Mornings on the Mall
Wednesday July 13, 2016
Hosts: Brian Wilson and Larry O’Connor
5am – A/B/C
Obama Mentions Himself 45 Times During Memorial Speech For Dallas Officers
President Obama referred to himself 45 times over the course of the speech he delivered Tuesday at the memorial service for the five police officers killed in Dallas last week.
Obama referred to himself twice before finishing his opening salutations and before mentioning the slain officers or their families. After noting the presence of President Bush, members of Congress and Dallas mayor Mike Rawlings, Obama appeared to go off-script.
“Chief Brown, I’m so glad I met Michelle first because she loves Stevie Wonder,” Obama said, jokingly referencing Dallas Police Chief David Brown’s earlier speech in which Brown quoted lyrics from the song “As” in tribute to the deceased. The president looked around the room, pointed at Brown and cracked a grin while the audience laughed at and applauded his joke. “Most of all, the families…” Obama said, proceeding with his speech.
Obama would refer to himself 43 more times throughout the speech — most of which he personally wrote, according to the LA Times — including one instance where he referred to himself in the third-person: “the president.”
“Politicians calculate how to grab attention or avoid the fallout. We see all this, and it’s hard not to think sometimes that the center won’t hold. And that things might get worse. I understand. I understand how Americans are feeling. But, Dallas, I’m here to say we must reject such despair,” he said later.
“I’m here to insist that we are not as divided as we seem. And I know that because I know America. I know how far we’ve come against impossible odds. I know we’ll make it because of what I’ve experienced in my own life. What I’ve seen of this country and its people, their goodness and decency as president of the United States,” he continued.
The president also referred to himself while lamenting the apparent inefficacy of his own rhetoric. “I’ve seen how inadequate my own words can be,” he said.
The president has faced scrutiny in the past for his habit of talking about himself during national speeches.
5am – D
Will Trump pick Mike Pence for V.P.? ‘Who the hell knows?’ Trump teases.
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence delivered an impassioned audition to become Donald Trump’s chief attack dog Tuesday, tearing into Hillary Clinton and mocking Bernie Sanders during a joint campaign rally here.
But will Trump choose him for veep?
“I don’t know if he’s going to be your governor or your vice president, who the hell knows?” Trump teased Tuesday night, as thousands of Hoosiers here cheered, standing on an indoor artificial turf field at the Grand Park Events Center.
The joint appearance came as Trump moves closer to selecting his vice-presidential running mate — a process that he has teased for weeks while appearing alongside his final tier of options, including former House speaker Newt Gingrich and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
Pence, who is regularly mentioned as one of the final contenders, fits the candidate profile the campaign is looking for to a T: He has decades of political experience, maintains strong ties to the Washington establishment and boasts solid conservative credentials. The Indiana governor could also bring a dose of discipline to the campaign, which has been regularly derailed in recent months by unnecessary blunders that have overshadowed Trump’s populist message. With an aggressive and well-received speech Tuesday, Pence also showed that he could be an effective surrogate for Trump.
“I actually served in Congress with Bernie Sanders, and let me tell you, he’s the nicest socialist I ever served with in Washington, D.C.,” Pence said, warming up to attack the former secretary of state. “Hillary and her party have been sliding so far to Bernie’s leftist agenda it’s hard to keep track of it. … [T]o paraphrase the director of the FBI, I think it would be ‘extremely careless’ to elect Hillary Clinton as the next president of the United States.”
“Donald Trump understands the frustrations and the hopes of the American people like no other American leader in my lifetime since Ronald Reagan,” Pence said in another instance. “The American people are tired … of being told this is as good as it gets.”
After Pence left the stage, Trump praised the governor and noted that he effectively won the GOP nomination after the Indiana primary and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s devastating loss against Trump here in May. Pence endorsed Cruz in that contest but spoke warmly about Trump as well.
Jason DePasquale, 44, praised Pence’s stewardship of the state, but remained unconvinced that Pence might get the nod.
“I like Mike Pence. Absolutely. I think he would be a good V.P. pick because I know Mike Pence … He’s definitely a seasoned person, but I don’t know that the rest of the country will get that,” he said. “We’ll see what happens but I don’t think it’s going to be him. But we’ll see — unless you know something?”
Trump also briefly addressed the deaths of two black men in Louisiana and Minnesota who were killed by police officers last week. Appearing to depart from prepared remarks praising law enforcement officials, he called the situation “tough to watch” and raised concerns about the causes of the shootings.
“The two people that were killed in Louisiana and Minnesota. It was tough, it was tough to watch, for everybody here it was tough to watch. We have to figure it out, we have to figure out what is going on. Was it training? Was it something else?” Trump said. “It could have been something else. We have to take care of everybody, remember that.”
Trump and his campaign also homed in on Sanders Tuesday after the senator from Vermont endorsed Clinton, accusing him of turning his back on his anti-Wall Street supporters and inviting them to vote for him.
“A lot of Bernie Sanders’s people are so upset about it, they’re going to be voting for Trump. I really believe that. They’re going to be voting for Trump,” the presumptive Republican nominee said at one point.
The comments capped a daylong deluge of anti-Sanders tweets from Trump’s official Twitter account and from his campaign’s rapid response team, which continually accused Sanders of hypocrisy.
Trump policy adviser, Stephen Miller, blasted the endorsement during brief remarks at the beginning of the rally Tuesday, accusing Clinton of being bought by special interests and calling Sanders’s tough talk against special interests a “hoax.”
“There are now millions of folks, decent, hardworking, patriotic people in the Democratic Party who have been completely cut out of the process,” Miller said. “The curtain was lifted. … All the rhetoric about giving people control in the Democratic Party was all a big hoax.”
5am – E
Speed camera tickets, revenue surge in DC
Speed enforcement cameras in the District are generating so many tickets that if the current pace continues, the cameras will have generated 1.4 million tickets with fines reaching $148 million by the end of the year, AAA Mid-Atlantic estimated.
Relying on a Freedom of Information Act request, AAA found that speed cameras arrayed on roadways throughout the city kicked out more than 365,000 tickets in the first four months of the fiscal year, ending Feb. 15, 2016. The revenue from those citations is more than $37 million — about the same as the revenue from the entire fiscal year 2014.
“They are just really activating every camera that they have in place,” said John Townsend, AAA Mid-Atlantic’s manager of public and government affairs.
“They’re skyrocketing again, both in terms of the number of tickets and the vast amount of revenue they’re collecting.”
The data, which AAA made public in a news release Tuesday, showed that the city’s speed camera revenue fell sharply in 2014. The city’s speed cameras generated just over 282,000 tickets in fiscal year 2014 for annual revenue of nearly $37.5 million, down from more than 419,000 tickets and $75.7 million in fiscal year 2013.
Some city officials blamed wintry weather for the drop, including prolonged icy conditions, which interfered with crews’ abilities to conduct routine maintenance on the automated speed enforcement camera system. Others, including D.C. police, said the drop was simply the result of drivers speeding less.
In fiscal year 2015, ticketing and revenue jumped back up; the speed cameras issued more than 520,000 citations, producing nearly $55.4 million in ticket revenue, according to the news release.
“Over the span of a year, the number of tickets increased almost 85 percent in the District of Columbia, and so did the revenue,” Townsend said.
The D.C. government pointed to a 1997 nationwide survey of drivers that indicates more than 7 in 10 drivers support the use of photo enforcement cameras to cut speeding.
It is important for drivers to always drive the speed limit, Townsend said, warning that D.C. speed cameras can be placed on any city roadway.
Townsend said he believes there is a widely held fear that D.C. speed cameras are all about the revenue and not so much about safety.
“The truth is somewhere in between,” Townsend said. “They’re about safety, and they’re about the revenue totals.”
6am – A/B/C
Donald Trump declines invitation to speak at NAACP convention
As racial tension continues to build across the country, Donald Trump has declined to speak at the NAACP’s annual convention in Cincinnati this weekend, the civil rights organization’s leader announced Tuesday.
Cornell William Brooks, the president and chief executive officer of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said during an interview on CNN that the presumptive Republican nominee “declined our invitation” and that presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton plans to speak at the conference. Nominees from both parties usually address the conference and the GOP’s last nominee, Mitt Romney, did so in 2012.
“The explanation given was that they’re holding their convention at the same time,” Brooks said. “We, of course, are in Cincinnati. They are in Cleveland. We were hoping he would make the short trip from Cleveland to Cincinnati.”
Trump’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
News of Trump skipping the civil rights organization’s event comes at the end of a violent, bloody week that sparked a heated discussed about race relations. Last week, two black men were killed during encounters with police in Minnesota and Louisiana, which were captured on video. On Thursday night, five officers were killed in retaliatory killings in Dallas. Since then, protests have sprung up across the country, often led by Black Lives Matter activists.
Trump said in an interviews with Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly on Tuesday night that the term “Black Lives Matter” is “a very divisive term.” Trump continued to accuse President Obama, the nation’s first black president, of stoking racial tension and not being a “cheerleader” for the nation. But on Tuesday he acknowledged that questions were also raised by the deaths of Alton Sterling in Louisiana and Philando Castile in Minnesota.
Brooks said that Trump is missing an opportunity.
“The NAACP, representing millions of Americans, we represent an occasion for those running for president to speak to the nation’s most critical issues at a critical hour in this country,” Brooks said. “You can’t run for president and not talk about police misconduct and police brutality. You can’t run for president and not talk about this country’s civil rights agenda, so this is an important moment and our convention really will be an opportunity for anyone running for president to provide a window into not only their policies but into their heart and character as a candidate. So it’s going to be an important moment.”
6am – D/E Soon, You’ll Be Able to Swim in a Pool of Sprinkles at This Museum Dedicated to Ice Cream
As summer heats up, you can try cooling off in a pool… of sprinkles
Calling anyone with an incorrigible sweet tooth: mark your calendars and book your tickets, because a Museum of Ice Cream is opening up in downtown New York — but just for one month, from July 29 to Aug. 31 this summer.
The dessert-focused exhibition is dedicated to all things ice cold and scoop-friendly, with some pretty whimsical touches. There will be a “swimmable rainbow ‘sprinkle’ pool, edible balloons, an immersive chocolate room and a collaborative massive ice cream sundae,” the museum’s site notes. “Guests will swing on an ice cream sandwich made for two, seesaw on an ice cream scooper and find their match/favorite flavor on a custom app in Tinder Land.” In other words, this is definitely not your average museum.
But even the sweetest things in life don’t come free; adults can expect to pay $18 for a ticket, although a gourmet ice cream tasting is included in the entrance fee, so you might want to come hungry and prepare for your sugar rush in advance. Just remember: take it slow to avoid the inevitable brain freeze.
And if its advance Instagram presence is anything to go by, this museum is going to be curated to within an inch of its cold, creamy life.
7am – A/B Holocaust Museum to visitors: Please stop catching Pokémon here (Washington Post)
Almost everywhere you turn, it seems, people have their eyes glued to smartphone screens playing Pokémon Go. Since its launch last week, the app has quickly become a cultural phenomenon that has fans of all ages hunting around their neighborhoods for collectible digital creatures that appear on players’ screens as they explore real-world locations.
But there’s at least one place that would really like to keep Pokémon out: the Holocaust Museum.
The museum, along with many other landmarks, is a “PokéStop” within the game — a place where players can get free in-game items. There are three PokéStops associated with various parts of the museum.
“Playing the game is not appropriate in the museum, which is a memorial to the victims of Nazism,” Andrew Hollinger, the museum’s communications director, told The Post. “We are trying to find out if we can get the museum excluded from the game.”
The Holocaust Museum’s plight highlights how apps that layer a digital world on top of the real one can create awkward situations, especially since the owners of the physical locations often cannot weigh in on how their spaces are being used.
One image circulating online appears to show a player encountering an unsettling digital critter inside the museum: a Pokémon called Koffing that emits poisonous gas floating by a sign for the museum’s Helena Rubinstein Auditorium. The auditorium shows the testimonials of Jews who survived the gas chambers.
Niantic did not immediately respond to inquiries about the alleged Koffing sighting or if there was any way to honor the Holocaust Museum’s request to stop Pokémon from popping up inside its building.
Hollinger stressed that the museum is generally pro-technology and encourages visitors to use social media to share how their experiences with the exhibits moved them. “But this game falls very much outside that,” he said.
On Monday afternoon, there were plenty of people inside the museum who seemed to be distracted from its haunting exhibits as they tried to “catch ’em all,” as the Pokémon slogan goes.
People Are Flocking To This Guy’s House Because It’s A Gym On Pokémon Go
Boon Sheridan, a designer who lives in Massachusetts with his wife
Last year, the family moved into a lovely home that was originally built as a church in the 1800s.
His house was showing up on the game as a “gym,” a place in the game where you can train and fight Pokémon.
“I thought, that can’t be right,” he said.
Sheridan said he didn’t really think much of it — until the next morning. Then, people started showing up at his house.
Some people went in a park across the street, he said, but most people got up close and personal with his “gym.” He said people came all through the night, which was a little creepy.
Many churches in the game are designated as “gyms,” Sheridan said, so he thinks that’s why his house was chosen.
Sheridan said he thinks that “no one bothered to check and see if it was an actual church or if it was a residence.”
About 50 people have come to his house so far, Sheridan said. He has spent some time outside to engage with the players, hoping to meet his neighbors.
“I like meeting some of the people, it’s fun,” he said.
He even met the “owner” of the “gym,” which Sheridan said was pretty weird considering the “gym” is inside his house.
However, Sheridan said it is a little odd that he has no control over his home being a significant part of the game, and never signed off on being included. He said it doesn’t really bother him, but doesn’t love all the late-night visitors.
“I’d be cool with it if I could have some control over the hours,” he said. “I’d rather them get it sorted out a little bit better.”
Sheridan said he hopes to talk to the developers behind the game to ask if they could put some limits on when people can come to his home or maybe move the gym to the nearby park.
But for the most part, Sheridan is bemused by the whole thing.
7am – C Sports Update: Jordan Spieth’s and Rory McIlroy’s Two Approaches to an Olympic Snub
The ethos of the world’s most famed athletic competition is known as the Olympic movement, which in the men’s golf community is best signified by the stampede of top players dashing away from the 2016 Rio Games.
The best male golfers are not just skipping the first Olympic golf tournament in 112 years; at least one, Rory McIlroy, on kicked dirt on it Tuesday as he left it behind.
Every day yields another body blow to the cause of golf in the Olympic Games and what it was meant to accomplish. Tuesday was only the latest, most cutting rebuke.
It began as the day when the top-ranked American Jordan Spieth would explain his decision, revealed Monday, to skip the Olympics, an event he had once eagerly promoted. Spieth, still the earnest, genial boy next door, did his best to clarify his position despite a mystifying unwillingness to be specific.
But then McIlroy, likable and normally deferential, addressed the worldwide news media and stomped on Olympic golf anew. McIlroy, who announced last month that he would forgo the Olympics because of concerns over the Zika virus, was asked about Spieth’s decision and whether elite golfers were letting down the game.
McIlroy unloaded.
“I don’t think it was as difficult a decision for me as it was for him,” McIlroy said, adding, “I don’t feel like I’ve let the game down at all.”
Restoring golf to the Olympics was intended to build the game of golf, especially globally, since the game would be exposed to people who do not normally follow golf or get to play it.
Jordan Spieth said Tuesday that he struggled with his decision to skip the Rio Games, but that overall health concerns, not only the Zika virus, were determining factors.
McIlroy did not see the connection.
“I didn’t get into golf to try and grow the game,” he said. “I tried to get into golf to win championships and win major championships.”
McIlroy, ranked No. 4 in the world, was just getting started. A few minutes earlier, Spieth had said it was going to be agonizing for him to watch the Olympic tournament from home. McIlroy said he was probably going to watch the Olympics, but maybe not the golf competition. Asked which events he would watch, McIlroy said, “Probably the events like track and field, swimming, diving — the stuff that matters.”
The dagger fired around the world at the Olympic ideal was unmistakable. That it took place less than 48 hours before the first shot of the 145th British Open was yet another setback for golf.
To be fair, in the past, even when McIlroy had said he would go to Rio, he had expressed an uneasiness about calling himself a future Olympian. In his view, Olympians were athletes who had worked tirelessly and often in anonymity — runners, swimmers and divers — to qualify for the event that was the pinnacle of their sport. McIlroy never pretended to view the Olympics the same way, and neither did most golfers.
One player who had shown some affinity toward the Olympics and who said he understood the importance of representing his country had been Spieth. It jibed with his all-American image, and it certainly helped him land endorsements from business entities like Coca-Cola, the longtime Olympic sponsor for whom Spieth, the world’s third-ranked golfer, is now a global ambassador.
Understanding all that, on Tuesday, Spieth, 22, anticipated the inquisition that came his way. He joked about it early, replied to every question respectfully and handled the situation with startling aplomb. He just did not have enough complete answers.
“This was something I very much struggled with,” said Spieth, whose withdrawal from the United States team means that the world’s top four golfers will not be in the Olympic tournament. Jason Day and Dustin Johnson, the world’s first- and second-ranked golfers, had already opted out.
Spieth avoided mentioning the Zika virus, and, in fact, asked reporters not to refer to it as the cause of his Olympic exit.
Want to Go to Rio?
The New York Times is sending dozens of journalists to Rio this summer to cover the Olympics (the good, the bad and the ugly). Sign up here to get daily updates and analysis from our team.
“Again, I didn’t cite that,” he said. “So please don’t do that for me. It’s strictly health concerns as a whole. That’s not the only one.”
Spieth conceded that people would be skeptical about the motivations for his decision, since they most likely include security concerns.
“Yes, I can understand why people are skeptical,” he said. “They’re as passionate about the Olympics as I am. They also are not in my shoes. So I feel that many, if not all of you, would have made the same decision I made if you were in my shoes.”
Although it might be the usual response in this situation, especially with a major championship beginning soon, Spieth did not say he would move on from his decision. Instead, he said the opposite.
“This decision will loom over me throughout the Olympic Games,” he said. “I will be, I’m sure, at times pretty upset I’m not down there.”
And yes, Spieth said he would watch the Olympic golf tournament.
“I’ll make it a goal to be at Tokyo in 2020,” he said of the next Summer Olympics. “I’ll make it a significant goal.”
He added that he hoped to play in four or five Olympics representing the United States. But with so many of the world’s best men’s golfers — and biggest names — snubbing the game’s much-publicized reintroduction to the Olympics, it is more than possible that golf will not be welcomed back in four years.
When it comes to Olympic golf in his lifetime, Spieth may be missing his only chance.
7am – D INTERVIEW: KT McFarland: Fox News national security analyst
Hong Kong: An international tribunal in The Hague ruled in favor of the Philippines in a maritime dispute Tuesday, concluding China has no legal basis to claim historic rights to the bulk of the South China Sea.
Chinese President Xi Jinping rejected the decision by the Permanent Court of Arbitration, which is likely to have lasting implications for the resource-rich hot spot, which sees $5 trillion worth of shipborne trade pass through each year.
“China will never accept any claim or action based on those awards,” Xi said. China had boycotted the proceedings.
The tribunal concluded that China doesn’t have the right to resources within its “nine-dash line,” which extends hundreds of miles to the south and east of its island province of Hainan and covers some 90% of the disputed waters.
China’s Ambassador to the United States, Cui Tiankai, accused the tribunal of “professional incompetence” and “questionable integrity.” Speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, he accused the United States of engaging in military exercises that constituted “military coercion.”
State Department spokesman John Kirby asserted that the United States, and the world, expect China to commit to nonmilitarization. “The world is watching to see if China is really the global power it professes itself to be, and the responsible power that it professes itself to be,” Kirby said.
Viewed as a decisive win for the Philippines, the ruling could heighten friction in a region already bristling with tension, especially if it unleashes a defiant reaction from China.
The United States, which has been at odds with China over freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, urged all parties “to avoid provocative statements and actions.”
7am – E Will Trump pick Mike Pence for V.P.? ‘Who the hell knows?’ Trump teases.
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence delivered an impassioned audition to become Donald Trump’s chief attack dog Tuesday, tearing into Hillary Clinton and mocking Bernie Sanders during a joint campaign rally here.
But will Trump choose him for veep?
“I don’t know if he’s going to be your governor or your vice president, who the hell knows?” Trump teased Tuesday night, as thousands of Hoosiers here cheered, standing on an indoor artificial turf field at the Grand Park Events Center.
The joint appearance came as Trump moves closer to selecting his vice-presidential running mate — a process that he has teased for weeks while appearing alongside his final tier of options, including former House speaker Newt Gingrich and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
Pence, who is regularly mentioned as one of the final contenders, fits the candidate profile the campaign is looking for to a T: He has decades of political experience, maintains strong ties to the Washington establishment and boasts solid conservative credentials. The Indiana governor could also bring a dose of discipline to the campaign, which has been regularly derailed in recent months by unnecessary blunders that have overshadowed Trump’s populist message. With an aggressive and well-received speech Tuesday, Pence also showed that he could be an effective surrogate for Trump.
“I actually served in Congress with Bernie Sanders, and let me tell you, he’s the nicest socialist I ever served with in Washington, D.C.,” Pence said, warming up to attack the former secretary of state. “Hillary and her party have been sliding so far to Bernie’s leftist agenda it’s hard to keep track of it. … [T]o paraphrase the director of the FBI, I think it would be ‘extremely careless’ to elect Hillary Clinton as the next president of the United States.”
“Donald Trump understands the frustrations and the hopes of the American people like no other American leader in my lifetime since Ronald Reagan,” Pence said in another instance. “The American people are tired … of being told this is as good as it gets.”
After Pence left the stage, Trump praised the governor and noted that he effectively won the GOP nomination after the Indiana primary and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s devastating loss against Trump here in May. Pence endorsed Cruz in that contest but spoke warmly about Trump as well.
Jason DePasquale, 44, praised Pence’s stewardship of the state, but remained unconvinced that Pence might get the nod.
“I like Mike Pence. Absolutely. I think he would be a good V.P. pick because I know Mike Pence … He’s definitely a seasoned person, but I don’t know that the rest of the country will get that,” he said. “We’ll see what happens but I don’t think it’s going to be him. But we’ll see — unless you know something?”
Trump also briefly addressed the deaths of two black men in Louisiana and Minnesota who were killed by police officers last week. Appearing to depart from prepared remarks praising law enforcement officials, he called the situation “tough to watch” and raised concerns about the causes of the shootings.
“The two people that were killed in Louisiana and Minnesota. It was tough, it was tough to watch, for everybody here it was tough to watch. We have to figure it out, we have to figure out what is going on. Was it training? Was it something else?” Trump said. “It could have been something else. We have to take care of everybody, remember that.”
Trump and his campaign also homed in on Sanders Tuesday after the senator from Vermont endorsed Clinton, accusing him of turning his back on his anti-Wall Street supporters and inviting them to vote for him.
“A lot of Bernie Sanders’s people are so upset about it, they’re going to be voting for Trump. I really believe that. They’re going to be voting for Trump,” the presumptive Republican nominee said at one point.
The comments capped a daylong deluge of anti-Sanders tweets from Trump’s official Twitter account and from his campaign’s rapid response team, which continually accused Sanders of hypocrisy.
Trump policy adviser, Stephen Miller, blasted the endorsement during brief remarks at the beginning of the rally Tuesday, accusing Clinton of being bought by special interests and calling Sanders’s tough talk against special interests a “hoax.”
“There are now millions of folks, decent, hardworking, patriotic people in the Democratic Party who have been completely cut out of the process,” Miller said. “The curtain was lifted. … All the rhetoric about giving people control in the Democratic Party was all a big hoax.”
8am – A/B/C
FAIRFAX, Va. – Fairfax County Public Schools have drafted a new list of guidelines and regulations when it comes to accommodating transgender students.
These guidelines were not voted on by the school board and they have not been publicly announced, but FOX 5 has learned they will take effect in the fall.
“In terms of school atmosphere, in terms of making schools more welcoming to all kids, especially trans kids, I think this will have a tremendous impact,” said Robert Rigby, president of the FCPS Pride and a veteran teacher at West Potomac High School in Alexandria.
Rigby applauds the move by the school board to implement the new regulations for transgender students in Fairfax County.
FOX 5 obtained a copy of the new regulations that include giving transgender students the option of using the bathroom or locker room that corresponds to their gender identity. It also provides instructions for teachers and staff to call students by their preferred name and pronoun.
However, not everyone is pleased with the move and how it has come about.
“I just felt like for many public school families who are seeking more information to know what is going on with their kids’ academic environment, this is another example of how we have sort of been shut out,” said Ruth Williamson, a mother of four children.
She said “a lack of transparency” drove her to pull her kids out of the Fairfax County Public Schools system. Now, the single mother juggles working and homeschooling her four children.
School board member Elizabeth Schultz also finds the move problematic.
“You have by default cut the public out of the discussion and you are reneging on your promise as a board to be accountable to the public,” she said.
“Especially as a mom of girls, I do feel that there are issues that for their future could really end up causing them to be discriminated against,” said Williamson. “My daughters are athletes and I’d love to see them have an equal playing field with other female athletes, particularly as they start to look toward high school and maybe getting scholarships. I’d hate to see them lose some opportunities there because they end up having to compete against transgender girls who really do have a biological advantage.”
During previous school board meetings and before Fairfax County Public Schools even decided on policy changes, parents expressed concern for the safety of students in bathrooms, locker room and when there were overnight accommodations involved for school trips.
“Some friends of mine with daughters have expressed concern about what about the yahoos, what about the troublemakers, what about the bad actors, and what we find is that no one ever has pretended to be trans to have access,” said Rigby.
In a statement, Fairfax County Public School Board Chair Pat Hynes said, “We do not hold up regulations for board review. Any board member may at any time propose that the school board direct the superintendent to amend any regulation to bring it in line with policy. That proposal would require a majority board vote and until then, the regulation would be in effect as written. Our forum conversation on July 14 is only about process.”
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Proposal introduced for group to rename J.E.B. Stuart High School
FALLS CHURCH, Va. — The Fairfax County School Board will vote later this month on whether to create a work group aimed at renaming a high school named after a Confederate Army general.If it’s created, the work group would be made up of students, parents, alumni, members of the community and business and community leaders with the goal of renaming J.E.B. Stuart High School in Falls Church.
The group would have until June 2017 to make recommendations to the board.
The proposal was introduced at Thursday’s board meeting, and several people used the citizen participation portion of the meeting to speak on both sides of the issue.
“The NAACP supports changing the name of J.E.B. Stuart High School to better reflect the diversity and inclusion of our public schools,” said George Alber with the Fairfax County NAACP.
“We have a duty to our community to not carry forward the relics of hate from a century ago into the future.”
Nicholas Pisciotta, a 2012 J.E.B. Stuart High graduate, opposes a name change and delivered his comments via video.
“The motion to change the name is a reckless attempt to revise our nation’s past, and deprives the students from this area of the educational opportunity to see how far the nation has advanced. Stuart is one of the most diverse high schools in the nation. It is a magical place,” he said.
Others who spoke took issue with the cost of a name change, which the school system estimates would be just under $700,000.
8am – D/E House Speaker Paul Ryan says presidential elections are a “binary choice” — and Donald Trump is a better one than Hillary Clinton
Here are five takeaways from the town hall:
Awkward dance with Trump
Ryan noted he’d spoken with Trump for weeks before offering the presumptive Republican nominee his endorsement, and was clear that he still disagrees with him on some topics.
“In the balance of things, the good clearly outweighs the things I don’t agree with,” Ryan said. “We don’t have people who run for office who 100% reflect all of our views. It doesn’t work like that.”
He was pressed on how he can morally justify his support for Trump, and wasn’t shy about taking issue with Trump’s proposed Muslim travel ban.
Ryan said he opposes proposals that violate religious freedom — whether it’s “Catholic nurses and doctors in California (through abortion laws), or whether a Republican is doing it to a Muslim.”
‘Openly racist’
Ryan’s tough spot was made clear when he was pressed by Zachary Marcone, a Republican who said he couldn’t support Trump because he is “openly racist.”
“Can you tell me, how can you morally justify your support for this kind of candidate?” Marcone asked.
In his answer, Ryan never disputed Marcone’s characterization of Trump as “openly racist.”
Instead, Ryan responded that by failing to support Trump, “That basically means you’re going to help elect Hillary Clinton — and I don’t think Hillary Clinton is going to support any of the things that you stand for if you’re a Republican.”
Ryan on VP: ‘I want a conservative’
Calling Trump “new to this,” Ryan made clear that he wants Trump to pick a vice presidential nominee who will mollify conservatives.
Ryan said he wants to see Trump pick “someone that is familiar with and has a proven record of being a conservative reformer, who understands conservative founding principles and has a record of applying those principles.”
At the same time Ryan held his town hall, Trump was campaigning in Indiana with Gov. Mike Pence in what many saw as a test-drive for a possible ticket. Trump and Pence had met one-on-one before a fundraiser earlier in the evening — and Ryan had lavished praise on Pence prior to CNN’s town hall.
Why is it so important for Trump to pick a reliable conservative? “I’d say he’s new to this and he’s been on different sides of different issues,” Ryan said.
Ryan’s nod to Black Lives Matter
The speaker didn’t use the comeback that “all lives matter” — and even denounced it — when a questioner asked for his take on the Black Lives Matter movement.
“I just don’t think we should be talking about dividing at all. I think we should be talking about unifying,” Ryan said. Noting that the retort that “all lives matter” tends to “enrage” people, he said: “Why don’t we stop kind of enraging everybody?”
It was a marked departure from Trump, who on Monday had told The Associated Press that Black Lives Matter is “a very divisive term” and said that “a lot of people feel that it is inherently racist.”
Ryan said lawmakers should seek to be “inclusive and aspirational” — and to “be peaceful and listen to each other and have calm conversations about what are truly people’s concerns and then see where solutions are.”
Ginsburg: The new pro-Trump talking point
Part of Ryan’s case for Trump includes the argument that a Republican president — any Republican president — would choose more conservative Supreme Court nominees than Hillary Clinton.
His go-to example to make that case: Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The left-leaning, 83-year-old justice criticized Donald Trump again this week, calling him a “faker” in an interview with CNN’s Joan Biskupic.
“I think it is out of place in an appointed branch of government. That shows bias to me,” Ryan said. “I don’t think that is something she should have done.”
In a reference to the opening left by Justice Antonin Scalia’s death and the possibility of other openings in the near future, Ryan said that “the next person on the Supreme Court will shape this court probably for a generation.”
