Wednesday, October 9, 2019
"I said a word I should not have said, and media drives me a little bit nuts to make a big deal about it," Sanders told NBC's Harry Smith during a sit-down interview in his Burlington home. "We're going to get back into the groove of a very vigorous campaign. I love doing rallies and I love doing town meetings."
The 78-year-old presidential candidate said he would "start off slower and build up and build up and build up."
Sanders' comments appeared to contradict what he told reporters outside his house on Tuesday after returning from an appointment with a cardiologist. In those remarks, according to a video released by CNN, the candidate said he would "probably not do three or four rallies a day" anymore.
"I think we're going to change the nature of the campaign a bit," he said. "Make sure that I have the strength to do what I have to do."
Tags: Senator , Bernie Sanders , Jeff Weaver , heart attack , NBC News , Web Only , Image , Video
Tuesday, October 8, 2019
Not surprisingly, the number of newcomers has dropped sharply over the past two years as policy changes by the Trump administration have pushed refugee admissions to historic lows.
Each year, the president establishes a cap on the overall number of applicants the nation will admit, and lower limits on refugees from different regions of the world.
When the U.S. refugee admissions program was established in 1980, the cap was set at more than 230,000. In 2019, it was a mere fraction of that at just 30,000. The Trump administration has proposed further reducing the cap to 18,000 in the 2020 fiscal year, which began on October 1. Vermont's resettlement numbers held relatively steady between 2008 and 2016. During that nine-year period, the state welcomed, on average, 336 refugees each year.
In the three years since, resettlement numbers have fallen dramatically. In 2017, Vermont resettled 236 refugees, and in 2019, just 115.
Given its relatively small population, Vermont has historically welcomed an outsized proportion of all refugees accepted into the U.S. each year. While Vermont has about 0.2 percent of the population of the United States, the state received at least 0.6 percent of refugees resettled in 2011 and 2012.
Vermont welcomed 7,956 refugees during the three decades between 1989 and 2019. Though that's a statewide total, nearly all of those people landed in Chittenden County, the majority in Burlington and Winooski.
That's not a count of the number of former refugees who currently live in the state; once resettled, people move into and out of Vermont. It also doesn't include people who immigrated via the U.S.'s asylum program.
But those numbers do provide a window into global upheaval over the past three decades. The graphic below shows that in the 1990s, the majority of refugees resettled were from Bosnia and Vietnam. The majority of arrivals in the last decade have been from Bhutan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia.
You can explore 30 years of refugee resettlement in Vermont in the chart below:
Tags: Refugees , Donald Trump , Web Only , Image , Video
Friday, October 4, 2019
The physicians who treated Sanders, Arturo E. Marchand Jr. and Arjun Gururaj, said that he had been diagnosed with a myocardial infarction — a heart attack — before he was transferred to the Desert Springs Hospital Medical Center, where they tended to him.
“The Senator was stable upon arrival and taken immediately to the cardiac catheterization laboratory, at which time two stents were placed in a blocked coronary artery in a timely fashion," says their statement, released by his campaign.
Tags: Senator , Bernie Sanders , Web Only , Image
Thursday, October 3, 2019
"Bernie is up and about," she said. "Yesterday, he spent much of the day talking with staff about policies, cracking jokes with the nurses and doctors, and speaking with his family on the phone."
The update came a day after Sanders' presidential campaign disclosed that doctors had inserted two stents after finding that he had a blocked artery. The campaign canceled scheduled appearances in California, Iowa and elsewhere as he recuperated in a Las Vegas hospital.
Tags: Senator , Bernie Sanders , Jane O'Meara Sanders , Web Only , Image
Wednesday, October 2, 2019
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was treated for a blocked artery Tuesday evening after experiencing chest discomfort at an event in Las Vegas, his presidential campaign announced Wednesday morning. Doctors inserted two stents, according to senior adviser Jeff Weaver.
"Sen. Sanders is conversing and in good spirits," Weaver said in a written statement. "He will be resting up over the next few days."
Sanders, who was set to appear at a gun control forum in Las Vegas, will stay off the campaign trail "until further notice," Weaver said in the statement.
At 78, Sanders is the oldest candidate in the Democratic field, though his leading rivals for the nomination are also septuagenarians: Former vice president Joe Biden is 76, while Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is 70.
Tags: Senator , Bernie Sanders , Web Only , Image
Tuesday, October 1, 2019
Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) presidential campaign announced Tuesday that it raised $25.3 million from July through September — more than any of the candidate's Democratic rivals have collected in a single quarter. The money came in the form of 1.4 million donations averaging $18.07 a pop, the campaign said.
Sanders' third-quarter haul exceeded the roughly $18 million he raised in the first and second quarters of this year — and it nearly matched the $26.2 million he took in exactly four years ago, when he was emerging as the chief alternative to former secretary of state Hillary Clinton.
Later Tuesday, the Sanders campaign made clear how it will spend some of its newly raised cash: on its first television advertisement of the 2020 election. The spot, called “Fights for Us,” will debut in Iowa on Thursday as part of a $1.3 million ad buy.
It features Sanders describing his working class upbringing — a topic he typically avoids — and contrasts his record with that of President Donald Trump, who a narrator describes as a “dangerous demagogue tearing our nation apart.”
Tags: Senator , Bernie Sanders , third-quarter fundraising , president , campaign , Web Only , Image , Video
Sunday, September 29, 2019
That was the case Saturday morning when U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) — aka AOC — joined Sanders, wife Jane O'Meara Sanders and campaign manager Faiz Shakir at Burlington's Penny Cluse Café.
According to owner and chef Charles Reeves, who was working in the kitchen that morning, Sanders is a semi-regular and "usually gets the buckwheat pancakes with blueberries." Ocasio-Cortez ordered scrambled eggs with rye toast and home fries, Reeves reported.
"They're totally regular people when they eat," he said of Sanders and O'Meara Sanders. "And we don't make a big deal about it."
What was up for discussion Saturday morning was less clear. Sanders' campaign did not respond to a request for comment and Seven Days could not reach an Ocasio-Cortez spokesperson, though her office confirmed the meeting to CNN.
Tags: Senator , Bernie Sanders , Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez , Penny Cluse , Web Only , Image
Thursday, September 26, 2019
"I support getting the facts in that inquiry that's happening today," Scott said Thursday morning at an Essex Junction press conference. "I think these are serious allegations, and we need to make sure that we do the fact-finding and figure out what exactly did happen."
Asked specifically whether he supported House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) decision this week to launch a formal impeachment inquiry, Scott said, “Well, I think the inquiry’s important. Yes.”
The second-term governor, who has long distanced himself from the Republican president, declined to say whether he believed Trump had committed impeachable offenses and said he would not "predetermine" what actions Congress should take in the future. "At this point, I just want to make sure what we're actually talking about," he said.
Scott made his remarks two days after Pelosi announced that the House would probe whether Trump improperly pressured the Ukrainian president to investigate a political rival, former vice president Joe Biden. The governor first weighed in on the inquiry late Wednesday in a written statement to the Associated Press, in which he referred to it as "appropriate."
Tags: Senator , Phil Scott , Donald Trump , impeachment , Patrick Leahy , Bernie Sanders , Peter Welch , Rebecca Holcombe , Web Only , Image
Wednesday, September 25, 2019
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in recent days repeated their previous demands that the House initiate an impeachment inquiry, but neither would explicitly call for the president's impeachment or removal from office.
In an interview with Seven Days Wednesday afternoon, Leahy said it was "extremely urgent" that the House investigate whether Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to dig up dirt on former vice president Joe Biden. "This Ukraine episode is very, very disturbing," the senator said, referring to allegations that Trump withheld military aid to Ukraine as he sought assistance in besmirching a political rival.
Leahy declined, however, to call for the impeachment of the president. "No, I said I support what [House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)] is doing: beginning the impeachment inquiry," he said. "Impeachment's gonna be up to the House."
Vermont's senior senator said he would not "prejudge" the outcome of the House's investigation without all the facts. And he noted that, if the House were to impeach the president, the Senate would be charged with conducting a trial and determining whether to convict him and remove him from office. "As one who would have to be a juror in any case brought by them, I'll wait and see what they do," Leahy said of the House.
Tags: Senator , Patrick Leahy , Bernie Sanders , Peter Welch , Donald Trump , impeachment , Web Only , Image
Friday, September 20, 2019
"We are skipping our lessons to teach you one," read a sign that a girl held up in a crowd packed shoulder-to-shoulder in front of Burlington City Hall.
The turnout there reached at least 2,000 and was probably many more, Deputy Police Chief Jon Murad said shortly after noon, as he and other officers set up traffic barricades. But he had no way of knowing for sure, he added.
The crowd spilled onto Main Street, which was closed to vehicles. Musicians played, students chanted for climate justice and speakers addressed the crowd from city hall steps.
In Montpelier, protesters gathered at the Statehouse carrying banners such as one that read "Climate Action Now." Similar events were being held all around the state, according to the Vermont Climate Strike Coalition, which said Friday marks the start of a week of action.
Climate protests organized by youths have drawn massive crowds in major cities around the world.
Check out these images from Vermont gatherings:
Tags: Vermont Climate Strike Coalition , climate change , global warming , Web Only , Image , Slideshow