Virginia's Public Square
Virginia's Public Square
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58,000 non-citizens were confirmed to have voted in Texas elections. Virginia Senator Mark Peake (R-Lynchburg) has introduced legislation to verify voter citizenship and prevent a similar problem in the Commonwealth. Peake’s bill has advanced out of committee, with all Republicans in support and all but one Democrat opposed.
On Friday morning in the Rose Garden at the White House, President Donald Trump announced that a “deal has been reached” to reopen the 25 percent of the federal government that has been closed since December 22, 2018. The sudden change in momentum came as major airports are experiencing long delays and over 800,000 federal workers are getting ready to miss a second paycheck.
President Trump pledged to sign a bill on day 35 of the shutdown that would reopen the government for three weeks, until February 15. The funding package, however, will not include any money for the proposed U.S.-Mexico border wall.
On Thursday, Trump relayed to reporters that he would support “a reasonable agreement” to reopen the government as the impasse between the Republican-controlled Senate and the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives has reached extreme divisiveness. That same day, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) scheduled votes for two likely failing plans to reopen nine federal agencies.
Under the Republican plan, $5.7 billion would be allocated to building the U.S.-Mexico border wall (or barrier) in “strategic locations” and, per President Trump‘s remarks, provide for a three-year extension of protections for over 700,000 undocumented immigrants shielded from deportation under the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Trump’s funding request also includes $800 million for humanitarian assistance, $805 million for drug detection technology, 2,750 more border agents and law enforcement officers, and 75 more immigration judges.
Democrats, on the other hand, have continued to work on a package that would ignore the president’s demand for $5.7 billion for a southern border wall and would instead allocate funds for other ideas aimed at protecting the border, what they call a “21st Century plan.” Although the Democratic Party’s border security plan and its costs remain a work in progress, it is said to include money for scanning devices and other advanced technological tools to bolster security at certain ports of entry at the southern border, as well as money for additional border agents and immigration judges.
According to a report from AP, the Senate first rejected the Republican plan, garnering just a 50-47 vote for the measure, 10 shy of the 60 votes needed. Minutes later, senators voted 52-44 for the Democratic alternative, eight shy of the 60 votes needed.
Last night and this morning, at least five Republican Senators called Trump to urge him to reopen the government, having the upper chamber consider his $5.7 billion request for border wall money through different legislation.
With the government set to reopen for the next three weeks, the president added in his speech that a bipartisan contingent of lawmakers from both the House and Senate will meet to develop a border security funding proposal for the Department of Homeland Security.
Following the Supreme Court’s decision in South Dakota v. Wayfair (2018), Virginia lawmakers are jumping on the opportunity to collect internet sales tax. The bigger question: what will the money be used for?
Bucking Governor Ralph Northam’s progressive gun control package, Virginia’s Republican-controlled State Senate passes a measure to repeal the ban on carrying firearms in church and other places of worship.
The one-two legislative strategy by Delegates Scott Garrett and Kathy Byron would prohibit taxpayer funding of abortion providers in this year’s budget and begin working towards prohibiting it in Virginia’s constitution. The move comes as Governor Northam and Democratic lawmakers proposed a sweeping repeal of abortion restrictions, including on late term abortions in the third trimester.
From federal investigations, to wonky deals with Chinese investors, to allegedly seeing the Khashoggi assassination, Terry McAuliffe may have to answer a barrage of odd questions when he officially announces his presidential run.
The legislation would place greater punishments on telephone spammers, adding the practice of spoofing to the Virginia Telephone Privacy Protection Act (VTPPA).
When Senator Mark Peake (R-Lynchburg) first ran for office in 2015, he said Virginia needed more lawmakers focused on solving problems with common sense. This session, he’s fighting for a bill which he says does exactly that.
Peake introduced SB1038 to require voter registrars throughout Virginia to electronically verify the name, date of birth, and social security number of each voter against existing federal databases to confirm that every registered voter is a citizen of Virginia and the United States.
Calling it a “very simple bill” and “very common sense”, Peake urged the committee to pass the measure, which he said would strengthen election integrity in Virginia and help fight voter fraud.
“I just kind of would like to make sure that people who are registered to vote in Virginia are actually Virginia citizens and the people they say they are,” he said.
Peake noted his legislation would cost less than a million dollars, contrasting the fiscal impact of the bill with the much larger sums of money spent every year on campaigns in Virginia.
“We’re talking about less than a million dollars to make sure that people who register to vote in the Commonwealth of Virginia are actually citizens of the Commonwealth of Virginia and are actually the people they say they are. That’s my bill,” Peake added, following a short presentation.
On Wednesday, Peake’s bill advanced out of the Senate’s Finance Committee, following an earlier favorable recommendation by the committee on Privileges and Elections, which handles election-related legislation. The legislation advanced out of Finance on a party line vote, with all Republicans in favor and all Democrats opposed, after passing out of Privileges and Elections with bipartisan support, when Senator Lionel Spruill (D-Chesapeake) broke ranks with his party to support the bill.
During Wednesday’s hearing, no representatives from the Department of Elections came to speak for or against the bill.
Following a short presentation, the committee, with Peake’s blessing, adopted an amendment giving registrars until 2021 to implement the legislation. This amendment, observers said, was necessary to give localities time to implement the electronic verification in their computer systems, as well as move the bill’s modest implementation cost beyond the current budget cycle, a move intended to put the law on the books and protect its passage against the possibility of becoming caught up in a larger budget dispute over Governor Northam’s proposal to increase spending and taxes this year.
While Northam has not indicated whether he would sign the legislation, the governor has shown disdain for other election integrity measures, calling for a repeal of Virginia’s voter ID law in his annual State of the Commonwealth address, in which he also called for higher spending, sweeping gun control, and creating a “fundamental right” to abortion, including late term abortions in the third trimester.
Northam’s opposition comes in spite of public polling showing voter ID measures to be very popular. According to Gallup, four in five Americans support voter ID laws.
Peake’s bill will now be heard by the full Senate, which favored the measure last year. If passed, it would need to gain approval in the House of Delegates before heading to the governor’s desk.
For example, at Virginia Commonwealth University, DACA recipients living in Virginia would only have to pay $14,490 in tuition and fees, much less than the $35,798 price tag for out-of-state students.
With day 33 of the partial government shutdown in the books, the Senate has scheduled votes on Thursday in the first attempt of such since federal funding an out at midnight on December 21, 2018. However, funding packages from both parties in power are likely to fail to meet the 60-vote threshold in the Senate to end the impasse, which is under 53-47 Republican control.
Both bills would reopen nine federal agencies and dole out paychecks to 800,000 government employees, but the similarities end there.
Under the Republican plan, $5.7 billion would be allocated to building the U.S.-Mexico border wall (or barrier) in “strategic locations” and, per President Trump‘s remarks, provide for a three-year extension of protections for over 700,000 undocumented immigrants shielded from deportation under the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Trump’s funding request also includes $800 million for humanitarian assistance, $805 million for drug detection technology, 2,750 more border agents and law enforcement officers, and 75 more immigration judges.
Democrats, on the other hand, have continued to work on a package that would ignore the president’s demand for $5.7 billion for a southern border wall and would instead allocate funds for other ideas aimed at protecting the border, what they call a “21st Century plan.” Although the Democratic Party’s border security plan and its costs remain a work in progress, it is said to include money for scanning devices and other advanced technological tools to bolster security at certain ports of entry at the southern border, as well as money for additional border agents and immigration judges.
Even if the Senate were to pass either plan, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (CA-12) has already scheduled to send the lower chamber home on Friday, ensuring that the shutdown will continue into next week. Moreover, it will fuel more animus in Republicans that the speaker and her party are not as interested as they say in reopening the government and sending hundreds of thousands of people back to work.
Nevertheless, in the consistent fighting between the Democratic leader of the House of Representatives and the Republican president, the State of the Union address next week has been postponed. Trump yielded to the speaker after a week-long showdown that featured the commander in chief cancelling a trip commissioned by Pelosi and a select group of congressional Democrats to Belgium, Egypt, and Afghanistan, calling the “seven-day excursion” an unnecessary “public relations event.”
White House officials have considered a backup plan to have President Trump give the speech at an alternate location if majority Democrats block the House chamber. Regardless, as the length of the shutdown is now unprecedented, Pelosi could break another bureaucratic paradigm as no invitation for the president’s State of the Union address has ever been rescinded.