May 4, 2017

A Little Nausea

No Care Trumpcare:  Yesterday evening Republican leadership announced that they plan to bring the current iteration of Trumpcare to the House floor for a vote today.  Congressman Upton who surprised leadership when he said that he would be a “no” vote got called to the Oval Office for some arm twisting yesterday.  In exchange for his vote he got Trump to commit an additional $8 billion over five years to help people with preexisting conditions fund their insurance premiums.  The $8 billion won’t make much of a dent in the preexisting condition hole but it was enough to flip Upton and one other Republican to the dark side.  The margin will be “razor thin” but leadership is convinced that they have enough votes to go forward.  This iteration of Trumpcare hasn’t been scored yet but, since it was crafted to meet the priorities of the Freedom Caucus whose stated objective is to kill Obamacare, even with the new $8 billion the number of people who will lose insurance will now exceed Trumpcare 1.0’s twenty-four million. Virtually every medical and hospital group including the AMA and AARP oppose the plan but Trump and House Republican leadership just want to get something passed on to the Senate.  And so it goes.             

Judicial Committee Hearing: On Tuesday, Hillary Clinton was interviewed by Christiane Amanpour at a Women for Women event.  Her remarks were mostly thoughtful and reflected the kind of knowledge about current events, world leaders and policy that used to be expected of American presidents. However, it was her comment that she would have won the election if only FBI Director Comey hadn’t held a press conference about her emails days before the election that got the most attention from the press and the tweeter-in-chief, who said she was lucky that Comey had let her off so easily. Yesterday when Comey testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he said that he was mildly nauseous that his decision to reveal that the FBI had found additional Hillary Clinton emails on Anthony Weiner’s computer, the ones that he later said weren’t new, might have influenced the outcome of the election.  Comey insisted that since he thought Clinton would win he had to disclose this information even though disclosing it directly violated the FBI’s usual practice of remaining silent about ongoing investigations.  He didn’t see any inconsistency in not disclosing that the FBI was investigating the Trump campaign team’s connections to Russia because he thought Trump would lose.  He then added that Russia is the single biggest threat to our democracy. Democrats on the committee were seen grabbing for their sickness bags.  Republicans just asked lots of questions about unmasking names caught up in incidental surveillance.  One piece of news, the FBI is looking into America’s Mayor Guiliani, trying to uncover who in the NYC FBI office told him about the emails on the Weiner computer in advance of Comey’s announcement.       

Middle East Peace:  Good news to report on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  Trump believes that a solution is attainable because the problem can be easily solved now that he is President.  He concluded this after meeting with Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the Palestinian Authority.  Trump didn’t seem to notice that Abbas’ demands that Israel return to pre-1967 borders, that East Jerusalem be the Palestinian capital and for a right of return for refugees have not changed, remain non-starters for Israel and have stymied all previous attempts at reaching an accord.  At some point he may figure out that solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is complicated, even more complicated than health care.

National Day of Prayer:  Today is the National Day of Prayer.  To celebrate Trump has invited conservative religious leaders to the White House to join him for the signing of an executive order intended to shrink the separation between church and state. Trump, who got a lot of heat for leaving Planned Parenthood funding in the budget resolution, is seeking to mollify the religious right.  This order will wipe out the effectiveness of the Johnson Amendment which forbids churches and other religious organizations from engaging in political speech, campaign activities or endorsing political candidates if they want to maintain their tax-exempt status. At least for now, it looks like a second planned order, a favorite of Vice President Pence, has been put on hold.  That order would have provided legal protections for individuals and entities seeking religious exemptions from certain federal laws and would have allowed groups to deny services to LGBT people or people of other religions. Ivanka and Jared squashed this one the first time Pence tried to get it signed and may have succeeded again.  Their influence is limited as a final decision on the Paris Climate Accords is expected soon, and despite the Kushners' push for Trump to stick with the accords, the pendulum appears to be swinging against continued participation.