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California school kids could soon be getting more time to sleep

8 injured after van plows into LA diners

Trump has new chief of staff, old health care fight

Heat wave predicted early this week in Northern California

Safe School Ambassadors on the front lines of making schools safer

President Maduro calls for international acceptance of Venezuela vote

ASSOCIATED PRESS

ASSOCIATED PRESS | July 30, 2017, 7:09PM

| Updated 30 minutes ago.

LOS ANGELES A van plowed into a group of people dining on a Los Angeles sidewalk Sunday afternoon, striking and injuring at least eight people.

A witness told the Associated Press the van jumped a curb and careened into a group of people eating outside The Fish Spot restaurant in the citys Mid-Wilshire neighborhood. The vehicle knocked down a white picket fence that served as a barrier between diners and pedestrians on the sidewalk.

Everyone was eating, enjoying life and out of nowhere this van ran them over, Courtney Crump said.

He said several victims were pinned under the van as panicked witnesses rush to pull them out. A man who was the first person struck by van had severe head injuries, Crump said.

I heard loud, agonizing screams. Im shook up, he said.

The victims included a 44-year-old man who suffered critical injuries, three who were seriously hurt and four others who were taken to the hospital in fair condition, Los Angeles Fire Department spokeswoman Margaret Stewart said.

An off-duty firefighter with the department was in the crowd and did not sustain major injuries, she said.

The driver came out of the van and appeared disoriented, Crump said. He jumped back into the van, prompting witnesses to hold him until authorities arrived at the scene.

The cause of the crash is under investigation.

Los Angeles police spokesman Josh Rubenstein said the crash appeared to be an accident, adding that there was no indication the driver intentionally drove into the crowd.

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Van strikes diners on LA sidewalk, 8 injured - Santa Rosa Press Democrat

(1 of ) Sisters (from left) Kathy Anderson of Sebastopol, Sue Brooke of Santa Clarita and Lori Brooke, of Scottsdale, Arizona. (Chris Smith/The Press Democrat) (2 of ) The scrapbook of Dolores Thomas, mother of Kathy Anderson of Sebastopol, Sue Brooke of Santa Clarita and Lori Brooke, of Scottsdale, Arizona. (Chris Smith/The Press Democrat)

CHRIS SMITH

THE PRESS DEMOCRAT | July 29, 2017, 4:11PM

| Updated 6 hours ago.

See those three women at a window table at the Sonoma County Airports restaurant?

Theyre leafing through an old photo album and talking and laughing, except for the one who now has her hands over her mouth and weeps.

Two of them are from out of town and just met the one in tears, Sebastopols Kathy Anderson. About a month ago Kathy, the eldest at 62, hadnt yet heard of the other two.

She didnt know theyre her half-sisters.

ITS SOME STORY how Kathy, a 1973 graduate of Analy High who manages the Cultivate Home store, set out to find something, anything about her birth mother.

Relying mostly on the virtual wonder that is Ancestry.com, she learned much about her birth mom, including the sad discovery that she died long ago. On the upside, Kathys genealogical research now has her venturing onto a whole other, richly laden branch of her family tree.

SHE WAS ADOPTED at birth, shes always known that.

The adoptive parents she adored, the late John and Iris Bastida of Sebastopol, knew nothing about her birth father and little about her birth mother.

Kathy grew up, married and had two children. Curiosity about her birth parents and why she was put up for adoption prompted her to do some searching back in 2001.

She uncovered her birth mothers name, Dolores Thomas. But beyond that, she struck out. I let it go, she said.

In time, both Kathys daughter, Becky Gehrett of Sebastopol, and her daughter-in-law, Deanna Gehrett of Cloverdale, became mothers. They told her that as moms theyd love to know more about their family history.

So in 2014, Kathy took a DNA test and submitted the results to Ancestry.com for a search for possible relatives. There were hits but none panned out.

Just last month, Ancestry.com helped Kathy connect with a cousin she didnt know she had, a young Arkansas man named Trey Shields. In an email, she asked him if he knew or knew of Dolores Thomas.

He did, and he emailed Kathy a photo of Dolores late parents. Kathy gazed at the picture and gasped: The woman had to be her maternal grandmother, the two of them look so much alike.

Trey Shields broke the news to Kathy that her mother who was single and living in San Francisco when she had Kathy died of cancer in 1970 at just 38. And, shared Shields, she left behind a husband and two young daughters, both of whom are alive and doing well.

Trey gave Kathy a phone number for one of her half-sisters, Lori Brooke of Arizona.

Lori, whos 52, flew into the Charles M. Schulz-Sonoma County Airport on Friday. Her sister, Sue Brooke, 54, drove up from her home Santa Clarita.

Kathy had barely met her half-sister as they sat in the airport cafe to get acquainted and look through the photo album Lori brought along.

THERE WAS MOM, a 22-year-old Nebraskan whod moved to San Francisco, smiling on the beach at Santa Cruz with a handsome sailor. Dolores had written the date on the back of the photo: Oct. 10, 1954.

View original post here:
Adopted Sebastopol shopkeeper, 62, meets sisters for first time - Santa Rosa Press Democrat

Our weekly roundup of the news, notes and chatter about the prospects for the next Democratic presidential race:

The 2020 Democratic presidential race now officially has its first candidate: Maryland Rep. John Delaney.

The third-term congressman announced his plans to run for president in a Washington Post op-ed Friday afternoon. Delaney, 54, won't run for re-election and is bypassing a run for Maryland governor in 2018.

Let's be honest here: More than anything, this reflects the reality that just about every elected Democrat thinks a couple big things: 1) They can beat Trump, and 2) The best-known Democratic prospects -- former Vice President Joe Biden, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren -- all have good reasons they might not run, which could mean a truly wide-open race. After all, another Maryland Democrat, former Gov. Martin O'Malley, also looks likely to run.

Why do even Delaney's allies admit he is an extreme longshot? Beyond his lack of a national profile, Delaney is well to the right of the Democratic primary electorate, including his support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. He previously pushed minimum wage hikes, but for amounts short of the $15 an hour that progressives have sought (and Delaney now says he backs). He has proposed allowing businesses to repatriate money earned overseas without paying taxes in exchange for buying infrastructure bonds.

"I don't really see it, but I think if he does this he will try to be the solutions candidate aimed at making Washington work again," said one Democratic strategist who has worked with Delaney. "He has a record of creating thousands of jobs as the CEO of two publicly traded companies that he built from scratch after being raised in a union household" in New Jersey, the strategist said. Delaney could also spend millions of his own dollars on a race.

Time to talk single-payer?

Democrats won a huge health care victory in the wee Friday morning hours. So what's next? Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders plans to introduce his single-payer health insurance bill -- "Medicare for all," as he'll cast it -- in September, an aide told CNN. The big question is which Democratic 2020 prospects will support it.

Already, Warren and New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand have embraced single-payer. California Sen. Kamala Harris expressed support for "the concept" in May, when she said health care access should not be "a function of your income," and again in July -- but cautioned the details are key. The Democratic base will demand she and others weigh in on the issue and on Sanders' bill, and it's likely to be a central issue in the 2020 nominating contest. "Single-payer is the absolutely the price of admission for our 2020 nominee both morally and politically," one Democratic operative said. A more skeptical operative said the party's 2020 primary could be "a suicidal litmus test" on single-payer.

Republicans tried to troll Democrats into voting for a single-payer bill that had no hope of passing Thursday. Democrats didn't take the bait.

Warren's fingerprints on Democrats' agenda

Speaking of anti-trust, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker told Recode the government needs to keep a much closer eye on Amazon and Google. "This consolidation that's happening all over the country is not a positive trend," he said, pointing to Amazon's bid to buy Whole Foods and Google's cable and telecom mergers.

Gillibrand was among the harshest Democratic critics of Trump's transgender military service ban, saying she was working on legislation to block it. She said on CNN she "can't think of anything less patriotic" and called the ban "outrageous."

Gillibrand has said she's not running in 2020. But many Democrats don't believe her, and see her as a strong contender. Gillibrand's biggest weakness, which some operatives told me they see her actively working to address, is that she was a moderate "Blue Dog" in the House whose previous positions on guns and same-sex marriage could prove problematic with the progressives.

Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton is profiled by Politico's Michael Kruse as an "insider who's an outsider." Focused heavily on Kruse's military record -- he went to Iraq four times -- Kruse finds those who know him speaking of a White House run as more of a question of when than if. "I'm not running for president, man," Moulton said.

Landrieu keeps his options open

New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu is tamping down speculation that he might run for president in 2020 -- sort of. At least in the present tense. "The answer to the question is I'm not running for president," Landrieu told David Axelrod on "The Axe Files," a podcast from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN. "You'd never rule out running (for) anything, you never say never about anything, but I'm not running."

An unusual approach to Trump

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is the rare Democrat who almost never says President Donald Trump's name -- a weird tactic for a big-state governor in a party fueled by resisting Trump. He blasted Trump's decision to ban transgender Americans from military service as a "Washington directive," The New York Times' Shane Goldmacher notes. "As a general rule, I haven't found nasty ad hominem attacks on a person whose cooperation is needed to help your state especially helpful," Cuomo told Goldmacher.

Calls for an African-American on the ticket

At the NAACP's convention in Baltimore, organization members said they wanted to see a black person on Democrats' 2020 ticket, per McClatchy's William Douglas and Katishi Maake. Among the people to watch: Harris, Booker, former Attorney General Eric Holder and former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick.

Tuesday, August 1 -- Minnesota Sen. Al Franken will sit down with NBC's Seth Meyers for a talk about Franken's book at the Great Hall at Cooper Union in New York City.

Wednesday, August 2 -- Polk County, Iowa, Democrats are teasing a 10 a.m. CT announcement about their steak fry. We're watching to see who the featured speaker will be at the Des Moines event that's seen as a must for future presidential contenders.

Expecting they could still be in Washington voting on health care, senators all kept their schedules open for the next week.

This story has been updated.

CNN's Ashley Killough, Sophie Tatum, Miranda Green, Saba Hamedy and Betsy Klein contributed to this story.

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#2020Vision: Rep. Delaney enters 2020 race; Warren's fingerprints on the Democratic agenda - Bloomington Pantagraph

You can still munch on a corn dog, wash it down with a lemon shake-up and then head over to marvel at the Butter Cow.

But if Democratic stem-winders are more to your taste, dont look to the Illinois State Fair this year.

A political tradition dating back at least half a century at the fair will look and sound a bit different this year.

When Democrats gather on the fairgrounds in Springfield for the 2017 version of Democrat Day, it will not feature the traditional mid-day political rally a partisan powwow aimed at ginning up support for candidates and incumbents.

Rich Miller of the Capitol Fax blog was first to report the rallys demise.

Steve Brown, a spokesman for Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan, the chairman of the Illinois Democratic Party, said the rally wasnt canceled because nothing was ever scheduled in the first place.

The focus of Democrats on the 17th of August will be chairmans brunch, Brown said, adding that more than 1,000 attendees were expected.

The Democratic county chairmans event is another longtime staple of the event. But it was always the outdoor rally, held on The Directors Lawn that was the days centerpiece.

Mayor Richard J. Daley, waving, leads the Chicago contingent at Democrat Day at the Illinois State Fair in Springfield, August 14, 1969. File Photo. | United Press International Wirephoto.

Every year, fair organizers set aside two days for Democrats and Republicans to hold speeches and other party events. The party that holds the governors office calls its day Governors Day. This year, Aug. 16 is Governors Day, and August 17 is Democrats Day.

For Democrats, the big outdoor rally also took a backseat in 2016, when the Democrat Day breakfast was the backdrop for speeches meant to drum up party support.

The rally has also been the scene for some awkward moments over the years. In 2012, Gov. Pat Quinn after being heckled by labor union leaders mixed up the names of President Barack Obama and slain al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich is shown as the the Flying Elvi perform behind him during Democrats Day at the Illinois State Fair in Springfield, Ill., Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2003. (AP Photo/ Illinois State Fair, David Blanchette)

Speaker of the House Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, left, Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn, center, and Illinois Senate President John Cullerton, D-Chicago, right, confer while participating in a Democrats rally at the Illinois State Fair on Governors Day in Springfield, Ill., Wednesday, Aug 19, 2009. File Photo. (AP Photo/Seth Perlman)

Ten years earlier, then-candidate Rod Blagojevich was campaigning for governor and squabbling with Madigan. The speaker, who is also state Democratic Party chairman told reporters: I dont plan to get into any criticism of Blagojevich. I could do that. I could talk about his indiscretions, but Im not going to do that because I believe in solidarity within the political party.

Madigan never elaborated on what indiscretions he was talking about.

U.S. Sen. Barack Obama is surrounded by reporters as he attends a Democrat Day rally at the Illinois State Fair in Springfield, Ill., Wednesday, Aug. 16, 2006. (AP File Photo/Seth Perlman)

Democrat Roland Burris addresses a crowd at a rally during Democrat Day at the Illinois State Fair in Springfield in 1997. File Photo. (AP Photo/Randy Squires, File)

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Democrat Day at State Fair to be a bit quieter this year - Chicago Sun-Times

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said he wants to make federal funding of Obamacare subsidies permanent before working with Republicans on other reforms to the troubled health care law the GOP has been unable to repeal.

Schumer said "there is a thirst" among Republicans to work with Democrats on reforming Obamacare following early Friday's defeat of the Republican plan to repeal the law.

"At the very beginning, we should stabilize the system," Schumer said Friday. "Make permanent the cost sharing, which keeps premiums low."

Schumer said he also wants to negotiate with the GOP on reviving insurance bailout payments from the federal government, known as reinsurance, as well as a plan by Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., to provide healthcare coverage in rural areas where there are no policies offered.

"That is what we should do initially," Schumer said. "Then, we should sit down and trade ideas."

Schumer emerged Friday with the attitude that his party now has leverage in the healthcare reform debate after Republicans failed to find enough support within their own party to begin the process of repealing Obamacare. A "skinny" repeal measure failed thanks to three GOP senators who voted against it, including Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

Schumer said he has already talked to Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., about a bipartisan collaboration on rescuing the law, which is suffering from a collapse of the individual insurance marketplaces.

Schumer said Republicans approached him in the Senate chamber early Friday morning as it became apparent the GOP bill would fail and thanked him for pushing bipartisan talks, and told Schumer they want to be involved. "There is a thirst to do it," Schumer said.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who suffered a major defeat when the bill failed to pass, remained silent Friday afternoon about the path forward.

He signaled on the Senate floor following the defeat of the GOP bill that he would not be willing to simply pour more federal money into Obamacare, which suggests the cost sharing and reinsurance proposals would not happen without concessions from the Democrats.

Schumer said Friday he understands that dynamic.

"There has to be a give and take," Schumer said. "My colleagues and my caucus know that."

Schumer said he believes there is new impetus to work in a bipartisan way, even though Democrats passed Obamacare in 2010 without a single Republican on board.

McCain's surprise vote against the measure, Schumer said, could prompt new bipartisanship.

"Sometimes you need a spark that inspires the forces of coming together that outweigh the forces of pulling part," Schumer said. "And John McCain may have done that."

See more here:
Chuck Schumer outlines Democrat terms for healthcare talks with GOP - Washington Examiner