Tuesday News: “Trump’s America Is a ‘White Man’s Country’”; Racism Is “At the Core of His Political Ideology”; Trump’s the One Who “Hates America”; Denver Riggleman, Who Has Horrible LGBT Voting Record, Presides at Same-Sex Marriage

by Lowell

Here are a few national and Virginia news headlines, political and otherwise, for Tuesday, July 16.

• Climate change is worsening wildfires, new study highlights
• Pelosi knocks White House fallback plan on debt limit, putting pressure on late-stage budget talks
• Republicans embrace Trump’s racism. Blame them as much as him.
• Trump’s incendiary rhetoric is met with fading resistance from Republican and corporate leaders (I expect it from Republicans, but that’s *really* bad by corporate leaders.)
• Racism Comes Out of the Closet (“The dog whistle days are apparently over.”)
• Mr. Trump appeared to revel in the viciousness of his brawl with the lawmakers. They pushed back.
• Trump Takes a Dump on the American Dream (“The president delivered a mouth-breathing clod take on the majesty and magic of our country, our history, and our Constitution, and a middle finger to our immigrant ancestors.”)
• Trump’s America Is a ‘White Man’s Country’ (“His racist idea of citizenship is an old one, brought back from the margins of American politics.”)
• A Message in Republicans’ Muted Criticism: It’s Trump’s Party (“As President Trump stepped up his comments accusing four Democratic congresswomen of color of hating America, Republicans were mostly quiet. The scant condemnation shows Mr. Trump’s control of the party and also reflects an eye toward 2020, our correspondent writes in an analysis.”)
• ‘His only tool is racism’: why Trump’s bigoted tirade could be a vote winner (The fact is, a large percentage of Americans holds racist views and/or is ok with the president expressing them. And yes, it’s horrifying.)
• Republicans Baffled Why Trump Keeps Saying Racist Things (“When forced to express discomfort, they will disassociate his latest outrage from his character. Trump may have said something racist, his allies will concede, but Trump cannot be a racist.”)
• Trump’s racism cements his party’s place among the West’s far right
• George Conway: Trump is a racist president
• Joe Biden Tells ‘Flat Racist’ Trump He Should Go Home
• Trump’s racist tweets are one of the lowest moments of his presidency
• Trump Plays to Die-Hard Base With Attack on Democratic Women
• Most Racist Presidential Comment of My Lifetime?
• Trump Made the Bad Blood Between Democrats Look Like Lemonade (“The president* put Nancy Pelosi and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s beef in perspective with some truly rancid tweets.”)
• The President* Is Now Arguing He’s the Real Victim of His Own Bigotry (“Plus: an assault on asylum and Wilbur Ross is on the chopping block.”)
• ‘Go Back Where You Came From’: The Long Rhetorical Roots Of Trump’s Racist Tweets (Good job by NPR on this headline.)
• Trump has done the impossible: He has united the Democrats
• I may not agree with AOC’s squad, but they are better Americans than Trump
• ‘Racist’ tweets? News media grapple with how to label Trump’s latest attacks (Any media outlet that calls Trump’s tweets anything other than “racist” – for instance, “racially charged” or “racially tinged” – is simply not doing its job. Also, they are cowards.)
• Donald Trump Continues To Show He’s Racist (“The president’s tweet targeting congresswomen of color is just the latest in a long list of examples.”)
• A Racist in the White House (“In 2008, we enjoyed the illusion of racial progress. Today, Donald Trump is in the White House.”)
• Numerous outlets gave Trump a pass for racist tweets in their headlines (“Several ABC News Twitter accounts described the president’s comments as ‘racially-charged,’ as did The Wall Street Journal and NPR (though a later ABC News headline did describe the tweets as ‘racist’). The New York Times in particular failed in its multiple news articles covering the tweets, in one headline describing what Trump wrote as fanning a ‘racial fire.'”)
• Lindsey Graham Called AOC a “Communist” in Rambling Fox & Friends Segment About the President’s Racist Tweets
• We need someone who can lift us up again. Enter President Obama. (“Mr. President, it is time. You must speak. Your country needs you.”)
• Trump Tells America What Kind of Nationalist He Is (“In a series of tweets attacking four Democratic congresswomen, the president reiterated his belief that only white people can truly be American.”)
• Editorial: Trump has it wrong; he seems to be the one who hates America
• Trump just denied his attacks are racist. He only confirmed the worst. (“As Jacob T. Levy observes, Trump’s repetition of racist and white nationalist tropes is laying waste to the norm, recently observed in both parties, according to which elites signal to white voters (at least nominally) that they should be better than our history…In that context, the reluctance of GOP lawmakers to condemn Trump’s latest racism becomes a lot more significant. And so does Trump’s staged denial of the racism that’s staring us all in the face, which is central to the broader normalizing of it that’s underway.”)
• Democrats plan vote on resolution against Trump
• Rep. Ilhan Omar Has Been A U.S. Citizen Longer Than Melania Trump (“Donald Trump presumably doesn’t question his wife’s right to criticize her adopted country.”)
• What on Earth Happened to the Republican Party? (“The closest thing we get – even here on Bearing Drift itself – is a pox on all houses post from my Bearing Drift colleague.” Good for D.J. McGuire, but sadly he’s a rare voice on the right these days.)
• Have Fun With the “Civil War.” I’m All In for Whoever Wins.
• Fox’s Katie Pavlich defends Trump’s racist tweets: “He didn’t say go there permanently. He said go there, fix the problem, come back.” (Demented.)
• The Conservative Effort to Salt the Judiciary With Larval Scalias Is Close to Complete (“This would be the case under any Republican president.”)
• Biden’s health care plan reveals the divide among Democrats
• After years of decrying McCarthyism, Lindsey Graham accuses members of Congress of being Communists (Graham is a seriously sick individual.)
• Trump abortion restrictions go into effect immediately (“Effective immediately, family planning clinics that are funded by taxpayers must stop referring women for abortions, the Trump administration said Monday.”)
• Low-polling Democratic presidential candidates spent almost all the money they raised in the second quarter
• ‘Doomsday scenario’: Cash shortage squeezes huge Dem field (“Nearly half of Democratic candidates spent more campaign cash than they raised in the second quarter of the year.”)
• Beto O’Rourke’s Fund-Raising Falters as 2020 Democrats Announce Finances
• Video: Republican Finally (Sort Of) Comments on Trump’s Racist Tweet; Ken Cuccinelli Dodges, Lies, Blabbers About How It Actually Could be Helpful
• CNN Panel on Trump’s Demagoguery Goes Off the Rails: ‘The White Nationalists Will Never Love You’
• GOP put on the back foot by Trump’s race storm
• Democrats erupt over Trump attacks
• Wash. Post overstates the NRA’s ability to influence legislation and elections (“To explain the Virginia legislature’s refusal to take up gun safety initiatives, look to racist GOP gerrymandering, not NRA power”)
• Virginia Republicans’ Pre-Existing Condition: Opposition to Health Care Expansion
• Virginia Campaign Finance Numbers for June 2019 Coming In…
• New Campaign Finance Numbers Lead to Several Changes in Virginia House of Delegates, State Senate Ratings by Chaz Nuttycombe
• In Democratic Fund-Raising, Five Candidates Stand Out (“The latest campaign finance filings show which Democrats gained steam in the money race and who is sputtering. Five candidates raised a combined $96 million from individual donors in the last three months, about three-quarters of the entire field’s fund-raising.”)
• Leanne Fox column: Elect candidates who want to stop gun violence (“Leanne Fox of Crozet is a gun owner, mother and volunteer with the Virginia chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.”)
• Why Did Virginia Republicans Run Away from Special Session on Guns? Thanks to Amanda Chase, Now We Know.
• EDITORIAL: Voters will have say on brief special session (“… this special session was set up to fail because Republican lawmakers decided ahead of time that the governor’s proposals would not have prevented the Virginia Beach shooting and were therefore irrelevant.”)
• MVP’s violations show ‘complete absence of any and all meaningful regulation’
• At reconvened Council on Environmental Justice, tensions linger
• 10 Activists Block Entrance to Mountain Valley Pipeline Work Site in Montgomery County, VA
• Even without citizenship question, Virginia health programs could suffer from census miscount
• Avowed neo-Nazi gets additional life term in Charlottesville attack (Good riddance.)
• Conservative GOP congressman presides at same-sex wedding in Virginia (“Rep. Denver Riggleman, a self-described ‘Liberty Republican’ married two men who volunteered on his 2018 campaign.” Uhhh…the same guy who “opposed the Equality Act, legislation that would ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity,” and “voted against a resolution opposing President Trump’s ban on transgender service members?” What a joke.)
• A police officer forced a black teen to stand for the pledge at the Virginia Capitol. Then she apologized (The RTD finally gets around to reporting on the story we posted here on July 13.)
• Staton Jumps into Board Race as Replacement in Ashburn (Staton is a right-wing extremist, just like his father-in-law Dick Black)
• Amazon spillover in Fairfax (and what to do about Tysons traffic)
• Henrico officials don’t know why county’s jail population is increasing, despite regional decline in incarceration
• Retired champion boxer hit, killed while crossing Virginia Beach street
• Virginia Beach man charged with 2 counts of murder in his parents’ deaths
• Virginia school district adopts dress code that isn’t sexist! Students helped draft rules
• Heat and humidity increase and storm chances return ahead of a scorching weekend (“Temperatures near 100 are possible Friday and Saturday.” Very consistent with what one would expect in a dangerously heated-up world.)