TPM’s Cameron Joseph talked to some disgruntled GOP House members who cast risky votes for Obamacare repeal only to see it die in the Senate: “I just find it interesting to note the number of geniuses serving in the United States Senate,” said one, after Speaker Paul Ryan warned members not to disparage the Senate. Give it a read.
With the apparent (zombies are undead) collapse of Obamacare repeal, I thought it made sense to republish these handy infographics. Back on May 4th, 2017, the House passed the American Health Care Act, which included devastating coverage loss numbers across the country. House Republicans who voted for it went to the White House shortly thereafter to celebrate bigly with laughs and guffaws and cheers and backslapping all around. Here are some of the best pictures of the celebration with President Trump, with annotations noting how many constituents would lose their coverage in each member’s district.
Click the “read more” link to see the full story where the photos are large enough to easily read the annotations.
Alice Ollstein walks us through Day 2 of the collapse of Obamacare repeal.
I was discussing with a friend this morning that much of the drama and chaos of the first months of the Trump administration is explained by a simple fact: President Trump thinks running the US government is essentially like running his private family business in which people work for him (it’s a very personalized operation) and people have to do what he says. That’s not how the US government works at all. It’s not even how the executive branch runs. Read More
Check out our look at some of choicest nuggets from Josh Green’s new bio of Steve Bannon, “Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency,” the first big book of the Trump era. How about the time Bannon raged at Speaker Paul Ryan as “a limp-dick motherfucker who was born in a petri dish at the Heritage Foundation”? Broken clock, a way with words … Josh will be taking your questions in The Hive on Friday at 9:00 AM eastern. Get your questions in now and join Josh at The Hive Friday morning.
As you can see, this evening a rapid-fire succession of events appears to have closed the door on Trumpcare 2.0 in the Senate. That doesn’t mean Obamacare repeal is over by any means. But it’s another major defeat. And after a while defeats tend to grow on themselves. I fully expect Mitch McConnell to go back to the drawing board, tinker with the bill and try again. But this is the first time I sense that McConnell’s next attempt may be harder than the last. Or, to put it a different way, it’s possible that this defeat for the repealers may prove a turning point in the grinding war over Obamacare repeal even though it will not be the final battle. Read More
In the wake of Sen. Ron Johnson pulling back on his clear support for Senate Trumpcare 2.0, Sens Lee and Moran have now also pulled their support altogether. That leaves Mitch McConnell well under the 50 votes required for passage. Expect other conservatives and moderates to jump off the ship probably as soon as this evening.
This is a big, big development. But it would be quite wrong to see this as the end of Obamacare repeal. Expect McConnell to take at least another crack at rejiggering the bill for eventual passage.
TPM’s Alice Ollstein asked Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) about a report that Mitch McConnell was double-dealing and now look what’s happened.
Over the last few weeks we’ve seen a rush of new data points on the Russia collusion front. But there’s one point which wasn’t new to me precisely but reminded me of something I’d lost focus on as the Russia/collusion story has heated up. That is, the GOP quest for Hillary Clinton’s 30,000 deleted emails.
Let’s go back more than two years ago, to March 2015. That’s when news of Hillary Clinton’s ‘private email server’ first came out. Closely coupled with that news was Clinton’s announcement that her lawyers had separated out the personal from professional emails, turned over the latter to the State Department and destroyed the former. I remember this quite clearly and quite painfully because, as I wrote here at the time, I knew this was classic Clinton and would lead to endless bad news. Not illegal, probably not wrong but exactly the kind of decision that would lead to months and years of horrible press and political self-inflicted wounds. Read More
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— ((((Peter Sagal)))) (@petersagal) July 17, 2017
Okay, I probably do need to say more. We’re just past midway through our annual drive and have a goal to meet by the close of the month. Are you a longtime reader? If you haven’t taken a moment to sign up for Prime, please take a moment to do so today. It’s important and we appreciate it no end.