WTF Just Happened Today

Tuesday, September 27, 2022

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1/ The Senate is set to vote on a short-term spending bill to keep the federal government running past Friday. In addition to maintaining current funding levels through Dec. 16, the bill also provides more than $12 billion to Ukraine, $1 billion to help families with heating and cooling costs, $2.5 billion to help New Mexico recover from wildfires, and $20 million in emergency funding for water and wastewater infrastructure improvements in Jackson, Mississippi. Prior to voting, Joe Manchin asked Chuck Schumer to remove his energy permitting package from the short-term government funding bill. The permitting proposal was a key part of Schumer’s deal with Manchin to pass the Inflation Reduction Act this summer on a party-line vote. Manchin conceded only after several Democrats and Republicans – including Mitch McConnell – threatened to vote against the spending measure and risk a government shutdown. (Politico / Washington Post / CBS News / New York Times / CNN / Wall Street Journal)

2/ Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton fled his home in a truck driven by his wife to avoid being served a subpoena in a lawsuit over funding for abortions. Several abortion rights organizations filed a lawsuit seeking a court order barring state officials from pursuing criminal charges against their employees for providing financial and other aid to Texans seeking abortion services out of state. In a sworn affidavit, the process server said that Paxton refused to accept the subpoena and instead ran from his garage into a truck driven by his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton. (Texas Tribune / NBC News / Bloomberg)

3/ More than 1,000 students walked out of Virginia public schools in protest of the state’s reversal of transgender protections. Earlier this month, Gov. Glenn Youngkin rewrote Virginia’s model policies for the treatment of transgender students, mandating that all students use school bathrooms and locker rooms according to the “biological sex” they were assigned at birth. The new policy also requires parental approval for staff members to refer to students by a different name or pronoun at school. “These revised guidelines will only hurt students in a time when students are facing unparalleled mental health challenges, and are a cruel attempt to politicize the existence of LGBTQIA+ students for political gain,” the Pride Liberation Project, a statewide LGBTQ youth advocacy group, said in a statement. (Washington Post / NBC News /