Roll Call:
A federal judge based in Green Bay has tossed a Sen. Ron Johnson’s Obamacare lawsuit targeting the health benefits for members of Congress and their staff.
The court dismissed the lawsuit, which contended the Obama administration decision to grant employer contributions for health plans purchased through the District of Columbia’s Obamacare health exchange ran afoul of the law.
Chief Judge William C. Griesbach of the Eastern District of Wisconsin ruled that Johnson and fellow plaintiff Brooke Ericson lacked standing, siding with the argument made by the government’s lawyers.
In making his judgement, Griesbach worked through several arguments that explained how the Office of Personnel Management regulation harmed the plaintiffs, finding none of them persuasive.
Huffington Post:
Dressed in black and carrying a mock coffin, a coalition of immigration activists paraded through the halls of the Dirksen and Hart Senate buildings on Monday morning as part of a protest of the Republican Party's stance on immigration.
During the staged funeral procession, demonstrators said that they wouldn't cry for the Republican Party or mourn its death because its politicians are out of touch on immigration and no longer represent their community.
"The Republican Party is essentially dead to our community. They have killed the dreams of thousands of people," said Greisa Martinez, an organizer with United We Dream, the youth-led immigration advocacy network that organized the event. Explaining that her mother is undocumented, Martinez said, "They have killed the dreams of my mother for not moving forward on immigration reform. They have killed the dreams of millions of people across the nation. And we're here to say, 'Enough.
More politics and policy below the fold.
Dara Lind/Vox:
14 facts that help explain America's child-migrant crisis
Ron Brownstein writes an important piece on same topic:
Regardless of how Congress handles his request for more border resources, President Obama is moving toward a historic—and explosive—executive order that will provide legal status to a significant number of the estimated 11.7 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. One senior White House official says that while "what's happening at the border will provide atmospherics for the [president's] decision," it won't stop him from acting on the undocumented—probably before the midterm elections. The resulting collision over Obama's expected action could lastingly define both the Democratic and Republican parties for the burgeoning Hispanic population.
NEJM:
THE RECORD TO DATE
Taking all existing coverage expansions together, we estimate that 20 million Americans have gained coverage as of May 1 under the ACA (FIGURE 3 Categories of Expanded Health Insurance Coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).). We do not know yet exactly how many of these people were previously uninsured, but it seems certain that many were. Recent national surveys seem to confirm this presumption. The CBO projects that the law will decrease the number of uninsured people by 12 million this year and by 26 million by 2017. Early polling data from Gallup, RAND, and the Urban Institute indicate that the number of uninsured people may have already declined by 5 million to 9 million and that the proportion of U.S. adults lacking insurance has fallen from 18% in the third quarter of 2013 to 13.4% in May 2014.
Andrew Prokop/Vox:
Chris Christie's chief economist resigns after years of inaccurate forecasts
But he still thinks he'll be president.
NY Times on Flight MH17 and analysis:
Wreckage Offers Clues on Why Flight 17 Went Down
Photographs of a piece of wreckage found by two reporters for The New York Times and analyzed by Reed Foster, a defense analyst with IHS Jane’s, offers some clues about what could have caused Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 to crash. While it is impossible from the photographs to determine that a specific missile was used, Mr. Foster said, the damage is consistent with the effects of a fragmentary warhead carried by an SA-11, the type of missile that American officials have said was most likely behind the attack. JULY 21, 2014
NY Times on the strategy:
President Vladimir V. Putin seems to be probing for a way out of the crisis of the downed Malaysia Airlines jet without appearing to compromise with the West