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Monday News: Putin Replaces Defense Minister; “Blinken Criticizes Israel For Conduct In Gaza Conflict”; “Cohen could make or break Trump as he takes stand”; “Biden calls Trump ‘unhinged’”; “5 things to know about Virginia’s newly revealed budget deal”

By
lowkell
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10

by Lowell

Here are a few international, national and Virginia news headlines, political and otherwise, for Monday, May 13.

VIDEO: This Mother’s Day, Do the Moms in Your Life a Favor. Stop Trump

By
Blue Virginia
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3

From President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign:

VIDEO: This Mother’s Day, Do the Moms in Your Life a Favor. Stop Trump

Daughters Have Fewer Rights than their Mothers or Grandmothers Did Because of Donald Trump

Happy Mother’s Day.

At the Biden campaign, we are asking Americans to do the moms in their lives a favor.

Stop Trump.

WATCH

And we would point Americans to President Biden’s 2008 DNC convention speech, speaking about the lessons he learned from his mother, Catherine Eugenia Finnegan Biden:

“I am so grateful that my mom, Catherine Eugenia Finnegan Biden, is here. You know, she taught her children — all the children who flocked to our house — that you are defined by your sense of honor, and you are redeemed by your loyalty. She believes bravery lives in every heart, and her expectation is that it will be summoned.”

“My mother’s creed is the American creed: No one is better than you. You are everyone’s equal, and everyone is equal to you.”

Through his life in public service and as President, Joe Biden has carried the lessons of his mother with him every day.

Donald Trump does not understand these values. His life choices and policies reflect that.

On Mother’s Day, a reminder: Donald Trump stands only for himself – and not mothers across America and their families:

Biden-Harris 2024 Senior Spokesperson Lauren Hitt released the following statement:

“The stakes of this election are high for all Americans, but especially moms across our country who will suffer under a second Trump term.

“Under Trump, the government will be allowed to monitor their pregnancies, and rip their families apart. Meanwhile President Biden is fighting to bring back his historic expanded Child Tax Credit to give families a little extra breathing room, and ensure paid leave for all Americans.

“Families depend on moms – and moms deserve a President they can depend on to protect their rights, work to lower their costs, and fight for them. Donald Trump wasn’t and isn’t that President, but Joe Biden is.”

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Paid for by Biden for President

Sunday News: “Trump insults prosecutor at Jersey Shore rally filled with vulgar jabs”; “From shooting puppies to lionizing Hannibal Lecter – This is Trump’s GOP”…”It’s a Cult”; “WaPo Boss Was at Center of Murdoch Cover-Up, New Docs Claim”

By
lowkell
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10

by Lowell

Here are a few international, national and Virginia news headlines, political and otherwise, for Sunday, May 12.

On “The Politics Hour,” Del. Mark Sickles Talks About the Virginia Budget, RGGI, ERIC, Youngkin’s “entertaining” Veto Explanations, the Need for Comprehensive Tax Reform,”Youngkin Being a “True Right Winger” and Mostly Playing National Politics, etc.

By
lowkell
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3

This morning, the House of Delegates and State Senate budget bills were posted online, so you can now look at the details of what was negotiated the past few weeks between Virginia legislators and the Youngkin administration.  On yesterday’s The Politics Hour on WAMU, Virginia Del. Mark Sickles – Vice Chair of the House of Delegates Appropriations Committee, thus heavily involved in budget negotations – discussed the new budget and other matters. Here are a few highlights.

  • “We went into [budget negotiations] with a good start, because we told [Youngkin] to begin with, we were gonna, our starting point was the conference report from our budget from session, and we didn’t wanna deviate too much from that. He understood that. You might recall during our reconvene session, he had 233 amendments to our budget. The Speaker ruled they were not specific and severable, so we never took them up, and decided to try to get a budget by May 13th. We think we’re gonna do that on Monday. The agreement yesterday cut out a couple things that the governor wanted out of the budget. And, basically, the rest of the spending was, what we had asked for to begin with.”
  • On RGGI, “we have a law that we believe is in effect now. The governor’s ignoring it, and he had his Air Control Board just nullify it even though we think it’s in the law. We didn’t think it was a suggestion. We thought it’s the law. That’s why it’s being litigated now. It was the House’s idea to put it in the budget. The Senate did not have it in the budget. Although, there at the end, when we were talking about closing this out, they became strong supporters of it. The environmental community weighed in strongly that we put it in there. But two things could happen. The governor could have vetoed the entire budget over it, or if he had line-item vetoed just the RGGI language, then we would have been in litigation over that. So we do have a court case. It’s down in the Floyd County Circuit Court that we hope we win. We we think the statute is fine and that the governor doesn’t have the authority to do what he did…We Democrats are gonna work on getting RGGI reestablished one way or the other, through the court system or reenacting it when we have the votes and have a governor who will employ a cap-and-trade program just like we’re doing in the Chesapeake Bay, just like President H. W. Bush did to cure acid rain 30 years ago.”
  • “We’ve got a very good budget that has K-12 spending over $2 billion more than we in the last budget. We have funding for higher education. The governor had no money for higher education in his budget. We have a lot of environmental spending for water quality, agricultural BMPs, stormwater, wastewater. There is a ton in this budget. I encourage everyone to look at it…most of that spending that’s in that bill is in this bill”
  • “The governor proposed basically tax reform in the budget. We think tax reform probably ought to be done separately, through the finance committee. He did not socialize that through his own party. The Republicans were shocked when he paid for that by sales taxes and decreased, really, his own taxes, because when you do it across the board, 12% tax cut, it really helps people at the highest end of the income scale more than it does people at, like, let’s say, my income tax level. And so it was just an unbalanced proposal. But the digital income tax is probably something that’s gonna have to be fixed. It will have to be fixed because we’ve changed the way we buy things, and there are fewer things that are subject to the sales tax than there used to be. And we have a lot of warnings into the future about the real estate prices and the way that we fund government. The gas tax doesn’t work as well anymore with all the electric cars being sold. All these things. So we do need comprehensive tax reform that is less reliant on property taxes. And I hope that when we have the next governor, we’ll have a chance to do comprehensive tax reform.”
  • “I don’t know. Maybe he’ll learn some more. I mean, he did not really get to know us for his first two years in office. He was running for president most of that time and had  the House of Delegates in Republican control, and he had some people there he could work with. And now that he he lost the election last November, you know, he had to learn our names and all that stuff.”
  • “I say good luck with [potentially running against Mark Warner in 2026] because he vetoed so many bills this year that have 70%, 80% approval in our area, that there’s a lot of material now that he had to really expose that… he’s a true right winger. And, you know, his beliefs became clear in all his vetoes this year.”
  • “[Youngkin] vetoed a bill that where it would require a person to be 21 years old to buy an assault weapon. Under federal law, you have to be 21 to buy a handgun. So…teenagers now in Virginia can buy an AR-15, and I thought that was wrong. And, you know, he gave the usual, freedom, Second Amendment type of reasoning to do it. And he did write some extensive explanations for his vetoes. They’re quite entertaining. I don’t think they were written by lawyers in many cases. It was kinda all over the place and some contradictory. But, anyway, there’s more to come. We rejected his amendments on other bills. So he’s got a week or so left to to continue vetoing bills, and I don’t know how many more there’ll be. Maybe 20?”
  • “ERIC allows the states that join the compact to exchange voter information.  There’s other ways to do it. Any good Department of Elections should be using various different methodologies to make sure their voting roles are accurate. The September before they decided to resign from ERIC, they claimed that our voter file was one of the best in the country and that ERIC was very efficient, was doing a great job. And, then for some reason, over the next 6 months, they decided there was some kind of conspiracy. One thing that ERIC did, with the permission of the states that were involved in it, was to talk to or send a letter to people who were eligible to vote but were not registered to say, hey, you’re eligible to vote if you’d like to, if you wanna register, this is how you register. People took offense to that, and someone called the Gateway Pundit  made it a national issue and and Republican governors all over the all over the country.”

Saturday News: “Brutal heatwaves and submerged cities: what a 3C world would look like”; “Trump Is Short on Cash—and Selling Laws to Anyone Who Will Pay”; Put the GOP in Charge, Get a “federal database of pregnant women?”; “VCU students, faculty don’t want Glenn Youngkin at graduation”

By
lowkell
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31

by Lowell

Here are a few international, national and Virginia news headlines, political and otherwise, for Saturday, May 11.

Two Peas in a Pod: Jen Kiggans and Marjorie Taylor Greene

By
Blue Virginia
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2

From the DCCC:

Two Peas in a Pod: Jen Kiggans and Marjorie Taylor Greene

Jen Kiggans on Greene and her extremist allies: “We all want the same things.”

With this week’s latest attempt to throw the House into chaos, Marjorie Taylor Greene has once again angered many of her colleagues — but probably not Jen Kiggans.

Kiggans has had no shortage of praise for the Georgia congresswoman, calling Greene “so kind” and “very nice to [her],” and even going as far as to call Greene her “teammate.” Kiggans and Greene have clearly identified each other as allies, with Greene even giving Kiggans’ re-election campaign $2,000 in 2023.

In response to Greene’s latest antics and Kiggans’ prior, effusive praise, her Democratic opponent — Missy Cotter Smasal — has gone on the offensive. In new reporting from the New York Times, Smasal said that “When voters hear [Kiggans’] comments calling Marjorie Taylor Greene a teammate, they are astounded and disgusted.”

When given the opportunity to distance herself from Greene by the New York Times, “A spokeswoman for Ms. Kiggans did not respond to a request for comment.”

DCCC Spokesperson Lauryn Fanguen:
“Missy Cotter Smasal said it best: Jen Kiggans is far too happy to enable the chaos of Marjorie Taylor Greene. Greene’s extremism is so far removed from the values of Coastal Virginians that it’s astonishing how freely Kiggans displays her admiration. Voters will remember Kiggans’ constant betrayals when they kick her out of office this November.”

The New York Times: Fresh Off Defeat in Speaker Fight, Greene Is ‘Thrilled’ With the Chaos She Wrought
Annie Karni | May 9, 2024

  • As Republicans and Democrats booed her loudly Wednesday when she called a snap vote on the House floor to oust Speaker Mike Johnson, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, paused briefly to narrate the drama to viewers back home.
  • Ms. Greene went on to take her shot at Mr. Johnson and miss, an outcome that she knew was a certainty. The vote to kill her attempt to remove him was an overwhelming 359 to 43 — with all but 39 Democrats joining with Republicans to block her and rescue the G.O.P. speaker.
  • The move… isolated Ms. Greene on Capitol Hill, putting her back where she was when she arrived in Washington three years ago: a provocateur and subject of derision who appears to revel in causing huge headaches for her colleagues.
  • If Ms. Greene’s goal in Congress was to chair a powerful committee or to build up political capital to drive major policy initiatives, this all would constitute a major problem for her. But those have never been the incentives that have driven the gentle lady from Georgia, whose congressional career has been defined by delighting her base and stoking anger on the right more than legislative achievement or political pragmatism.
  • “I’m thrilled with the whole thing,” Ms. Greene said in an interview on Thursday, sounding upbeat after her spectacular defeat. “Even the booing from both sides — I fully expected it. My district is thrilled.”
  • On Wednesday evening, center-leaning Republicans tried to create as much distance from her as they could, fearful that association with her theatrics would alienate voters in their districts turned off by the seemingly endless chaos in the House.
  • “Marjorie Taylor Greene, she is so kind,” Representative Jen Kiggans, a vulnerable Republican from Virginia, said at a recent event. “She has been very nice to me.” Of Ms. Greene and other bomb throwers in her party, she said, “I have nothing bad or, you know, different to say about any of these people. They’re on my team, right? They are my teammates. We all want the same things.”
  • If that’s what abandonment by her party looks like, who needs an embrace?
  • Democrats, for their part, aren’t willing to let Republicans run away from Ms. Greene, the most famous Republican in the House, so quickly.
  • Missy Cotter Smasal, a Democrat challenging Ms. Kiggans in coastal Virginia, said that “when voters hear her comments calling Marjorie Taylor Greene a teammate, they are astounded and disgusted.”
  • Even though Ms. Kiggans voted to kill Ms. Greene’s effort on Wednesday night, Ms. Smasal was using it as a cudgel against her Republican opponent the next day, just as Republicans had tried to warn Ms. Greene when they pressed her to stand down.
  • “Jen Kiggans in office enables the chaos of Marjorie Taylor Greene,” she said. A spokeswoman for Ms. Kiggans did not respond to a request for comment.
  • Justin Chermol, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said that “when the Republicans lose their majority in November, it will be because the so-called moderates let Marjorie Taylor Greene be their party mascot.” On Wednesday, Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, sent out a fund-raising email detailing how Ms. Greene “threatened to throw Congress further into chaos, crisis and confusion.”
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Vital Program to Cut Pollution, Lower Energy Costs, and Protect Virginians from Flood Risk Removed as Part of Budget Compromise

By
Blue Virginia
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4

From Virginia environmental leaders:

RICHMOND — According to news reports, members of the budget conference committee failed to include language in the new budget insisting that the Commonwealth remain a part of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. RGGI is a multi-state carbon cap-and-invest program that in just three years brought nearly $830 million to Virginia to fund flood resiliency projects and energy efficiency programs for low-income Virginians, while also cutting power plant pollution by almost 25 percent. Lawmakers will return to Richmond next week to take up the full, revised budget.

In response to this action, leaders from Virginia’s environmental community issued the following joint statement:

“The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative has been one of our best tools in Virginia to combat climate change while returning investment to the communities across the Commonwealth that need it most. At a time when we’re seeing extreme weather events happen more regularly, and as we head into what forecasters are saying will be another summer of scorching temperatures, it is incredibly disappointing that lawmakers aren’t doing everything they can to stand up to Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s illegal RGGI repeal and gutting of a program intended to protect vulnerable communities from flooding and lower energy costs. This governor deserves to be held accountable for attempting to unilaterally override Virginia law, and this capitulation by the General Assembly unfortunately sets us back.

“Staying out of RGGI, and foregoing the hundreds of millions of dollars it generates each year, further burdens already disadvantaged communities on the frontlines of pollution and flooding impacts, and who shoulder disproportionate household energy costs. Furthermore, cutting this dedicated source of funding without a plan to address flooding, at a time when severe weather events are becoming more and more common, is reckless and bad public policy. And without funding for energy efficiency programs, the families least able to afford it will continue seeing rising energy costs as we head into the hot summer months.

“To be clear, Gov. Youngkin got us into this mess. But it is incumbent on lawmakers to do everything they can going forward to protect vulnerable communities from climate change and rising energy costs, and to secure a clean energy future.”

Michael Town, Executive Director, Virginia League of Conservation Voters

Lillian Anderson, Clean Energy & Climate Justice Policy & Campaigns Manager, Virginia Conservation Network

Connor Kish, Director, Sierra Club Virginia Chapter

Peter Anderson, Director of State Energy Policy, Appalachian Voices

Faith B. Harris, Executive Director, Virginia Interfaith Power & Light

Victoria Higgins, Virginia Director, Chesapeake Climate Action Network Action Fund

Elly Boehmer Wilson, State Director, Environment Virginia

Mary-Carson Stiff, Executive Director, Wetlands Watch

About us:
The Virginia League of Conservation Voters serves as the political voice of the state’s conservation community, working to make sure Virginia’s elected officials recognize that our natural heritage is an environmental and economic treasure for all. Virginia LCV works with conservation leaders across Virginia and strives for a conservation majority in state government. We secure good public policies on the state level and hold public officials accountable for their positions on environmental issues. For more information, visit www.valcv.org.

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Video: School Board in Deep-“Red” Shenandoah County, VA Listens to Speakers Explaining Why They Shouldn’t Do “U-Turn” and Rename Schools for Confederates; Then Do So Anyway

By
lowkell
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13

That’s right – last night, the Shenandoah County School Board voted 5-1 “to reinstate the names of Stonewall Jackson High and Ashby-Lee Elementary in Quicksburg…The vote marked the first such U-turn anywhere in the US” (“Following the May 2020 murder of George Floyd and a summer of racial justice unrest, Virginia and other states took down Confederate statues from public spaces.”). So yeah, deep-“red” Shenandoah County has decided to lurch backwards – towards the shameful days of “Massive Resistance” and “Jim Crow,” and towards honoring traitors who took up arms against the United States of America in order to defend a horrific system of slavery. As the following speakers explained prior to the School Board’s vote, THAT is exactly what is going on here.

  • “My name is Bo Dickinson and I’m speaking as a private citizen on behalf of no one other than myself. I actually started my career in education over 20 years ago at Stonewall Jackson High School as an American history teacher. I realized that most students thought of Stonewall Jackson as a place and as a building as much as they thought about him as a person and this may be the case for many who remain attached to the Stonewall name. Former graduates are likely proud of their own high [Stonewall Jackson High School] accomplishments and the memories they formed at SJHS. That feeling is quite natural and partially why this debate is so emotional and difficult. However, it is also history itself that makes this difficult – very difficult. Stonewall Jackson High School was named on January 12th, 1959 – over 95 years after Stonewall Jackson’s death in 1863. So why did it take nearly a century to suddenly discover this so-called heritage in the mid 20th century? In 1959, the national news spotlight was centered on Virginia as federal courts issued the first court order to desegregate public schools. In response, Senator Harry Byrd declared massive resistance to racial integration and Governor Lindsay Alman forcibly closed schools that attempted to integrate. In fact, the very first school closed by the governor was just a few miles away from here in neighboring Warren County. And I’m actually honored to be here with some of those former students…It was precisely at this very moment that the Shenandoah County School Board chose to name its new high school after a Confederate general who fought in the defense of slavery and state’s rights. If you vote to restore the name of Stonewall Jackson in 2024, you will be resurrecting an act of 1959 that is forever rooted in Massive Resistance and Jim Crow segregation.”
  • “Good evening. My name is Gene Kilby, I’m the last surviving son of James Wilson Kilby, one of the individuals that was very instrumental in in desegregating schools in Virginia. I stand before you tonight to continue to fight the same battle that has been fought repeatedly over and over again. I stand before you tonight on the shoulders of those who came before me. I stand before you tonight on the pledge of this county that this county made in 1964 to support civil rights. I stand before you tonight on the resolution against racism adopted by the Shenandoah County School Board in June of  2020. Were these just gestures at that time or did the School Board really mean it? Why are we here tonight to go back to a time in history that was very cruel, where hatred and racism continued throughout this county and throughout the United States? My…first experience with Confederate sympathizers was in the year of 1968; I was  7 years old. They poisoned the family dog, shot through our home, mutilated our livestock and left bloody sheeps on the mailbox. Is this the type of legacy that you want to put in Shenandoah County’s Public School buildings? The Civil War was fought and lost by the Confederacy? Do you want to continue to memorialize individuals that lived in insurrection against the United States? We don’t need to go backwards; we just ask you tonight to do the right thing.”

Spoiler: the Republican-dominated Shenandoah County School Board did NOT end up doing the right thing – far from it.  Just disgraceful. By the way, do Glenn Youngkin, Jason Miyares, Todd Gilbert, etc. have any comment on any of this?!?

Trump Demands $1 Billion from Big Oil in Exchange for Doing Their Bidding

By
kindler
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2

By Kindler (please check out my Substack)

Sometimes the corruption at the core of right-wing politics is so blatant, it just takes your breath away.  That is certainly the case with the Washington Post’s recent bombshell, “What Trump promised oil CEOs as he asked them to steer $1 billion to his campaign”.

According to multiple attendees of a dinner with oil industry executives at Mar-a-Lago, Trump stated: “You all are wealthy enough…that you should raise $1 billion to return me to the White House” – in exchange for which, he promised to give them all the policy payoffs they are demanding, from ending restrictions on drilling in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico to allowing more liquefied natural gas exports.

“Giving $1 billion would be a ‘deal,’ Trump said, because of the taxation and regulation they would avoid thanks to him.”

It’s hard to state a political quid-pro-quo more blatantly than GIVE ME LOTS OF MONEY AND I WILL GIVE YOUR INDUSTRY WHATEVER IT WANTS.  And I appreciate the Post refusing to sugarcoat what it called “Trump’s remarkably blunt and transactional pitch.” Instead of the New York Times’ trademark “both sides are always equal” spin, the Post emphasized here that “[t]he contrast between the two candidates on climate policy could not be more stark.”

It may be tempting for some folks to tune out a story like this as just more political noise, but such a shameless display of “pay to play” politics is precisely the type of corruption of our system that almost everyone claims to be passionately against.  Many cynics will dismiss Trump’s display as how all politicians operate, but as the Post documents, it’s not. In fact, the story begins with the anecdote of one of the Big Oil execs complaining to Trump “how they continued to face burdensome environmental regulations despite spending $400 million to lobby the Biden administration in the last year.”

How dare Joe Biden refuse to be bought out by the world’s worst polluters! The nerve of the man!

While our politics revolves around a lot of things, a great deal of it is about the oil, coal and gas industries’ corrupt and immoral efforts to keep their profits flowing at the expense of the lives and health of the rest of us.  There’s a reason why the Republican party’s grip is strongest in fossil fuel extraction states, from Texas and Oklahoma to West Virginia, Wyoming and Kentucky – and why most of Trump’s biggest foreign supporters are petro-dictators, especially those of Saudi Arabia and Russia.

Because ultimately, the Republican party is not about principles at all – it is about gaining and maintaining power by being shamelessly for sale to the highest bidder.  The rest is just window dressing to gain votes from people who don’t read stories about what is really happening in the dark halls of Mar-a-Lago or at steakhouses or fundraisers around the country.

We need to open more Americans’ eyes to the huge choice they face this November between the principled policies of Biden and the Democrats vs. the GOP vision of policy being dictated by those stuffing dollars into their pockets.  Young people who fear the risks of climate change most especially need to pay attention as Republicans bargain their futures away in a soulless trade for political power.  Vote wisely.

Friday News: “Biden’s Public Ultimatum to Bibi”; “Trump Flaunts His Corruption”; “GOP Plan for Execution Spree”; Stormy Daniels’ “final day on the stand in the hush-money trial was a doozy”; “Virginia school board approves restoring Confederate leaders’ names”

By
lowkell
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23

by Lowell

Here are a few international, national and Virginia news headlines, political and otherwise, for Friday, May 10.

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