THIS WEEK IN POLITICAL NEWS -- 3/23/17

The Everything Is Truly Off The Rails Edition

Editor’s Note: I just can’t concentrate on the Gorsuch hearings. It’s a combo of there being too much other news going on and also my despair/frustration knowing that he will definitely be confirmed, and is likely to be as radical as Alito. I am thrilled the Dems are going to oppose him and filibuster, even if it forces the nuclear option.

BATTERED BUT NOT BROKEN: In an unbelievable (but non-permanent) defeat, the GOP was forced to pull its health care* bill from the floor today, canceling a vote scheduled for the 7th anniversary of the signing of Obamacare after it became clear Ryan did not have the votes [pro tip: click that link] to pass the bill. This came after a last-minute (literally) night-time editing session in which the conservatives demanded that the “essential health benefits” -- requirements that every health insurance plan cover basic things like hospitalizations prescription drugs, and doctor’s visits -- be stripped. This is both cruel and insane. As Chait explains, “A system without essential benefits would make the law’s protections for people with preexisting conditions meaningless. Insurers couldn’t turn you away if you had a pricy condition, but the only people who wanted to buy plans covering them would be sick and expensive, making covering their conditions unaffordable — just like before Obamacare existed.” It also begs scammers to take advantage of the federal government (and spend more of the government’s money). This is because, as Yglesias explains, “without the essential health benefits in place, there will be no requirement that insurance companies offer good insurance. You can just craft a cheap, totally worthless plan, spend a ton to market it, and scoop up government money.” Of course, these changes helped drive “moderate” Republicans away from the bill -- and even then, it was insufficiently cruel for the “Freedom Caucus” to get behind. (One reporter tweeted Thursday that the arch-conservatives are now demanding the repeal of the Obamacare regulations that affect all health insurance plans in the country are are VITALLY important, including a ban on yearly and lifetime caps; the end of community rating (ie, the rule that insurance companies have to charge everyone the same); standardized documentation (because who wants to be able to actually understand their insurance plans anyway); and the rule requiring insurance companies to spend 85% of premiums on health benefits and return the rest to consumers). Now it is being reported that Trump is “demanding” that the bill come for a vote tomorrow -- even if, apparently, there aren’t the votes to pass it. And if somehow the House does pass it, it’s still entirely unclear what version they would even be voting on tomorrow (as of writing, we still have no text of the bill; at 9pm tonight, the GOP voted en masse to waive the rule requiring that the bill exist for awhile before being voted on), and then less clear whether that version could pass the Senate, both because of the politics and because these last-minute changes may mean that it can’t be passed through reconciliation (and would thus require 60 votes). (A set of changes proposed Monday night would, as projected by the CBO, “reduce savings in federal spending by half as much as their original plan and would still cause 24 million more Americans to be uninsured.” Of course, there won’t be a CBO score of whatever bill is actually voted on tomorrow.) So now I guess we wait to see what happens Friday. Guys, this is nuts -- and it would be nuts for Republicans to pass this bill. (Also, read this great Josh Barro piece about the Republican chickens coming home to roost.)

*It is not a health care bill. It is a giant tax cut for the rich that distributes money from the poor to the rich, in which “[t]he typical family making less than $10,000 will lose $1,420,” while “the average family making $200,000 or more would gain $5,640.”

THE BEST THING ABOUT THIS: The most hilarious part about the GOP’s self-inflicted wound is that Trump has no understanding at all of why he is in this position. It seems like that’s because Paul Ryan has lied to him, telling him that he has no choice but to do health care repeal first. Trump believed it:

• Feb 17: “And we have to, as you know, statutorily and for reasons of budget, we have to go first. It's not like, frankly, the tax would be easier, in my opinion, but for statutory reasons and for budgetary reasons, we have to submit the healthcare sooner.”
• Feb. 22: "Before we do the tax — which is actually very well finalized — but we can't submit it until the health care statutorily or otherwise," Trump told reporters before a White House budget meeting.
• Feb 27: "Nobody knew that health care could be so complicated," Trump said. "And statutorily and for budget purposes, as you know, we have to do health care before we do the tax cut."
• March 20: “We want a very big tax cut,” Trump said, “but we cannot do that until we keep our promise to repeal and replace the disaster known as Obamacare.”

There is, of course, no “statutory” reason why health care has to go first. Instead, it’s part of Paul Ryan’s strategy to lock in enormous tax cuts for the rich that don’t expire. Chait explains that a budget bill can be passed with only 51 votes in the Senate, unless it increases the deficit after 10 years, in which case it can be filibustered. In 2001, Republicans avoided this by just having the tax cuts expire after 10 years. But that’s no longer good enough for Paul Ryan. So he needs to find a giant pot of money so that the tax cut doesn’t increase the deficit and thus can be passed with only 51 votes. “The Republican plan to repeal Obamacare would eliminate all the taxes that were raised to help pay for the benefits — about $1.2 trillion over the next decade. This would lower the baseline of tax revenue, meaning that Republicans would need to design a tax code that raises $1.2 trillion less in revenue in order to be “revenue-neutral.” That makes it crucial for them to repeal Obamacare before they cut taxes.” Of course, they could (and likely will) just pass a tax cut that explodes the deficit (just like the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts) without pretending that it is revenue-neutral. “They’ll look back and wish they hadn’t bled time and political capital on a reach goal that they wound up abandoning anyway.” The icing on the cake is that the GOP healthcare plan (even before it’s latest cruel and stupid changes) is enormously, unbelievably unpopular.

RUSSIA EXPLODES AGAIN: It is unbelievable that it is only Thursday night, given how much exploded in the Russia story this week. It started with the FBI’s confirmation on Monday that it is currently investigating possible collaboration between Trump associates and Russian hackers bent on influencing the 2016 election. This is a really, really big deal, even as the steady trickle of Russia-related news tends to lull us into forgetting what a massive thing this is. That was shocking enough. But then we had to suffer the spectacle of a Republican party working as hard as possible to avoid learning anything whatsoever about these possible ties -- or about Russian interference at all -- for an entire day, a display that was sad and pathetic. But even that was less depressing than watching the official twitter feed of the President of the United States lie in real time, about things that were happening right before our eyes. “This was not just campaign spin, or even presidential obfuscation. It was an official government communications arm of the executive branch with massive reach—something akin to a state-run media outlet—deliberately misreporting, in real time, what was happening on Capitol Hill.” Jamelle Bouie: “It’s difficult to describe the feeling of seeing the president of the United States lie, in the moment, about ongoing events and testimony. To watch the White House declare that you should believe it over your lying eyes, even as you witness reality unfold in real time. It’s not the usual spin or political dishonesty; it feels transgressive, like some critical line has been crossed, and a new world entered where Donald Trump and his allies contest the nature of truth itself, with the presidency as their platform for action.” And that was followed by the amazing moment where the FBI Director fact checked -- and corrected -- the sitting president’s tweets in the middle of the hearing. Zach Beauchamp writes: “We’re in the midst of what’s already a significant scandal — and one that could, depending on what the FBI uncovers, end up being the biggest political scandal ever in our history. And it’s not clear, judging by the behavior of the Republicans at the House Intelligence hearing, if our hyperpolarized political system is capable of handling it.”

I think it’s now pretty clear that the system is not capable of handling it. Two days after this unbelievable hearing, the Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee -- which, recall, is supposed to be investigating Russian interference in our election, including whether Trump’s team worked with Russian hackers -- gave an extraordinary statement and press conference. In what appears to be an attempt to vindicate Trump’s (thoroughly debunked) assertion that Obama had wiretapped Trump Tower, Nunes announced that members of the Trump transition team had in fact been swept up in surveillance that was not related to Russia but was related to FISA warrants of some kind. This was shocking and bizarre, for all the reasons Lawfareblog explores here. For one, it’s totally unclear, more than 24 hours later, what he was actually trying to allege. And he never discussed this information with the committee itself or even with the ranking member, Rep. Adam Schiff, who as of Thursday morning had no idea what Nunes was talking about. And it was also super weird that Nunes ran over to tell the White House -- you know, the subject of his committee’s investigation -- about this stuff. And then on Thursday, Nunes refused to say that this “information” had not come from the White House itself, calling into question what the hell he is talking about and whether it’s actually real information he’s discussing. All of this led John McCain today, after calling the statement “bizarre,” to say that Congress “no longer has credibility to handle this alone” and that a select committee must take over the investigation.

That was all crazy. But then Schiff raised the stakes by declaring that the evidence he has seen showing collusion between Team Trump and the Russians is “more than circumstantial now,” a dramatic shift from his position as of Sunday that the evidence was only circumstantial.

But this is not all. On Wednesday morning, the AP reported that Paul Manafort -- Trump’s former campaign chairman -- had signed a contract with a Russian oligarch in 2005 to work for the “benefit of the Putin government” among the highest levels of the US government in exchange for $10 million. The relationship between Manafort and this oligarch continued until at least 2009. And then Wednesday night, CNN reported that “The FBI has information that indicates associates of President Donald Trump communicated with suspected Russian operatives to possibly coordinate the release of information damaging to Hillary Clinton's campaign. . . . The FBI cannot yet prove that collusion took place, but the information suggesting collusion is now a large focus of the investigation, the officials said.” It’s a carefully worded article with a lot of hedging, but it is potentially enormously explosive.

ALSO THIS: This morning Time Magazine published an unbelievable interview with Trump about his penchant for lying. It is frightening and insane and confirms that, to Trump, there really is no such thing as an objective truth. It’s not long, and you should read it. In his very first answer -- for an interview about why he lies all the time -- Trump he tells 5 obvious lies! (No one died in Sweden in the riot that was totally unrelated to the topic Trump had mentioned the day before; Weiner did not have any new Clinton emails on his computer; NATO “covered” terrorism before Trump’s presidency; our NATO allies do pay; and it is Trump who has no idea how NATO is funded.)

Must-See Chart of the Week: 7 Charts Explain the Horrors of Trumpcare.

Best Video of the Week: Goodness, Golly, Gosh, Gorsuch Is a Heckuva Guy.

A Picture’s Worth 1,000 Words: Diversity!

THIS WEEK IN POLITICAL NEWS -- 3/19/17

THE COURTS RIDE IN ON THEIR WHITE HORSES: The federal court system did some good work this week (and some not so good -- see Must Read of the Week), and it’s nice to start with some good news. First, two federal judges (in Hawaii and Maryland) struck down Trump’s “revised” Muslim travel ban this week, finding that the ban violated the Establishment Clause by being explicitly targeted at Muslims. The Hawaii opinion is clear, powerful, and worth a read (especially starting at page 28). The judge uses the words of Trump and his campaign advisors (hi there, Giuliani!) to show that this was always intended to be a ban of Muslims, period. It mocks the “illogic” of the government’s position that it can’t be a Muslim ban if only 9% of the world’s Muslims are affected: “The notion that one can demonstrate animus toward any group of people only by targeting all of them at once is fundamentally flawed.” And it rejected the argument that the court may only look at the neutral text of the ban itself, without considering the context (ie, the many, many openly anti-Islam statements made about the ban by Trump and other White House officials). “The record before this court . . . includes significant and unrebutted evidence of religious animus driving the promulgation of the Executive Order and its related predecessor.” Good stuff there; go read it! The other court victory worth hailing came late last Friday, when a federal court panel in Texas “ruled that Texas’s Republican-led legislature gerrymandered some of the state’s congressional districts to stunt the growing influence of minority voters.” It’s a great victory, but these two sentences, from the Washington Post, put into stark relief the supremely absurd jurisprudence governing these issues: “All three judges agreed that the legislature packed minorities into some districts and splintered them among others to dilute their power. But the jurists disagreed about whether that was simply partisan gerrymandering, which the Supreme Court has tolerated, or racial discrimination, which is forbidden.” As our parties become more and more racially polarized, the Supreme Court is going to have to figure out a better way of protecting minority voters. Given the any-day-now ascendancy of Gorsuch, however, let’s not hold our breath for that one.

HEALTH CARE UPDATE: This week, the Republican Party continued to hemorrhage from the self-inflicted wound that is their insane Obamacare “replacement” plan, a plan the CBO found would kick 24 million people off their insurance, including 17 million in the first year alone. It would dramatically increase costs for poorer, sicker, and older Americans, and the “savings” in lower premium costs that eventually kick in come from the fact that older people will simply be pushed out from the insurance pools. The CBO score, which came in late Monday, ricocheted like a bullet around Washington. Sens. Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, and Mike Lee have railed against the bill and said it can’t pass the Senate; Sen. Susan Collins announced Friday  she won’t vote for it in its current form; three House GOPers voted against the bill in committee; and the Freedom Caucus has signaled it will not cave in its opposition. McClatchy tallies 27 House Republicans as leaning no on the bill, and a new poll puts opposition to the bill at 45% to 24% in support. All of this forced Paul Ryan to admit this week that the bill would have to change to pass the House: Those changes appear to be ones that make the bill crueler and even more of an anti-Medicaid cudgel, allowing states to put a work requirement on Medicaid recipients; “convert Medicaid from an entitlement program (which covers anyone who meets certain eligibility requirements) into a block grant (a fixed annual sum that does not rise or fall with the poverty rate);” and block states that have not yet expanded Medicaid from doing so in the future. These changes will only imperil its chances in the Senate even more. Regardless, the GOP has already declared they won’t wait for a revised CBO score before voting. The House plans to vote THIS WEEK on the bill, which (remember) was released TWO weeks ago and which has received no substantial amendments, markups, or revisions of any kind, even after the devastating CBO report. The next two weeks are going to be CRUCIAL in putting pressure on your GOP reps and senators to oppose this bill.

TRUMP’S A LIAR, CONT.: This week, it was made definitive that Trump (obviously) lied about being “wiretapped” by Obama. (House Intelligence Committee chair David Nunes, a Trump stooge, scolded the press even as he admitted there was no evidence for Trump’s lie: “[A]re you going to take the tweets literally? And if you are then clearly the president was wrong.”) So there is no question that this was a lie. But he has not only refused to back down or apologize, he and his minions are digging in their heels, insisting that another conspiracy theory -- that Obama asked the British to surveil Trump for him -- is true. Even after McMaster and Spicer apologized to the British ambassador for the lie (although the White House later denied there as any apology), Trump insisted it was true in a press conference with Angela Merkel. The British are super, super pissed about this. This is honestly a very big deal. But that’s not even the lie I wanted to highlight. Washington Post reporter David Farenthold (who has doggedly pursued Trump’s charitable giving situation for the last 1.5 years) follows up on three key charity-related claims Trump has made post election and finds -- shocker! -- that he has followed through with none of them. First, he promised to donate his presidential salary to charity. When pressed on this claim, Spicer acknowledged that Trump has been accepting the paychecks but intends to donate the salary at the end of the year. Uh huh. Second, the Inauguration Committee had promised to donate all leftover funds to charity, but now refuses to provide any information on how much is left or when and to whom it will be donated. And third, Trump memorably promised to “voluntarily donate all profits from foreign-government payments made to his hotel” to the U.S. treasury. There has been nothing said since then about how this would work, who’s in charge of seeing it happen, and how we will know when and how the donations are being made.

THE BUDGET IS BAD, BUT: The budget Trump released this week is really, really bad. You’ve heard all the reasons it’s terrible -- and they’re true. It is an insane, cruel, unAmerican document that would (once again) hit those who supported him most the hardest. But ultimately, guys, it’s not worth spending that much time on because it’s not going anywhere. Ed Kilgore explains why this budget is not going to happen, ever. First, it’s not really a budget; it has no economic forecasts of the consequences of its cuts or spending, including short-term costs or long-term deficits and debt. Second, Congress has a very hard time cutting discretionary spending. Third, the defense spending hikes violate the “sequester” law that is still on the books. Fourth, he’ll need Democratic votes to boost military spending the way he wants to, and that won’t happen, or at least without giveaways on the non-defense side. “Any way you look at it, OMB’s drastic cuts ain’t happening, and in that respect as in others, the “Trump Budget” isn’t remotely as terrifying as it purports to be. There is a whole separate line of questions that can be asked about why the new administration chose to rattle hobgoblins at all the supporters and beneficiaries of the programs it pretends it is going to kill.”

TO KEEP AN EYE ON: “Former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, who was removed from his post by the Trump administration last week, was overseeing an investigation into stock trades made by the president’s health secretary, according to a person familiar with the office.”

Fun Video of the Week: Compare this to this.

Must Read of the Week: This relatively short Slate piece discusses an OUTRAGEOUS and truly shocking case of police misconduct, and the enormous problem of court-created rules that make suing police officers virtually impossible.

THIS WEEK IN POLITICAL NEWS -- 3/12/17

The Repeal and Go F--- Yourself Edition

Note: I am experimenting with sending these out on Sundays instead of Thursday nights, in the interest of actually having time to write them. But I may switch back, so keep watch of your inbox!

REPLACEMENT -- THE FACTS: We finally got a look at the GOP's "repeal and replace" health care bill. It's pretty terrible, though it has a fwe non-terrible features: It keeps Obamacare’s ban on charging sick people more for insurance; the ban on annual and lifetime caps on coverage; the requirement that preventative care and other basic services be provided without copays; a cap on individual’s out-of-pocket expenses; and the permission for children up to 26 to stay on their parents’ health plans. But it changes crucial parts of Obamacare, most importantly slashing the subsidies, replacing the needs-based payments with a flat subsidy and allowing insurers to charge older people up to 5 times more than others. And while Obamacare’s subsidies phase out pretty quickly as a person’s income rises, the Republicans shell out money to families making up to $150,000. So while Obamacare gave more generous subsidies to poorer and older people, and pegged those subsidies to the actual cost of healthcare in a given area (meaning that rural areas with fewer choices tended to get higher subsidies, and as healthcare costs went up, so did subsidies), the GOP bill effectively transfers money from the poor, sick, and old to the rich, healthy, and young. “A 60-year-old earning $20,000 in Lincoln, Neb., currently gets a subsidy of $18,470 to help her buy insurance, with extra subsidies to help her pay deductibles and co-payments, according to calculations made by Kaiser. Under the new legislation, she would get a subsidy of $4,000, and no help with cost sharing.” Jonathan Cohn, on Brian Beutler’s podcast, explained the difference this way: “That’s the idea [of Obamacare]: the tax credits are supposed to be a guarantee, and they will get bigger if either you don’t have a lot of money or if insurance in your area costs a lot. The Republican tax credits are not a guarantee. They are a flat amount. They go up by age, but that’s it.”

Gone also is the individual mandate (which makes those without insurance pay a fine to the government), replaced with a 30% surcharge insurance companies can charge those who have a more than 2-month gap in coverage. (This gets it backward, of course, because with this hefty charge, only the sickest people would have an incentive to pay the charge and sign up for coverage, making the market sicker and more expensive than the existing individual market, which already skews too sick and expensive.) The other big and potentially catastrophic change would be to Medicare, whose funding would be dramatically cut starting in 2020. “Currently, Medicaid costs are shared between states and the federal government, but the funding is open-ended, so the federal government pays its percentage of whatever states spend. Under the proposed bill, the amount of federal funding would be capped on a per-person basis . . . [b]ut that per-capita amount might not grow as fast as Medicaid costs, which could leave states on the hook for an ever-increasing share of the costs of the program.” This will almost certainly lead to a widespread cut in funding and services for Medicaid patients. Most important from a GOP perspective -- and the raison d’etre of its existence -- is that the bill repeals almost all of Obamacare’s taxes -- most importantly, taxes on the rich, as well as taxes on things like medical devices, tanning salons, and -- oh yeah -- insurance executive salaries over half a million dollars. It’s a $600 billion tax cut to the rich. And the bill also drops Obamacare’s mental-health-parity and addiction treatment requirements -- but that’s fine, because we’re not in any kind of addiction crisis right now or anything.  

As a result of all of these changes, Standard & Poor’s estimates that between 6 and 10 million people will lose their insurance. The Brookings Institution estimates that at least 15 million people will lose health insurance. No wonder the GOP wants to rush the bill through before the CBO has a chance to analyze it.

REPLACEMENT -- THE POLITICS: I’ve said it a thousand times: The only thing saving us from the most dire consequences of the Trump/GOP takeover of government is their staggering incompetence. This bill was rolled out on Monday, apparently before the GOP had lined up any support for it among its normal constituents. Heritage Foundation, the Club for Growth, and FreedomWorks are all against it, as are the Koch Brothers. Breitbart has been vocal in opposition, and even Fox News’ Tucker Carlson asked Paul Ryan why he included a massive tax cut for the rich (Ryan’s response: “I’m not concerned about it.”). The AARP, the American Hospitals Association, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association have all come out against the bill. Even the chief medical officer of Medicaid -- a government employee -- spoke publicly about his opposition. Four Republican senators --  Rob Portman (OH), Shelley Moore Capito (WV), Cory Gardner (CO), and Lisa Murkowski (AK) -- have written to Mitch McConnell saying they cannot support a decimation of Medicaid. (Republicans can only afford to lose two votes in the Senate). On the other hand, the uber-conservative Freedom Caucus opposes the bill because it is too generous and too much like Obamacare; Senator Tom Cotton has said the bill can’t pass the Senate. And the people who will be most hurt by this bill are the same people who voted overwhelmingly for Trump. (Example: Those set to lose $7,500 in subsidies went for Trump 58% to 39%.) All of this is to say that there is a real (relatively good) chance that this bill dies a painful death. But we have to keep pushing our reps and senators on this (I’m looking at you, Colorado residents!).

REPLACEMENT -- THE STUNNING HYPOCRISY AND BULLSHIT: I basically just want to quote this entire Jonathan Chait piece, which you should all read. Here’s a big excerpt:

The national health-care debate began in 2009. Republicans have had eight years since then to draw up and unify around a plan of their own. They have spent this time insisting they could do so easily. For most of the year, in fact, House Republicans have been running a television ad assuring the public they already “have a plan” with wonderful features: “Health insurance that provides more choices and better care, at lower costs. Provides peace of mind to people with preexisting conditions … without disrupting existing coverage.” Eventually they had told the lie so long it became impossible for them to abandon it. And so Republicans have found themselves frantically scrawling out a hopelessly inadequate solution in order to meet a self-imposed deadline driven by their overarching desire to cut taxes for the rich.

Ezra Klein writes, “It is difficult to say what question, or set of questions, would lead to this bill as an answer. Were voters clamoring for a bill that cut taxes on the rich, raised premiums on the old, and cut subsidies for the poor? Will Americans be happy when 15 million people lose their health insurance and many of those remaining face higher deductibles?”

The Republicans have been lying about Obamacare for 7 years. They said it was “shoved down our throats” and passed in the dead of night. In fact, it went through a full year of painstaking, exhausting, nerve-wracking debate and negotiation and compromise and votes. Meanwhile, the GOP passed its replacement bill out of committee at 4:30 in the morning. Seriously. They spent years complaining about Obamacare’s cut to Medicare -- and then they pocketed those cuts in their own bill. They spent years insisting that premiums and deductibles were too high, and then wrote a bill that will cause out-of-pocket costs to soar. They complained that Obamacare delayed many of its provisions to juice its CBO score. But their bill puts off its Medicaid cuts for two years, and the GOP now insists that the CBO is stupid and worthless and doesn’t matter, and they are moving forward with passing the bill before even knowing what the CBO says it will do to the deficit or to the number of insured.

And let’s not forget that this bill violates many key promises Trump made throughout his campaign:

• “I’m not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid.” [May 2015]
• "I am going to take care of everybody. I don’t care if it costs me votes or not. Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now." [Sept. 2015]
• “You will end up with great health care for a fraction of the price and that will take place immediately after we go in. Immediately! Fast! Quick!” [Feb. 2016]
• “You will have the finest health care plan there is. . . . Obamacare is a total disaster and not only are your rates going up by numbers that nobody’s ever believed, but your deductibles are going up. So that unless you get hit by a truck, you will never be able to use it. It's a disastrous plan and it has to be repealed and replaced.” [Oct. 2016]
• “We’re going to have insurance for everybody,” Mr. Trump said. “There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it. That’s not going to happen with us.” [Jan. 15, 2017]

LIAR IN CHIEF, PART 10,000: How amazing that it was just last Saturday that Trump tweeted out that he had “found out” that Obama had wiretapped Trump’s phones during the election? And then the White House promptly refused to answer any questions, instead calling for a congressional “investigation” into what the president had already asserted was a fact? Yeah, that was insane. Why am I not surprised that there’s been essentially no follow up? It is now just taken as a given that we have a president who serially lies -- about some of the most important and urgent issues conceivable -- in public, with no repercussions or consequences or shame. The House Intelligence Committee is now asking for Trump to turn over his “evidence” about this by tomorrow. That’s obviously never going to happen and also no one will care because nothing matters. The introduction of the dumpster fire GOP “replacement” plan was the biggest gift to Trump he could have ever hoped for, because heaven forbid we concentrate on two things at once.

PUT ON YOUR RADAR: Here’s yet another thing to put in the panic file. House Republicans are advancing a series of bills that would make it dramatically harder for consumers and employees to file lawsuits against corporations and others that have wronged them. “One proposal would limit monetary awards in medical malpractice suits to $250,000 for noneconomic damages, which include pain and suffering,” while another bill “would permit class-action lawsuits to proceed in federal court only if every person in the class had ‘an injury of the same type and scope.’” These are dramatic measures. The idea that, no matter the injury, a plaintiff would face an automatic (and really very low) cap on damages is really outrageous. And the class action bill could make it infinitely harder to pursue bad actors: “It could sharply restrict membership in a class, for example, to women who had been sexually harassed in the same way by the same manager.”

Must Read: One of my all-time favorite writers Richard Lawson (who usually writes about movies and pop culture) wrote a brilliant and insightful and a Hell Yes! column on why Bush nostalgia is so disgusting. Please read it!

Best Video of the Week Ever: I’m sure by now you’ve all seen this glorious 2 minute video of a BBC interview being interrupted by some insanely adorable children. If not, rectify that situation IMMEDIATELY. And then read this play-by-play that makes the video even more hilarious and winning than it already is. (And people say these newsletters are depressing!)

Bonus Video: Kate McKinnon’s Jeff Sessions is my new favorite part of SNL. This week’s is not to be missed.