We have two themes: Russian connection haunts Trump forever, and what happens to Obamacare repeal?
The Hill (22 GOP no votes needed to block):
The Hill's Whip List: Where Republicans stand on ObamaCare repeal plan
HOUSE REPUBLICANS No (18) [as of this moment 22]
My expectation is it passes. But it will be tight.
Jill Lawrence/USA Today:
The Republican reckoning on health care
You don't have to be a conservative to see that the health law needs changes to stabilize insurance markets and consumer costs, and it would be wondrous (not to mention smart and practical politics) to behold the two parties working together to fix this landmark law. But nor should you have to be a bleeding-heart humanitarian to see that it’s in our national economic interest to have a healthy population that doesn’t live in fear of illness, death, insurance cutoffs or medical bankruptcy.
There's a reason six in 10 Americans say the government should make sure people have health coverage. There’s a reason Cole Porter wrote these lyrics in 1940: “I still got my health, so what do I care.”
There’s no need more universal or fundamental.
Michael Gerson/WaPo:
Every new administration has a shakeout period. But this assumes an ability to learn from mistakes. And this would require admitting mistakes. The spectacle of an American president blaming a Fox News commentator for a major diplomatic incident was another milestone in the miniaturization of the presidency.
Politico:
Live updates: Will Obamacare be repealed under Trump?
A group of hardline conservatives is still promising to make life difficult for the GOP leadership.
Monday night tweaks to the House bill — which included concessions to both the party’s conservative and moderate wings — have already reaped some rewards. Four centrist Republicans committed last night to backing the bill, bringing the GOP closer to the 216 votes its needs for Thursday’s scheduled vote.
But the margin remains tight, and a group of hardline conservatives is still promising to make life difficult for the GOP leadership. The House Freedom Caucus — which counts about 20 to 30 members — emerged from negotiations unimpressed with the final bill and is vowing not to back down even as Republican leadership and the White House turns up the heat.
Noah Rothman/Commentary:
So much for ‘RyanCare’
Paul Ryan outmaneuvered the Trump wing on health care.
Ryan’s calculations are correct. While some GOP moderates in Congress think the bill is too conservative, most of the Republicans in Ryan’s conference predisposed to oppose this bill hail from red districts where Trump is popular, but the Speaker is not. Trump needs this bill to pass as much as Ryan does; it would be unheard of for a new president’s first major legislative initiative to fail as a result of opposition from within his own party’s ranks.
Trump’s reported pledge to support primary challenges against Republican holdouts is, in a way, a potent one. Conservative members who balk at voting for a bill their constituents see as too liberal aren’t going to be punished for voting their principles. Voters may be persuaded to abandon their representatives, however, if the issue isn’t the GOP’s health care bill but a litmus test measuring loyalty to President Trump.
That threat only works if the American Health Care Act is seen as a proxy for Trump, and that means the president has to endorse it enthusiastically. He’s done just that. Whether the White House likes it or not, it’s “TrumpCare” from this point forward. Clearly, that’s just how Paul Ryan wanted it.
I expect it to pass the House. It sucks as legislation but they are desperate for a win, and they’d then blame the Senate.
Michael A Cohen/Boston Globe:
Welcome to Donald Trump’s bizarro America
Following the lead of pretty much every public official who has commented on this story, Comey quickly and decisively shot down the president. “I have no information that supports those tweets,” said Comey. He then went a step further and said that the Department of Justice had asked him to pass along that it too “has no information that supports those tweets.” The head of the National Security Agency, Mike Rogers, took a similar view and said there was no evidence to support Trump’s assertions.
Read between the lines and what we have here are the director of the FBI and the director of the National Security Agency, in effect, calling the president of the United States a liar.
Click here and follow the above thread.
Zack Beauchamp/Vox:
The FBI probe into Trump and Russia is huge news. Our political system isn’t ready for it.
We’re so used to reports on Trump’s Russia ties that it’s easy to lose sight of the enormity here: There is an official FBI investigation into a presidential campaign’s possible collusion with a hostile foreign power for the first time in US history. Seasoned national security reporters, like the New York Times’s Matt Rosenberg, can scarcely believe it:
German Lopez/Vox:
“If it wasn’t for insurance, I wouldn’t be here”: how Obamacare’s end would worsen the opioid crisis
The opioid epidemic now kills more Americans each year than HIV/AIDS did at its peak. Obamacare’s repeal would make it worse.
Congressional Republicans, with Trump’s support, have explicitly taken aim at these policies. They want to undo the Obamacare-funded Medicaid expansion. They want to repeal coverage requirements that mandate insurers, including Medicaid, cover addiction treatment. They want to make Obamacare’s tax credits less generous. And they would achieve all of that with the bill, the American Health Care Act, that’s now working through the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.
Howard Fineman/HuffPost:
The Trump-Russia Story Has Only Just Begun (To Explode)
Not since Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal has an investigative hearing made it so clear that a presidency was in serious legal peril.
Let’s step back for a minute and consider again what we saw Monday in a hearing room of the U.S. House.
The director of the FBI, with the director of the National Security Agency agreeing at his side, in effect called the president of the United States a liar ― and, oh, by the way, the president’s 2016 campaign indeed is under investigation for allegedly having secretly teamed up with Russia to win the election.