THIS WEEK IN POLITICAL NEWS -- 6/29/17

I am running on steam tonight so this will be short.

A PRELIMINARY BUT CRUCIAL HEALTH CARE VICTORY: This week, Mitch McConnell was forced to delay the Senate vote on Trumpcare when it became clear that he did not have 50 Republicans willing to sign on to the cruel, immoral, and stupid bill. This is not the end of the fight, by any means -- but it represents a real and significant (if preliminary) victory that we should take heart in. The delay followed the CBO’s score of the bill on Monday, which found that 22 million more Americans would be uninsured by 2026 than under Obamacare, including 15 million fewer people covered by Medicaid (15 million fewer people would be covered by insurance by next year alone). Following Senator Heller’s opposition, Senator Susan Collins of Maine finally came out very strongly against the bill, citing the decimation of Medicaid and cuts to rural hospitals. These two joined the conservatives, with Rand Paul as the most outspoken, who also opposed the bill. Since McConnel can only afford to lose two votes, he was forced to postpone the vote and try to tweak it. In the meantime, the bill is extremely, almost laughingly unpopular with the American people.

WHAT HAPPENS FROM HERE? Ultimately, the Senate will try to bring this back again in the same secret, vote-immediately way they did this past week -- the same method that allowed the House to pass its own bill after its initial embarrassing defeat. The ray of sunshine is that in the Senate, reconciliation rules require the bill to be scored by the CBO, which means the GOP will not be able to spring a new vote on in a matter of hours (like what happened in the House). [Ed. Note: I can’t find a link to support this statement, but I am pretty confident -- but not 100% confident -- that it is accurate. So do with that what you will.] This means we have more time to organize -- but it also means we have more time to get distracted. But if McConnell decides that the “moderates” will act consistently with their history and cave, he just needs to make the bill crueler and stupider and the conservatives will be on board. What’s interesting is that some rank-and-filers are starting to push back against the tax cuts that, so far, have proven the entire rationale for the “repeal” efforts: Tennessee’s Bob Corker declared, “It’s not an acceptable proposition to have a bill that increases the burden on lower-income citizens and lessons [sic] the burden on wealthy citizens.” (Still, even these GOPers, including Collins, are hesitating only about a small piece of the tax cuts, not the entire idea.) Today, Ted Cruz proposed a compromise that Vox’s Dylan Matthews wrote “might knock over the dominoes necessary for a deal, starting with regulations, moving to tax subsidies, and ending up with more cash for Medicaid and fewer tax cuts for the rich.” (I know -- Ted Cruz? Compromise savior??) Here’s the general idea: “As long as a health plan offered at least one Obamacare-compliant plan in a state, the plan would also be allowed to offer non-Obamacare-compliant plans in that state. . . . If conservatives get that win on insurance regulations, they might be willing to accept fewer tax cuts for the wealthy in the bill.” This proposal stems from Republicans’ main policy beef with Obamacare: the regulations requiring broad and expansive coverage for things like hospital visits, preventative medicine, contraceptives, etc -- all of which, Republicans argue, make health insurance more expensive. At the same time, most Americans strongly support these requirements: The idea that if you pay for insurance, it should actually cover your medical costs is, it turns out, a pretty popular one. So Cruz’s idea would say that one plan per state must comply with these regulations and cover all essential health benefits, but then insurers can offer more bare-bones (presumably cheaper) plans also. While this may be a political winner, it has some major policy problems, as Dylan Matthews explains: “The fundamental problem is sicker people would be drawn to the more robust Obamacare plans, while healthier people would gravitate toward the skimpier non-Obamacare coverage. . . . Then inside the Obamacare market, as more and more sick people buy coverage there, costs for health insurers go up and so they increase premiums. It has the makings of a classic death spiral. Because only sick people remain, premiums eventually increase to astronomic levels. It turns the Obamacare exchanges into a high-risk pool.” While I obviously do not want to see any sort of Trumpcare pass, it must be acknowledged that, even if this shitty compromise became law, it is far, far, FAR better than the full-scale repeal that I was certain, on November 9, was coming immediately. Most importantly, the GOP appears to be acknowledging that the government must play some role to ensure that people have access to health care they can actually afford. Cruz told Matthes, “If those with seriously [sic] illnesses are going to be subsidized, and there is widespread agreement in Congress that they are going to be subsidized, I think far better for that to happen from direct tax revenue rather than forcing a bunch of other people to pay much higher premiums.” That’s a pretty huge admission.

THIS SHOULD GO WITHOUT SAYING: It’s insane that the GOP is actually arguing this point, but it should go without saying that the Senate bill definitely, for sure slashes Medicaid. For some reason, even though slashing Medicaid has been on the top of their agenda for a long time (see, e.g., Paul Ryan dreaming about cutting Medicaid while attending college keggers), this week the party peddled the lie that the Senate bill does no such thing. Yesterday, Donald Trump tweeted a hilariously misleading graph to declare that Medicaid spending under the Senate bill “actually goes up.” Ari Fleisher and Fox News declared the same thing, insisting that Medicaid spending was not being cut at all. This is insanity; simple math and a basic understanding of reality makes it clear. And then today the CBO spelled it out very clearly for us, in a supplemental report: “In CBO’s assessment, Medicaid spending under the Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017 would be 26 percent lower in 2026 than it would be under the agency’s extended baseline, and the gap would widen to about 35 percent in 2036 (see figure below).” I just don’t understand why Republicans would

THE TRAVEL BAN IS IN EFFECT, SORT OF: On Monday, the Supreme Court issued a ruling allowing Trump’s travel ban to go into effect, but said that it could not bar anyone with “a credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States.” On Friday morning, DHS’s memo about who would count as part of such a relationship was obtained by the Times: “Stepsiblings and half-siblings are allowed, but not nieces or nephews. Sons- and daughters-in-law are in, but brothers- and sisters-in-law are not. Parents, including in-laws, are considered “close family,” but grandparents are not.” The ban went into effect at 8pm tonight. There’s a chance the case will be declared moot by this fall, when the Court hears arguments on the merits of the litigation against the ban. That’s because the ban itself is drafted as a 90-day temporary halt while the government reviews its vetting procedures -- a review the Court told the government it should get started on right away -- and thus will expire by its own terms on September 27. Mary Lederman thinks the Court’s ruling was actually a pretty significant victory for the challengers to the ban, both because of the mootness issue and because of the Court’s willingness to uphold the injunction (ie, bar the enforcement of the ban) with respect to all travelers with relationships to anyone in the United States, not just those with relationships to the plaintiffs in these cases.

YEAH, THERE’S DEFINITELY SOME EVIDENCE OF COLLUSION: Tonight, the Wall Street Journal reported that a GOP operative -- with ties to Mike Flynn -- apparently tried to work with hackers to retrieve thousands of lost Clinton emails. Read Chait’s summary, titled “Stop Assuming Trump Is Innocent of Collusion,” because I am too tired to keep writing.

Endorsements

• This is not an “endorsement” in the slightest, but just a quick hit: Today Trump -- the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED EFFING STATES -- took to Twitter to mock a female cable news host for being vain and ugly and dumb. (And then a White House official piled on, calling this woman “dumb as a rock.” And then his press secretary (who is, notably, a woman) repeatedly and vociferously defended his actions because he’s a “fighter” who fights “fire with fire.”) Earlier this week, Trump -- WHILE ON THE PHONE WITH A FOREIGN LEADER -- called over a blonde Irish reporter and told her she had a nice smile and was beautiful, all while sitting behind the desk in the Oval. Our president, ladies and gentlemen.
• MY FAVORITE STORY OF THE WEEK OR MONTH OR 6 MONTHS is this David Farenthold revelation that at least 17 of Trump’s clubs, including Mar-a-Lago, feature a framed Time Magazine cover with Trump’s face on it that is a fake cover. “There was no March 1, 2009, issue of Time magazine. And there was no issue at all in 2009 that had Trump on the cover.” You guys, it gets so much better: “Another possible clue to the fake cover’s origins: The fake bar code on the bottom right. An identical bar code shows up online in a graphic-design tutorial posted in 2010, in which a Peruvian designer laid out how to make a fake Time cover — complete with this bar code, for extra realism.” AAAAAAAHHHH ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?! Oh my god I love this story so much.
• This greatest ever video of Piers Morgan being humiliated by his kick-ass co-anchor.  
• This Clickhole headline is the greatest ever (Clickhole is a part of The Onion) (HT: Fletcher Davis)

THIS WEEK IN POLITICAL NEWS -- 6/25/17

Hands on the Plow Edition

FIRST, LET’S BUCK UP: On Tuesday, Democrats lost yet another special election in a safe, reliably GOP seat -- this time in the safe, reliably GOP district of the Georgia 6th. These special elections have all bee in safe GOP seats because their former occupants were picked by the Trump administration to serve in various positions -- and were picked in part because their seat was reliably Republican. Still, the loss hurts. And I was feeling drained and exhausted and disappointed on Wednesday morning. So it was a nice kick in the pants to be directed to this (short) thread, which I highly encourage everyone to read right now. (HT: Paul Kremer). I’ll wait. Seriously. Go read it.

Good, right? But before we move on and put our hands to the plow of healthcare, a quick reflection on those races: Chait says that the current Dem funk “might be the worst Democratic freakout ever.” “As Dave Wasserman points out, in the four special elections, they have overperformed the partisan baseline in their districts by an average of 8 percentage points.” Let’s also remember that after Barack Obama’s 2008 victory, Republicans didn’t score a win until the Scott Brown election of 2009, a year after Obama’s win. And at the time, everyone was saying that this augured well for the Democrats. And yet we remember the Tea Party sweep of 2010, right? The point is that special elections in districts handpicked to not flip do not tell us much about the national mood and our chance to win back the House 16 months from now.

IT’S ALL ABOUT HEALTH CARE: So we now have the Senate bill in front of us. As I said on Thursday night, it is in many ways more drastic and more cruel than the House bill. The CBO will release its “score” of the bill early this coming week, which will show how much it is projected to cost (or save), how many people will be insured under it compared to the current baseline (ie, compared to Obamacare), and what premiums and other costs are expected to be. We’ll know a lot more about the bill with that score. But for now, here’s some basics about the bill:

• The subsidies available to those buying insurance through the exchanges would be slashed by the equivalent of about 15%. This means that your out-of-pocket expenses (premiums and deductibles) would increase substantially. Median deductibles would rise from about $3500 to $6300. When you remember that the GOP’s entire anti-Obamacare stance was supposedly about lowering premiums and deductibles, this seems like a pretty blatant failure.
• The expansion of Medicaid to those making up to 138% of poverty level would be forced to end by 2023. Separate and apart from the expansion, the Senate bill would “permanently restructure Medicaid,” cutting around $800 billion from the program over the next decade.
• And wouldn’t you know it, but along with slashing health care spending on the working poor, the disabled, children, and the elderly by $800 billion, the Senate bill gives a tax cut of about $1 trillion, almost all of which goes to the richest Americans. Probably just a coincidence. Oh and the best part is that it makes the tax cut on investment income (capital gains and dividends) retroactive. “This provision in particular is heavily loaded toward the richest of the rich. According to the Tax Policy Center, 90% of the cut goes to the top 1% (those with income of $699,000 or more); they’d get an average tax benefit of about $25,000. And almost two-thirds goes to the top 0.1% (with income exceeding $3.8 million); they’d get an average $165,000.”
• States will be able to relatively easily waive essential health benefits and reinstitute annual and lifetime caps on insurance, even for those on employer-based plans. “This may be the most insidious provision of the repeal bill, and certainly is the most deeply hidden.” (If you want a searing (and brief) portrait of what those caps can mean in real life, please read this.) The House bill allowed States to apply for waivers to ACA’s current rule requiring coverage of essential benefits and banning caps; the Senate bill essentially requires the HHS Secretary to approve all such waivers, without discretion. “As a result, states would be able to eliminate the essential health benefits that all health plans must provide under the ACA — including hospitalization, prescription coverage, maternity care and substance abuse and mental health treatment. Since only essential health benefits are subject to the ban on lifetime and annual benefit limits, high-cost patients such as cancer victims and sufferers from chronic diseases could permanently lose their benefits early in their treatment.”
• The Senate bill (like the House bill) eliminates both the individual and employer mandate, meaning that large employers would no longer be required to provide insurance and individuals would no longer have to have insurance (but could still buy a policy, with federal subsidies, when they got sick -- which seems sort of against the whole “personal responsibility” shit the GOP is always peddling).
• It raises costs on people 50-64 (ie, pre-Medicare) substantially, allowing insurers to charge older people 5 times more than it charges younger (as opposed to the currently-permitted 3:1 ratio).
• Subsidies are slashed. Currently, people on the individual market qualify for subsidies if their income is anywhere up to 400% of the poverty line. The Senate bill lowers that to 350%. This is another way older people get screwed: “Under existing law, the most that anyone within 400% of the poverty line can pay for a qualified health plan is 9.5% of their income. Under the Senate bill, buyers age 60 or older within 350% of the poverty line would pay as much as 16.2% of income — and those over 350% of poverty would get no help at all.”

WHAT IS OUR POLITICAL STRATEGY: First, the strategy is call, call, call; mobilize, mobilize, mobilize. I hope everyone was able to make some calls last week and will keep it up this week. It’s easy and it really does make a difference. Why do you think that, for the first time ever, 100% of Democrats are standing united on this, firm in their opposition to Trumpcare? It’s because of us. That’s major. Second, I think the Democratic leadership is actually doing a pretty good job. Although I would like to lead more with the “this is just a tax cut for the rich funded by slashing health care for working families” angle, I think overall their strategy has been good and is working. I recommend listening to Pod Save America’s interview with Senator Schumer from earlier this week (20 minutes total). Starting at 30:45, the hosts ask him about whether, in our messaging about Trumpcare, we should focus on the fucked up process of the bill (ie, written in secret by 13 men, without a single hearing, no input from experts, and no discussion with Democrats -- and shown to lobbyists before it was shared with the rest of the GOP caucus, let alone the rest of the Senate) or the substance of the bill (ie, it will kill a lot of people by stripping health insurance from millions of Americans and making the insurance others actually have crappier and less protective). Here’s Schumer’s answer:

“It’s a three-step dance. One: They are using unprecedented dark room, back room processes to move this forward. Why? They’re ashamed of the bill. I said on the floor today, if they liked this bill, they’d have a brass band marching down the streets with the bill through every town in America. But why are they ashamed? And then you give the substance: the fact that so many covered people will lose coverage, 23 million under the House bill; preexisting conditions; women’s rights -- women’s health care; opioid addiction; nursing homes; you name it. We’re trying to combine those arguments into one coherent three-sentence paragraph, and it’s working.

I like that. And Schumer emphasized that there is no reason to lose hope: “We’re close. There are 2 Republicans who it looks like they’re going to vote no. . . .We get one more, we win the whole damn fight. Don’t be discouraged -- we’re right on the edge!”

WHAT IS THEIR POLITICAL STRATEGY: It is increasingly clear that the only strategy the GOP has to pass this bill is to literally and flagrantly lie about it, the more brazen, the better, apparently. Today, HHS Secretary Tom Price declared that under the GOP bill, “We would not have individuals lose coverage.” That’s a lie. (He also had the balls to complain that, under Obamacare, 28 million Americans remain without insurance -- not optimal, but still the lowest uninsured rate in American history, and a figure that will rise dramatically under the GOP plan). Kellyanne Conway today declared that the bill’s Medicaid cuts “are not cuts to Medicaid.” That is a lie. Senator Tim Scott: “Medicaid is not being cut from our perspective.” Don’t care what perspective you’re using -- that’s a lie. Sen. Pat Toomy: “The Senate bill will codify and make permanent the Medicaid expansion.” Yeah, that’s a lie. THESE ARE INSANE LIES, PEOPLE. Don’t let the GOP gaslight you.

SO DO THEY HAVE THE VOTES? With Dems united in opposition to the bill, Mitch McConnell can afford to lose exactly two votes (which would take him to 50 votes, and Pence can break the tie). Right now, two GOP senators have come out pretty strongly against the bill -- for opposite reasons. On Friday, Nevada Senator Dean Heller, the GOP’s most endangered member who’s up in 2018, announced his opposition in relatively forceful language: “I’m telling you right now, I cannot support a piece of legislation that takes insurance away from tens of millions of Americans, and hundreds of thousands of Nevadans.” By grounding his opposition in the fact of millions losing coverage, Heller leaves himself very little room to get on board with minor tweaks. That millions lose coverage is not some accidental by-product of the GOP legislation; it’s its whole raison d’etre. So that was extremely encouraging. Then Mike Lee, the uber-conservative from Utah, wrote on Medium that he would not support the bill “as drafted,” which seems to leave more wiggle room. Still, his critique was pretty stinging: “Far short of “repeal,” the Senate bill keeps the Democrats’ broken system intact, just with less spending on the poor to pay for corporate bailouts and tax cuts. A cynic might say that the BCRA is less a Republican health care bill than a caricature of a Republican health care bill.” On the other hand, he writes that he asks “only that the bill be amended to include an opt-out provision, for states or even just for individuals.” I have no idea what that means: How could an individual opt out of regulations, or federal subsidies? But it does seem like he’s creating a way to accept cosmetic changes to the bill. Senators Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and Ron Johnson have also spoken out against the bill; Ron Johnson said today “there’s no way we should be voting” on the bill this week. And Senators Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins have talked about their misgivings, although they have no locked themselves into anything.

LIVES ARE ON THE LINE: Guys, defeating this IS DOABLE. We have to fight as hard as we can, because lives -- millions of lives -- literally depend on it. If you want to really hear about how this stuff impacts real lives, take 8 minutes and watch this interview with Mike Phillips, a man with severe disabilities, and his mom.

Endorsements:

• Last week, three different police officers escaped guilty verdicts for killing unarmed black men. The hung jury that failed to convict Philando Castile’s killer is a particularly bitter pill to swallow, and the exchange was caught entirely on camera and the aftermath was famously filmed by Mr. Castile’s girlfriend, as he lay dying in the front seat of his car. The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah speaks quite eloquently about the trial here.
• Compression socks
• “The Big Sick,” a new movie written by Kumail Nanjiani and his wife Emily Gordon. This movie has so many laughs and so much heart. It was really great.

This song, by Passenger (and the fact that it plays on YouTube without an ad!).

THIS WEEK IN POLITICAL NEWS -- 6/15/17

THE A PLOT -- TRUMP: The main story in politics continues to be the Russia investigation that has quickly morphed and expanded into the Trump Obstruction investigation. The Washington Post broke the (not surprising) news last night that Bob Mueller has expanded the scope of his investigation to include whether Trump obstructed justice (or attempted to) by making loyalty pledges from Comey, asking him to drop the Flynn investigation, asking him repeatedly to announce publicly that Trump was not under FBI investigation -- and then fired him, when Comey failed to do any of those things (and then lied about the reason for firing him, and then told NBC that he fired him to shut down the Russia investigation, and then told Russian officials in the Oval Office that he fired Comey to take the pressure off from the Russia investigation). Hard to think of a clearer case of obstruction. You have to love the delicious irony that Trump was, in fact, not himself under FBI investigation until he fired the FBI director for refusing to say publicly that he was not under FBI investigation -- and now he’s under FBI investigation. Talking Points Memo does a close-read of the WaPo report to pull out some nuggets: (1) the obstruction investigation seems to have started even before Mueller was appointed, presumably authorized by Rosenstein; (2) the investigation includes Trump’s requests to DNI Coats and NSA chief Rodgers regarding shutting down the FBI investigation; (3) Mueller is interviewing people inside and outside the government, presumably meaning the numerous Trump cronies who circle him and to whom he regularly vents about the pressures of governing (usually while on the golf course); and (4) Mueller is looking into potential “financial crimes” involving Trump and/or his associates. Josh Marshall comments, “even with my own limited reporting, it is quite clear to me that there are numerous people in Trump’s entourage (or ‘crew’, if you will) including Trump himself whose history and ways of doing business would not survive first contact with real legal scrutiny.”

Tonight, the Post reports that Mueller is also “investigating the finances and business dealings of Jared Kushner.” Besides the downfall of Chris Christie, I’m not sure anything in politics can bring such an easy smile to my face as watching Jared Kushner crash and burn. We also learned last night that “Mr. Mueller’s investigation was looking at money laundering by Trump associates. The suspicion is that any cooperation with Russian officials would most likely have been done in exchange for some kind of financial payoff, and that there would have been an effort to hide the payoffs, most likely by routing them through offshore banking centers.”

THE A PLOT -- SESSIONS: On Tuesday, racist Keebler Elf Jeff Sessions testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee, where he proceeded to not remember vast quantities of things, including how many times he had met with Russian ambassador Kislyak. (Important reminder: Not one of the other 25 members of the Armed Services committee, on which Sessions served while in the Senate and which he cited as his reasons for his 1:1 meetings with Kislyak last year, said they had met with Kisylak.) Sessions repeatedly refused to answer questions about conversations with Trump by asserting a sort of protectionist executive privilege: He admitted that only the president can invoke executive privilege, and that Trump had not invoked the privilege, but nevertheless refused to answer questions just in case Trump later changed his mind. This justification is legally shaky, though Democrats (including Eric Holder) have invoked something similar in the past. He told Senator Kamala Harris that his refusal was based on “longstanding DOJ policy,” but refused to say where he had seen the policy, whether it was a written policy, and whether he had consulted it before testifying. (And when she grew impatient with his stonewalling and dissembling, he told her she was making him nervous and gallant John McCain had to ride to his rescue.)

Sessions also repeatedly insisted that Comey was fired because of his handling of the Clinton investigation – pretending that Trump’s public statement to NBC and private statement to the Russians saying otherwise simply didn’t happen. Slate speculates on why he was so committed to this lie: First, he was trying to protect the president from charges of obstructing justice (ie, firing Comey to shut down the investigation). Second, he was trying to protect himself: He has promised to recuse himself from all matters touching on the Russian investigation, so if Comey was fired because of that investigation, Seshy would be in trouble. Of course, this explanation only helps him to the extent he continues to lie about (and senators continue to not be precise about) the nature of his recusal, something that no senator really corrected him on. Sessions promised to recuse himself from any matter dealing in any way with either of the two presidential campaigns (ie, Trump and Clinton); his recusal was NOT simply about the Russia investigation. So even if Comey were fired because of his handling of the Clinton emails (which, again, he emphatically was not), Sessions should have been nowhere near that decision.

Perhaps the most substantive revelation from the testimony was that he -- the top law enforcement officer in the country, charged with overseeing the entire federal law enforcement apparatus -- has never once requested or received any briefing or intelligence about the Russian government’s attempts to influence our election (and their continued attempts to influence future elections). And when McCain asked about the various areas that Sessions may have rightfully discussed with Kislyak -- reports about Russian interference in our election; Russian support for Bashar al Assad, or other security issues -- Sessions could not recall discussing any of those topics. This testimony came on the same day that Bloomberg news reported that Russia’s interference or attempted interference in our voting systems was far greater than previously reported. “In Illinois, investigators found evidence that cyber intruders tried to delete or alter voter data. The hackers accessed software designed to be used by poll workers on Election Day, and in at least one state accessed a campaign finance database. . . . In all, the Russian hackers hit systems in a total of 39 states.”

I THINK TRUMP MAY ACTUALLY FIRE MUELLER: Predictably, Trump is losing his mind about all of this, going on unhinged twitter tirades all day today. Even before the new reporting confirming that Mueller was investigating Trump himself, Chait laid out a convincing case that Trump is somewhat likely to actually fire Mueller. “First, Trump has a very strong motive to fire Mueller: He is probably guilty. . . . Second, Trump has no intrinsic respect for political norms. . . . Third, Trump has endlessly violated a series of norms that appeared to be inviolable. . . . Finally, Trump’s erratic personality makes the firing of Mueller a mathematical probability.” If Trump decides on this absolutely insane course of action, how could he actually do it? Jack Goldsmith lays out the possible scenarios at Lawfare. By the regulations governing Mueller’s appointment, it looks like Trump would have to order Rosenstein to fire Mueller (rather than fire him directly). If Rosenstein refused and resigned (he told Congress on Tuesday that he wouldn’t fire Mueller without good cause), Trump would order the next in line to carry out the firing. Eventually, he’ll find someone willing to carry out his order, whether to curry his favor or in service to what Goldsmith calls “the Bork principle . . .:  stability in the Justice Department and in law enforcement more generally.”

THE SECRECY OF AND SILENCE ABOUT THE HEALTH CARE BILL IS A GIANT, MASSIVE SCANDAL: So it would be good to treat it as such. The bill is apparently completely drafted, but no one outside of the handful of men (yep, all men) McConnell tapped to write it and the CBO have seen it, including other GOP senators, who are starting to express at least some mild frustration with the secrecy. Wisconsin Senator Johnson: “Seems like around here, the last step is getting information, which doesn’t seem to be necessarily the most effective process.” “Asked his level of comfort with the process, Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, cut off a reporter before he could finish his sentence. ‘None,’ he said.” When asked if she could support the bill, Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski said, “I just truly do not know, because I don’t know where it’s going.” HHS Secretary Tom Price testified this week that he “hasn’t seen any legislative language.” Sarah Kliff put it simply: “Republicans do not want the country to know what is in their health care bill.”

The substance of the bill is, of course, its own massive scandal. The Center for Budget Policy and Priorities published a lengthy, detailed examination of the devastating effects of the plans to decimate Medicaid funding. It reports that the bill “would not only effectively end the Medicaid expansion, but radically restructure federal financing for virtually the entire Medicaid program, threatening coverage for tens of millions of Americans. These changes to Medicaid would make it especially hard for children with special health care needs, including those with disabilities, to get the care they need to stay healthy, remain in their communities, and succeed in life.” Besides the sweeping cuts to Medicaid that will immiserate literally millions of Americans (including millions of children), the GOP bill would likely usher back in one of the most odious of the pre-Obamacare health regime: the imposition of lifetime caps on insurance benefits, including for employer-based plans (which cover about 60% of Americans). We’ve talked about this before, but now the Center for American Progress ran the numbers, and “estimate[s] that the Senate bill would erode or eliminate financial protections for about 27 million workers and their dependents.”

Yet despite the corrupt, unAmerican drafting and passage process and the truly cruel substance (that fulfills exactly none of the GOP or Trump’s promises, other than repealing Obamacare), the bill is likely to pass. That’s in large part owing to the deafening silence on the part of the nation’s health insurance companies, doctors, hospitals, and other medical-related interests groups. I’m quoting at length from the Times’ David Leonhart, who nails it:

Doctors, hospital executives and treatment advocates take pride in doing good work that improves people’s lives. Sometimes, good work doesn’t require hard choices. Other times, it does. This is one of those times when it does. A halfhearted effort to stop the bill won’t protect millions of Americans from losing their insurance and, ultimately, from being denied medical care.

Senate leaders are rushing to pass a bill before their July 4 recess, and they seem to be making headway. That leaves opponents only three weeks to live up to their convictions. They can create advertisements that make clear the human damage the bill would do. Or put their well-respected leaders on popular talk shows. Or hold a mock hearing, featuring every group that has been denied the ability to testify.

Above all, they can take a risk for a cause.

OTHER THINGS I RAN OUT OF TIME FOR:

Kansas Taxes: Kansas’s years-long experiment in GOP supply-side tax policy--the very policy the party wants to impose nationally--has been such a failure that the GOP-dominated legislature overrode Governor Sam Brownback’s veto to finally raise taxes in the face of massive, massive deficits. Read Chait’s explanation of what happened. (Best part: In 2015, Grover Norquist declared that “Kansas is the model” for conservative tax policy, where we would all be able to see the massive growth and benefits that came from slashing taxes for the wealthy and corporations. Just two years later, Norquist has the cojones to say (this is a literal, actual quote), “If you’re a Republican looking for a model, Kansas is not the model.”)

Emoluments Lawsuits: As of this week, Trump is facing three separate lawsuits over his refusal to divest himself from his companies. Slate breaks down those lawsuits and their implications here.

Extremist Judges: Dahlia Lithwick reports on the absolute nutters that Trump has nominated to fill the 130 judicial vacancies laid out before him. One of his appellate court nominees is a prolific blogger who wrote that he would have objected to an anti-racism school curriculum in Arksans in the 1950s because forcibly teaching things to children is bad. (This was to show his consistency in objecting to a current anti-gay-bullying curriculum propounded in California, which, he sputtered, seemed to suggest that “bullying of homosexuals is wrong.”) Another nominee, also a blogger, cited in blog posts claims that Obama was not born in the United States. “Perhaps the same Trump administration that continues to insist that a racist, misogynist purveyor of hate speech was magically transformed into FDR the day he took the oath of office truly believes that lawyers who spew invective and conspiracy theories are suddenly coated with impartial fairy magic on the day they don the black robes.” (This is why I love Dahlia.)

Endorsements:

• Fun Video of the Week: Kate McKinnon gives the people what we want: her Jeff Sessions impression!
• Ohio local candidates: Steve Dettlebach for AG and Kathleen Clyde for Secretary of State. Ohio readers should learn about these impressive candidates running for two incredibly crucial positions. We know what important roles AGs can play nationally, let alone in their state, and the SEcretary of State oversees the administration of elections. Clyde is a longtime voting rights advocate who wants to take Ohio out of the stone age when it comes to voting procedures. Help them (and give them some money)!
• Colorado local candidate: Phil Weiser for AG.  
• This Samantha Bee segment on Rikers Island’s debate club.
• This dance, from my new favorite procrastination show, “World of Dance.”
• This audio, of the Australian prime minister openly mocking Trump to the raucus delight of a crowd.
• Jon Ossoff, the Democrat running to flip the seat in the special election in the Atlanta suburbs, faces the final election NEXT TUESDAY. The polls are very close, and Ossoff needs all the help he can get to flip this seat and score a first crucial win for Democrats in the Trump era. All over the country, people are hosting house parties this weekend and next week to call Georgia voters to encourage them to go vote on Tuesday. Find a house party near you and go make a few calls! Making calls is very, very easy, and you can make a real contribution with just an hour of your time. We have less than a week until this crucial election. Let’s make it a big, earth-shattering win for our side!