Trump Says New Health Care Plan Is 'On Its Way,' Doesn't Say When

Source: Talking Points Memo


By ESME CRIBB Published APRIL 30, 2017 9:20 AM

President Donald Trump on Sunday tweeted that a new plan to repeal and replace Obamacare is “on its way,” though he did not specify when.

“Will have much lower premiums & deductibles while at the same time taking care of pre-existing conditions!” he tweeted. “ObamaCare is dead.”

Trump also went after Democrats, who he called “the party of obstruction.”

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/858654431956672512
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/858659215451271168
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/858660413873025024

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Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/trump-claims-new-health-care-plan-on-its-way

Donald Trump is taking on Michelle Obama's healthy food legacy

3 battlefronts in Trump's effort to make American food unhealthy again

Updated by Julia Belluz@juliaoftorontojulia.belluz@voxmedia.com Apr 29, 2017, 12:48pm EDT

Trump brags about eating fast food. Michelle Obama planted a vegetable garden at the White House. Now it seems the President is quietly trying to overtake the former First Lady’s vision for the future of food in America.

Michelle Obama had a strikingly successful record of fighting the obesity epidemic and improving nutrition — both symbolically and through advocacy for legislation. But many Obama-era efforts to push the food industry in a healthier direction are now under threat.

Over the last couple of weeks, a number of reports have surfaced suggesting that the food industry is trying to capitalize on Trump’s anti-regulation agenda and push back on reforms aimed at making our food supply healthier. The food lobbyists, emboldened by the current White House, are reportedly pushing back on recent healthy food and transparency mandates that would hurt their bottom line.

Some of the key battlegrounds — school lunches, food and menu labels — are familiar terrain for anybody who has been watching the efforts to clean up the US food supply. Here’s a quick rundown of what’s been happening, and the top three areas to watch.

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http://www.vox.com/2017/4/29/15479488/donald-trump-michelle-obama-school-lunch-menu-labels

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein BLAST Trump At 2017 WHCA Dinner

Donald Trump's first 100 days have been a big success - at least when it comes to vicious racist...

SUNDAY, APR 30, 2017 10:00 AM EDT

Donald Trump’s first 100 days have been a big success — at least when it comes to vicious racist policies

Amid all the failures, Trump can claim a big win: He has pursued overtly racist policies that will shape our future

SEAN MCELWEE

President Donald Trump’s first 100 days have been defined by failure. After signing a flurry of Congressional Review Acts that will accomplish key goals like poisoning streams and reducing worker protections, he has done virtually nothing through the legislative process. His major initiatives have gone down in flames: the travel ban is in legal limbo and the repeal of Obamacare has been consigned to the ash heap, despite several attempts to revive it. Tax reform continues to be shoved further and further into the future, along with the border wall. All the while, the debt ceiling still looms in the background. Trump still has hundreds of open positions to fill across the government.

The president’s most touted accomplishments have been the appointment of Justice Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court (no small feat) and his incoherent bombing campaigns, which have been met with salivating press coverage. But, while progressives cheer on his failures and pundits chide him, Trump’s 100 days have a dark underside. Where Trump has been most successful is his campaign to reshape the demographics of the United States and roll back progress on racial justice.

Trump’s Key Success

Since becoming president, Trump has quickly moderated his stances that were at odds with GOP orthodoxy. He won’t be withdrawing from NATO, nor will he label China a currency manipulator. He won’t be melding economic populism to racism, as have Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban (who nationalized the energy sector), Polish conservative leader Jarosław Kaczyński (whose Law and Justice Party endorses a child tax credit) or French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen.

Infrastructure seems to have fallen off Trump’s agenda for now, and contrary to his promise to provide health insurance for all, Trump pushed for Paul Ryan’s health care bill, which would have left millions uninsured. He backed cuts to Medicaid (despite his promise not to touch it) and has proposed massive tax cuts for the Republican donor class. Far from pursuing a non-interventionist foreign policy, Trump has been sucked into the Blob and embraced interventionism. The only area where he has distinguished himself from the GOP establishment is his aggressive pursuit of deeply racist policies.

more
http://www.salon.com/2017/04/30/donald-trumps-first-100-days-have-been-a-big-success-at-least-when-it-comes-to-vicious-racist-policies/

How the Left Learned to Hate Like the Right

By MICHELLE GOLDBERG APRIL 29, 2017


MARIETTA, GA. — Shortly before President Trump’s swearing-in, I spoke to Steve Cohen, a liberal congressman from Tennessee, about his decision to skip the ceremony. Mr. Cohen said his horror of Mr. Trump almost made him understand how Tea Partyers might have felt under President Barack Obama. “I want my country back!” he said, echoing the right’s rallying cry.

One hundred days into his administration, President Trump has few legislative achievements to his name. But he has forced liberals to experience the near-apocalyptic revulsion that conservatives have often felt toward Democratic presidents. In doing so, he has unwittingly created a new movement in American politics, as Democrats channel the sort of all-encompassing outrage that has long fueled grass-roots conservatism.

For decades, Democrats have envied the Republicans’ passionate, locally attuned base. It turns out that what Democrats were missing was a sense of existential emergency. Mr. Trump has provided it.

Objectively, there’s no comparison between the conservative demonization of Mr. Obama and the progressive case against Mr. Trump. People on the right saw Mr. Obama as a Kenyan-born secret Muslim with a hidden agenda to hobble American power and a health care reform plan to establish “death panels.” None of that is true.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/29/opinion/sunday/how-the-left-learned-to-hate-like-the-right.html?emc=edit_th_20170430&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=57435284

Even as President, Donald Trump Panders to the N.R.A. - The NYT Editorial Board

President Trump eagerly repaid his campaign debt to the National Rifle Association on Friday by appearing at its annual convention in Atlanta. Last year, candidate Trump benefited greatly from the N.R.A.’s endorsement and $30 million worth of campaign support; the N.R.A., in turn, relished Mr. Trump’s fear-inducing agenda, which led to greater arms sales among more and more ordinary Americans.

Interestingly, however, now that Mr. Trump’s in the White House, gun sales have been leveling off, gun company stocks are dropping and industry workers are being laid off. One reason is that President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have departed the political scene, thereby depriving gun marketeers and the N.R.A. of the selling point that caused an eight-year binge of gun sales to buyers who feared tight new regulations.

And binge it was, with the industry growing from 166,000 employees to 301,000 in the Obama years, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation. But since the election, “there is no political incentive to buy guns,” Robert Spitzer, a professor at the State University of New York at Cortland, told CNN Money, leaving gun makers and retailers “a victim of their own success.”

Americans concerned for public safety can only hope that the decline will continue as the nation’s gun carnage seems likely to produce another year of 30,000-plus deaths. Mr. Trump himself has displayed no sense of responsibility to offer prescriptions for how that toll might be reduced through gun safety. Rather, in his appearance Friday, he stuck to the red-meat stuff expected at a convention where hundreds of companies displayed an astonishing 15 acres of guns and firearms paraphernalia for thousands of conventioneers.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/29/opinion/even-as-president-donald-trump-panders-to-the-nra.html?emc=edit_th_20170430&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=57435284

Trump Savages News Media at Rally to Mark His 100th Day

By MARK LANDLERAPRIL 29, 2017

HARRISBURG, Pa. — President Trump came to a farm expo center here on Saturday to celebrate his first 100 days in office by bathing in the support of his bedrock supporters, reprising the populist themes of his campaign and savaging a familiar foe: the news media.

In a rally timed to coincide with an annual dinner of the White House press corps in Washington, which he declined to attend, Mr. Trump laced into what he referred to as “the failing New York Times,” as well as CNN and MSNBC, which he accused of incompetence and dishonesty.

“Their priorities are not my priorities, and not your priorities,” Mr. Trump said to a sea of supporters, many in familiar red “Make America Great Again” caps. “If the media’s job is to be honest and tell the truth, the media deserves a very, very big fat failing grade,” he said, adding that they were “very dishonest people.”

Mr. Trump reveled in his decision to skip the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, describing a scene in which Hollywood stars and reporters consoled themselves in a Washington hotel ballroom, while he mixed with a better class of people in the American heartland.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/29/us/politics/trump-rally-pennsylvania.html?emc=edit_th_20170430&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=57435284

Trump invigorates, enchants crowd during rally in Harrisburg, Pa.

By Marc Fisher April 29 at 10:15 PM

HARRISBURG, Pa. — On the 100th day, the president had fun. He zipped up to the nearest Rust Belt state full of the forgotten men and women who put him into office. He bashed the bad guys of the media and Hollywood and the swamp he’d just left behind. He promised jobs and greatness. It was like last year again, all lusty cheers and smiling faces, a refreshing tonic after three months of stubborn lawmakers, naysaying judges, carping protesters, frenetic days and lonely nights.

Donald Trump could have stayed home and had dinner with 2,700 card-carrying members of the Washington elite, many of whom make their living inspecting his every move for missteps, most of whom probably didn’t vote for him anyway. But he said no to the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, where the swells in tuxedos and gowns feasted on jokes at his expense.

Instead, he spent Saturday night in Harrisburg, a town he’d described during the campaign as hollowed-out — “just rotting .?.?. It’s just a war zone.”

This time, he called it “a wonderful, beautiful” place. He soaked in the love of Harrisburg, people who’d waited in summer-strength sun for as long as 13 hours for the chance to tell their president they have his back.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/100-days-in-trump-invigorates-enchants-crowd-during-rally-in-harrisburg-pa/2017/04/29/c656d764-2aa7-11e7-a616-d7c8a68c1a66_story.html?utm_term=.c05476bf7c6b&wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1

In my first 100 days, I kept my promise to Americans - By Donald Trump

By Donald J. Trump April 29 at 6:00 PM

Donald J. Trump is the president of the United States.

One hundred days ago, I took the oath of office and made a pledge: We are not merely going to transfer political power from one party to another, but instead are going to transfer that power from Washington, D.C., and give it back to the people.

In the past 100 days, I have kept that promise — and more.

Issue by issue, department by department, we are giving the people their country back. After decades of a shrinking middle class, open borders and the mass offshoring of American jobs and wealth, this government is working for the citizens of our country and no one else.

The same establishment media that concealed these problems — and profited from them — is obviously not going to tell this story. That is why we are taking our message directly to America.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/president-trump-in-my-first-100-days-i-kept-my-promise-to-americans/2017/04/29/ad1c9574-2cfd-11e7-a616-d7c8a68c1a66_story.html?utm_term=.257544828032&wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1

'We are not fake news': At a Trump-free correspondents dinner, White House press has its say.

Source: The Washington Post



By Monica Hesse April 30 at 12:17 AM

The White House Correspondents’ Association punched back this weekend against an administration that has denigrated it, attempted to discredit it and, ultimately, snubbed it by becoming the first administration in decades to skip out on the annual bread-breaking between the White House and the reporters who cover the presidency.

“We cannot ignore the rhetoric that has been employed by the president about who we are and what we do,” association president Jeff Mason told a ballroom of journalists attending the correspondents’ dinner on Saturday night. “We are not fake news. We are not failing news organizations. And we are not the enemy of the American people.”

At the last line, he received a standing ovation.

President Trump’s relationship with the press has been notoriously tempestuous. He lambasted the media at his campaign rallies, calling them “fake,” and “failing” and, most memorably, America’s “enemy.”

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/we-are-not-fake-news-at-a-trump-free-correspondents-dinner-white-house-press-has-its-say/2017/04/29/a9548892-2d26-11e7-b605-33413c691853_story.html?utm_term=.f2a7e83487b7&wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1