Senior national reporter
@HuffPost
/ Author of THE TEN YEAR WAR & SICK / Lecturer
@FordSchool
/ Fan of Red Sox, Dolphins, Wolverines / Proud husband & dad
**Some Personal News**
THE TEN YEAR WAR, my new book, is available for pre-order.
It’s an effort to tell the story of Obamacare and, more broadly, the story of American politics over the last decade. (1)
A friendly reminder that the Supreme Court did not even recognize an individual right to own a firearm until 2008 -- and that the opinion, by Scalia, relied on some highly suspect reasoning.
Chris Wallace on Fox citing the numerous breaches of protocol -- and Hatch Act -- we saw tonight.
Says people can decide for themselves whether it matters but makes clear that "all of this has never happened before."
Not sure people grasp the totality or history of what Democrats won in Michigan last night
☑️Governor
☑️Attorney General
☑️Sec'y of State
☑️Abortion, voting amendments
☑️Key U.S. House races
And now it looks like they've flipped the Senate *and* House
Susan Collins saying it was a mistake not to consider Garland and that it would be a mistake for Democrats to do same to Trump's next nominee tells you everything you need to know about how the GOP gets away with breaking all the rules.
Friendly reminder:
1. Rick Scott was CEO of a company that the feds fined $1.7 billion -- yes, billion with a "b" -- for fraudulent Medicare billing
2. Scott's party, the GOP, has repeatedly tried to cut and privatize Medicare
Announcement from
@ASlavitt
-- HHS/Defense approving a new over-the-counter, self-administered COVID test.
Says they are 95% accurate, results within 15 minutes.
Not the first to observe this, but these hearings are pulling back the curtain on the deep state to reveal ... serious, smart and deeply patriotic public servants.
We should be thankful that government service attracts people of such high caliber.
On
@NBCNews
right now
@SavannahGuthrie
keeps asking Fauci if he wishes there were a national stay-at-home order and Fauci is doing everything he can to avoid saying “yes” while basically saying ... yes.
NEW at HuffPost:
Warren updates her coronavirus plan, now includes push to increase ICU capacity, ramp up ventilator production, bigger stimulus.
She's not running for president anymore, but hopes to influence administration, fellow lawmakers.
Hate even dignifying tweets like these -- and I know this isn't the most incendiary part -- but I feel compelled to note that "lightweight" Gillibrand has a magna cum laude degree from Dartmouth.
Lightweight Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a total flunky for Chuck Schumer and someone who would come to my office “begging” for campaign contributions not so long ago (and would do anything for them), is now in the ring fighting against Trump. Very disloyal to Bill & Crooked-USED!
Did Trump just sound exasperated that states are looking for the feds to help with supplies?
This is a national disaster. It is absolutely the federal government's job to take charge.
Mayor Pete’s new addiction/mental health agenda has a bit of everything, from better coverage of opioid treatments to investments in screening.
But if fully implemented, it could add up to the most sweeping mental health care changes in 50 years
The Nunberg interviews were crazy, I agree. But shouldn't we still be talking about the
@JaneMayerNYer
story & possibility of Russian meddling with Trump's choice of Secretary of State?
A trauma surgeon who was on duty last week, taking care of Parkland victims, describes -- in graphic detail -- what bullets from an AR-15 do to the human body.
Difficult to read. Important to read.
The fact that Portman is calling here for a bipartisan commission to investigate the election system -- and not the assault on the Capitol -- tells you a lot about why Wednesday happened.
We need to work together to restore confidence in the integrity of our electoral system.
That's why I will introduce a bill to establish a bipartisan, blue ribbon panel to provide transparency into past election issues & recommend best practices for the states moving forward.
The girl in this picture, hospitalized at age 9, had an illness that made her uninsurable.
Now she's a U.S. senator and she's fighting the Trump administration over pre-existing conditions.
Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney was on two different shows this morning --
@CNNSotu
&
@ThisWeekABC
-- insisting "every Republican plan" had protections for people with pre-existing conditions.
In reality, every single plan rolled back those protections. This is just one example.
The president's budget on March 11 proposed replacing the ACA with an approach modeled after the Graham-Cassidy bill, providing "relief" from "many" of the ACA's insurance rules. The original Graham-Cassidy bill allowed unlimited premiums for people with pre-existing conditions.
This ad tells you everything you need to know about how potent the politics of health care has become -- and how it's turned on Republicans, even in deeply red states.
@TPCarney
My list of contenders would start with the 2000 election/recount & 2008 financial collapse.
Election of Obama & Trump close behind, then natural disasters (Katrina, Sandy), gun violence tragedies (Sandy Hook, Las Vegas, Parkland) and a legislative debate (ACA).
Story that should be getting a *lot* more attention:
Utah Republicans are rushing to pass a bill that will block the state's Medicaid expansion, which voters just approved in the November election
@JeffYoung
has the details -->
Absolutely baffled by this decision from
@MSNBC
-- Joan is one of the sharpest political observers they have on air, and her voice is especially vital at this moment.
#KeepJoanWalsh
Many women citing
@joanwalsh
as an early champion; I’m among them. She encouraged me to write from feminist perspective more than a decade ago as an editor
@salon
. Strange time for MSNBC to jettison someone who’s long been committed to making space for & promoting other women.
It's true that Pelosi is wealthy and raises money from wealthy people.
It's also true that Pelosi has spent her career fighting to strengthen the safety net, bolster unions, regulate corporations, raise taxes on wealthy, etc.
I mean, there's a reason conservatives detest her.
Marcia Fudge on Nancy Pelosi's unpopularity: "I think they see her as an elitist. And I think to some degree she is. She’s a very wealthy person, she raises a lot of money from a lot of other wealthy people.”
Looks like another Republican candidate has removed abortion language from his website.
This time it’s Tom Barrett, who is challenging Elissa Slotkin for a U.S. House seat in Michigan.
Via
@nannburke
@CraigDMauger
I've seen Sanders repeatedly on Detroit television this weekend, thanks to coverage of his rallies, interviews with local anchors, appearances on national Sunday shows airing now.
I've seen almost nothing of Biden, who comes tomorrow.
No idea if this will make a difference.
On Fox & Friends, Jerry Falwell Jr claims people are "overreacting" to coronavirus, the national response is "their next attempt to get Trump," and the virus itself is a North Korean bioweapon.
VP Pence jumping right for it at rally in Yuma, AZ: “I was with Martha McSally every step of the way when she fought to protect pre-existing conditions for every American. She was there. I saw it.”
State spox tells
@detroitnews
that "delay in processing voters appears to be concentrated at city clerks office is college towns, such as Ann Arbor, East Lansing and Kalamazoo, that are fielding hundreds of people registering to vote"
Listening to Mitt Romney — “I think we should have nothing to do with Marjorie Taylor Greene, and think we should repudiate the things she said and move away from her” — I keep thinking of a historical echo that seems relevant on multiple levels:
Biden wins Michigan by at least 2 points, nears 270 electoral votes; Dems also buoyed by Senate victory, new majority on Supreme Court; Republicans keep control of state House (from
@AP
)
The morning after Donald Trump's election, almost nobody thought the ACA would survive -- except one Obama adviser, who was convinced Republicans had no idea what they were doing.
She was right.
An excerpt from THE TEN YEAR WAR, now up at
@TheAtlantic
For background and context, I highly recommend reading the opinion alongside the dissent by Justice Stevens.
Or the essay Stevens wrote for
@TheAtlantic
many years later.
Tell people Medicare for All means a guaranteed right to health care, 78 percent support it.
Tell them it means eliminating private insurance, 37 percent support it.
Have now seen two governors -- Pritzker (D-Ill) and Scott (R-Vt) -- call for removing Trump from office.
Also the National Association of Manufacturers, which is as establishment DC as you can get.
The Trump Administration has gone from asking courts to roll back part of the ACA to asking courts to roll back the entire thing.
Pre-ex protections, tax credits, Medicaid expansion — all would be gone and many millions would lose coverage.
- Protecting the LGBTQ community instead of targeting it
- Strengthening gun safety rules instead of rolling them back
- Repealing old abortion bans instead of enacting new ones
Now at
@HuffPost
: How Michigan is becoming the anti-Florida
Gratuitous shot at M4A from Biden. M4A isn't the reason Italy is having problems.
Italy's problem is health system capacity. Independent of health system design.
200K could get health insurance, another 1M could save money on premiums under a new proposal the Biden administration is unveiling today.
And it's something they can do without Congress.
The Trump Administration is fighting in court to take those protections away.
This is just a shocking contempt for truth — and the voters. Even by Trump’s standards.
All Republicans support people with pre-existing conditions, and if they don’t, they will after I speak to them. I am in total support. Also, Democrats will destroy your Medicare, and I will keep it healthy and well!
"People will buy these policies, show up at the hospital for a condition they did not expect, and discover they are not covered.”
That's an insurance commissioner talking -- not me.
Trump says Obama "was not proactive" about trying to pass a background check bill.
WHAT ON EARTH IS HE TALKING ABOUT
Obama, fresh off reelection -- and Sandy Hook -- spent nearly all of his political capital trying to get Manchin-Toomey through Congress.
More to say about Pelosi soon, but this was just one of the moments from the ACA fight when she defied skeptics all over Washington -- and within her own caucus.
"By sheer will, she turned that room around."
Here, via Dr. Slaoui, are the number of people who will get vaccinated each month if both Pfizer & Moderna get speedy approval:
20M in Dec
30M in Jan
50M in Feb
Yes, that's people, not doses. Enough to reach high-risk population.
h/t
@megtirrell
for asking question
Cornyn just now, on Fox News: "This is not a bill that is designed primarily to benefit the wealthy and the large businesses."
This is *exactly* what the bill would do.
In most of America, the story was about a red wave that never materialized
In Michigan, the story was about a blue wave that made history
This is what it looked like
Heard from a lot of people in health care this past week, in administration and on the front lines.
They know a coronavirus patient surge is coming. They know what kind of capacity the system has. And they are worried.
Not creating a special ACA enrollment period makes no sense unless carrying on your crusade against "Obamacare" is more important to you than addressing a public health crisis.
Read
@JeffYoung
The image of Democrats as ruthless operatives who break all the rules is standard right wing fare these days. Have never understood this coming from party of Bush V Gore, filibuster escalation, Garland, etc., and wonder sincerely how much is self delusion.
Reading conservative Twitter threads on Kavanaugh and am struck by the absolute conviction that Ford’s allegations are part of a Democratic plot, and that the GOP has ruinously tied itself to norms and decorum while Democrats are ruthless political operators.
Pete Stark died today, his family announced.
The former congressman was a sometimes obstreperous, always unapologetic liberal back when such politics were out of fashion.
Health care was his cause and his legacy, per this 2013
@jrovner
article.
RIP
Not a typo. From the statement:
“We have received reports ... that the children arriving here are much younger than those who have been transported here in the past. Some of the children are infants as young as three months of age.”
HHS spokesperson Caputo and his aides have targeted the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports — a pillar of U.S. medical research — arguing that scientists are intentionally trying to undermine Trump’s message.
This law is a direct consequence of the reaction to Parkland and there's a chance it's already preventing new tragedies from happening.
Change can be difficult and maddeningly slow. But it happens.
Police in Miami-Dade made their 12th gun seizure last week under FL’s new red flag law. Broward appears to be leading the state with 47 requests and 22 seizures.
Paul Ryan, like other Trump supporters, recently said there's "no evidence" of collusion. This is straight-up gaslighting.
Here's
@mattyglesias
with a reminder of what we *already* know:
So has anybody come up with a word for that thing where you check twitter, see something you want to read but the autorefresh moves it before you can click, and then you can't find it anywhere in your timeline?
Imagine a version of Obamacare that...
- reaches fewer people
- has more dysfunctional markets
- operates less efficiently
That's what Trump & Republicans are creating
UNC is a world-class research institution that brought in $1.2B in research funding last year.
Ending tenure would seriously undermine its ability to attract top faculty & grants.
Put aside academic freedom etc. Do these lawmakers grasp the economic implications here?