As is often the case with late breaking news, the French election results were too late for most of the pundits to comment on just yet. Meanwhile blowback from the House lemming vote on AHCA continues apace.
Daily Beast:
Did Macron Outsmart Campaign Hackers?
The mainstream French media carried the Macron campaign statement, but virtually nothing else. In addition to the normal proscription of campaign “propaganda” on election eve, the government issued a statement saying specifically that anyone disseminating the materials in this dump in France could be liable to prosecution, and calling on the media to shoulder their “responsibility” by steering clear of them.
Meanwhile, Wikileaks jumped on the document dump, but didn’t seem to be familiar with the material in it. Responding to the Macron statement that some of the items were bogus, Wikileaks tweeted, “We have not yet discovered fakes in #MacronLeaks & we are very skeptical that the Macron campaign is faster than us.”
Ah, but there’s the rub. As reported by The Daily Beast, part of the Macron campaign strategy against Fancy Bear (also known as Pawn Storm and Apt28) was to sign on to the phishing pages and plant bogus information.
“You can flood these [phishing] addresses with multiple passwords and log-ins, true ones, false ones, so the people behind them use up a lot of time trying to figure them out,” Mounir Mahjoubi, the head of Macron’s digital team, told The Daily Beast for its earlier article on this subject.
NY Times:
‘No District Is Off the Table’: Health Vote Could Put House in Play
Democrats are recruiting challengers aggressively, even in conservative-leaning districts, importuning an eclectic group of could-be candidates that includes a Minnesota gelato baron, a former candidate for governor of Kansas and the mayor of Syracuse.
“No district is off the table,” said Representative Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico, the House Democratic campaign chairman, who vowed that Democrats would cast the widest possible net.
Ross Douthat/NY Times:
The Republicans were given a gift by Trump’s campaign, a grace they did not merit: the gift of freedom from the trap of dogma, from the pre-existing condition of zombie Reaganism, from an agenda out of touch with the concerns of their actual constituents. Nominating Trump wasn’t as suicidal as it seemed only because he had the political cunning to run against the party’s ideological enforcers, while promising working-class voters not just cultural acknowledgment but material support.
As written, the A.H.C.A. basically takes Trump’s gift to the party and hurls it off the highest possible cliff. It is not just the scale of the likely insurance losses, or how much the rich benefit from repeal relative to everybody else. It’s also the gulf between that reality and what Trump and various Republican leaders explicitly promised — insisting that their plan would deliver better coverage, lower premiums, and a lot of other things that have since taken a back seat to making room in the budget for more tax cuts.
EJ Dionne/WaPo:
Yes, House Republicans, the heartless health-care vote will define you
It is said that the Senate will save House Republicans from the consequences of their craven heartlessness. No one should count on this in light of the hatred in the GOP for a law named after Barack Obama; the misguided fantasy that “the market” can cure whatever ails our health care system; the insatiable desire to keep shoveling money to the wealthiest Americans in tax relief; and the eagerness to slash and slash where programs for low-income Americans are concerned. On all these matters, pay heed to Paul Ryan: This is who they are. This defines them.
And the rest of us should never forget it.
Dan Diamond/Politico:
Trump’s new opioids strategy ‘devastates’ advocates
A proposal to slash funding for the drug control office is the latest worrying sign, advocates say.
"It’s devastating," said Kevin Sabet, who worked in the decades-old Office of National Drug Control Policy, advising the Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama administrations. "It’s the biggest cut I’ve ever seen or had to deal with."
It's the latest item in the Trump agenda that addiction advocates fear would erode the government's ability to fight an epidemic killing more than 47,000 Americans per year. Since taking office, the Trump administration has fought to pass an Obamacare repeal bill that would result in millions more without coverage; fired a surgeon general who led an unprecedented study of the opioid crisis; proposed billions of dollars of cuts to public health funding; and signaled a return to the tough-on-drugs approach to fighting addiction.
Chad Stone/US News:
The 'Repeal and Replace' Ruse
House Republicans' alternative to Obamacare went from bad to worse.
The GOP's promise to repeal and replace Obamacare is one of history's greatest false advertising campaigns. Republicans falsely claimed that Obamacare was failing, they never had an adequate substitute in mind, and they promised that their replacement would be better, cheaper and more available than Obamacare. In fact, as Vox's Matt Yglesias succinctly observes, they betrayed all their promises.
Politico:
Georgia Democrat Jon Ossoff has drawn notice for the legions of Democrats volunteering, donating and voting at unusually high rates to support his campaign. But Ossoff has also quietly attracted a small but potentially pivotal share of Republican support in his special election race, according to a new analysis of the April 18 primary — one major reason why the two-month runoff for Tom Price’s old district is expected to be so close and hard-fought.
The voter-file analysis of the special primary was conducted by Optimus Consulting, a Republican data-analytics firm that has been observing the Georgia race. The voter file allows Optimus and others to dig for details about who exactly turned out for the first round of the special election, and how they likely voted.
James Hohmann/WaPo:
THE BIG IDEA: An uncovered dynamic in the current health care fight is the degree to which congressional Democrats have held together in unified opposition.
There are 10 Democratic senators and a dozen House members up for reelection next year in places Donald Trump carried. Not one has defected to support the GOP effort to unravel Obamacare or even gone wobbly. House Republicans, who voted in unison dozens of times to repeal the law when they knew it was just for show, are now the ones struggling to get on the same page.
The complexion of the House Democratic caucus has changed, as Blue Dogs got wiped out and the base of the party moved to the left. Of the 34 Democrats who voted against the Affordable Care Act when it passed in 2010, only three remain: Collin Peterson of Minnesota, Daniel Lipinski of Illinois and Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts. Each is against the GOP push to undo the law.