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If House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s (CA-23) legislation is passed through the House before the midterms, the Senate will most likely not vote on the bill until January, getting it to President Trump’s desk in early 2019 at the quickest pace if all goes according to plan.
The “Tenaciously Moving for American Change in 2020” political action committee announced that they are going to “encourage” former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe to run for the Democratic presidential nomination to challenge President Donald Trump.
Republican candidate Denver Riggleman and Democratic candidate Leslie Cockburn sparred at a debate on Monday night in front of a crowd at Piedmont Virginia Community College. During the exchange between the two hopefuls to represent Virginia’s Fifth District, Cockburn came out in support of a U.S.-Taliban negotiation which she says will end the War in Afghanistan, all the while being highly critical of her Republican opponent’s military service.
When asked about the economic situation in the Central Virginia congressional district, Cockburn sidestepped the question to say, “I’d like to address the issue of Afghanistan.”
“I covered three different wars in Afghanistan,” she said, reiterating her investigative journalism experience in foreign wars.
“As for what should be done in Afghanistan right now, we’ve been there 17 years,” Cockburn said. “My friend John Sopko, who is the inspector general, tells us that we’ve spent nearly a trillion dollars on that war and we are definitely not winning it.”
“One problem is that the patron of the Taliban is Pakistan,” Cockburn added. “We have to negotiate with the Taliban and Pakistan in order to leave that war, and I think that this should be a matter of diplomacy, and it needs to happen now.”
She attacked Riggleman, an Air Force veteran, saying that “Denver was not in Afghanistan.” Cockburn explained that he was “3,000 miles away from Afghanistan,” where he was strategizing to conduct bombing missions in the country while at a U.S. naval base at Diego Garcia, implying that he played a minor role.
Furthermore, Cockburn said that Riggleman’s work was unsuccessful in pushing back Taliban forces.
“The bombings didn’t become successful until you had special forces on the ground calling in airstrikes,” she said.
Riggleman replied that he was happy to work with those on the ground in Afghanistan on the airstrikes and doesn’t need to defend his service.
“We worked with the joint forward air controllers in Afghanistan…it’s hard to answer this in a way that doesn’t sound emotional,” Riggleman said. “I’m not going to defend my military service because of what I’ve done.”
“Those JFAC [Joint Force Air Component] strikes on the caves? Yeah, that was us. But I do appreciate the try,” Riggleman responded to Cockburn.
The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) has listed all seven of Virginia’s Republican representatives in the 115th Congress as award winners for their key votes to bolster small business and support low-tax initiatives.
The bill from Delegate Margaret Ransone (R-Westmoreland) would direct the State Board of Elections to appoint a commissioner that oversees the Department of Elections, eliminate two additional senior-level political appointees made by the governor, establishing a one full-time director of operations, and increase the term lengths for board members from four to six years.
On Tuesday morning, Ambassador to the United Nations (U.N.) Nikki Haley is reported to be planning on leaving her position next year as top U.S. diplomat following an announcement by President Donald Trump during a meeting in the Oval Office. The former South Carolina governor did not give an exact reason as to why she is leaving the Trump Administration, but rumors of a 2020 run for the presidency were quashed.
Although she is speculated to have ambitions to hold higher office, Haley said at the White House, “No I’m not running in 2020.”
In front of reporters, President Trump said that Haley told him “six months ago” that she wanted to “take a little time off.”
“She’s been very successful,” Trump said. “She’s done a fantastic job and we’ve done a fantastic job.” The President reiterated the efforts to solve the issues with North Korea as well as leading strong on the international stage.
Speaking to Haley’s strengths as a solid leader, Trump said, “That was really the thing I think she did best at the United Nations – she got to know the players. She got to know China, Russia, India, she knows everybody on a very first-name basis. They like her.”
President Trump added that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo “thinks the world” of Haley.
“Hopefully you’ll be coming back at some point,” Trump said to her. “You can have your pick.”
“It has been an honor of a lifetime,” Haley said, addressing a packed room in the Oval Office. She added that she felt “lucky” to have been able to “lead a state that raised me and serve a country I love so very much.”
Looking back on her career, Haley said:
“Look at two years, look at what has happened in two years with the United States on foreign policy. Now the United States is respected. Countries may not like what we do, but they respect what we do. They know that if we’re going to do something, we follow it through, and the President proved that. Whether it was with the chemical weapons in Syria, whether its with NATO…whether it’s the trade deals…they get that the President means business.”
Haley also remarked on cutting $1.3 billion out of the U.N. budget. “We’ve made it stronger, we’ve made it more efficient,” she said.
Explaining actions taken on behalf of the U.S. on sanctioning North Korea for their testing and of building nuclear weapons, rescinding the Iran Nuclear Deal, and getting an embargo on South Sudan, Haley said, “you can’t overlook the bad things their doing, you have to see them for the threat they are.”
During her time at the U.N., she also spearheaded the Trump Administration’s effort to push back against anti-Israel bias within the international governmental body. Speaking to the controversial embassy relocation in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, Haley said, “we will put our embassy where we want to put our embassy.”
She explained that her decision to resign at the end of the year was not based on personal developments, but rather that, “It’s very important for government officials to understand when it’s time to step aside.” Haley added, “It was a blessing to go into the U.N. with body armor everyday and defend America…I will never step aside from fighting for our country.”
A successor to U.N. Ambassador Haley is said to be announced in two to three weeks, whom will begin their tenure at the international body in 2019.
After weeks of incredulous and offensive sexual assault allegations used to derail the confirmation process for then-D.C. Circuit Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh, following the 50-48 Senate vote to confirm him, the news Supreme Court justice’s first action was to hire an all-female staff of law clerks, the first in U.S. history to do so. For over a decade on the federal court, a majority of the law clerks he hired were women, showing his attitude towards women in the workplace has been long carried out.
“My women law clerks said I was one of the strongest advocates in the federal judiciary for women lawyers,” Kavanaugh said to the Senate Judiciary Committee during the hearing weeks ago, according to The Washington Post. He added, “And they wrote that the legal profession is fairer and more equal because of me.”
Justice Kavanaugh also explained that he has made a special effort to hire women after reading a story years ago about the unequal balance between men and woman hired for reputable clerk positions at the U.S. Supreme Court and for other federal judges. Moreover, Kavanaugh told senators that if he was to be confirmed, he had to hire “a first group of four law clerks who could be available to clerk at the Supreme Court for me on a moment’s notice.”
During his 12 years on the federal bench, “no federal judge — not a single one in the country — has sent more women law clerks to clerk on the Supreme Court than I have,” Kavanaugh said. Of the positions that are to be filled, he said during the hearing, “All four are women. If confirmed, I’ll be the first justice in the history of the Supreme Court to have a group of all-women law clerks. That is who I am.”
The new clerks for Justice Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court are:
Kim Jackson: A Yale graduate who worked for Kavanaugh on the appeals court. She is also one the three African-Americans clerking at the Supreme Court this term, two of whom previously worked for Kavanaugh.
Shannon Grammel: A Harvard graduate and former president of the Stanford Law Review who was recently clerking for the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Megan Lacy: A University of Virginia graduate and former counsel to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA). She was also part of the White House team that worked on Kavanaugh’s nomination.
Sara Nommensen: A Harvard graduate and student of Kavanaugh’s who worked at the Justice Department’s office of legal counsel.
“I didn’t know Rod before,” President Donald Trump said Monday leaving the White House. “I’ve gotten to know him, and I get along very well with him.” He added at a previous press conference, “My preference would be to keep him and to let him finish up.”
“Six years ago, a national group of liberal donors began a systematic effort to attack the bipartisan redistricting plan adopted by the House, despite pre-approval by President Barack Obama’s Justice Department and overwhelming support from the African American members of the House. This coordinated, partisan effort cost taxpayers millions of dollars and is culminating with an overt attempt to install a court-drawn plan more politically favorable to Democrats than any politically-neutral plan that might emerge from a legislative compromise,” said Speaker of the House Kirk Cox (R-Colonial Heights).
Former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are traveling the continent to talk about their careers, important moments in American history, and, of course, the “most controversial and unpredictable presidential election.”