VA Del. Tim Hugo, KT McFarland and MD Governor Larry Hogan joined WMAL Wednesday morning.

Mornings on the Mall

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

Hosts: Brian Wilson and Larry O’Connor

Executive Producer: Heather Smith Hunter

5am – A/B/C Reagan National Airport closes doors to homeless. Reagan National Airport has decided to change it’s hours, keeping homeless people out of the airport. ARLINGTON, Va. (WUSA9) — After serving as a de facto refuge for years, Ronald Regan National Airport is shutting its doors to the homeless. In late September, the Airport Authority signed a new policy, taking effect Monday, prohibiting people from being in the airport overnight unless they have a boarding pass. “Public hours of operation for Reagan National Airport are now 4:30 a.m. to 1130 p.m.,” Chris Paolino, a spokesperson for the airport, said. “That means that the general public, the people who might come just to be in the airport, after those hours they’re going to be asked to leave.” People asked to leave and don’t could be arrested for trespassing.

Ahead of winter, more tents at Virginia Avenue homeless camp. WASHINGTON — Through shelters and motel rooms, the District expects to provide a roof for more than 700 homeless families this winter, by far the most ever. But by limitation or personal choice, other homeless people, particularly individuals, are planning to brave the elements. In the past few weeks, a homeless encampment along Rock Creek Parkway near Virginia Avenue has swelled, with more tents going up daily. “About 12 new people have come in the last three days,” says one man who didn’t give his name. “The problem is that we don’t have work and some are disabled.” On Monday afternoon, 14 tents — some with multiple rooms — dotted the grassy area just north of the Watergate. It’s unclear how many recently became homeless. All said the tents — which appear new — were donated.

5am – D         VA Elections:

• McAuliffe’s hopes for Senate majority dashed. (Washington Post) — Republicans held onto the Virginia Senate in fiercely contested elections Tuesday, leaving Gov. Terry McAuliffe without legislative leverage or political momentum as he works to deliver Virginia for his friend and ally Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2016. The outcome was a blunt rebuke to McAuliffe (D), who had barnstormed the state with 24 events over the past four days and who portrayed the elections as a make-or-break moment for his progressive agenda. All 140 seats in the General Assembly were on the ballot. But all eyes were on a handful of Senate seats that would decide whether Republicans held their 21-19 majority in Richmond’s upper chamber. Because the GOP dominates the House, flipping the Senate was the term-limited governor’s only hope for building a legislative legacy.

5am – E         Election results nationwide:

• Republican Matt Bevin wins Kentucky governor’s race. (USA Today) — GOP’s Bevin defeats Conway in Ky. gov.’s race. LOUISVILLE — Matt Bevin became the first governor from Louisville and Lt. Gov.-elect Jenean Hampton became first African American to win statewide office in Kentucky on Tuesday as Republicans rolled to victories in several key races. Democrat Jack Conway failed to roll up the large margin in Jefferson County he needed and couldn’t minimize losses elsewhere as Bevin grabbed large margins throughout the rest of the state. The Associated Press called the race for Bevin at 8:16 p.m. ET. With 100% of the vote counted, Bevin defeated Conway 53% to 44%.
• Ohio votes against legalizing recreational marijuana use. (USA Today) — Ohio voters say no to legalizing marijuana. CINCINNATI — In a major blow to marijuana legalization nationwide, Ohio voters Tuesday rejected a sweeping initiative that would have ended pot prohibition in the Buckeye State. Unofficial election results found that the proposed constitutional amendment, known as Issue 3, was defeated 65.1% to 34.8%. Voters did write into the Ohio Constitution a provision known has Issue 2 that prohibits the establishment of a “monopoly, oligopoly or cartel” in the state’s founding document. The ballot issue, which the state legislature wrote expressly to defeat the marijuana language, passed 52.6% to 47.4%.
• Maryland election results: City voters in Maryland headed to the polls Tuesday to choose council representatives and new mayors for races in Rockville, Bowie, Laurel, College Park, Greenbelt, and Gaithersburg. College Park’s next mayor will be the first openly gay man to hold the post.

6am – A/B/C Marco Rubio spent lavishly on a GOP credit card, but some transactions are still secret. Rubio has refused to disclose some records. (Tampa Bay Times) –It has become legend in Florida political circles, a missing chapter in Marco Rubio’s convoluted financial story: two years of credit-card transactions from his time in the state House, when he and other Republican leaders freely spent party money. Details about the spending, which included repairs for Rubio’s family minivan, emerged in his 2010 U.S. Senate race. But voters got only half the story because the candidate refused to disclose additional records. Now, Sen. Rubio’s past is under fresh scrutiny as he emerges as a top presidential prospect. During last week’s debate, he deflected questions about his financial discipline — most recently, he liquidated a retirement account — but those questions will only intensify. “For years, I’ve been hearing that his credit cards are a disaster,” Donald Trump said Tuesday during a news conference in New York City.

6am – D/E     Florida Eighth-Grader Gets Detention For Hugging. OVIEDO, Fla. (CBS Tampa)– An eighth-grader in Florida got detention for hugging friends before school, according to WKMG. “I just like hugged them. It was literally for a second,” Ella, an eighth-grade student at Jackson Heights Middle School, told the station. The school district bans “inappropriate touching,” but that’s left for interpretation for each principal. Jackson Heights banned hugging altogether this year, a move some parents find excessive. “I do not feel that this ‘no hugging, holding hands, arm-linking’ would be considered inappropriate touching,” Kathy Fishbough, Ella’s mother, said. The district says students are given detentions after repeatedly breaking the code of conduct. The student’s mother said Ella was given a warning last month when the same boy from the “hug” put his hand on her head.

7am – A         INTERVIEW – VA DEL TIM HUGO — representing the 40th district, which includes the municipalities of Catharpin, Clifton, and Fairfax Station and is the Majority Caucus Chairman for the Virginia House Republican Caucus – recapped the Virginia elections.

7am – B        2016 News:

• Company launches Bernie Sanders-inspired underwear line. MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — Employees of a Vermont company have launched a side business selling underwear featuring a black-and-white drawing of the face of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. NECN reports that the underwear, which features the message “Feel the Bern,” is available for men and women and costs $15 plus shipping and handling. The three workers with KSE Partners, a strategic communications and government affairs firm, say they created Bernie’s Briefs as a fun side business.
• Republicans Ask IRS to Audit Clinton Charity’s Finances. (Reuters) — The Republican Party filed a formal complaint against one of Hillary Clinton’s family charities with the Internal Revenue Service on Tuesday and is calling for an audit after the charity said this week it would not refile erroneous tax returns. The Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation’s flagship health program conceded earlier this year it had misreported by millions of the dollars the money it was given by governments compared with non-government donors in its tax returns for 2012 and 2013. The charities have come under intense scrutiny this year with Hillary Clinton remaining the favorite to become the Democratic Party’s nominee in the November 2016 presidential election.
• Clinton Calls for Exxon Probe After Company Cuts Off Foundation Funding. (Free Beacon/Alana Goodman)- Hillary Clinton is calling for a federal investigation of ExxonMobil’s climate change activities just months after the company neglected to renew its sponsorship of the Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting. ExxonMobil, which is being accused by global warming activists of misleading the public about climate change, has given between $ 1 million and $5 million to the Clinton Foundation and sponsored the CGI annual meeting in 2014. But this year, the oil giant was one of six major corporations that stopped sponsoring the event, according to USA Today. Clinton said last week that the Department of Justice should investigate ExxonMobil for allegedly withholding data related to climate change, saying that there is “a lot of evidence they misled people.”
• Poll: Trump and Carson neck-and-neck. Washington (CNN) – Donald Trump and Ben Carson are running neck-and-neck in the Republican primary, a new national poll shows. Trump has 24% support compared to Carson’s 23% in a new Quinnipiac University survey. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio comes in No. 3 with 14% support, and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is No. 4 with 13%. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is next with just 4% support, followed by Carly Fiorina, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Ohio Gov. John Kasich at 3% each, and then Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul at 2%. Among Democrats, Hillary Clinton has maintained her hefty lead — with 53% backing to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 35%. The worst news for Clinton comes in a head-to-head with Carson, where she trails 50% to 40%.       “Is there a doctor in the house? There certainly is and at the moment Dr. Ben Carson is delivering a troubling diagnosis to Secretary Hillary Clinton,” said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll, in a release accompanying the poll. “With the election one year away, Ben Carson has surgically cut away all but one GOP opponent and taken a scalpel to Hillary Clinton’s lead.”

7am – C        Study may have found evidence of alternate, parallel universes. (USA Today) — Prepare to have your mind blown. An astrophysicist says he may have found evidence of alternate or parallel universes by looking back in time to just after the Big Bang more than 13 billion years ago. While mapping the so-called “cosmic microwave background,” which is the light left over from the early universe, scientist Ranga-Ram Chary found what he called a mysterious glow, the International Business Times reported. Chary, a researcher at the European Space Agency’s Planck Space Telescope data center at CalTech, said the glow could be due to matter from a neighboring universe “leaking” into ours, according to New Scientist magazine. “Our universe may simply be a region within an eternally inflating super-region,” scientist Chary wrote in a recent study in the Astrophysical Journal. “Many other regions beyond our observable universe would exist with each such region governed by a different set of physical parameters than the ones we have measured for our universe,” Chary wrote in the study.

7am – D         INTERVIEW — KT MCFARLAND – FOX NEWS NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST

• RUSSIAN PLANE: U.S. satellite detected ‘heat flash’ around doomed Russian jet just before crash. Egypt’s President Dismisses ISIS Group’s Claim It Downed Russian Jet.
• SYRIA: Syria conflict: Russia says keeping Assad ‘not crucial’ Earlier on Tuesday the Russian foreign ministry said it was not crucial for Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad to stay in power, saying it was up to the Syrian people to decide.However, a spokeswoman for the ministry said that this did not represent a change of position.

7am – E         Entertainment News:

• I’m always been asked to pose for Playboy, says Adele: Singer slams ‘ridiculous’ approaches asking her to pose for the magazine during Rolling Stone interview. Gone is the glossy hair and make-up that we’re used to. But Adele’s low-key new look is not the most surprising thing about her latest interview. The singer reveals that she has quit smoking, cut her alcohol intake to one drink a week – and is constantly asked whether she would pose for Playboy. ‘I’ve been asked … so many ****ing times, it’s ridiculous,’ she told Rolling Stone. ‘And [do they ask me] because I’m a woman or because I’m fat?’ The mother-of-one, stripped back to tousled wet hair and minimal make-up as she sits in a white dressing gown for the cover, ponders in the interview whether being plus-sized has led to her success.
• Nicole Kidman Joins DC’s ‘Wonder Woman’ as Amazonian Warrior. Warner Bros.’ Wonder Woman has just roped in an Oscar winner. Nicole Kidman is in negotiations to join Gal Gadot and Chris Pine in the DC Comics adaptation, which is being directed by Patty Jenkins. More on the Nicole Kidman Wonder Woman casting after the jump. TheWrap broke news of the Nicole Kidman Wonder Woman casting. Kidman will play a “high-ranking Amazonian warrior.” Her character name has not been revealed, but one possibility is that the description refers to Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons and Wonder Woman’s mother in the comics.
• Nicole Kidman Was Leah Remini’s “Guardian Angel” After Leaving Scientology: “She Left and She’s Okay.” After she defected from the Church of Scientology in 2013, Leah Remini found solace in none other than Nicole Kidman, whom she never met or spoke to — but has described in her new memoir as “my guardian angel.” Remini, 45, left Scientology after 30 years as a member, and her new book, Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology, details the alleged events that resulted in her decision. However, it wasn’t easy even after she defected. “During this confusing early period, I sometimes felt adrift,” Remini recalled in her book. “But I had one figure I kept front and center in my mind to keep from going crazy: Nicole Kidman. That’s right, Tom Cruise’s ex was my guardian angel. Although I never met her or attempted to meet her, I thought about her a lot.”

8am – A/B/C Marco Rubio spent lavishly on a GOP credit card, but some transactions are still secret. Rubio has refused to disclose some records. (Tampa Bay Times) –It has become legend in Florida political circles, a missing chapter in Marco Rubio’s convoluted financial story: two years of credit-card transactions from his time in the state House, when he and other Republican leaders freely spent party money. Details about the spending, which included repairs for Rubio’s family minivan, emerged in his 2010 U.S. Senate race. But voters got only half the story because the candidate refused to disclose additional records. Now, Sen. Rubio’s past is under fresh scrutiny as he emerges as a top presidential prospect. During last week’s debate, he deflected questions about his financial discipline — most recently, he liquidated a retirement account — but those questions will only intensify. “For years, I’ve been hearing that his credit cards are a disaster,” Donald Trump said Tuesday during a news conference in New York City.

8am – D/E     INTERVIEW — MARYLAND GOVERNOR LARRY HOGAN — discussed the one year anniversary of the governor’s historic election