Booker wades into Virginia attorney general race
'Jay Jones will be a tireless fighter for Virginia families as Attorney General, and that's why I'm so excited to announce my endorsement today,' Booker said in a statement. 'Jay Jones has the vision, commitment, and integrity to keep families safe and make sure every Virginian gets a fair shake in the justice system. I'll be working every day to ensure Jay wins this race.'
Jones is running against fellow Democrat Shannon Taylor, who serves as the commonwealth's attorney for Henrico County; the primary is June 17.
Jones has shored up a number of endorsements, including former Virginia Govs. Terry McAuliffe (D) and Ralph Northam (D), while Taylor has the backing of former state Attorney General Mark Herring (R) and former Virginia House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn (D), among other Democrats.
Whoever wins the Democratic primary will face off against the state's current Attorney General Jason Miyares (R) in November.
Booker is the latest national Democrat to endorse ahead of the state's primaries later this month. On Monday, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg backed Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney (D) in the crowded Democratic primary for Virginia lieutenant governor.
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Associated Press
10 minutes ago
- Associated Press
Democrats and advocates criticize Trump's executive order on homelessness
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Leading Democrats and advocates for the homeless are criticizing an executive order President Donald Trump signed this week aimed at removing homeless people from the streets, possibly by committing them for mental health or drug treatment without their consent. Trump directed some of his Cabinet heads to prioritize funding to cities that crack down on open drug use and street camping, with the goal of making people feel safer. It's not compassionate to do nothing, the order states. 'Shifting these individuals into long-term institutional settings for humane treatment is the most proven way to restore public order,' the order reads. Homelessness has become a bigger problem in recent years as the cost of housing increased, especially in states such as California where there aren't enough homes to meet demand. At the same time, drug addiction and overdoses have soared with the availability of cheap and potent fentanyl. The president's order might be aimed at liberal cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York, which Trump views as too lax about conditions on their streets. But many of the concepts have already been proposed or tested in California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democratic mayors have worked for years to get people off the streets and into treatment. Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court made it easier for cities to clear encampments even if the people living in them have nowhere else to go. Still, advocates say Trump's new order is vague, punitive and won't effectively end homelessness. Newsom has directed cities to clean up homeless encampments and he's funneled more money into programs to treat addiction and mental health disorders. His office said Friday that Trump's order relies on harmful stereotypes and focuses more on 'creating distracting headlines and settling old scores.' 'But, his imitation (even poorly executed) is the highest form of flattery,' spokesperson Tara Gallegos said in a statement, referring to the president calling for strategies already in use in California. San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie has also emphasized the importance of clean and orderly streets in banning homeless people from living in RVs and urging people to accept the city's offers of shelter. In Silicon Valley, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan recently pushed a policy change that makes a person eligible for jail if they reject three offers of shelter. Trump's executive order tasks Attorney General Pam Bondi and the secretaries for health, housing and transportation to prioritize grants to states and local governments that enforce bans on open drug use and street camping. Devon Kurtz, the public safety policy director at the Cicero Institute, a conservative policy group that has advocated for several of the provisions of the executive order, said the organization is 'delighted' by the order. He acknowledged that California has already been moving to ban encampments since the Supreme Court's decision. But he said Trump's order adds teeth to that shift, Kurtz said. 'It's a clear message to these communities that were still sort of uncomfortable because it was such a big change in policy,' Kurtz said. But Steve Berg, chief policy officer at the National Alliance to End Homelessness, called parts of the order vague. He said the U.S. abandoned forced institutionalization decades ago because it was too expensive and raised moral and legal concerns. 'What is problematic about this executive order is not so much that law enforcement is involved — it's what it calls on law enforcement to do, which is to forcibly lock people up,' Berg said. 'That's not the right approach to dealing with homelessness.' The mayor of California's most populous city, Los Angeles, is at odds with the Newsom and Trump administrations on homelessness. Mayor Karen Bass, a Democrat, opposes punishing sweeps and says the city has reduced street homelessness by working with homeless people to get them into shelter or housing. 'Moving people from one street to the next or from the street to jail and back again will not solve this problem,' she said in a statement. ___ Kramon reported from Atlanta. She is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
Politico
12 minutes ago
- Politico
The red state broadcaster bracing for funding cuts
Presented by Chevron Welcome to POLITICO's West Wing Playbook: Remaking Government, your guide to Donald Trump's unprecedented overhaul of the federal government — the key decisions, the critical characters and the power dynamics that are upending Washington and beyond. Send tips | Subscribe | Email Sophia | Email Irie | Email Ben President DONALD TRUMP on Thursday signed legislation making sharp cuts to public broadcasting. Now, small, rural radio and TV stations across the country are bracing for the worst. One of those outlets is KEDT-TV/FM, a public radio and TV station in Corpus Christi, Texas. It's the only radio station in the region that has a news department, said station president and general manager DON DUNLAP, and covers a rural service area with a primarily Republican, low-income and Spanish-speaking audience. 'There are 10 public TV stations in Texas, and we're thinking probably six of them will close down within a year,' Dunlap predicted in an interview with West Wing Playbook. The White House maintains that the cuts — included in a rescissions package clawing back about $9 billion in previously approved federal funding for public broadcasting and foreign aid — would limit the taxpayer dollars going to NPR and PBS, the independent but publicly funded news outlets Republicans have long accused of peddling a leftwing bias. 'Democratic paper-pushers masquerading as reporters don't deserve taxpayer subsidies, and NPR and PBS will have to learn to survive on their own,' said White House principal deputy press secretary HARRISON FIELDS. 'Unfortunately for them, their only lifeline was taxpayer dollars, and that ended when President Trump was sworn in.' But critics, including four Congressional Republicans, have maintained that the rescissions would imperil dozens of local newsrooms with little connection to the national organizations — many in rural, deep-red areas. 'I think [lawmakers'] decisions were not informed,' Dunlap said. 'We're there to help people.' This interview has been edited for length and clarity. How will the passage of the rescissions package affect your stations? We would have to make a decision whether we're going to shut down the television service or we have to shut down the radio service. Both of them provide unique services in these communities that are not going to be picked up by commercial media, because the content is not commercially viable. There are other secondary impacts that we don't have any data on right now. What is it going to do to our programming costs? We buy about $600,000 worth of programming from NPR and PBS, and obviously their programming model is going to have to change if there are fewer stations involved. All these different unknowns make this scenario planning very, very difficult. Republicans say they're defunding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting because NPR and PBS propagate left-wing positions. You're in a red district in a red state — how do you respond to that? That's said by a lot of people who don't listen or watch what we're doing here. On the TV side, there's just no way that we could even have two sides to something. What's the political side of bald eagles or nature programs about hurricanes or volcanoes, or classical music programming to play on the radio? There's no political side to that. We have a program on the radio called 'All Things Considered.' I think the nature of that program is what these people don't like. Some people don't like things to be talked about or covered. 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Britt, who serves as chair of the Senate Appropriations homeland subcommittee, wrote a letter today to White House Budget Chief RUSS VOUGHT, urging the Office of Management and Budget to 'fully implement' the stopgap government funding package enacted earlier this year. Suspension of the appropriated funds, whether delayed or formally withheld, 'could threaten Americans' ability to access better treatments and limit our nation's leadership in biomedical science,' the senators warned in the latest example of Republican pushback to the administration's pattern of withholding money from programs that lawmakers have explicitly set aside funds for. FUNDS, RELEASED: The Trump administration will release billions of dollars in education funding that have been on hold for review for weeks, our MACKENZIE WILKES reports. 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New York Post
41 minutes ago
- New York Post
The ‘woke right' free-trade critics are only fooling themselves
Capitalism gets a lot of hate. I expect it from the left. They blame free markets for racism, 'horrifying inequality' and even, according to economist Joseph Stiglitz, 'accelerating climate change.' People on the right generally defend capitalism, but today, a growing number agree with the left. Advertisement Author James Lindsay says, 'They make the exact same arguments that we've heard for decades: 'capitalism has made everything about the dollar. Everything's about GDP . . . you lose everything that really matters, like kinship and nation and identity.' ' Tucker Carlson, who Lindsay calls 'woke right,' praises Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren's economic programs, saying they 'make obvious sense.' 'Astonishing!' says Lindsay. Advertisement 'Warren put forth something called the 'Accountable Capitalism Act,' which was going to restrain the way that corporations are able to behave under the brand name of 'accountability'.' Even Vice President JD Vance attacks free trade. 'While the government shouldn't be controlling the American economy,' Vance said, 'we should . . . put a little bit of a thumb on the scale . . . protect nascent industries from foreign competition.' That is 'just another way of saying, 'your company got too big, so we need to take some of your property and distribute it further down the chain,'' says Lindsay. Advertisement The veep is 'very against large multinational corporations and the things that they do and wants to limit them.' But why? Large companies get large mostly by doing things right. Businesses don't make profits unless they please their customers. Look at places that mostly embrace free markets — the United States, Singapore, Switzerland, New Zealand and Hong Kong (until China's government clamped down). Advertisement These are good places to live. People prosper when markets are free. 'It works!' says Lindsay. 'When you have free people who can engage freely with one another and trade . . . you actually have a rising of all ships. Because what you have is a people who are free to do with their things as they will. 'They, therefore, can implement their stuff, their money, their resources, their talents, whatever they happen to be, to solve problems for other people. And when you solve a problem for other people, even if it's a kind of silly thing, like entertaining them with a silly game on their phone, when you solve a problem for other people, they'll give you money for it in exchange.' Exactly: Trade is win-win. Otherwise, we wouldn't engage in it. So it puzzles me that as markets continue to lift more people out of poverty, capitalism faces more attacks — even from the right. 'The problem,' says Lindsay, is 'it requires people to be free . . . You can't control people who are free. 'So we need to have a government system to tell them to do the right thing in the name of the common good. That's the mentality.' Advertisement Get opinions and commentary from our columnists Subscribe to our daily Post Opinion newsletter! Thanks for signing up! Enter your email address Please provide a valid email address. By clicking above you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Never miss a story. Check out more newsletters Lindsay once hoaxed a conservative magazine, American Reformer, into publishing part of the 'Communist Manifesto,' merely by substituting Christian nationalist language for words like 'proletariat.' When the editors learned that they'd been tricked, they left the article up, saying it was 'a reasonable aggregation of some New Right ideas.' Advertisement Yikes. Government-managed trade, protection for politically connected industries, state promotion of Christianity, speech restrictions, morality laws, state-owned industry, cronyism — these are bad ideas, no matter which side sells them. John Stossel is the author of 'Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media.'
