NY Times:
As Republicans in Washington grapple with how to meet their promise of undoing the greatest expansion of health care coverage since the Great Society, they are struggling with what may be an irreconcilable problem: bridging the vast gulf between the expectations of blue-collar voters like Mr. Waltimire who propelled Mr. Trump to the presidency, and longstanding party orthodoxy that it is not the federal government’s role to provide benefits to a wide swath of society…
For all the focus on demands by the party hard-liners that the repeal-and-replace bill be less expansive, there is also rising concern among mainline Republicans from states with large numbers of lower-income whites about a backlash. The group includes Mr. Portman, as well as Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia.
“The folks who Hillary Clinton called the ‘deplorables’ are actually those who want better coverage, who we’d be hurting if we don’t change this bill,” Mr. Cassidy said, noting that Mr. Trump promised “he’d give them better care.”
The senator, a physician who once worked in his state’s charity hospital network, bluntly said that the philosophical debate was over and that his party ought to be pragmatic about how best to create a more cost-efficient and comprehensive health care system.
We will help them only after the current effort fails, and they own the failure.
Vox (from Dec):
The question is not whether Republicans will end coverage for millions. It is when they will do it. Oller’s three years of work could very much be undone over the next three years.
In southeastern Kentucky, that idea didn’t seem to penetrate at all — not to Oller, and not to the people she signed up for coverage.
“We all need it,” Oller told me when I asked about the fact that Trump and congressional Republicans had promised Obamacare repeal. “You can’t get rid of it.”
NY Times on Trump’s temperament:
Once again, Mr. Trump’s agenda was subsumed by problems of his own making, his message undercut by a seemingly endless stream of controversy he cannot seem to stop himself from feeding.
The health care measure appears on track for a House vote this week, and the president, who planned a weekend of relaxation at Mar-a-Lago, his Palm Beach, Fla., club, is likely to receive a large measure of the credit. But it has also become clear that Mr. Trump, an agitator incapable of responding proportionately to any slight, appears hellbent on squandering his honeymoon.
Instead, he has sowed chaos in his own West Wing, and talked or tweeted his way into trouble, over and over again.
Greg Sargent/WaPo:
A new CNN poll out this morning tests one of the fundamental tenets of the Trump and Bannon worldview in a very illuminating way. It finds that large majorities reject the basic idea that undocumented immigrants who have been in this country for a long time — and have not committed serious crimes — should nonetheless be subject to removal.
It’s the latest sign of a larger trend that goes like this: Little by little, the narrative that President Trump and his top adviser, Stephen K. Bannon, have been telling about what is happening in this country is getting translated into concrete policy specifics. And Americans are recoiling from the results.
Vox:
Trump's budget has a radical plan for remaking US foreign policy
During a 1954 White House luncheon, Winston Churchill told the assembled notables that “to jaw-jaw always is better than to war-war.” Diplomacy, Churchill had come to believe, was capable of resolving conflict more reliably and at far lower cost than any kind of military action.
President Trump’s budget outline is what would happen if one reversed Churchill’s principle entirely, and then built a government around it...
“He wants to value what’s visible and doesn’t care about what’s invisible, even if it actually does something,” Dan Drezner, a professor at Tufts University’s Fletcher School, says of Trump. “This is thinking that I’m going to add an addition to my house, and I’m going to do so by not paying my home insurance.”
BBC interviews Louise Mensch for 6 minutes here. Keep in mind much of what she says is in nutter territory. She gets facts right and connects the dots in a crazy manner. Be aware of the crazy. For example, check out the argument about “peddling wild conspiracy theories” such as Putin murdering Andrew Breitbart (which she states she believes); be careful how you use her theories and arguments.
Andrew Neil interviewed former Conservative MP Louise Mensch about claims of Russian involvement in the US presidential election.
More from BuzzFeed:
Russia Critic Sparks Feud At The New York Times
An opinion piece [link] by controversial writer and former UK member of Parliament Louise Mensch mentions her FISA warrant story, which Times reporters have knocked down. “The NYT newsroom disagrees with her baseless claims,” a Times reporter said.
See also this piece from Lloyd Grove/Daily Beast:
Russia expert Tom Nichols, a professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College, publicly scolded Mensch last month for her claim that Putin had Andrew Breitbart whacked.
“This is crazy talk,” Nichols tweeted. “And undermines the important point that Russia has done real things for which it must be held accountable.”
“She’s batshit crazy, OK?” Nance told The Daily Beast. “She is a fruit loop of the highest order.”
Mensch fired back: “I am unfazed by little people snapping at my heels.”
Grain of salt, folks.
KFF:
Medicaid’s Role in Addressing the Opioid Epidemic
Michael A. Cohen/Boston Globe:
There is no greater challenge in covering national politics these days than simply trying to keep up with the daily outrages emanating from Washington. Take, for example, the fact that, two weeks ago, all we were talking about was the fact that Jeff Sessions, the attorney general and nation’s highest law enforcement official, lied to Congress. This week you hear only crickets on Sessions.
But here’s one story that should not fall through the cracks: Representative Steve King of Iowa. Earlier this week King shared an article on Twitter offering his support for the Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who has based his political ascendancy on bashing Muslim immigrants. King added the words, “Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny. We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.”