Democrats Flip Crucial Seat in Virginia Senate, Protecting State Abortion Rights

Democrats have flipped a crucial state Senate seat in Virginia, ensuring greater protection of abortion rights in the state.

Democrat Aaron Rouse defeated Republican Kevin Adams in the special election race for Virginia’s 7th Senate district, flipping the seat formerly held by Republican Jen Kiggans. The win extends the Democrats’ advantage in the Senate to 22–18, almost certainly halting some of Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin’s most radical agenda items, including a proposed 15-week abortion ban.

The Virginia Public Access Project has declared Rouse the winner, with the Democrat leading Adams by fewer than 400 votes as of Wednesday morning (and absentee ballots still being counted). Adams conceded on Wednesday morning.

The election was prompted by Kiggans’s rise to the U.S. House of Representatives, after she defeated Elaine Luria for Virginia’s 2nd district seat in November. Rouse promised to safeguard abortion rights, while his Republican opponent supported a 15-week abortion ban.

Rouse’s win is yet another domino falling on the red-wave-that-never-was for Republicans—one that in no small part was hamstrung by voters motivated by abortion rights. Rouse, a former Virginia Beach councilman and NFL player, had campaigned significantly on the issue.

“One, two, three. One, we are going to protect a woman’s right to choose health care, we are going to build an economy that works for everyone, and we are going to support our public education system, making sure our teachers and staff have a salary they can be proud of,” Rouse said on Tuesday.

The election results will still need to be officially certified, which may take weeks. But if the results hold, the right to abortion in Virginia will have a more resilient safeguard against attacks from Republicans like Youngkin.

Illinois is now the ninth state in the United States to ban assault weapons. Governor J.B. Pritzker signed a bill late Tuesday night banning the sale and possession of assault weapons.

The state Senate passed the “Protect Illinois Communities Act” 34–20 on Monday, kicking it to the state House, which approved the bill 68–41 Tuesday. Pritzker signed the bill shortly thereafter, immediately enacting it into law. The bill passed just before newly elected officials were to be sworn in on Wednesday.

Illinois will halt the sale and possession of an array of assault weapons, handguns, and high-capacity magazines and “switches”—rapid-fire devices that can convert semiautomatic weapons into automatic machine guns.

The ban comes six months after a mass shooter killed seven people at a Fourth of July parade in a Chicago suburb. The gunman had used a legally purchased semiautomatic weapon.

“After nearly every mass shooting, we’ve seen efforts to ban dangerous weapons thwarted—and then leaders send their thoughts and prayers, while they throw their hands up, resigning themselves to the idea that gun violence is a sacrifice that Americans must accept,” Pritzker said at a press conference. “But it doesn’t have to be that way.”

Now nine states, as well as Washington, D.C., forbid the sale or possession of such weapons. The Illinois State Rifle Association has already threatened to challenge the ban in court. Meanwhile, a recent poll showed 63 percent of Illinoisans in favor of banning assault weapons.

“This assault weapons ban is a step in the right direction,” Pritzker said at a press conference. “But there’s no magic fix, no single law that will end gun violence once and for all. So we must keep fighting, voting, and protesting to ensure that future generations will only have to read about massacres like Highland Park, Sandy Hook, and Uvalde in their history books. It’s our burden and our mandate, one that we carry with solemn honor for our children who will grow up in a better and safer world.”

Flights have begun to resume Wednesday after the Federal Aviation Administration grounded planes nationwide earlier in the day due to a crucial information system outage, causing thousands of flight delays and cancellations.

The FAA issued the ground stop after the Notice to Air Missions, or NOTAM, system, which provides pilots and flight personnel with real-time information about hazards and restrictions such as equipment failures or closed runways, stopped working.

More than 5,400 flights have been delayed throughout the United States and more than 900 canceled after the outage, according to the flight tracker site FlightAware. The FAA says it does not yet know the source of the outage, but White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said there is “no evidence of a cyberattack at this point.”

President Joe Biden has been briefed on the issue and ordered the Department of Transportation to conduct a full investigation into the matter, she said.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg tweeted that he was in touch with the FAA and would be investigating the outage’s “root causes.”

The outage will put more scrutiny on Buttigieg, who is already facing criticism over the Southwest Airlines debacle during the winter holiday travel season.

Buttigieg made a splash during the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, and many speculated that his appointment to the DOT was setting him up as a potential Biden successor.

The airline crises are the latest tests of how Buttigieg performs under pressure, and so far, some find that he is coming up short: More than a dozen Democratic lawmakers sent him a letter last week, urging him to do “much more” to hold airlines accountable for cancellations and protect passengers’ rights.

House Republicans have recommended twice as many men named Michael to chair committees as women in general.

Majority Leader Steve Scalise released a list of recommendations that was ratified on Tuesday. Six men named Mike or Michael will be chairing committees, while only three women will be doing the same.

The only women appointed were Kay Granger to the Appropriations Committee; Cathy McMorris Rodgers to the Energy and Commerce Committee; and Virginia Foxx to what was formerly the Committee on Education and Labor, now the Committee on Education and the Workforce.

Mike Rogers chairs the Armed Services Committee, Michael McCaul leads the Foreign Affairs Committee, and Mike Bost heads the Veterans’ Affairs Committee. Mike Turner chairs the Intelligence Committee, Michael Guest leads the Ethics Committee, and Mike Gallagher will helm the new House Select Committee on China.

An honorable mention goes to Mark Green, the new head of the Committee on Homeland Security, for having 50 percent of the same letters in his name as the Mikes. The imbalance is especially stark during an administration that has prided itself on the diversity of its appointees.

All nine of the Mikes, Mark, and women were loyal supporters of Kevin McCarthy during his seemingly unending bid for speaker of the House. Rogers went so far as to threaten to ban anyone who voted against McCarthy from sitting on a committee—and apparently got into a fight with Matt Gaetz on the House floor.

A relentless onslaught of winter storms have pummeled California, leaving 16 people dead—more than the number of people who have died from California wildfires in the past two years. Now, as more rain looms, some 34 million Californians are under flood watches, or about 90 percent of the state’s total population and 10 percent of the country’s.

“These floods are deadly and have now turned to be more deadly than even the wildfires here in the state of California,” said Governor Gavin Newsom during a press conference Sunday, where he requested a state of emergency from the White House.

The weeks-long storming has left thousands of people without power as dangerous mudslides and flooding have plagued much of the state.

On Monday alone, between five and 10 inches of rain fell across areas facing flood warnings—with some rain levels peaking as high as 15.5 inches. The National Weather Service says that even six inches of water can reach the bottom of most passenger cars, while 12 would float many vehicles.

Hundreds of thousands have had their power knocked out over the course of the ongoing storms. As of writing, Poweroutage.us tracks just under 180,000 customers currently without power.

In a vacuum, such amounts of rain may superficially sound like a welcome interruption in a region blighted by drought. After all, the massive rainfall is part of what are known as “atmospheric rivers,” systems operating as rivers in the sky, which provide the region with much-needed water. But outside of the vacuum, this series is dropping too much precipitation too quickly. This is largely due to the ever-worsening impacts of climate change.

Warmer and drier conditions have led to more punishing drought in the region; such conditions have helped spark even more damaging wildfires and left the land less able to soak up precipitation. The conditions also lead to less staying annual snowpack, precipitation coming instead in the form of rainwater. All that combines in a recipe for disaster, as is on display now.

Terrifyingly, an August study warned the risk of once-in-a-lifetime megafloods is increasing and will become more damaging, particularly if human-caused climate change patterns continue. The study suggests that storms like the one in California will happen more often, and the “ceiling” for megafloods will increase in both likelihood and potential damage.

So California demands our attention on multiple fronts: the people who need help now and the dire need to improve our systems of life so these crises don’t get even worse.