Sparks Fly on Child Safety Bill and Trump's Good and Bad News
Yes, Virginia a big tax deal can still get done!
Axios: Sparks fly as senators push CEOs to support online safety bills
Why it matters: Legislators spent nearly four hours grilling Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg along with the CEOs of TikTok, X, Snap and Discord on the sexual exploitation of children on their platforms — but outrage directed at social media from both sides of the aisle has yet to produce new laws to solve the problem.
The poll finds Trump at 58 percent support among potential Republican primary voters, with Haley at 32 percent. Haley has said her goal is to improve on her performance in last week’s New Hampshire primary, where she won 43 percent of the vote to Trump’s 54 percent.
The Hill Majority of swing-state voters in new poll wouldn’t vote for Trump if convicted
The Bloomberg News/Morning Consult survey found that among voters in swing states such as Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, 53 percent of respondents said they were unwilling to vote for the former president if he is convicted in one of his multiple criminal cases.
The Hill Biden super PAC launches historic $250M ad blitz
The 10-week ad blitz will target voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin
POLITICO Gender gap expands between Biden and Trump, new poll shows
The gender gap is growing between supporters of President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, according to a new Quinnipiac University
'Propelled by female voters in just the past few weeks, the head-to-head tie with Trump morphs into a modest lead for Biden.'It's a different story for former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who trails far behind Trump in the Republican primary.
Haley's support comes largely from independents, with 53 percent saying they'd vote for her. Another 37 percent would back Biden. In the same poll, 52 percent of independents said they'd support Biden over Trump, who'd have the support of 40 percent of respondents.'In a head-to-head matchup against Biden, Haley outperforms Trump, thanks to independents,' Malloy said. 'Add third party candidates to the mix and her numbers slip in part because of her weakness among Republicans.
Geopolitical Futures A Shift in Russian Wartime Policy?
Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti published a statement made by President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday that we regard as a significant shift in Russian foreign policy. He said the demilitarized zone in Ukraine should be pushed back farther away from Russian territories – far enough that it would be safe from “long-range weapons of foreign production … which the Ukrainian authorities use to shell peaceful cities.” After all, the purpose of the conflict, he said, was to protect the Russian motherland.
Virginia General Assembly
Steve Haner - Thomas Jefferson Institute: Rent Control, Collective Bargaining, Class Action Lawsuits, Virginia’s Business Climate in the Crosshairs
The push to radically regulate Virginia’s energy future discussed earlier is being mimicked with equally aggressive legislation throughout the rest of our economy. None of the ideas below are new, and most are already in law in places like California, New York, or other more liberal states. What has changed is that when proposed in the past, they usually were rejected in Virginia on a bipartisan basis. Democrats now march in lockstep.
Sen. Ghazala Hashmi and Delegate Rip Sullivan opine: Commentary: Want to supercharge Clean Energy Act? Enable free market competition
Richmond Times Dispatch: Bill to fully eliminate car tax dies, as assembly waits on governor
The Virginia Association of Counties and Virginia Municipal League, representing local governments, say they have heard little from the Youngkin administration since a meeting on Dec. 22, two days after the governor’s budget speech.
“I honestly don’t know what’s going on at the administration level about the car tax,” VaCo Executive Director Dean Lynch said on Wednesday.
Analysis - where there’s a will, there’s a way. One of my #1 Rules of Politics is that politics is not about what you want, it’s about what you are willing to give up to get what you want. All of this can still be done.
Richmond Times Dispatch: VEA terminates its labor lobbyist, who sues the organization
the statewide teachers union that represents teachers and school support staffers, is terminating its chief labor lobbyist, Emily Yen, midway through the General Assembly session.
Yen is now suing the VEA, asserting that the organization fired her in retaliation for her claims that she was discriminated against based on her gender.
Yen had filed a grievance with her employer in May and alleged that, based on her gender and race, she was being compensated less than similarly situated, male colleagues. According to the suit her grievance was ultimately successful, and the VEA increased her pay and awarded her back pay.