As relieved as I am that Senate Republicans have delayed the vote on their revolting excuse for a healthcare bill, I am feeling anxious that the delay will only give them time to regroup and convince the hold-outs to return to the fold, as they always seem to evitably do, when the choice is between principles or party.
I'm trying to be optimistic, though: The delay gives us more time to resist, too — to make more calls, to disseminate the facts, to move people to take action.
Overall, I'm feeling frustrated with and powerless about national politics. Every day, however, I feel more strongly that building community in order to validate each other and create Ungaslighting Zones is more important than ever, and I am here for it. Harm mitigation motivates me.
Aside from politics, I'm all right. Yesterday, I had lunch with a friend at a restaurant I'd never tried before, and I ate some delicious manicotti. Can't complain about that.
How are you?
Discussion Thread: How Are You?
So This Just Happened
MUST WATCH: White House reporter @BrianKarem pushing back against Sarah Huckabee Sanders and saying what many people have been thinking. pic.twitter.com/hW49e0tdWY
— Yashar Ali (@yashar) June 27, 2017
SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS: —people in this room, but news outlets get to go on, day after day, and cite unnamed sources, use stories without sources, have, you know—you mentioned the Scaramucci story where they had to have reporters resign— [crosstalk]To recap: White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders babbles some Trump-standard nonsense about "fake news." Reporter Brian Karem quite rightly calls out what she's doing as irresponsible and notes that she's demonizing the members of the White House press corps who are just trying to do their jobs. To which she responds: "I disagree completely." And then demonizes the press again.
BRIAN KAREM: Come on. You're inflaming everybody right here and right now with those words. This administration has done that, as well. Why in the name of heavens— Any one of us [gestures to reporters in room] are replaceable, and any one of us, if we don't get it right, the audience has the opportunity to turn the channel or not read us.
HUCKABEE SANDERS: I think—
KAREM: You have been elected to serve for four years, at least. There's no option other that that.
HUCKABEE SANDERS: I think—
KAREM: We're here to ask you questions; you're here to provide the answers! And what you just did is inflammatory to people all over the country who look at it and say, "See? Once again, the president is right and everybody else out here is fake media." And everybody in this room is only trying to do their job.
HUCKABEE SANDERS: I disagree completely. First of all, I think if anything has been inflamed, it's the dishonesty that often takes place by the news media. And I think it is outrageous for you to accuse me of inflaming a story when I was simply trying to respond to his question.
Listen, I'm not always thrilled with the way the White House press corps and the broader political media does their jobs. But they are doing important work, exactly as Karem describes: Asking questions of the elected officials who owe We the People answers to those questions.
The Trump administration's war on the press is a refusal to be accountable to voters. (No information, no recourse.) This, too, is what happens in authoritarian regimes. #Resist.
Daily Dose of Cute
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
Senate "Healthcare" Vote Delayed
BREAKING: Lacking votes, Senate GOP leaders abruptly delay vote on health care bill until after July 4th recess.
— AP Politics (@AP_Politics) June 27, 2017
The strategy has been, and continues to be, to try to ram this thing through while voters aren't paying attention. KEEP CALLING EVERY DAY. https://t.co/vCEKoJ71BZ
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) June 27, 2017
I can't emphasize this point strongly enough: Do not let down your guard. There is a complex strategy here, and trust that it does not involve Senate Republicans caving on this reprehensible legislation.
They will continue to delay as long as they think they can outlast our attention, so vigilance is crucial.
Announcing a delay now will suggest to lots of people who aren't paying careful attention that they can relax, because the bill is on its last legs. Nope! That's certainly what Mitch McConnell hopes voters will think, though, so vigilance is crucial.
The delay will give McConnell time to convince the equivocating members of his caucus to vote for the bill, even if it means offering them sweeteners — which, in some cases, would mean making the bill even worse, so vigilance is crucial.
Keep up the heat. It's the best and only chance we've got.
We Resist: Day 159
One of the difficulties in resisting the Trump administration, the Republican Congressional majority, and Republican state legislatures is keeping on top of the sheer number of horrors, indignities, and normalization of the aggressively abnormal that they unleash every single day.
So here is a daily thread for all of us to share all the things that are going on, thus crowdsourcing a daily compendium of the onslaught of conservative erosion of our rights and our very democracy.
Stay engaged. Stay vigilant. Resist.
* * *
Here are some things in the news today:
Earlier today by me: This Is What Happens in Authoritarian Regimes and Ukraine Is Under Cyberattack.
REMINDER: KEEP CALLING YOUR SENATORS TO TELL THEM TO VOTE NO ON TRUMPCARE.
Mallory Shelbourne at the Hill: CBO: 4 Million Would Lose Employer Health Coverage Under GOP Plan. "Four million people would lose employer-provided insurance coverage in 2018 if the Senate's plan to repeal ObamaCare became law, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected on Monday. The nonpartisan budget analyst attributed the drop to the GOP's plan to repeal ObamaCare's two central mandates: the requirement to have health insurance and the requirement that most large employers provide it. 'Under current law, the prospect of paying the employer mandate penalty tips the scale for some businesses and causes them to decide to offer health insurance to their employees. Thus, eliminating that penalty would cause some employers to not offer health insurance,' the CBO wrote."
So, if you think you're safe because you've got employee-sponsored healthcare, you may not be. KEEP CALLING.
Burgess Everett, Josh Dawsey, and Jennifer Haberkorn at Politico: McConnell Warns Trump, GOP on Health Bill Failure. "Mitch McConnell is delivering an urgent warning to staffers, Republican senators and even the president himself: If Obamacare repeal fails this week, the GOP will lose all leverage and be forced to work with Chuck Schumer." OH THE HORROR! Keep. Calling.
* * *
More on today's cyberattacks in Ukraine and now elsewhere...
Erik Ortiz at NBC News: Widespread Cyberattack Hits Major European Companies. "A widespread cyberattack rippled across Europe on Tuesday, with major companies in Ukraine, Russia, Britain, and elsewhere reporting large-scale disruptions. Merck, an American pharmaceutical company, tweeted that its computer network 'was compromised...as part of the global hack.' ...A message on a cash machine for Ukraine's state-owned bank Oschadbank demanded $300 worth of Bitcoin — and taunted victims not to 'waste your time' looking for another fix. 'If you see this text, then your files are no longer accessible, because they have been encrypted,' the message read in English, according to an image take by a Reuters photographer in Kiev. 'Perhaps you are busy looking for a way to recover your files, but don't waste your time. Nobody can recover your files without our encryption service.' The message then went on to say how to pay the ransom in Bitcoin."
James Booth at Legal Week: DLA Piper Hit by Cyberattack with Phones and Computers Down Across the Firm. "DLA Piper has been hit by a major cyber attack, which has knocked out phones and computers across the firm. The shutdown appears to have been caused by a ransomware attack, similar to the WannaCry attack that hit organisations such as the NHS last month. ...Steve Hill, ex-deputy director in the UK government National Security Secretariat dealing with cyber security told Legal Week at that time: 'There is a huge criminal cyber threat to law firms. The hackers perpetrating these types of attacks will not be teenage boys — they are criminal gangs set up to exploit law firms for sensitive data or lock people out of the data in return for a ransom.'"
How many attorneys are currently investigating or defending the Trump administration? I'm sure this is nothing to worry about. Everything is fine.
* * *
Claudia Koerner and Nancy A. Youssef at BuzzFeed: White House Says Syria May Be Preparing Another Chemical Attack, Warns Assad Will "Pay a Heavy Price."
Syria appears to be preparing a new chemical weapons attack against its citizens, the White House said Monday, warning that if the weapons are again used, the US will make the Syrian government "pay a heavy price."Fucking hell, this White House is just going rogue on foreign policy. There is no communication with CENTCOM, and clearly no communication with Congressional leaders. Further to that, what in wag the dog hell is this shit, exactly?! The White House is clearly rattling the saber against Syria every time they need to distract from bad news — *cough* CBO healthcare bill score *cough* — and that garbage cannot be allowed to stand. It's intolerable.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer announced the news in a statement late Monday.
The United States has identified potential preparations for another chemical weapons attack by the Assad regime that would likely result in the mass murder of civilians, including innocent children. The activities are similar to preparations the regime made before its April 4, 2017 chemical weapons attack.Five US defense officials reached by BuzzFeed News said they did not know where the potential chemical attack would come from, including one US Central Command official who had "no idea" about its origin. The officials said they were unaware the White House was planning to release its statement; usually such statements are coordinated across the national security agencies and departments before they are released.
As we have previously stated, the United States is in Syria to eliminate the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. If, however, Mr. Assad conducts another mass murder attack using chemical weapons, he and his military will pay a heavy price.
A Pentagon spokesperson declined to comment on the matter and referred questions to the White House statement. A State Department spokesperson also referred BuzzFeed News to the White House statement and said the agency did not have anything to add.
Secretary of Defense James Mattis departed Monday evening for a three-day trip to Germany and Belgium, and Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Joseph Dunford was in Afghanistan. Earlier in the evening, both Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, as well as National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, attended a White House dinner hosted by Trump for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
And I say "the White House" rather than "Donald Trump" advisedly: "All this occurred this week as [Donald] Trump displayed what two White House officials characterized as relative indifference and passivity towards the subject, instead opting to focus his public and private energies towards fuming at his domestic enemies in the Democratic Party and the 'fake news.' 'The president cares more about CNN and the Russia story than [Syria] at the moment,' one official observed."
Blink. Blink.
* * *
Devlin Barrett at the Washington Post: FBI Has Questioned Trump Campaign Adviser Carter Page at Length in Russia Probe. "Over a series of five meetings in March, totaling about 10 hours of questioning, Page repeatedly denied wrongdoing when asked about allegations that he may have acted as a kind of go-between for Russia and the Trump campaign, according to a person familiar with Page's account. The interviews with the FBI are the most extensive known questioning of a potential suspect in the probe of possible Russian connections to associates of [Donald] Trump. ...Page confirmed Monday that the interviews occurred, calling them 'extensive discussions.' He declined to say if he has spoken to investigators since the March interviews."
Esme Cribb at TPM: Kushner Adds Defense Lawyer to His Team for Federal Russia Probe. "Jared Kushner, a senior White House adviser and [Donald] Trump's son-in-law, has added a prominent criminal defense lawyer to the legal team representing him amid the federal probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, according to reports late Monday by Politico and NBC News. Kushner has retained Abbe Lowell, a powerhouse trial lawyer who has represented high-profile political figures including John Edwards and lobbyist Jack Abramoff, in addition to his personal attorney Jamie Gorelick, according to Politico."
Jon Swaine at the Guardian: Trump Lawyer's Firm Steered Millions in Donations to Family Members, Files Show. "Documents obtained by the Guardian show [Jay Sekulow, Donald Trump's new attorney] approved plans to push poor and jobless people to donate money to his Christian nonprofit, which since 2000 has steered more than $60m to Sekulow, his family, and their businesses. ...In addition to using tens of millions of dollars in donations to pay Sekulow, his wife, his sons, his brother, his sister-in-law, his niece and nephew, and their firms, Case has also been used to provide a series of unusual loans and property deals to the Sekulow family." Remember how I just said last week that it sounded like Sekulow was "running a charity nepotism scam not unlike the one Trump was running"? Yeah.
Lily Dobrovolskaya and Nicholas Nehamas at the Miami Herald: Russian Official Linked to South Florida Biker Club Spent Millions on Trump Condos. "Out-of-town money pouring into South Florida real estate is as old as Henry Flagler. But the tale of Igor Zorin offers a 21st-century twist with all the weirdness modern Miami has to offer: Russian cash, a motorcycle club named after Russia's powerful special forces, and a condo tower branded by Donald Trump. Zorin is a Russian government official who has spent nearly $8 million on waterfront South Florida homes, hardly financially prudent given his bureaucrat's salary of $75,000 per year." For more on this story, see Charlie Pierce.
* * *
Judd Legum at ThinkProgress: The Inside Story of How TMZ Quietly Became America's Most Potent Pro-Trump Media Outlet. "As Trump has risen, TMZ has quietly emerged as, arguably, the most important pro-Trump outlet in America. Fox News is the largest and best known, but its audience is older and already inclined to support Trump. Breitbart is the most aggressive and strident, but its connection to white nationalism limits its appeal. TMZ attracts a large and diverse audience — precisely the folks Trump needed to reach to stitch together a winning coalition. Stories on TMZ not only gain a wide audience online but also appear on two nationally syndicated daily television shows (TMZ and TMZ Live) that, in most markets, are aired multiple times each day."
President Donald Trump could start a trade war this week https://t.co/CWFeE3zPuv pic.twitter.com/Ds2qorBTJU
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) June 27, 2017
Oh.
Richard L. Hasen at the LA Times: Gorsuch Is the New Scalia, Just Like Trump Promised.
Whatever else comes of the Donald J. Trump presidency, already he has perfectly fulfilled one campaign pledge in a way that will affect the entire United States for a generation or more: putting another Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court. The early signs from Justice Neil Gorsuch, who joined the Court in April, show that he will hew to the late Justice Scalia's brand of jurisprudence, both in his conservatism and his boldness.Please tell me again how there were no differences between the two candidates. *jumps into Christmas tree*
Usually it takes a few years to get the full sense of a new justice...
Not so with Gorsuch. In a flurry of orders and opinions issued Monday, Gorsuch went his own way. The majority affirmed the right of same-sex parents to have both their names appear on birth certificates, but Gorsuch dissented. The majority chose not to hear a challenge to California's public carry gun law, thus leaving it in place, but Gorsuch dissented. Gorsuch also wrote separately in the Trinity Lutheran case, on whether a parochial school may take government money for playground safety equipment. The court found in favor of the school, but Gorsuch went even further to the right in endorsing the government's ability to aid religious organizations. This followed his dissent with Justice Clarence Thomas a few weeks ago over the court's failure to consider overturning the "soft money ban" contained in the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law.
Gorsuch also joined with the court's other strong conservatives, Alito and Thomas, to partially dissent from the Supreme Court's Monday order in the travel ban case. The court split the baby in that case, ruling that until the court hears the case this fall, only part of the ban may go into effect. (The government cannot enforce the travel ban against foreign individuals from six predominantly Muslim nations who have family, work or university connections to people or entities in the United States.) The dissenters would have allowed the Trump administration to enforce the entire ban until the court could fully consider the case.
What have you been reading that we need to resist today?
What Could Have Been, and What Is
Over the last four years, I have mentioned many times the joint 60 Minutes interview with President Barack Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. It is one of my favorite political interviews, for a lot of reasons. I was thinking about that interview again today — specifically the part where Obama talks about why he wanted Clinton as his Secretary of State.
Steve Kroft: It's no secret that your aides cautioned you against— actually were against you offering Secretary Clinton this job. And you were just as determined not to take it. And you avoided taking her phone calls for awhile because you were afraid she was going to say no. Why were you so insistent about wanting her to be secretary of state?Obama wanted Clinton specifically because of her extraordinary diplomatic skills, dating back to her tenure as First Lady, and the respect she commanded around the globe after many years as a people's ambassador for the United States.
President Obama: Well, I was a big admirer of Hillary's before our primary battles and the general election. You know, her discipline, her stamina, her thoughtfulness, her ability to project, I think, and make clear issues that are important to the American people, I thought made her an extraordinary talent. She also was already a world figure. And I thought that somebody stepping into that position of secretary of state at a time when, keep in mind, we were still in Iraq. Afghanistan was still an enormous challenge. There was great uncertainty in terms of how we would reset our relations around the world, to have somebody who could serve as that effective ambassador in her own right without having to earn her stripes, so to speak, on the international stage, I thought would be hugely important.
...I think everybody understands that Hillary's been, you know, one of the most important advisors that I've had on a whole range of issues. Hillary's capacity to travel around the world, to lay the groundwork for a new way of doing things, to establish a sense of engagement that, you know, our foreign policy was not going to be defined solely by Iraq, that we were going to be vigilant about terrorism, but we were going to make sure that we deployed all elements of American power, diplomacy, our economic and cultural and social capital, in order to bring about the kinds of international solutions that we wanted to see. I had confidence that Hillary could do that.
He was walking into the White House following eight years of George W. Bush having critically undermined the United States' standing with our allies (and our enemies), which had left us less safe. He knew we had to reestablish trust and rebuild diplomatic relationships, quickly and meaningfully, and the person he wanted to do it, the person he knew would be able to do it, was Hillary Clinton.
And she did.
Had she been elected president, the era of increased global respect for a United States that centered diplomacy in its foreign policy would have continued. (That's not to say that a Clinton presidency would not have included foreign policy decisions with which I would have expected to disagree, nor that the Obama presidency did not include the same.)
Instead, the country elected Donald Trump, who has no use for diplomacy and set about alienating our allies with belligerence and ignorance. The State Department that greeted Clinton's arrival with a solid minute of enthusiastic cheering is now being run by an oil executive with no government experience who's running the department as a skeleton crew.
The difference between what could have been and what is is stark.
Only 159 days into Trump's presidency, the Pew Research Center has found: "Global views of the U.S. and its president have shifted dramatically downward since the end of Barack Obama's presidency and the start of Donald Trump's, and they are now at similar levels to ratings from the George W. Bush era, according to a new Pew Research Center report that examines attitudes in 37 countries."
All of the work that President Obama and Secretary Clinton did is gone. Vanished. In 159 days.
Trump has stomped all over their collective legacy, which would be enough, except it's far worse than that, because, in doing so, he has made this country and its every citizen less safe than we were.
Less safe than we could have still been.
Ukraine Is Under Cyberattack
One week ago today, I shared Andy Greenberg's piece at Wired about how Ukraine had become Russia's test lab for Cyberwar. In Ukraine, Greenberg wrote, "the quintessential cyberwar scenario has come to life."
There had been two blackouts already, and they weren't isolated attacks, but "part of a digital blitzkrieg that has pummeled Ukraine for the past three years—a sustained cyberassault unlike any the world has ever seen. A hacker army has systematically undermined practically every sector of Ukraine: media, finance, transportation, military, politics, energy. Wave after wave of intrusions have deleted data, destroyed computers, and in some cases paralyzed organizations' most basic functions."
Today, Ukraine is being hit with another huge wave of cyberattacks.
Several Ukrainian banks and power company KyivEnergo are reporedly under massive hackers attack https://t.co/BZ5JtiWn85 pic.twitter.com/rxf4Cs8uJX
— Liveuamap (@Liveuamap) June 27, 2017
Cyber attack in #Ukraine. Following known or allegedly hit so far...
— Christian Borys (@ItsBorys) June 27, 2017
Banks
Power grid
Postal
Gov't Ministry
Media
Airport
Cell providers
This is our future, if we don't take the possibility seriously. (Which we're currently not, btw.) https://t.co/7nFdegqAM2
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) June 27, 2017
Via Andrea Chalupa, RFE/RL reports: "Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Pavlo Rozenko said on Facebook on June 27 that every computer monitor in the cabinet of ministers was locked and displayed a message in English warning users that if they shut down their computers all of their data will be deleted."
There is no confirmation that Russia is behind today's cyberattack on Ukraine, but it would be extraordinary if that were not the case.
Meanwhile, as I have previously noted, Russian diplomats, presumed to be Russian intelligence agents, have been "waging a quiet effort to map the United States' telecommunications infrastructure, perhaps preparing for an opportunity to disrupt it," and Russia has developed "a cyberweapon that has the potential to be the most disruptive yet against electric systems that Americans depend on for daily life."
Trump is not taking these threats seriously, even as Ukraine is suffering the very cyberattacks that we should fear. To the absolute contrary, Trump seems keen to abet Russia's plotting against the U.S., by handing back to the Russians control of the compounds from which they are thought to have orchestrated the infrastructure mapping intel operations.
I don't know whether Trump is actively colluding with the Kremlin against the United States, or whether the combination of his enamourment of Putin and his own uninformed arrogance has led him to genuinely and unaccountably believe that the Russians are his pals. Either way, he clearly believes that Putin respects him, which is foolish in the extreme.
Putin is not Trump's ally. Trump is Putin's mark.
And what is happening in Ukraine today is a foreshadow of what is to come in the United States, because we have a president who doesn't believe it will ever happen here.
This Is What Happens in Authoritarian Regimes
Donald Trump's corruption is so vast and his lack of ethics so profound that it has caused a lurching shift in expectations of the United States President in only 159 days. It's easy to become inured to the erosion of our democratic norms, but we must resist the normalization of authoritarianism.
This is a big story, because this is what happens in authoritarian regimes: Coral Davenport at the New York Times reports that an E.P.A. Official Pressured Scientist on Congressional Testimony, Emails Show.
The Environmental Protection Agency's chief of staff pressured the top scientist on the agency's scientific review board to alter her congressional testimony and play down the dismissal of expert advisers, his emails show.To call this "amateurish" behavior is to extend good faith to this administration, who has not earned any. It's not a matter of a failure of comprehension about hearings work; it's a matter of trying to avoid the appearance of subverting the role of academic science in environmental policy, while actually subverting the role of academic science in environmental policy.
Deborah Swackhamer, an environmental chemist who leads the E.P.A.'s Board of Scientific Counselors, was to testify on May 23 before the House Science Committee on the role of states in environmental policy when Ryan Jackson, the E.P.A.'s chief of staff, asked her to stick to the agency's "talking points" on the dismissals of several members of the scientific board.
"I was stunned that he was pushing me to 'correct' something in my testimony," said Dr. Swackhamer, a retired University of Minnesota professor. "I was factual, and he was not. I felt bullied."
...James Thurber, the founder and former director of the Center for Congressional Studies at American University, said he had never heard of an administration pressuring a witness, particularly a scientist, to alter testimony already submitted for the official record.
"It's shocking and insulting to be told before you go in to alter your testimony to what the administration wants," he said. "This just shows a certain amount of amateurishness about how these hearings work. They're supposed to be places where you get objective views. You don't go around telling people what to say."
This, as my friend Sarah Kendzior has noted, is part of the authoritarian's agenda (emphasis mine):
Shortly after Trump's inauguration, his administration reviewed the EPA's website and, during that time, instructed its employees not to communicate on its research to the public through press releases, blog posts, or social media. If citizens became ill due to environmental protection rollbacks, policies like this could lead to people would have less information to use to seek recourse.No information, no recourse. No information, nothing to resist.
That censorship of scientists and national parks workers — who reportedly went on to act as "rogue" employees posting statistics on climate change in anonymous Twitter accounts — furthers the administration's authoritarian ambitions: One cannot refute information one does not know.
Dr. Swackhamer said she "felt bullied." No wonder. She found herself at the blunt end of an authoritarian order. Nothing about that is going to feel right.
And it should not sit right with us.
Question of the Day
[I've got a doctor's appointment this afternoon, so I have to wrap up a little early today. Nothing serious — just a regular check-up!]
Suggested by Shaker SisterShimmy: "If someone were to make a book you love into a movie, what would your dream cast be?"
The Monday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by a warm summer breeze.
Recommended Reading:
Kenrya Rankin: Philando Castile's Family Settles with City of St. Anthony for Nearly $3 Million
Lance Mannion: Mean! Mean! Mean!
Andy Towle: While Trump Shuns LGBT Pride Month, Justin Trudeau Marches in Toronto Pride Parade
Soleil Ho: Be Better: A Guide to Avoid Cultural Appropriation
Zain Dada and Zainab Rahim: [Content Note: Islamophobia; fire; terrorism; injury and death; displacement] British Muslims and the Need for Safe Spaces
George Dvorsky: Scientists Have Finally Figured Out Why Chimps Are So Damn Strong
Leave your links and recommendations in comments. Self-promotion welcome and encouraged!
CBO: Senate Bill Is Hot Trash
As I mentioned earlier, the Congressional Budget Office announced it was anticipating releasing its assessment of the Senate "healthcare" bill this afternoon, and so it has. And I hope you're reclining comfortably on your fainting couches so you don't swoon with the shock of hearing that the CBO has concluded that the Senate bill is hot trash, just like the House version. I'm paraphrasing, but only slightly.
Amy Goldstein and Kelsey Snell at the Washington Post: CBO: Senate GOP Healthcare Bill Would Leave 22 Million More People Uninsured by 2026.
Senate Republicans' bill to erase major parts of the Affordable Care Act would cause an estimated 22 million more Americans to be uninsured in the coming decade — just over a million fewer than similar legislation recently passed by the House, according to the Congressional Budget Office.Twenty-two million people would lose health insurance coverage, fifteen million of them by next year.
...According to the 49-page report, the immediate increase in the ranks of the uninsured would be slightly larger than under the House version, with an estimated 15 million fewer Americans likely to have coverage in 2018, compared to 14 million in the House bill.
There is a lot more to the CBO report, of course, but do you even need to know more than that? It's scandalous.
I am despondent at the fact that there are people tasked with governing this country and representing the people's interests who can look at those figures and still justify supporting this legislation. It is an unfathomable cruelty that the United States continues to treat healthcare as a privilege, rather than a right.
Donald Trump's Soul Is Full of Greed and Garbage
Naturally, Donald Trump is celebrating the Supreme Court's atrocious decision to uphold a significant piece of Trump's Muslim ban, ubiquitously and mendaciously known as the "travel ban."
The White House put out a statement from Trump, reading in its entirety:
Today's unanimous Supreme Court decision is a clear victory for our national security. It allows the travel suspension for the six terror-prone countries and the refugee suspension to become largely effective.
As President, I cannot allow people into our country who want to do us harm. I want people who can love the United States and all of its citizens, and who will be hardworking and productive.
My number one responsibility as Commander in Chief is to keep the American people safe. Today's ruling allows me to use an important tool for protecting our Nation's homeland. I am also particularly gratified that the Supreme Court's decision was 9-0.
Hang on. Did the aggressively bigoted, incompetent, lazy-ass, big league loser of a president who fits signing bills that hurt people in between his golf game just say that he only wants immigrants who "can love the United States and all of its citizens, and who will be hardworking and productive"?
ALL THE MIRTHLESS LAUGHTER IN THE MULTIVERSE.
It's always the motherfuckers who could never meet their own requirements for citizenship that suggest the most absurd qualifications for entry.
It reminds me of the time that racist heapshit Rep. Duncan Hunter was asked at a Tea Party rally if he would support the deportation of American citizens who are the children of undocumented immigrants, to which Hunter replied that he would, then defended his position by saying, "We're not being mean. We're just saying it takes more than walking across the border to become an American citizen. It's within our souls."
What horseshit.
Our souls don't make us deserving of the best America has to offer. For proof of that, look no further than the GOP.
The Real American, as defined by Republicans, doesn't look anything like the collection of cowards and reprobates that comprise the Republican Party — least of all their disgusting wreck of a president.
The qualities that define Republicans' idealized Civis Americanus — patriotic, brave, principled, adventurous, enterprising, optimistic, indomitable — look an awful lot like the undocumented immigrant who makes their way across the border in search of a better life, risking deportation and detention and bodily harm to realize a dream arbitrarily denied on the accidental circumstances of one's birth.
Would that it took at least walking across the border to become an American citizen. We'd certainly have fewer citizens who used the gift of their unearned citizenry as a justification to behave like intolerant, isolationist scoundrels.
I am exhausted to my very bones with these projectionist hypocrites caterwauling about the unique soul of the American citizen, whose own souls could not less resemble their ideal. There's nothing fearless or innovative or hopeful or confident about xenophobic nationalism; about the promotion of personal avarice above social conscience; about contempt for the marginalized.
This country, a beautiful mosaic of people and cultures and ideas, still infused with a spirit of exploration and invention, really does have the potential to be a land of opportunity for everyone who arrives on its shores or crosses its borders, if we gave that notion half the chance it deserved.
But when the soul of Republicans' Ideal American Citizen stares them in the face, they suggest kicking it out of the country — or barring their entry altogether.
Within their souls is not the expansive, courageous ideal they champion, but a profound insecurity born of the lazy complacency that unearned privilege breeds. They are anxious braggarts, waving the flag and shouting about how America is the "greatest country in the world!" at every opportunity — and then reacting with sullen resentment when people agree and clamor to get in the door.
Certain people, anyway.
My Scottish-born husband came to the US not because his life was dreadful or he was being persecuted or his family was starving or because he couldn't find work. He came on a fiancée visa because he fell in love with an American citizen. And when we were flying over the ocean that once separated us, together, for the first time, clutching hands and chattering excitedly about the life on which we were about to embark, Iain talked about his vision of life in America — about its diversity and opportunity and generous supply of chances.
It was, I imagine, a conversation not at all dissimilar to those had by other immigrants making their way into the same country, who are different from Iain only by virtue of a piece of paper he held in his hand as he crossed the border, or because of the nation in which he was born.
Being an American is more than a matter of geography, law, and luck. Frequently, the people who weren't born here seem to understand that better than many of those who were.
They laugh and sniff and squirm and rage at the abiding belief shared by many Americans that this country is not "ours" to gift or deny to anyone who wants to share this space in good faith, and help make it better. They ignore any history that might suggest this land isn't "theirs." They not only draw lines along borders, but lines between citizens — the kind who belong here, and the kind who don't, because they didn't earn it, as if having been born here to citizens by a twist of fate is some sort of laudable achievement, but having been born here to non-citizens is some sort of scam.
And they talk about souls — whatever that means — as if souls don't reside inside one's humanity, which is neither contingent on nor contained by borders. Any American soul not firmly rooted in one's humanity isn't much of a soul at all; it's a selfish intellect disconnected from the commonality of humanness, whence the dehumanization of non-Americans begins.
I don't know if I have any kind of soul at all, no less a particularly American one. But if I do have an American soul, I can say this with certainty: Within my American soul is a love of this country, even despite its many flaws, so profound that I cannot imagine denying the chance to love it as much as I do to anyone who wanted it.
Quote of the Day
"On behalf of the physician and medical student members of the American Medical Association, I am writing to express our opposition to the discussion draft of the 'Better Care Reconciliation Act' released on June 22, 2017. Medicine has long operated under the precept of Primum non nocere, or 'first, do no harm.' The draft legislation violates that standard on many levels."—James L. Madara, MD, Executive Vice President of the American Medical Association, in a letter [pdf] to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, on the AMA's strong objections to Senate Republicans' latest "healthcare" propsal.
The CBO has announced it will "release an estimate of the Senate health care plan later this afternoon."
Which means, by the end of the day, the Senate plan will have been denounced as harmful by the American Medical Association and found to be abject garbage by the Congressional Budget Office.
And still they won't be deterred. Because harm and garbage is the point.
Daily Dose of Cute
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
We Resist: Day 158
One of the difficulties in resisting the Trump administration, the Republican Congressional majority, and Republican state legislatures is keeping on top of the sheer number of horrors, indignities, and normalization of the aggressively abnormal that they unleash every single day.
So here is a daily thread for all of us to share all the things that are going on, thus crowdsourcing a daily compendium of the onslaught of conservative erosion of our rights and our very democracy.
Stay engaged. Stay vigilant. Resist.
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Here are some things in the news today:
Earlier today by me: No Silver Linings. And by Fannie: Since Donald Brought Election Rigging Up: It Was.
REMINDER: KEEP CALLING YOUR SENATORS TO TELL THEM TO VOTE NO ON TRUMPCARE.
Benjamin D. Sommers, M.D., Ph.D., Atul A. Gawande, M.D., M.P.H., and Katherine Baicker, Ph.D. at The New England Journal of Medicine: Health Insurance Coverage and Health — What the Recent Evidence Tells Us.
One question experts are commonly asked is how the ACA — or its repeal — will affect health and mortality. The body of evidence summarized here indicates that coverage expansions significantly increase patients' access to care and use of preventive care, primary care, chronic illness treatment, medications, and surgery. These increases appear to produce significant, multifaceted, and nuanced benefits to health.Meanwhile...
...There remain many unanswered questions about U.S. health insurance policy, including how to best structure coverage to maximize health and value and how much public spending we want to devote to subsidizing coverage for people who cannot afford it. But whether enrollees benefit from that coverage is not one of the unanswered questions. Insurance coverage increases access to care and improves a wide range of health outcomes. Arguing that health insurance coverage doesn't improve health is simply inconsistent with the evidence.
Before summer’s out, we'll repeal/replace Obamacare w/ system based on personal responsibility, free-market competition & state-based reform pic.twitter.com/JzCyxX9kJb
— Mike Pence (@mike_pence) June 24, 2017
Cool banquet, bro.
Charlie Jane Anders at Rewire: Health Care Isn't a 'Market,' It's a Public Good—and Legislators Would Do Well to Remember That. "Is health care a 'market,' or a public good, like clean air? Should I care if you don't have health coverage — or is that just the consequence of a robust market economy, with winners and losers? It's a stark choice this time. If you believe that health care is just like any other free-market enterprise, then it's fine for millions of poor people to lose coverage. But it's encouraging to see most people in the United States coming together against this callous proposition."
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Mark Sherman at the AP: High Court Reinstates Trump Travel Ban, Will Hear Arguments. FUCK!!! What a horrendous decision.
The Supreme Court is letting the Trump administration mostly enforce its 90-day ban on travelers from six mostly Muslim countries, overturning lower court orders that blocked it.This decision makes no sense. Except, of course, to give Trump a win. And even with the exception for people with U.S. ties, this hands Trump a big and ugly win: The ability to legally bar people from entering the country on the basis that they are Muslim. Disgusting.
The action Monday is a victory for [Donald] Trump in the biggest legal controversy of his young presidency.
The court did leave one category of foreigners protected, those "with a credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States," the court said in an unsigned opinion.
The justices will hear arguments in the case in October.
...The Trump administration said the ban was needed to allow an internal review of the screening procedures for visa applicants from those countries. That review should be complete before October 2, the first day the justices could hear arguments in their new term.
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Trump this morning:
— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) June 26, 2017
-Democrats have no ideas
-Obama did nothing
-Hillary is crooked
-Bernie Sanders is crazy
-Why won't they work with us? pic.twitter.com/l6jnZ05JmO
Trump won the election and has a rubber-stamp GOP Congressional majority, but is still railing against Democrats as the reason he's failing. https://t.co/sN03wWlAG8
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) June 26, 2017
He is unfit to be president of this nation in every conceivable way. Seethe.
Michael Kranish at the Washington Post: Kushner Firm's $285 Million Deutsche Bank Loan Came Just Before Election Day.
One month before Election Day, Jared Kushner's real estate company finalized a $285 million loan as part of a refinancing package for its property near Times Square in Manhattan.Nice work if you can get it. Fishy as hell, unethical, shady, dirty, and possibly criminal, but nice. Ahem.
The loan came at a critical moment. Kushner was playing a key role in the presidential campaign of his father-in-law, Donald Trump. The lender, Deutsche Bank, was negotiating to settle a federal mortgage fraud case and charges from New York state regulators that it aided a possible Russian money-laundering scheme. The cases were settled in December and January.
Now, Kushner's association with Deutsche Bank is among a number of financial matters that could come under focus as his business activities are reviewed by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, who is examining Kushner as part of a broader investigation into possible Russian influence in the election.
The October deal illustrates the extent to which Kushner was balancing roles as a top adviser to Trump and a real estate company executive. After the election, Kushner juggled duties for the Trump transition team and his corporation as he prepared to move to the White House. The Washington Post has reported that investigators are probing Kushner's separate December meetings with the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, and with Russian banker Sergey Gorkov, the head of Vnesheconombank, a state development bank.
The Deutsche Bank loan capped what Kushner Cos. viewed as a triumph: It had purchased four mostly empty retail floors of the former New York Times building in 2015, recruited tenants to fill the space and got the Deutsche Bank loan in a refinancing deal that gave Kushner's company $74 million more than it paid for the property.
Martin Pengelly at the Guardian: Top Democrat Schiff Criticizes Obama over Reaction to Russian Hacks. Which he did do, but I'm more interested in his criticism of Trump, because this is so spot-on: "On Saturday, [Trump tweeted]: 'Since the Obama administration was told way before the 2016 election that the Russians were meddling, why no action? Focus on them, not T!' ...[Adam Schiff, the ranking member of the House intelligence committee] said: 'I have to contest what [Donald] Trump is saying because for Donald Trump, who openly egged on the Russians to hack Hillary Clinton's emails and celebrated every release of these stolen documents to criticise Obama now is a bit like someone knowingly receiving stolen property blaming the police for not stopping the theft. Donald Trump is in no position to complain here.'" YES.
Dana Priest and Michael Birnbaum at the Washington Post: Europe Has Been Working to Expose Russian Meddling for Years. "Across the continent, counterintelligence officials, legislators, researchers, and journalists have devoted years — in some cases, decades — to the development of ways to counter Russian disinformation, hacking, and trolling. And they are putting them to use as never before. Four dozen officials and researchers interviewed recently sounded uniformly more confident about the results of their efforts to counter Russian influence than officials grappling with it in the United States... The best antidote to Russian influence, European experts say, is to make it visible. 'We have to prepare the public,' said Patrick Sensburg, a member of the German Parliament and an intelligence expert."
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The TSA is testing having passengers remove books from their carry-on bags in security line. https://t.co/AaH0O1t5KB
— ACLU National (@ACLU) June 25, 2017
Tom Dart at the Guardian: Texas Latinos Greet Court Date for 'Show Me Your Papers' SB4 Immigration Law. "Anger at Texas' strict new immigration law simmered as a thousand Latino policymakers and advocates gathered in Dallas this weekend, ahead of a hearing in which civil rights groups will ask for the measure to be blocked. A federal court in San Antonio will hear arguments on Monday, with judge Orlando Garcia to decide whether to grant a preliminary injunction that would stop the law, known as SB4, from taking effect on 1 September. Among those fighting SB4 are Texas' biggest cities, Latino organizations, and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which successfully argued earlier this year that Donald Trump's travel ban affecting some majority-Muslim nations was unconstitutional." Welp.
Jenny Rowland at ThinkProgress: Trump's Interior Secretary Defends His Plan to Cut at Least 4,000 Staff. "In multiple appearances on Capitol Hill this week, Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke stood behind his proposal to cut at least 4,000 full-time staff from the Interior Department. He has also begun an unprecedented shake-up of senior career officials. Together, the thinning of experienced career employees could have far-reaching consequences for the agency's ability to manage public land and energy development on behalf of the American people." Unreal.
David Lieb at the AP: Possible Effects of Gerrymandering Seen in Uncontested Races.
When voters cast ballots for state representatives last fall, millions of Americans essentially had no choice: In 42 percent of all such elections, candidates faced no major party opponents.Totally incompatible with a healthy democracy.
Political scientists say a major reason for the lack of choices is the way districts are drawn — gerrymandered, in some cases, to ensure as many comfortable seats as possible for the majority party by creating other districts overwhelmingly packed with voters for the minority party.
"With an increasing number of districts being drawn to deliberately favor one party over another — and with fewer voters indicating an interest in crossover voting — lots of potential candidates will look at those previous results and come to a conclusion that it's too difficult to mount an election campaign in a district where their party is the minority," said John McGlennon, a longtime professor of government and public policy at the College of William & Mary in Virginia who has tracked partisan competition in elections.
While the rate of uncontested races dipped slightly from 2014 to 2016, the percentage of people living in legislative districts without electoral choices has been generally rising over the past several decades.
What have you been reading that we need to resist today?
Since Donald Brought Election Rigging Up: It Was
In light of some of the ongoing narratives about the 2016 election, it has dawned on me that what Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, and many of their die-hard fans have in common with MRAs appears to be an entitled sense that if the system isn't rigged for them, then it's rigged against them.
The system I'm talking about is our basic electoral process.
Take Bernie and the infamous, still-circulating claim that the all-powerful Democratic National Committee (DNC) "rigged" the Democratic Primary against him. How this "rigging" tangibly led to Hillary Clinton defeating Sanders by more than 3 million votes is rarely specified. But, Aphra Behn has addressed this nonsensical claim in depth already. The summary is that the most controversial of the stolen DNC emails allegedly "showing" this "rigging" were dated after it became mathematically impossible for Bernie to win. (Nevertheless, the mainstream media persists in repeating this claim or letting it go unchallenged).
In practice, the Evil DNC Rigging narrative really only "works" by erasing the millions of ordinary people, many of them Black women, who sincerely and enthusiastically supported Clinton and pretending that if not for the fantastical DNC Rigging, significantly more would have voted for Bernie Sanders instead.
Then, of course, we have Donald, who repeatedly claimed during the lead-up to November 8th, that "Crooked Hillary" was "rigging" the election against him. He offered no evidence, but he didn't really have to. The general public already believed both he and Bernie were more honest than Hillary Clinton even though analyses showed that she was the most honest of the three. If Donald, who was a "truth-teller," made a claim against Crooked Hillary, why wouldn't many people believe it?
My rhetorical question speaks to the fact that the election was rigged.
Yes, it was rigged by prevailing norms of misogyny, although bias can be difficult to measure and difficult for many people to accept as a thing that actually exists in the world.
But also, what was it, if not rigging, that led to emails detrimental only to Hillary Clinton's campaign having been stolen, leaked, and continually reported on? How might have voter perceptions changed, for instance, about who was and wasn't evil, cheating, or dishonest had private emails from Trump's and Sanders' campaigns been stolen, leaked, and reported on incessantly?
In addition, we now know that the US Intelligence Community (PDF) believes that the Russian Government sought to "undermine faith in the US democratic process" and harm Hillary Clinton's electability via these leaked and stolen emails. With the benefit of hindsight, doesn't it seem that the election was instead rigged for Donald?
Moving to our current state of sad affairs, I've seen repeated scoldings for people on social media to stop "re-litigating the primaries." Well, telling people to just get over something, while acting so above the fray, isn't usually a good strategy for helping people who are upset get over things.
During the 2016 election, both Sanders and Trump supporters capitalized on the one-sided nature of the leaked emails to the detriment of Hillary Clinton's campaign. Many people continue to believe, or at least insist on social media, that Hillary didn't legitimately win the Democratic Primary. Donald Trump even tweeted about it over the weekend, in June 2017, because he knows this claim sows discord among the left. It's possible that Russian troll-bots are still intentionally stirring this pot.
Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders, the Independent from Vermont, is Outreach Chair for the Democratic Party, even as he goes around the country demeaning the "failing" Democractic Party model.
(Which, itself, seems like a failing Democratic Party model, but WHO AM I TO JUDGE?)
I contend that the divisions among the left are real, deep, and pre-date the 2016 primary. They won't go away simply by giving the "leaders" of different factions honorary positions within the Democratic Party, while leaving the underlying problems unaddressed. The facts on the ground are that, to many Hillary supporters, Bernie Sanders will remain a polarizing figure, in part because he has yet to adequately address, let alone counter, the circulating claim that Hillary Clinton cheated when she beat him.
In May 2016, for instance, in response to Trump's claim that the Democratic Primary was "rigged" against Bernie, Bernie gave a weak sauce retort that while he wouldn't use the word "rigged," the process was "dumb."
"Dumb."
Apparently, it was "dumb" that the process had pre-existing rules, rules that Bernie ostensibly knew about before he decided to run. Something something establishment. Don't you hate how systems consistently fail, and are rigged against, white men. I'm so glad we nipped that oppression in the bud before anything bad happened, like letting a woman be president.
I guess we'll never talk about how Bernie could shut this shit down but chooses not to because he apparently can't admit he lost to a woman. pic.twitter.com/rg271Sa25J— Fannie Wolfe (@fanniesroom) June 26, 2017
"No longer may this liberty be denied."
It was two years ago today that Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote those words as part of his ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage nationally in the United States.
In those two years, there are people who have tried to deny that liberty: Court clerks who claim religious objections to issuing marriage licenses, and Republican officials who propose legislation to repeal the right, and family members and "friends" and strangers who wield scorn and judgment and opprobrium as disincentives.
They have not succeeded.
In its latest polling, the Pew Research Center found: "By a margin of nearly two-to-one (62% to 32%), more Americans now say they favor [same-sex marriage rights] than say they are opposed."
That is good news, still not nearly as good as it could be.
We must remain vigilant: If the fight against Roe has taught us anything, it is the necessity of vigilance.
As if on cue: "The Supreme Court on Monday said it will consider next term whether a Denver baker unlawfully discriminated against a gay couple by refusing to sell them a wedding cake."
That case doesn't present a direct challenge to legal marriage, but it is the type of case that conservatives love because it keeps a social justice issue they want to reverse in the news and forces marginalized people to fight for equality in a way attached to the larger social justice issue, but with less public sympathy. Conservatives use cases like this to leverage sentiments like "why don't you just go somewhere else for your wedding cake?" to start eroding support for weddings altogether.
Vigilance is crucial.
On this anniversary, I recommit myself to the fight for same-sex marriage, by never letting down my guard and remaining prepared, always, to defend this right as it needs defense.
"Just as a couple vows to support each other, so does society pledge to support the couple, offering symbolic recognition and material benefits to protect and nourish the union."—Justice Anthony Kennedy, June 26, 2015.
And let us endeavor always to protect and nourish the right to forge that union.
No Silver Linings
Over the weekend, there was another long and widely circulated thinkpiece penned by a white man who is hoping for an outcome — in this case, the resurgence of Republican moderates (lol) — that will make Donald Trump's presidency "worth it."
I published a Twitter thread responding to the general idea, ubiquitous on both the right and the left, that there will be silver linings of one sort of another to Trump's presidency.
I've turned that Twitter thread into a moment: "Stop Saying There Will Be Silver Linings to Trump's Presidency."
This is a subject on which I've written before, specifically the foolishness of imagining a leftist utopia will rise from the ashes of Trump's presidency. And I imagine I will be obliged to keep writing it, because there is a seemingly endless stream of glib shitheads who are willing to sacrifice other people's safety or very lives for the possibility of a highly unlikely "silver lining" of one sort or another.
Trump is busily annihilating of our democratic systems and norms. Destroying something is rarely the way to fix it.
