Since the 1960s, first ladies have taken “an active if subordinate role in their husbands’ administrations,” said Dr. Nicole Hemmer, an expert in Presidential Studies at UVA’s Miller Center and the U.S. Studies Centre in Sydney. “Typically they scale back any professional activities during the campaign, then set up an office in the East Wing of the White House after inauguration,” she said.
A Trump tweet can move markets. But Nordstrom, Trump's latest Twitter target, seems largely immune to the president’s public bashing. On Wednesday morning, he criticized the retailer for dropping Ivanka Trump products – and its stock value climbed. So, is the Trump tweet losing its power? Not necessarily, said Kimberly Whitler, a UVA marketing professor.
The hearing prompted Robert Pianta, dean of UVA’s Curry School of Education, to write that he was “was deeply dismayed by her performance” in the hearing. “It was, in a word, disqualifying,” he wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post late last month. In an interview, Pianta on Wednesday said he fears that DeVos could use Congress’ upcoming reauthorization of the Higher Education Act to loosen teacher preparation regulations.
Larry Sabato, director of UVA’s Center for Politics, suggested that McConnell in Machiavellian fashion had intentionally helped Warren reap a media bonanza because he thinks she would be relatively easy for Trump to beat if he faces her in the 2020 general election. “This is a strategic player,” he said of McConnell. “It could not have possibly escaped him that telling the most prominent woman senator [to] sit down and shut up while reading a letter from Coretta Scott King would promote her among Democrats.”
An anti-Trump resistance has rallied the Democratic base and dominated media coverage, but it could easily backfire with the crucial independent voters it lost in November if the onslaught of obstruction and protest devolves into grandstanding and futility, political strategists said. “Democrats need to be strategic in choosing their targets, and even then they may be defeated in a large majority of their efforts,” said Larry Sabato, a UVA political science professor. “Opposing everything actually means effectively opposing nothing.”
“Deutsche poses the biggest conflict that we know about in terms of dollar amounts and the scale of legal exposures,” says UVA law professor Brandon Garrett. In trying to clear up its outstanding regulatory troubles, the bank “may have tried to do its best to avoid the appearance of impropriety, but it may be impossible for them to do so.”
Supervisors learned how area transit agencies are funded in advance of a joint meeting with City Council on the topic scheduled for 10 a.m. Feb. 16 at CitySpace. At that meeting, the executive director of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission will present the results of a study of how Charlottesville Area Transit, JAUNT and the University of Virginia’s transit system can work together. The University Transit Service has no federal or state funding and is paid for entirely through UVA’s budget. They also provide six routes around the University that are open to the public.
(Co-written by UVA sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project) Too many men still believe in the ball-and-chain myth, viewing marriage as an expensive encumbrance on their freedom and their sex lives.
New research from the UVA School of Medicine and Virginia Commonwealth University have revealed that a blood test currently used to determine the health and well-being of patients undergoing dialysis treatment may be producing inconsistent results.
The UVA athletics department announced Wednesday that Aaron Smith has been named head volleyball coach. Currently the Cavaliers’ interim head coach, Smith spent the last five years as an assistant under former coach Dennis Hohenshelt, who resigned in January.
They wouldn't need to tell anyone that they did so. They could share the returns with their committee members in closed session. And if one of the committees thinks releasing the returns to the House or Senate would further a legitimate committee purpose and be in the public interest, they can do that, too – without Trump's consent, said George Yin, a former chief of staff at the Joint Committee on Taxation and a UVA professor of law.
In releasing the list of terror incidents, White House officials said Trump was arguing that terrorist attacks have become so pervasive that they do not spark the intensity of coverage they once did. "The terror list was both an attempt to flood the zone and move the goalposts," said Nicole Renee Hemmer, assistant professor at UVA's Miller Center. "It was an absurd list, mixing non-terror events with very small events with huge, arguably over-covered events like the Sydney cafe attack."
Jovenel Moise was sworn in Tuesday as Haiti’s president for the next five years after a bruising two-year election cycle, inheriting a chronically struggling economy and a deeply divided society. Robert Fatton, a Haitian-born politics professor at the University of Virginia, described the many challenges facing Moise as “herculean.”
Even if the government moves forward with listing the rusty-patched bee as endangered, many native pollinators face an uphill battle. Dr. T’ai Roulston, curator of the State Arboretum of Virginia and research associate professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, says, “I think the listing of the rusty-patch as an endangered species is a great first step in recognizing the importance of insects in our ecosystems generally and our reliance on them in food production. This was a common bee 30 years ago and it disappeared from most of its range before we even noticed. Others...
Nicholas H. Wolfinger, a researcher at the University of Utah, and W. Bradford Wilcox, a researcher at the University of Virginia, say that more education is needed in order to ensure that people understand marriage and the truth behind it. “Contrary to the notion that marriage is detrimental to men, it turns out that the benefits are substantial by every conceivable measure, including greater financial well-being, higher quality of sexual life, and significantly better physical and mental health outcomes,” Wilcox and Wolfinger wrote in “Men & Marriage: Debunking the Ball and Chain Myth.”
The search is on for a new University of Virginia president. The school recently announced the formation of a special committee that has been tasked with finding a replacement for President Teresa Sullivan, who announced last month that she intends to retire in July 2018, when her contract expires.
Leaders at the University of Virginia and in Albemarle County had mixed feelings about Betsy DeVos’ confirmation as Secretary of Education on Tuesday. DeVos’ inability to answer specific questions about policy at her initial hearing was extremely worrisome, said Dean Bob Pianta of UVA’s Curry School of Education. “She just didn’t know the very basics of what her department would be responsible for,” Pianta said. “And that’s just dangerous.”
A counseling program that offers support for caregivers of patients with Alzheimer's disease or dementia is expanding its reach. The Family Access to Memory Impairment and Loss Information, Engagement and Support program, known as F.A.M.I.L.I.E.S., will be available to caregivers in Gloucester and Mathews counties on Middle Peninsula, as well as parts of the Northern Neck and Southside. The center, located in Williamsburg, offers the program in partnership with the University of Virginia and the Virginia Department for Aging and Rehabilitative Services.
(Commentary by Ed Hess, a professor at UVA’s Darden School of Business) American manufacturing job losses to China and Mexico were a major theme of the presidential campaign, and President Trump has followed up on his promise to pressure manufacturers to keep jobs here rather than send them abroad. What he hasn't yet addressed — but should — is the looming technology tsunami that will hit the U.S. job market over the next five to 15 years and likely destroy tens of millions of jobs.
Salon writer David Masciotra interviewed Rita Dove about the power of poetry and the necessity of the arts, especially in times of political trouble and terror.