In The News

AT SOME POINT, Congress must find the courage to listen to U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine’s warnings about the violence Islamic State is doing to America’s Constitution. Since August 2014, U.S. warplanes and drones have been chasing the fundamentalist thugs of the Islamic State group across Syria and Iraq. We’ve been lobbing bombs into their bedrooms, destroying their encampments, disrupting their movement and killing their leaders. And yet Islamic State — also known by the acronyms...Continue Reading

Back in his hometown of Richmond during a Thanksgiving recess of the U.S. Congress, U.S. Sen. Timothy M. Kaine, D-Va., spent Monday listening to the concerns of seniors and their support groups on issues ranging from Alzheimer’s disease to hunger. Kaine, a member of the Senate Special Committee on Aging and co-sponsor of the HOPE for Alzheimer’s Act, led a roundtable discussion on the disease focusing on how federal and local government can provide better support. Later, Kaine and l...Continue Reading

The Paris attacks have prompted widespread debate in the US over what to do about ISIS — including within the Democratic Party. To get a sense of that debate, I spoke to Sen. Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat who sits on the Foreign Relations Committee. He's helped lead an effort to move the anti-ISIS war out of its legal gray zone with a new congressional authorization for military force, and in April co-signed a letter along with Sen. John McCain and two others calling o...Continue Reading

Back in his hometown of Richmond during a Thanksgiving recess of the U.S. Congress, U.S. Sen. Timothy M. Kaine, D-Va., spent Monday listening to the concerns of seniors and their support groups on issues ranging from Alzheimer’s disease to hunger. Kaine, a member of the Senate Special Committee on Aging and co-sponsor of the HOPE for Alzheimer’s Act, led a roundtable discussion on the disease focusing on how federal and local government can provide better support. Later, Kaine and l...Continue Reading

Virginia’s U.S. senators and at least one area congressman say Congress needs to vote on how to respond to the terrorist group carving out territory in Iraq and Syria and expanding its threat elsewhere. After updating Lynchburg businesspeople on his stances toward world and Washington affairs and talking business innovation Friday, Senator Mark Warner said Congress should vote to address the threat posed by the Islamic State group, also called ISIS, ISIL and Daesh. He has supported author...Continue Reading

In light of the deadly terrorist attacks last week in Paris, U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine has reiterated his justified and bipartisan call for Congress to approve an Authorization for Use of Military Force against the Islamic State. Kaine, a Virginia Democrat, joined once again by Arizona Republican Sen. Jeff Flake, says Congress is mired in shamefully passive posturing by failing to put its official support behind the military action in which the United States has been engaged with ISIS for the past 15 ...Continue Reading

This is the new look of high school sex ed: A roomful of teens, 14-year-olds mostly, is told that a girl and boy meet at a school dance. The boy drives her home. They kiss. What happens next, over the girl's protests, leaves him confused and her crying, no longer a virgin. "Raise your hands if you think this was rape," health educator Justin Balido asks the Carlmont High School freshmen, drawing them into a debate that has preoccupied college administrators, lawmakers and the courts. Sex educati...Continue Reading

For more than 18 months, Sen. Tim Kaine has been like an Old Testament prophet, crying in the wilderness. His message? That Congress and President Obama must jointly negotiate an Authorization for the Use of Military Force (an AUMF, in common parlance) to lay out the terms and overall strategy for engagement against the forces of the so-called Islamic State, or ISIS. And he got the same reception one biblical prophet after another received from the powers-that-be: He was ignored. Well now, aft...Continue Reading

In the aftermath of the horrible Friday the 13thattacks in Paris, many members of Congress quickly took the opportunity to blast the Obama administration’s failure to appropriately counter ISIS in Iraq, Syria and beyond. It is fair game to challenge the administration’s strategy, but these critiques miss an important point: Congress has abdicated its fundamental duty to debate, vote on and shape the extent of the current war on ISIS. Our post-Paris discussion about what more the U.S....Continue Reading

After the Paris attacks, President Obama said the U.S. would intensify the current campaign of airstrikes and arming and training moderate forces, but would not change its overall strategy against ISIS. “We have the right strategy and we’re going to see it through,” Obama told reportersMonday during the closing conference of the G-20 summit. “What I do not do is take actions either because it is going to work politically or it is going to somehow, in the abstract, ma...Continue Reading

The debate continues on War Powers and Congress. In light of the deadly attacks in Paris, U.S. Senators Tim Kaine and Jeff Flake are again renewing their call for Congress to debate and vote on an Authorization for Use of Military Force against the Islamic State.  The two have a bill on the floor now and Senator Kaine tells 88.9 WCVE it’s the only measure before the Senate that could GET Congress to authorize the war against ISIS/ISIL. Senator Kaine says he and Senator Flake...Continue Reading

Congress has come a long way from “freedom fries.” The Paris attacks have Washington expressing a new solidarity with France — a nation not too long ago derided by conservatives as a “so-called ally.” And the aftermath of the deadly violence is rapidly resetting the capital’s agenda as Republicans and the Obama administration clash over the rising fear of terrorism at home and how best to combat the Islamic State in the Middle East. Back in 2003, Republicans i...Continue Reading

With the scourge of prescription drug abuse still taking a deadly toll on the coalfields of southern West Virginia and Southwest Virginia, area lawmakers are increasingly encouraging physicians to co-prescribe the life-saving drug Naloxone. Naloxone is considered to be a safe and effective antidote to opioid overdoses. A new state law took effect in West Virginia earlier this year allowing first responders, friends and family to administer the potentially life-saving medication to people overdos...Continue Reading

Tim Kaine righted a wrong today.The U.S. senator and former Virginia governor had passed through Leesburg and Loudoun County more times than he can count -- campaigning, meeting with constituents, flying out of Dulles. Yet somehow the Senate Armed Services Committee member had never visited the home of decorated Gen. George C. Marshall, tucked quaintly into a corner of downtown Leesburg.The Democratic lawmaker rectified that today, as he and and a handful of state and local officials honored the...Continue Reading

WASHINGTON (AP) — In the battle against the Islamic State group, members of Congress talk tough against extremism, but many want to run for cover when it comes to voting on new war powers to fight the militants, preferring to let the president own the battle. They might not be able to run for long. The U.S. military intervention in Iraq and Syria is creeping forward, putting more pressure on Congress to vote on a new Authorization for the Use of Military Force. It would be the first war vo...Continue Reading

President Obama's decision to send special operations ground forces into Syria is again prompting calls for specific authorization from Congress to wage war. RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST: And President Obama's decision last week to order up 50 special operations forces to Syria has revived calls for Congress to weigh in on the war against the Islamic State. Obama himself has urged lawmakers to vote on giving him specific authority to wage that war. But the Republican-led Congress has resisted. As NPR's ...Continue Reading

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) on Thursday prescribed an antidote to the increasing number of opioid overdoses and deaths — widespread dispensing of naloxone. Naloxone works nearly instantly to block the opioid receptors in the brain and counter the effects of heroin, fentanyl and narcotic painkillers. But it must be administered quickly. Kaine’s bill seeks to make it more available in homes and health settings. Kaine was among the first group of Virginians to be trained in August 2014 in h...Continue Reading

A group of 12 U.S. senators, led by Christopher Murphy, D-Conn., is calling for the Army inspector general to investigate the discharges of tens of thousands of service members diagnosed with mental health disorders, such as post-traumatic stress disorder or traumatic brain injuries. The formal letter sent to top Army officials Eric Fanning and Gen. Mark A. Milley was motivated by last week's "Missed Treatment" investigation by NPR's Daniel Zwerdling and Colorado Public Radio's Michael...Continue Reading

Sen. Tim Kaine said Wednesday that President Obama still does not have a clear strategy for confronting the so-called Islamic State in Syria. Kaine, a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee and a Virginia Democrat, also cautioned his party’s candidates not to prioritize issues like restrictions on gun ownership above improving the economy. “I don’t think any Democrat need to fear taking a position in favor of reasonable gun rules, like universal background record ...Continue Reading

Virginia's two U.S. senators are among the lawmakers spearheading a bipartisan effort to extend the life of a popular federal college student loan program for modest and low-income students. The Carl D. Perkins Loan Program has been around for decades, with more than 26 million students getting the $28 billion loans since 1958. They are offered at a 5 percent interest rate, with no origination fees and a nine-month grace period after graduation. In the most recent academic year, for example, mor...Continue Reading