Thursday News: “Pound Falls Most Since 2017 as May’s Brexit Divorce Plan Rocked”; “Forget Impeachment. Mueller’s Real Threat to Trump Is in 2020”; “Virginia got a deal on its half of Amazon’s HQ2”

by Lowell

Here are a few national and Virginia news headlines, political and otherwise, for Thursday, November 15.

• Pound Falls Most Since 2017 as May’s Brexit Divorce Plan Rocked
• Britain’s Brexit secretary resigns over Theresa May’s plan to exit European Union
• U.K. Government in Crisis After Ministers Quit
• Britain Is Rushing to Seal a Brexit Deal Few Support (“Brexit negotiators have overcome the Irish border impasse, but can their deal pass muster in Parliament?”)
• Brexit: May hit by two cabinet resignations as Raab and McVey quit over plan – Politics live
• “Insanity,” “Furious,” “On His Own”: Trump’s Post-Midterms Blues Are Vexing His Staff and Roiling the White House (“He’s lashing out at aides and press and foreign leaders, and threatening to roll West Wing heads—but at least he didn’t get his hair wet at the Belleau Wood memorial.”)
• Saudi prosecutor seeks death penalty for suspects in Khashoggi’s killing (“Turkey has blamed the highest ranks of power in Saudi Arabia for Khashoggi’s brutal death, saying the kingdom sent an assassination squad for him.”)
• Second Trump-Kim summit to go ahead without list of nuclear North Korean weapons, Pence says
• ‘Hillary’s campaign will die this week’: Trump adviser knew about WikiLeaks’ efforts in advance (“But we were assured there was ‘no collusion’?”)
• The #FiveWhiteGuys Are Offering a Sucker’s Bet to Anti-Pelosi Democrats (“There is no need for any of this.”)
• Stormy Daniels’ Attorney Michael Avenatti Has Been Arrested On Suspicion Of Domestic Violence (This guy’s a real piece of work…)
• Will the Republican Party keep dancing with autocracy? (“Too many conservatives, especially among elected officials, have pulled their punches in the crunch and fallen silent under pressure.”)
• Jeff Flake says he’ll block judicial nominees until a Mueller protection bill gets a vote (I’ll believe it when I see it with this guy…)
• America will need years to clean up the toxins Trump has released (“He’s not just pushing the limits — he’s erasing them.”)
• Deputy national security adviser reassigned after first lady Melania Trump calls for firing
• Federal Judge Weighs Delay As Deadline Looms For Florida Recounts
• Trump Is Reshaping The Judiciary. A Breakdown By Race, Gender And Qualification (This is horrifying.)
• Decision Expected Today In CNN Suit Over White House Revoking Acosta’s Press Pass
• Insurgents seek female challenger to replace Pelosi
• Nancy Pelosi’s Democratic Foes Prepare To Go Public (“The House speaker’s race is about to get real for the California Democrat who’s in line for the gavel.”)
• Democratic gains erasing House GOP in California (“Democrats have flipped four GOP seats in the Golden State thus far, while two other races in red districts are still too close to call. If those both break in Democrats favor, California Republicans will see their ranks chopped nearly in half.”)
• STUDY: NY Times, Wash. Post coverage of caravan plummets after midterms (“News stories referencing the caravan drop by more than half post-elections, front-page ones by more than two-thirds”)
• Mitch McConnell Blocks Bipartisan Bill to Safeguard Mueller Probe (McConnell is the worst.)
• Somebody Get the President*’s Babysitter (“Trump is throwing temper tantrums at world leaders because presidenting* isn’t fun anymore.”)
• When Will the Supreme Court Get Fed Up With Crooked Republican Gerrymanders? (“Virginia brings the latest”)
• This Country Has a Violent White-Nationalist Problem (“If it had a real president, he’d get on television and denounce it.”)
• This Is the Saturday Night Massacre (“It’s just happening in slow motion.”)
• Facebook hired GOP consultancy that used anti-Semitic dogwhistles to smear protesters: report (“The tech giant was content to smear opponents as anti-Semitic while employing a familiar anti-Semitic dogwhistle”)
• The GOP strategy to make the midterm elections about bigotry pretty much failed (“While a few Republicans won after subtle or overt appeals to fear of others, the approach was mostly a bust.”)
• The Inadequacy of Hope (“Michelle Obama’s optimism can’t account for the unavoidable truths of Donald Trump’s presidency.”)
• Amid Lawsuits and Arrests, a Georgia Election Continues
• Forget Impeachment. Mueller’s Real Threat to Trump Is in 2020. (“The hypothetical impeachment of President Trump is a Washington obsession. It of course serves the interests of the Republican Party to conflate any mechanism for oversight or accountability of the administration with the most drastic possible remedy. But impeachment fervor has also been stoked by activists on the left, especially billionaire Tom Steyer, who has spent a fortune promoting it, as well as the news media, which both craves the drama and falls back automatically to the most memorable historical cases of presidents fighting with Congress over scandal (Nixon and Clinton)…So what’s the point of all the investigation? The point is to establish legal accountability for the president. Well-functioning democracies don’t have criminal oligarchies running the country with legal impunity… even if Robert Mueller can’t kick Trump out of the White House directly and the Senate won’t, there’s a body of people who can: the 2020 electorate.”)
• Trump Finally Supports Jared Kushner’s Compromise Criminal-Justice Reform Bill
• A Conversation With a Freshman Democrat (“We spoke with Abigail Spanberger…”)
• Virginia New Members 2019
• Virginia got a deal on its half of Amazon’s HQ2 compared to New York, but is it really ‘zero risk’?
• Flurry of action on Dominion’s coal ash plans sets stage for next General Assembly session to settle the issue
• I Don’t Even Know What to Say About Jim Webb Anymore…
• Hurst: Virginia’s historic chance to finally ratify the ERA
• Virginia redistricting starts again in 2021. At this rate, the current saga won’t have ended.
• Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring to introduce anti-hate-crimes legislation, citing rise in violence
• Editorial: The context of Amazon
• Third person files seeking Democratic nomination in special election for Ben Cline’s seat (“Former Amherst town councilman Kenneth Bumgarner filed by the Wednesday deadline. The two other Democratic candidates are Christian Worth, a political activist in Lexington, and Nicholas Betts, a third-year law student at Washington and Lee School of Law.”)
• Republican candidate Arash Ebrahimi running in the 33rd state senate district (Uh, try “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness!”)
• Amazon’s HQ2 in Virginia Leaves a Real Estate Firm Poised to Cash In (“For JBG Smith, the HQ2 deal may pay off in an uptick in occupancy and rents for residential, retail and other properties it owns adjacent to Amazon’s new offices. But it could take five to seven years for this bonanza to arrive, said Danny Ismail, an analyst and lead of office coverage for the real estate research firm Green Street Advisors.”)
• Turbine project throws caution to the wind (“Dominion, however, is putting ratepayers in a precarious situation by not entering into a more traditional power purchase agreement, which would make a third-party developer — in this case, Danish energy company Orsted — responsible for constructing the project and selling the power to the utility company.”)
• New Amazon headquarters will impact Fredericksburg region, but experts differ on how much
• Here’s how much it cost Virginia to attract Amazon’s headquarters
• Fairfax County teacher enters 2019 race for Prince William school board (“Lisa Zargarpur, a lifelong Prince William County resident and mother of three, says school boards need a teacher’s perspective when it comes to making decisions about school division policies and spending priorities. That’s why Zargarpur, who’s also an elementary school music teacher, is running for the Coles District seat on the Prince William County School Board in 2019. “)
• A slippery wintry mix gradually changes to a cold, wind-swept rain (“Conditions deteriorate north and west of Interstate 95, with increasing chances of accumulation and slick roads.”)