In The News

The Appalachian Trail Conservancy honored Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., during its sixth annual Leaders in Conservation Awards Gala this summer in Washington, D.C. The ATC also honored Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., at the event. Both senators were recognized for their leadership in conservation and support of the Appalachian Trail. Sen. Kaine has made great strides in preserving open space in Virginia through his sponsorship of legislation that reauthorizes key conservation programs, improves access to pu...Continue Reading

Amid swirling controversy over Amazon.com’s corporate culture, U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine stopped by the company’s distribution facility in Chesterfield last week. The walk-through, scheduled before The New York Times published a scathing story on the Web retailer’s bruising management style, was part of Kaine’s recent five-day economic tour across the state. With a résumé that includes being the former governor of Virginia, former chair of the Democ...Continue Reading

The August recess for Congress allows its members time to spend with family, opportunities to meet with their constitute, and time to catch up on their summer reading. U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., hit the road during the second week of his recess beginning a five-day economic tour of Virginia with a focused on economic development and job creation. Last Tuesday, Kaine’s economic tour came to his hometown of Richmond, where he met with African-American business leaders to discuss challenges ...Continue Reading

Economic development discussion often turns to education U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, the former governor of Virginia, made a stop in South Hill during his Route 58 tour on Wednesday, Aug. 19, and sat down with local leaders at The Colonial Center for Performing Arts for a roundtable discussion on economic development. The conversation often shifted to education, with leaders from South Hill and Mecklenburg County asking a number of questions geared toward what the federal and state governments could d...Continue Reading

U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine sent a letter to federal regulators on Monday questioning whether the process to approve the Atlantic Coast Pipeline was moving too fast for the public to keep up — and if Dominion had done enough work to use existing right-of-ways. He also passed along concerns from constituents about the geology of the region, with wide areas of karst limestone that present unstable foundation for construction projects. And he raised questions key to some in the Shenandoah Valley, lik...Continue Reading

Speaking to a Veterans of Foreign Wars conference last month, President Barack Obama touted the progress being made at the Department of Veterans Affairs to alleviate lengthy wait times for those seeking health care at a VA facility. But he expressed dissatisfaction that the problem had not yet been resolved, that veterans were still waiting too long to see a health professional and that more should be done to care for those who serve in the nation's defense. U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine left a recent vi...Continue Reading

Here’s a perplexing disconnect between public policy and reality: If you’re a college student who qualifies for student aid, the federal government will pay for you to study for four years — even if it’s medieval poetry, and there’s no market demand for medieval poets. Yet if you’re a low-income student who wants to learn a trade — say, welding — there’s no aid available, even though the training program is a lot shorter, a lot cheaper, and ...Continue Reading

Five weeks before another round of deep Defense Department cuts is set to go into effect absent action from Congress, budget analysts and elected leaders throughout the region are renewing concerns about the Washington area’s reliance on Pentagon spending and the need to advance private sector growth in its place. No state is more reliant on defense spending than Virginia, where it affects nearly 13 percent of the commonwealth’s economic output, tops nationwide, and pr...Continue Reading

Continuing his five-day swing through Virginia, U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine and his team on Wednesday spoke with ABB employees and other community leaders as the discussions turned to economic development. Career and technical training was at the forefront of this discussion with Kaine immediately telling his guests that No Child Left Behind had been rewritten to include several CTE aspects. “It doesn’t have to be a four-year bachelor’s degree for everybody,” Kaine said. “...Continue Reading

A U.S. senator is stepping up to help some Arlington veterans replace a stolen American flag. The American flag was ripped down and stolen from the American Legion Post 139 in Arlington on Tuesday. A POW flag was also found on the ground. Senator Tim Kaine heard about the stolen flag and arranged for a new flag to be sent to the post. "I hope they enjoy this new flag which was flown over the U.S. Capitol!," Kaine wrote on Facebook. 

RICHMOND, Va. — While Sen. Mark Warner round-tabled down the street on Tuesday with a group of gig-economy workers, Virginia’s junior senator, Democrat Tim Kaine, met with local black business leaders in Richmond on a five-day economic tour through the state. Talk primarily focused on federal contracting, which Kaine said later was consistent with the most common concern voiced by Virginia business interests: sequestration and the federal budget. Kaine p...Continue Reading

CHESTERFIELD - U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., made a stop at the Amazon Fulfillment Center on a five-day tour of Virginia, focused on building strategies to improve economic development and job creation. Tuesday was the second day of tour, which also brought the senator to Richmond, where he met with African-American business leaders to discuss challenges facing their businesses, including issues involving access to capital and workforce preparation. Afterward, Kaine toured Amazon, and spoke of its...Continue Reading

Rising sea levels, cybersecurity and foreign policy were among the topics U.S. Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner riffed on during a luncheon Monday. Several hundred people packed a ballroom at the Founders Inn and Spa to hear the lawmakers opine on a mix of issues, including the proposed Iran nuclear agreement lawmakers are set to vote on next month. Warner told attendees he remains undecided on the proposal because he's still examining the framework, as are many of his colleagues. "In my 6-1/2 ye...Continue Reading

U.S. Sen. Mark Warner defined sequestration as “stupidity on steroids” on Monday. Simply avoiding sequestration is the answer, Warner claimed at the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce’s second annual U.S. Senatorial Forum. Hampton Roads remains one of the largest, if not the largest, location of military personnel in the country, U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine said at the event. Considering this fact, budget cuts that involve sequestration of the defense department create a ripple effect t...Continue Reading

The landscape appears to be changing at the Hampton VA Medical Center, and it goes beyond waterfront construction that is reshaping the grounds. Patient wait times are down, staff has increased, and on Monday a politician came away impressed. Such a trifecta would have been unthinkable nine months ago, when Hampton logged the nation's worst wait times for primary care patients and was trying to overcome the loss of nine doctors in six months. Sen. Tim Kaine, who toured the hospital Monday, gave ...Continue Reading

Rock and Rock Hall of Famer Joan Jett plays in Elmwood Park on Thursday night. Just typing the adjective makes us feel nostalgic, and reminds us of what Jett’s guitar player, Ricky Byrd, had to say at the induction ceremony earlier this year. His 13-year-old daughter wasn’t really impressed that her dad’s band was being honored unless it meant she could meet the chart-topping rapper Iggy Azalea. “In my world,” Byrd said, “there is only one Iggy you want to mee...Continue Reading

I urge the General Assembly to give Virginia Supreme Court Justice Jane Marum Roush fair review on her merits rather than refusing to consider her for the role [“Democrats demand hearings on pick for Supreme Court,” Metro, Aug. 11]. The Virginia Constitution is clear. When a vacancy occurs in any circuit court, the Court of Appeals, the State Corporation Commission or the Virginia Supreme Court when the legislature is not in session, the governor may appoint a replacement, subject to...Continue Reading

When Maurice "Mo" Lynch arrived as a young graduate student at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science in 1962, the place was evolving fast. "It was just at the very beginning of what I call the growth into a full-blown marine science laboratory, as opposed to a fisheries laboratory," recalled Lynch, now a VIMS professor emeritus. One of the first things he and his fellow students tackled in the summer of '63 was a directive from the General Assembly to determine whether dredging the James Rive...Continue Reading

Just a day after Metro’s board of directors gave the transit agency’s top management 10 days to explain why a defective section of rail was not repaired for more than a month, the region’s four U.S. senators are weighing in, demanding that the findings of the internal investigation be aired publicly at a board hearing. Sens. Barbara Mikulski (D) and Ben Cardin (D) of Maryland and Sens. Mark Warner (D) and Tim Kaine (D) of Virginia made it clear that they are out of patience. Al...Continue Reading

Last Saturday marked the one-year anniversary of the start of America’s campaign against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). But after some 5,000 airstrikes—with some 3,500 U.S. soldiers on the ground—Congress has yet to hold an up-or-down vote on authorization for our latest Middle East war. A year of illegal warmaking represents a new low in the erosion of constitutional checks and balances: an occasion for the country to reflect on the dangerous drift toward the normalization of presi...Continue Reading