On the campaign trail, President-elect Donald Trump promised to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. But UVA health policy experts say Trump is likely to take less drastic action, replacing the most controversial parts of the law while preserving the rest of it.
With just days before President-elect Donald Trump is set to take the oath of office, UVA’s Miller Center is looking at national security issues that he and his administration might have to face.
A day after announcing it would play a 2020 game against Georgia, the University of Virginia announced that it would face old ACC rival Maryland in a home-and-home series in 2023 and 2024. The teams will meet Sept. 16, 2023, in College Park, Md., and Sept. 14 the following year in Charlottesville.
Kenneth S. Stroupe Jr., chief of staff at the UVA Center for Politics and former press secretary for former Virginia Gov. George Allen, wrote that a growing body of research connects gerrymandering with reducing political competition, protecting incumbents, promoting partisan bias and polarization, tamping down voter turnout, increasing voter apathy, heightening legislative gridlock instead of a willingness to find common ground, and enabling a lack of accountability among legislators who occupy politically insulated safe seats.
The Obama administration in its waning days is taking companies to task in a way that it generally did not in its early years; it is getting corporations to plead guilty and charging executives in connection with crimes. “There’s absolutely been a marked shift away from out-of-court deals with companies where no individuals were prosecuted to plea agreements with companies and individual indictments,” said UVA law professor Brandon Garrett, author of “Too Big to Jail: How Prosecutors Compromise with Corporations.”
One of the biggest threats to human rights in 2016 was the rise of populism, according to Human Rights Watch, which launched its 2017 report on human rights Thursday in Washington, D.C. The report cites the human rights implications of key elections in the U.S. and around the globe, as well as the refugee crisis and the rise of demagogues. Larry Sabato of UVA’s Center for Politics said too many people are not paying attention. "It ought to concern anyone who cares about small 'd' democracy,” he said, “because so often what happens in the United States or in other democracies like Great Britain...
An electronic sensor for real-time monitoring of drug molecules in the blood soon could continuously guide drug dosing in humans by monitoring drug metabolism or organ function. UVA’s Robin Felder welcomes the advance, commenting that “continuous improvements in aptamer chemistry and biosensor engineering promise a truly bright future for personalized medicine.”
Professor Gary Ferguson, a queer studies specialist at the University of Virginia, reveals the 450-year-old history of same-sex marriage.
Health care providers and families in Central Virginia are trying to plan ahead, but that's hard when the future of the Affordable Care Act is so uncertain. “There’s a lot of uncertainty, but the way we have planned at this time is we’re assuming that the provisions that are in place will continue,” said UVA Health System Chief Financial Officer Larry Fitzgerald.
The speed with which people can process information declines at a steady rate from as early as their 20s. One possible culprit, says Timothy Salthouse, director of UVA’s Cognitive Aging Laboratory, is depletion of a chemical called dopamine, receptor sites for which decline in number with advancing age.
The Tom Tom Founders Festival announced its 2017 schedule, a new partnership, a number of national keynote speakers for its weeklong spring festivities and the addition of the Hometown Summit, sponsored by UVA’s Darden School of Business.
A UVA business incubator program is accepting application for its 2017 class. The i.Lab incubator is open to UVA students, faculty and staff as well as the local community, with for-profit and nonprofit business ideas.
Virginia’s public universities showed modest overall enrollment growth for the fall semester, although seven of the 15 schools lost students. The decline was experienced by schools that already enroll the highest numbers of in-state students, posing potential unintended consequences from an effort at the General Assembly to cap out-of-state enrollment, members of the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia say.
Virginia’s public universities showed modest overall enrollment growth for the fall semester, although seven of the 15 schools lost students. The decline was experienced by schools that already enroll the highest numbers of in-state students, posing potential unintended consequences from an effort at the General Assembly to cap out-of-state enrollment, members of the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia say.
Presidents give farewell addresses primarily to reflect on their achievements during their four or eight years, sometimes even including expressions of regret for promises left unfulfilled, said Marc Selverstone, associate professor at UVA’s Miller Center, which studies the presidency.
Larry Sabato, director of UVA’s Center for Politics, said McAuliffe’s hands have been tied by an opposing legislature, leaving the governor to focus his “considerable energies” on economic development and unilateral executive orders.
The danger for Trump is heightened given the sprawling nature of his business, the Trump Organization. “We’ve had presidents before who were rich, but we’re in some uncharted territory given Trump’s wealth and his myriad of business interests,” said Saikrishna Prakash, a UVA law professor who specializes in constitutional separation of powers.
Guided by influential conservatives, President-elect Donald Trump said Wednesday that he will nominate a Supreme Court justice within the first two weeks of taking office on Jan. 20, but his candidate could still easily miss what remains of the high court’s current term. “I assume the Senate will at least go through due diligence, usually two or three months,” said Doug Laycock, a UVA law professor, adding that it might be likely that Trump’s pick will not be seated in time to participate this year.
Larry Sabato, a political scientist with UVA’s Center for Politics, told VOA the speech was different from others given by presidents before they left office. “Certainly, it was untraditional; we’ve never had a farewell address like this. One can only imagine what George Washington, or for that matter Dwight Eisenhower, who had the most famous farewell address, would have thought of this manner of delivery. It was more like a political rally.”
The Donald Trump who took questions from reporters Tuesday in his first press conference as president-elect was the same combative, short-tempered figure the American public saw on the 2016 campaign trail, down to the red power tie. Russell Riley, associate professor at UVA’s nonpartisan Miller Center, said Trump’s remarks demonstrated a “personalization that you just do not see in the history of the presidency.”