July 28, 2017

Is the GOP Health Care Effort Really Dead?

July 28, 2017 at 7:57 am EDT By Taegan Goddard

Playbook: “It is not completely clear. Talk to Hill Republicans and the big problem is this: House Republicans do not believe Senate Republicans can pass anything substantial — period. And the idea that a bi-cameral negotiation — called a “conference committee” — would have somehow produced a compromise was also a bit of a fantasy.”

“Repealing and replacing Obamacare is still the party’s central tenet — and has been for nearly a decade. But it will have to start anew, now. And it will continue to eat up much of the party’s time and energy on Capitol Hill. Obamacare was on life support many times in 2009-2010. Democrats eventually got it through… There will definitely be a push to starve the law of funding.”

Sam Baker: “Conservatives were particularly stung by last night’s defeat, and said they would keep up the pressure for some sort of action on repeal. But, realistically, it’s hard to see leaders in either chamber wading back into such a bruising fight any time soon.”

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https://politicalwire.com/2017/07/28/gop-health-care-effort-really-dead/

July 28, 2017

McCain Has Never Forgotten

July 28, 2017 at 8:04 am EDT By Taegan Goddard

James Hohmann: “There is nothing Trump can do any more that will get to McCain. Battling an aggressive form of brain cancer, the maverick was willing to vote ‘no’ on the ‘skinny repeal’ amendment so that other GOP colleagues who were also opposed to the measure could vote ‘yes’ to save face with the conservative base. To this day, Trump has never apologized for saying that the former fighter pilot was not a war hero because he got captured in Vietnam. It gets less attention, but the president also besmirched the Arizona senator’s character by repeatedly accusing him of not taking care of other veterans. McCain has never forgotten.”

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https://politicalwire.com/2017/07/28/mccain-never-forgotten/

July 28, 2017

Trump On O'Care Repeal Failure: 'It's Going To Be Fine'

Source: Talking Points Memo



By NICOLE LAFOND Published JULY 28, 2017 2:50 PM

After suggesting that the Senate should nuke its rules in order to get an Obamacare repeal bill passed, President Donald Trump signaled that he isn’t too worried about the effort to dismantle his predecessor’s signature legislative achievement.

“It’s going to be fine,” Trump said told reporters as he stepped off Air Force One for an event in Long Island, New York Friday afternoon.

During a speech that was supposed to be centered on the administration’s efforts to wipe out the MS-13 gang, Trump couldn’t help but attack Congress for its failure to repeal Obamacare, and he patted himself on the back for being “right” about the law.

“They should have approved health care last night, but you can’t have everything. Boy, oh boy. They’ve been working on that one for seven years. Can you believe that?” he said. “The swamp. But, we’ll get it done. We’re going to get it done. You know, I said from the beginning, ‘let Obamacare implode and then do it.’ I turned out to be right. Let Obamacare implode.”

Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/trump-on-obamacare-repeal-failure-its-going-be-fine

July 28, 2017

McCain to return to Arizona for chemotherapy and radiation

Source: Politico




By LOUIS NELSON 07/28/2017 03:00 PM EDT

Fresh off of casting one of the decisive votes to sink his party’s latest effort to repeal Obamacare, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) will return to his home state to undergo treatment for brain cancer.

“In accordance with the guidance of his physicians, Sen. McCain is returning to Arizona to undergo further treatment at Mayo Clinic,” his office said in a statement Friday. “On Monday, July 31, he will begin a standard post-surgical regimen of targeted radiation and chemotherapy.”

McCain will maintain a work schedule during that time, his office said, with plans to return to Washington at the end of the August recess.

The Arizona senator was diagnosed earlier this month with a particularly aggressive type of brain tumor that was discovered during a surgical procedure to remove a blood clot from behind his eye. The tumor is the same type that killed former Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Beau Biden, the son of former Vice President Joe Biden.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2017/07/28/john-mccain-cancer-treatment-chemotherapy-241099

July 28, 2017

Exclusive: Majority of Americans support transgender military service - poll

Source: Reuters




JULY 28, 2017 / 1:36 PM / AN HOUR AGO

Chris Kahn

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A majority of Americans believe that transgender individuals should be allowed to serve in the military, according to an exclusive Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Friday.

The July 26-28 poll suggested that the country largely disagrees with President Donald Trump's announcement this week that he will ban transgender personnel from the armed forces.

When asked to weigh in on the debate, 58 percent of adults agreed with the statement, "Transgender people should be allowed to serve in the military." Twenty-seven percent said they should not while the rest answered "don't know."

Democrats mostly supported military service by transgender Americans while Republicans were more evenly split. Among Republicans, 32 percent said transgender Americans should be allowed to serve, while 49 percent said they should not. Another 19 percent of Republicans said they don't know.

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-military-transgender-poll-idUSKBN1AD2BL

July 28, 2017

Is Trump about to release that anticipated anti-LGBT 'religious freedom' order?

By Bil Browning · Friday, July 28, 2017

Speaking on the Family Research Council‘s “Washington Watch” radio show this week, president Tony Perkins dropped a bit of news that will send shudders down the back of the LGBT community. He told his followers that the Trump administration will move forward with it’s anticipated anti-LGBT “religious freedom” executive order.

“By the way, stand by next week, you’re going to see some follow-up to the president’s executive order on religious liberty,” Perkins said on the show. “The next phase of that is going to be coming about and I think it is going to be very instructive. We are going to see government agencies basically put on notice that they have to respect religious freedom. And that is not just the ability to believe, it is the free exercise of religion.”

While a previously leaked version of the order was tantamount to a license to discriminate against LGBT people, when Trump released the order in May all references to LGBT people were stripped out and, instead, it concentrated on allowing ministers to endorse political candidates from the pulpit and instructed Attorney General Jeff Sessions to write “new rules” on how the long-standing directive should be applied.

Sessions, who addressed the anti-LGBT hate group Alliance Defending Freedom and tried to keep his remarks a secret (of course, a transcript was promptly leaked), assured the group that he would make defending “religious freedom” a top priority of the department and promised his office would issue new guidelines on the subject soon.

more
https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2017/07/trump-release-anticipated-anti-lgbt-religious-freedom-order/

July 28, 2017

Top Lawyer For Civil Rights At Justice Department Leaving After Roughly 6 Months

Source: NPR




July 28, 201711:00 AM ET

CARRIE JOHNSON

Thomas Wheeler, who has been leading the Justice Department's civil rights unit, informed staffers there Thursday that he would be leaving the post, according to two sources familiar with the communication.

The job put Wheeler, an Indiana lawyer who is personally and professionally close to Vice President Pence, in the middle of a number of controversies, including the Trump administration's turnaround on guidance regarding transgender students, the decisions to close investigations of police officers without criminal charges and shifting legal positions on voting rights and other cases.

During his short tenure, Wheeler made fighting hate crimes a priority. In May, he said, "Any serious effort to combat violent crime in America must include hate crimes."

He highlighted a series of prosecutions this year alone, including the conviction of a Tennessee man in February for plotting to attack a mosque and Muslim community in upstate New York, the sentencing of an Idaho man for beating a gay man to death in 2016 and the sentencing of Dylann Roof to death in January for murdering nine African-American worshippers at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C.

Read more: http://www.npr.org/2017/07/28/539989095/top-lawyer-for-civil-rights-at-justice-department-leaving-after-roughly-6-months

July 28, 2017

As Trump debases the presidency, the religious right looks away - By Jennifer Rubin

No group has been as blindly loyal to President Trump as Christian conservatives. They have not let religion or values get in the way of their support. Consider the “Access Hollywood” tape, the attack on a Gold Star family, a mass of inexplicable ties between Trump’s campaign and Russian officials (and the president’s open invitation to Russia to continue hacking), the firing of the FBI director, the humiliation of evangelical-favorite Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the politicization of the Boy Scouts, the threats to the special counsel and now an interview with Trump’s out-of-control, potty-mouthed communications director. What about Trump, exactly, reflects their values? (Taking Medicaid away from millions and separating families to deport law-abiding immigrants?) The Trump administration is a clown show — but it’s the evangelicals who supplied the tent, the red noses and the floppy shoes. Each day presents a new insult to the office of the presidency and a repudiation of civilized behavior.

The Post reports:

In an interview with the New Yorker published Thursday, [White House Communications Director Anthony] Scaramucci called [White House Chief of Staff Reince] Priebus a “[f–––ing] paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac” and claimed that the former Republican Party chairman will “be asked to resign very shortly” in a sweep that he warned could eventually involve much of the staff.

Meanwhile, the president’s own conduct is so badly out of control that Republicans are finally trying to take efforts to childproof the Justice Department. The Post reports that Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) “made clear that he would not consider holding confirmation hearings for a replacement any time this year. That would leave the Justice Department in the hands of Rod J. Rosenstein, the career prosecutor who is now deputy attorney general and someone who also has earned Trump’s disrespect for having appointed [special counsel Robert S.] Mueller [III].” This is the very first time — outside the ponderous Senate Intelligence Committee investigation — that Republicans have taken any formal step to rein in Trump on the Russia affair. (It came on the same day the Senate sent him a Russia sanctions bill, in essence daring him to veto it.)

Cumulatively — let’s not forget the erratic, impulsive declaration that he was throwing transgender military personnel out of the armed services — it is not clear whether Trump has reached a tipping point when Republicans decide he actually has to leave office. Yet if Trump nevertheless proceeds to fire Sessions and then order Justice Department officials to fire Mueller (or fire them if they won’t), Republicans will have no remedy at their disposal other than impeachment; they may very well choose not to use it, but then we have the makings of a constitutional crisis on our hands.

And the religious right, which intones “Judge Gorsuch, Judge Gorsuch!” when confronted with the series of Trump abominations, should do some soul-searching. Was this trashing of the White House, assault on civil language and conduct and contempt for the Constitution (the one the religious right thinks is so important that the new Supreme Court justice must protect it) worth it? And if it gets worse, is there any point at which the religious might put country above tribe, morality above partisanship? No, I don’t think it will do so ever.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2017/07/28/as-trump-debases-the-presidency-the-religious-right-looks-away/?utm_term=.159c2123833a

July 28, 2017

Parents of Charlie Gard say he has died: reports

Source: The Washington Post




By Lindsey Bever July 28 at 1:35 PM

Charlie Gard, the terminally ill British boy whose heartbreaking case captured worldwide attention and inflamed a debate over end-of-life rights, died Friday, only a week before he was to turn 1 year old.

Charlie's parents said their 11-month-old son had died a day after a British court ruled that he should be moved to hospice and be disconnected from a ventilator, a spokesman for the family confirmed to BBC News, the Guardian and the Associated Press.

His parents, Chris Gard and Connie Yates, fought for months in a heart-wrenching court case that weighed their rights to keep their son alive against the desire of doctors to let him die to spare him pain and suffering.

The bitter legal battle elicited sympathy and support from Pope Francis and President Trump, with hospitals in Rome and New York offering to help the child. It came to an exhausting and emotional end once it became clear that an experimental medical treatment that Charlie’s parents wanted for their son was not viable.



Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/07/28/parents-of-charlie-gard-say-he-has-died-reports

July 28, 2017

Ryan: We want to do tax reform 'better' than health care

Source: Politico




By LOUIS NELSON 07/28/2017 08:05 AM EDT

House Speaker Paul Ryan said his party has already taken a lesson from the healthcare fight and applied it to another top goal: Tax reform.

Despite campaigning for more than seven years on a promise to repeal and replace Obamacare, Republicans have struggled within their own caucus to find consensus on how exactly their own healthcare proposal should take shape. Early Friday morning, a so-called “skinny repeal” bill was narrowly voted down in the Senate, a setback that leaves the GOP with no obvious path forward that does not include negotiations with Democrats.

Ryan, in an interview with Fox Business network that was taped before the dramatic Friday vote in the Senate, said the infighting on healthcare has prompted Republicans to hold copious meetings on planned tax reform proposals so that the entire party is on the same page.

“We looked at healthcare and said let's make sure that do tax reform better and differently, so we have had exhausting meetings -- not exhausting, we’ve exhausted these points between all three branches, all three decision makers: Senate, House, White House,” Ryan told Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo. “We’ve had meeting after meeting after meeting to make sure we see it the same way and on common ground.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2017/07/28/paul-ryan-tax-reform-health-care-241080