongest weapon. Trump is terrible at words. (“The lawyers will fight over the legality and constitutionality of President Trump’s national emergency declaration. What his legal team can’t salvage is the American people’s assessment of his ability to do his job.” Imbeciles and racists elected an imbecile and racist.)
• Exclusive: WH press secretary Sarah Sanders interviewed by special counsel’s office
• Special counsel prosecutors say they have communications of Stone with WikiLeaks
• Texas elections chief sorry for fake news about 95,000 “illegal” voters, still wants purge
• Bill Weld Has What Any Republican Needs to Primary Trump: He Doesn’t Give a Damn (“The former Massachusetts governor is ready for one last leap in the dark.”)
• Supreme Court Will Hear Case Challenging Citizenship Question In 2020 Census (“A federal judge in New York blocked the Trump administration from adding the question earlier this year.”)
• Ex-cardinal McCarrick defrocked by Vatican for sexual abuse
• Colin Kaepernick and Eric Reid settle collusion case with NFL
• Kaepernick deal could close NFL’s kneeling chapter (“A sports agent says the NFL could have paid dearly to ‘not continue with this issue.'”)
• Tax Refund Fiasco Is Political Payback For Republicans (“They stepped on this rake last year and now it’s hitting them in the face.”)
• Biden Reportedly “95 Percent” Ready for 2020 Run (“After months (and years) of flirting with another presidential bid, sources close to Biden say he’s almost at yes.”)
• Eric Trump Blames Democrats for Ruining His Plans to Profit Off the Presidency
• Kaine asks Shanahan if military families would be hurt by moving $3.6B for border wall
• Warner Introduces Act to Protect Credit Scores of Shutdown Workers
• Virginia politics: The uneasy marriage of new liberalism and historic racism
• Virginia Democrats Now Look To Women of Color For Leadership
• Ralph Northam wants forgiveness. Virginia’s black activists want him to work for it. (“The embattled governor’s fight for redemption is just beginning.”)
• Northern Virginia Is Keeping Amazon’s 25,000 Jobs, and Wants You to Know It
• Poll: Despite All the Virginia Republican Outrage, Virginians Overwhelmingly Support Third-Trimester Abortion Where a Woman’s Health Is At Risk
• Video: Del. Patrick Hope Defends Call for Impeachment of LG Justin Fairfax, Says It’s “fundamentally first and foremost about due process”
• Spanberger reacts to scandal in Richmond
• Clicking Clean Virginia (“The Dirty Energy Powering Data Center Alley”)
• For job creation, solar is a winner: Virginia’s solar jobs rose nine percent in 2018
• Tax department to ‘crank it up’ as Northam signs tax bills
• LGBT activists upset with loss of Va. anti-discrimination bills turn to November (As should pro-ERA activists, climate/environmental activists, gun violence prevention activists, etc, etc.)
• Northam’s hometown struggles to square the man they know with the photo in his yearbook
• Va. House Republicans let LGBT non-discrimination bills die without a hearing
• Mountain Valley Pipeline acknowledges criminal investigation into alleged environmental violations (“On January 7, 2019, the MVP Joint Venture received a letter from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Virginia stating that it and the EPA are investigating potential criminal and/or civil violations of the Clean Water Act and other federal statutes as they relate to the construction of the MVP. The January 7, 2019, letter requests the MVP Joint Venture and its members, contractors, suppliers and other entities involved in the construction of the MVP to preserve documents related to the MVP generated from September 1, 2018 to the present.”)
• Governor announces winner of $3.3 billion contract to expand HRBT by 2025
• Alicia Plerhoples Announces Candidacy for Chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors
• Virginia election on Tuesday could offer first glimpse of scandals’ impact
  
• After persuasion, bill changing ‘Good Samaritan’ law advances from House panel
• General Assembly Notebook: House panel backs mandatory minimum for killing police dogs
• Council 20 of AFSCME, the Largest Public Sector Union in the County, Endorses Democrat Tim Chapman for Fairfax County Board Chair
• Colder this weekend with a light mix chance late Sunday; Winter storm next week? (“Presidents’ Day looks good. Tuesday night and Wednesday? Not so good.”)