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.
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.
I have never been convinced that our current policy of trying to unseat the Assad government in Syria is the only reasonable one for the US to pursue or even the correct one. A couple years ago I wrote that I wasn’t sure it made sense, or was even logical, to think we could battle ISIS in Syria and the Assad regime at the same time.
I know there are strong contrary arguments. The situation on the ground is now quite different with respect to ISIS and Assad than it was two years ago. But that’s not my point here. My point here is simply to grant that it is not inherently questionable or suspicious to end our covert support for anti-Assad rebels in Syria, as President Trump has just done, according to reports this afternoon. But it is highly, highly disquieting in the context of Trump’s extremely suspicious behavior with respect to Russia in general. Read More
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Remarkable NYT interview today with President Trump in the Oval Office, in which he castigated his own attorney general as being “extremely unfair … to the president” for recusing himself from the Russia probe, accused James Comey of using the Steele dossier as leverage over Trump to keep his job, and warned that Special Counsel Robert Mueller would cross a red line if he investigated Trump family finances beyond any Russia connection. There’s much more.
A statement was just released through Sen. John McCain’s office.
Entirely unsurprisingly, the new New York Times interview with President Trump shows he has learned nothing from the biggest mistakes of the first six months of his presidency. He has turned completely against Attorney General Jeff Sessions, one of his staunchest loyalists, who he now blames for essentially launching the Russia probe. He is also lashing out at Rod Rosenstein. Sessions and Rosenstein, were complicit, substantively if not legally, in firing FBI Director James Comey, what I believe is to date the greatest impeachable offense of his Presidency. He is setting out the terms upon which he will fire Robert Mueller. He inexplicably admitted to using his second conversation with Vladimir Putin to discuss the issues that had come up a year ago in that Trump Tower meeting with Don Jr.
You’ve heard about those. What I was almost more interested was the litany of bizarre and often inexplicable statements and claims that came before he even got to those issues. So I took a moment to annotate each of these passages … Read More
It looks Obamacare repeal is back on track in the Senate. Sen. Paul now says he’ll allow the bill to move to the Senate floor as long as he’s allowed a vote on his version, which seems like an easy ask. That doesn’t mean Trumpcare will pass necessarily. But simply getting it to the floor for a vote would be a big, big step in that direction.
Remember I explained on Monday how the Trump team’s obsession with getting hacked emails from Clinton’s (allegedly hacked but very likely not hacked) private email server may have spurred the Russian intelligence effort to hack and disclose the DNC and Podesta emails.
Look what this top Trump campaign official was looking at a month before the Don Jr. meeting …
Kremlin has Hillary’s emails. Russia has 20,000 emails stolen from her secret home server. @IngrahamAngle #Trump2016 https://t.co/HvFlFBo2RT
— Dan Scavino Jr. (@DanScavino) May 12, 2016
Senators still don’t know which Obamacare repeal bill they’ll be voting on next week, but Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn called that “a luxury we don’t have.”