In The News

Five weeks before another round of deep Defense Department cuts is set to go into effect absent action from Congress, budget analysts and elected leaders throughout the region are renewing concerns about the Washington area’s reliance on Pentagon spending and the need to advance private sector growth in its place. No state is more reliant on defense spending than Virginia, where it affects nearly 13 percent of the commonwealth’s economic output, tops nationwide, and pr...Continue Reading

Continuing his five-day swing through Virginia, U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine and his team on Wednesday spoke with ABB employees and other community leaders as the discussions turned to economic development. Career and technical training was at the forefront of this discussion with Kaine immediately telling his guests that No Child Left Behind had been rewritten to include several CTE aspects. “It doesn’t have to be a four-year bachelor’s degree for everybody,” Kaine said. “...Continue Reading

A U.S. senator is stepping up to help some Arlington veterans replace a stolen American flag. The American flag was ripped down and stolen from the American Legion Post 139 in Arlington on Tuesday. A POW flag was also found on the ground. Senator Tim Kaine heard about the stolen flag and arranged for a new flag to be sent to the post. "I hope they enjoy this new flag which was flown over the U.S. Capitol!," Kaine wrote on Facebook. 

RICHMOND, Va. — While Sen. Mark Warner round-tabled down the street on Tuesday with a group of gig-economy workers, Virginia’s junior senator, Democrat Tim Kaine, met with local black business leaders in Richmond on a five-day economic tour through the state. Talk primarily focused on federal contracting, which Kaine said later was consistent with the most common concern voiced by Virginia business interests: sequestration and the federal budget. Kaine p...Continue Reading

CHESTERFIELD - U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., made a stop at the Amazon Fulfillment Center on a five-day tour of Virginia, focused on building strategies to improve economic development and job creation. Tuesday was the second day of tour, which also brought the senator to Richmond, where he met with African-American business leaders to discuss challenges facing their businesses, including issues involving access to capital and workforce preparation. Afterward, Kaine toured Amazon, and spoke of its...Continue Reading

Rising sea levels, cybersecurity and foreign policy were among the topics U.S. Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner riffed on during a luncheon Monday. Several hundred people packed a ballroom at the Founders Inn and Spa to hear the lawmakers opine on a mix of issues, including the proposed Iran nuclear agreement lawmakers are set to vote on next month. Warner told attendees he remains undecided on the proposal because he's still examining the framework, as are many of his colleagues. "In my 6-1/2 ye...Continue Reading

U.S. Sen. Mark Warner defined sequestration as “stupidity on steroids” on Monday. Simply avoiding sequestration is the answer, Warner claimed at the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce’s second annual U.S. Senatorial Forum. Hampton Roads remains one of the largest, if not the largest, location of military personnel in the country, U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine said at the event. Considering this fact, budget cuts that involve sequestration of the defense department create a ripple effect t...Continue Reading

The landscape appears to be changing at the Hampton VA Medical Center, and it goes beyond waterfront construction that is reshaping the grounds. Patient wait times are down, staff has increased, and on Monday a politician came away impressed. Such a trifecta would have been unthinkable nine months ago, when Hampton logged the nation's worst wait times for primary care patients and was trying to overcome the loss of nine doctors in six months. Sen. Tim Kaine, who toured the hospital Monday, gave ...Continue Reading

Rock and Rock Hall of Famer Joan Jett plays in Elmwood Park on Thursday night. Just typing the adjective makes us feel nostalgic, and reminds us of what Jett’s guitar player, Ricky Byrd, had to say at the induction ceremony earlier this year. His 13-year-old daughter wasn’t really impressed that her dad’s band was being honored unless it meant she could meet the chart-topping rapper Iggy Azalea. “In my world,” Byrd said, “there is only one Iggy you want to mee...Continue Reading

I urge the General Assembly to give Virginia Supreme Court Justice Jane Marum Roush fair review on her merits rather than refusing to consider her for the role [“Democrats demand hearings on pick for Supreme Court,” Metro, Aug. 11]. The Virginia Constitution is clear. When a vacancy occurs in any circuit court, the Court of Appeals, the State Corporation Commission or the Virginia Supreme Court when the legislature is not in session, the governor may appoint a replacement, subject to...Continue Reading

When Maurice "Mo" Lynch arrived as a young graduate student at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science in 1962, the place was evolving fast. "It was just at the very beginning of what I call the growth into a full-blown marine science laboratory, as opposed to a fisheries laboratory," recalled Lynch, now a VIMS professor emeritus. One of the first things he and his fellow students tackled in the summer of '63 was a directive from the General Assembly to determine whether dredging the James Rive...Continue Reading

Just a day after Metro’s board of directors gave the transit agency’s top management 10 days to explain why a defective section of rail was not repaired for more than a month, the region’s four U.S. senators are weighing in, demanding that the findings of the internal investigation be aired publicly at a board hearing. Sens. Barbara Mikulski (D) and Ben Cardin (D) of Maryland and Sens. Mark Warner (D) and Tim Kaine (D) of Virginia made it clear that they are out of patience. Al...Continue Reading

Last Saturday marked the one-year anniversary of the start of America’s campaign against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). But after some 5,000 airstrikes—with some 3,500 U.S. soldiers on the ground—Congress has yet to hold an up-or-down vote on authorization for our latest Middle East war. A year of illegal warmaking represents a new low in the erosion of constitutional checks and balances: an occasion for the country to reflect on the dangerous drift towar...Continue Reading

The area’s congressional delegation recently introduced a bipartisan bill aimed at addressing regulatory problems that have impeded the progress of prospective economic development sites, including Commonwealth Crossing Business Centre in Henry County. U.S. Rep. Robert Hurt, R-Chatham, and U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, joined U.S. Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, both Democrats, in introducing the Commonsense Permitting for Job Creation Act (H.R. 3434 and S. 1914) in both houses of C...Continue Reading

The scourge of prescription drug abuse has seemingly permeated all aspects of our society here in the mountains, and the deadly epidemic shows no signs of abating. That’s why the battle must continue on the local, state and federal level. One well-known contributing factor to this deadly affliction is a process commonly known as “doctor shopping.” As its name implies, doctor shopping is the process of drug addicts going from one doctor to the another in search of prescriptions ...Continue Reading

Last month, Sens. Jeff Merkley, Tammy Baldwin and Cory Booker introduced The Equality Act in the U.S. Senate. This would be the first sweeping anti-discrimination bill, amending the Civil Rights Act of 1964, to include lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, protecting LGBT people from workplace discrimination and housing discrimination. Virginia Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine joined the three fellow Democrats as co-sponsors of the bill. Though same-sex marriage was legalized, it’...Continue Reading

Advanced jobs training would be put on an equal footing with traditional college courses under a new Pell Grant bill backed by U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va. Kaine, a co-founder of the Senate Career and Technical Education Caucus, is aiming to expand the federal program and cover students enrolled in short-term industry certification programs. Currently, Pell Grants are only available for courses that are at least 15 weeks long — the length of an average college semester. Kaine’s bill wo...Continue Reading

For one, full year, U.S. fighter jets have been involved in punishing airstrikes on the forces of the so-called Islamic State. And for one, full year, U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia has been like a biblical prophet of old, a voice crying in the wilderness, calling on Congress to give its approval and backing to the combat mission. But to no avail. President Obama committed U.S. forces to a campaign of airstrikes against ISIS, as the terror state is also known, after weeks of stunning military ...Continue Reading

Happy Anniversary! Congress is about to celebrate a full year of dawdling over America’s war against the Islamic State by going on vacation. Having despaired of passing a bill with “Cyber” in its name that nevertheless would do little to protect America against cyberattacks, the Senate just closed up shop for the summer. They’ll be back on September 8 for a debate about whether or not to reject the Iran nuclear deal in favor of starting ...Continue Reading

Thursday is the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon B. Johnson signing the Voting Rights Act that outlawed discriminatory voting practices adopted in many southern states after the Civil War, including Virginia, including literacy tests as a prerequisite to voting. In recognition of the important anniversary, U.S. Senators Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, Democrats from Virginia, have renewed their call for the Senate to adopt legislation that would that would restore and advance voting protections f...Continue Reading