by Lowell
Here are a few national and Virginia news headlines, political and otherwise, for Thursday, August 8.
- June was the hottest month ever. Literally. (“That’s actually the good news. The bad news: It’s probably going to get worse. Will global leaders finally act on climate change?”)
- UN panel calls for changes to farming, diets to stave off climate change (Ditch meat for starters.)
- Climate Change Is Taking a Bigger Toll on Our Food, Water, and Land Than We Realized
- IPCC Report Urges Food System Overhaul to Save the Climate and Food Security (“Better land use, less-meat-intensive diets and eliminating food waste should be priorities to help forestall a climate catastrophe, the report says.”)
- World Must Protect Land To Avoid Climate Disaster, New UN Report Warns (“Averting catastrophic warming requires rapid, global changes to land use and food production, the assessment says.”)
- U.S. Rushes to Ready New China Tariffs as Companies Fear Damage (“U.S. companies complain about lack of clarity, short notice” Why are Republicans so anti-business?)
- China’s Hand Is Stronger Than Trump Thinks (“Beijing is less concerned about capital flight than in the past and could easily let the yuan weaken further.”)
- North Korea keeps testing missiles, ‘playing Trump for a fool’ (“Pyongyang is engaging in its own maximum pressure campaign.”)
- Banks Hand Over Documents on Russians Possibly Linked to Trump
- White Nationalist Terrorism Is a Problem. Trump Is a Bigger One. (“He’s done more damage to our democracy than an armed psychopathic racist ever could”)
- In visit to Dayton, Trump finds a victim — himself (“Analysis: The president threatened to overshadow his role of consoler-in-chief with a self-soothing Twitter war.”)
- Trump Has Dragged Us Into the Gutter (“The targets of the president’s rhetoric are experiencing a nightmare like no other in this country.”)
- Trump attacks local leaders as he visits two cities grieving from mass shootings
- Can the country come back from Trump? The Republic already looks like Rome in ruins. (As Joe Biden says, we might be able to survive four years of this, but definitely not eight years.)
- Trump Says There Are Some Very Bad People on Both Sides (“The president’s false equivalencies amount to a denial of the role that ideology played in the El Paso shooting.”)
- ‘People are afraid to be Hispanic’: Trump visits an angry, grieving El Paso (“President faces protests as he spends day at sites of mass shootings in Texas and Dayton, Ohio”)
- Right-wing extremism in America is a real threat. Conservative media downplaying the problem only makes it worse. (“Why does right-wing rhetoric keep finding its way into the words of murderers?”)
- Fox News circles the wagons in the wake of the El Paso shooting
- AFTER THE SHOOTINGS: On a Day Set Aside for Healing, Trump Stokes Divisions
- Joe Biden’s speech in Iowa puts Trump to shame
- Joe Biden reminded all of us of what a presidential president would sound like (Excellent speech.)
- Trump campaign ad featured QAnon signs despite FBI warning that conspiracy could motivate extremists (“The FBI warned that QAnon could ‘motivate’ domestic extremists ‘to commit criminal and sometimes violent activity'”)
- Trump’s openness to extensive background checks for gun buys draws warning from NRA
- Booker floats ‘nature-based’ climate strategy
- Bodies found in Canada believed to be teen suspects wanted for multiple murders, police say
- The Oil Giants Might Finally Pay for Pulling the Biggest Hoax of All (“New York State is alleging ExxonMobil knew the risks of climate change and defrauded its investors by misrepresenting them.”)
- ICE agents raid Miss. work sites, arrest 680 people in largest single-state immigration enforcement action in U.S. history
- House Retirement Tracker: GOP Exits Mount, Hurting Chances To Flip Control In 2020
- Tragedy puts spotlight on O’Rourke (He’s been superb the past few days, no question.)
- The Conservative Capacity for Fauxtrage—and Hypocrisy—Is Limitless (“Joaquin Castro set everybody off.”)
- Democrats and the FBI say white extremism is a huge problem. Trump disagrees. (Of course Trump says that.)
- Harry Reid to Dems: Kill the Filibuster to Tackle the Climate Crisis (“The former majority leader has some thoughts about what his party should do should it return to power.”)
- Lawmakers Accuse Trump Administration of Circumventing Congress on Weather Service Staffing (“Employees say they are working more overtime on account of vacancies than they are allowed to get paid for.”)
- USA Today’s Virginia HQ evacuated amid reports of man with weapon (“The reports were determined to be a false alarm and an all clear was give. A 911 caller told police there was an armed, former employee on the grounds.”)
- Susan Collins has a predictably pathetic response to El Paso and Dayton shootings (“There are times for political debate, but this is not one of them.”)
- False Reports Of Gunmen In N.Y.C. And Virginia Cause Jitters Following Mass Shootings
- Hundreds of USDA employees to be removed from their jobs in September (“The Agriculture Department is preparing to issue hundreds of termination letters to employees who have not agreed to move from D.C. to Kansas City.” Totally f’ed up.)
- It’s been over 600 days since U.S. Park Police killed an unarmed man. We still have no answers. (“For nearly that entire time, since November 2017, the FBI has been — so we are told — conducting an investigation. For nearly that entire time, officials at the Park Police, the FBI and the Justice Department have treated requests for information — from Congress, from the Ghaisar family and from the media — with contempt.”)
- Despite legislative blocks, one form of carbon cap-and-trade is alive and well in Virginia (“In the Appalachian Mountains that surround the Clinch River Valley, vast forests are quietly capturing carbon that is quantified for sale in California’s cap-and-trade market. Then, depending on the forest’s ownership, profits are plowed back into conservation efforts at home or, until recently, paid out to investors.”)
- Video: EW Jackson Declares, “As a Black American…It is a lie! The president has NOT stoked racism.” (“I’m just really disgusted with the level of racial demagoguery coming out of Beto O’Rourke”)
- Three Democrats Now Vying to Take on Rep. Denver “Bigfoot” Riggleman (R-VA05) (Dr. Cameron Webb, Kim Daugherty, RD Huffstetler)
- It can be tough to get action on white supremacists, Herring says
- Does the Winchester Star Have the Worst Editorial Page in Virginia? (Trump-loving rag rants that Northam talked about “Virginia’s dubious 21st century achievements — i.e., homosexual marriage, elevation of the transgender lifestyle”)
- Schapiro: Long before Trump did it, a Virginia governor inspired extremists (“A politician’s inflammatory rhetoric is seized by deplorables, long before they were labeled such by Hillary Clinton.”)
- November’s election will determine what Virginia does — or doesn’t do — about guns
- MVP tries again to remove 2 tree-sitters who have blocked work on the pipeline for nearly a year
- Legislator knows where blame truly lies in ballot screw-up
- ‘The pig bomb’: Feral hogs make a great meme, but they are a serious pest in Virginia
- Governor Northam Announces Three New Solar Installations on State Facilities
- Fairfax County Plans a Historic Solar Buy—If Dominion Energy Doesn’t Stand In the Way
- Work with rural communities toward clean water goals
- At town hall hosted by NAACP, community members address vandalism at Richmond school, root causes
- Legionella bacteria found at seven Chesterfield locations — including a hospital and three schools
- Hampton University looks to train next generation of black esports players, entrepreneurs
- Fairfax school officials made sex jokes after hearing of alleged assault, testimony shows
- Storm causes flooding and power outages for thousands in Hampton Roads
- Muggy again today with more storms possible; trending less humid into the weekend
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