NY Times:
Senate Republicans Lay Low on the Fourth, or Face Single-Minded Pressure
Mr. Manchin’s Republican colleague in West Virginia, Senator Shelley Moore Capito, was not here on Tuesday as she had been two years earlier. She released a YouTube message but had no public events for the day. The Republican senator next door in Ohio, Rob Portman, had none either. Nor did the two Republican senators in Iowa. The parades in Colorado proceeded without Senator Cory Gardner.
It is a tough summer for Senate Republicans, who are trying to combine a long-promised repeal of the Affordable Care Act with a replacement that has, in legislation drafted so far, been as popular as sunburn. Protesters have held sit-ins at Senate offices, phone lines have been jammed and editorial writers have blasted their states’ congressional delegations. Planes have even flown admonitory, if occasionally poorly conceived, banners over state capitals.
Aaron E. Carroll and Austin Frakt/NY Times:
Medicaid Worsens Your Health? That’s a Classic Misinterpretation of Research
What is the basis for the argument that poor Americans will be healthier if they are required to pay substantially more for health care? It appears that proponents like Ms. Verma have looked at research and concluded that having Medicaid is often no better than being uninsured — and thus that any private insurance, even with enormous deductibles, must be better. But our examination of research in this field suggests this kind of thinking is based on a classic misunderstanding: confusing correlation for causation.
Jef Pollock/Daily News:
I talk to people about guns a lot. As a pollster for races across the nation, and often in traditional “gun country” states like Montana and West Virginia, there is no avoiding the issue on the campaign trail.
Often, well-meaning campaign staff and insiders are wary of the subject, hoping to avoid it, explaining that “guns are hard in our state.” We hear it all the time: “guns are hard in New Hampshire, guns are hard Arizona, guns are hard . . . everywhere.”
But the truth is, the American public has evolved far faster than the political class when it comes to gun laws. Go to any focus group in states with the highest gun ownership rates in this country, and you’ll hear avid hunters, Second Amendment-supporting voters, proclaim that protecting their right to bear arms is a huge priority for them — while at the same time, they are exasperated with the politicians who can’t seem to make any progress on doing more to prevent gun violence.
Paul Waldman/WaPo:
The problem with ‘But Trump’s base loves it!’
So if we say that “Trump’s base” likes what he does with Twitter, we have to acknowledge that the “Trump’s base” we’re referring to is a minority of Republicans. That puts the question of whether this is a clever strategy in a very different light.
That doesn’t mean it isn’t a strategy at all, only that if it is, it’s probably a foolish one. Perhaps the most revealing story about White House thinking of late was this article from Philip Rucker and Ashley Parker after Trump’s repugnant attacks on Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, in which they revealed that “to many inside the White House, as well as outside allies, what looked like a public relations debacle amounted to an abundance of ‘winning.’ ” There was a caveat, however: “Some White House advisers said they were frustrated that the Brzezinski feud … overtook the president’s fight with CNN, which seemed in their eyes to have clearer villains and heroes.”
Soak that in for a moment — they were worried that his feud with the hosts of “Morning Joe” might distract from his far more productive and important feud with CNN. We should remember that the next time anyone suggests that the Trump White House is staffed by shrewd operators who know what they’re doing.
ADL:
ADL’s Center on Extremism, which tracks extremism and hate online and offline, has looked closely at the activity of Reddit user HanAssholeSolo, who appears to have created the version of the edited clip tweeted by the president and posted it on a sub-Reddit commonly used by President Trump supporters.
Indeed, this user appears to be delighted by the attention his clip has generated. “Holy S---!!,” the individual wrote yesterday. “I wake up and have my morning coffee and who retweets my s---post but the MAGA EMPEROR himself!!! I am honored.” In response, another Reddit user remarked, “Also, now it’s confirmed that Trump sees our memes.”
A closer look at HanAssholeSolo Reddit activity reveals an 18-month record of vile comments and memes against Muslims, African-Americans, Jews and others. And some, like the edited clip of Trump at WrestleMania, seem to glorify violence. For example, in a post about George Soros, HanAssholeSolo wrote: "His [George Soros'] dead bloated corpse being dragged through the streets would be my satisfaction."
AP:
A Syrian doctor says he won’t return to the United States to finish his studies at Brown University because of the Trump administration’s travel ban.
Khaled Almilaji said Wednesday there’s too much uncertainty, even though he possibly could get a student visa under the scaled-back version of the ban, which could go into effect as early as Thursday.
President Donald Trump first ordered a refugee and travel ban aimed at seven Muslim-majority nations, including Syria, shortly after taking office in January. After a federal judge struck it down, he issued a revised order, which was also blocked. The Supreme Court will take up the legality of the ban in October, and in the meantime said this week a limited version could go into effect.
WaPo:
Two thousand years ago, Roman builders constructed vast sea walls and harbor piers. The concrete they used outlasted the empire — and still holds lessons for modern engineers, scientists say.
A bunch of half-sunken structures off the Italian coast might sound less impressive than a gladiatorial colosseum. But underwater, the marvel is in the material. The harbor concrete, a mixture of volcanic ash and quicklime, has withstood the sea for two millennia and counting. What's more, it is stronger than when it was first mixed.
The Roman stuff is “an extraordinarily rich material in terms of scientific possibility,” said Philip Brune, a research scientist at DuPont Pioneer who has studied the engineering properties of Roman monuments. “It's the most durable building material in human history, and I say that as an engineer not prone to hyperbole.”
By contrast, modern concrete exposed to saltwater corrodes within decades.