We begin today's roundup with
The New York Times and its analysis of Medicare and Medicaid successes and need for improvement and expansion:
Medicare and Medicaid, the two mainstays of government health insurance, turn 50 this month, having made it possible for most Americans in poverty and old age to get medical care. While the Affordable Care Act fills the gap for people who don’t qualify for help from those two programs, there are important improvements still needed in both Medicare and Medicaid.
[...] Medicare and Medicaid have changed and grown over the decades, through Republican and Democratic administrations, to meet new challenges. Their performance and popular support has allowed them to withstand ideologically-driven attacks on their continuance as government entitlements. These programs succeed, in fact, because they entitle all eligible Americans to receive the health care they need.
The Washington Post writes about the burning of black churches:
The incidents are under investigation, at least two of them likely accidents. The other four have not been identified as hate crimes. Still, the painful history of attacks on black churches is cause enough for concern. [...] It is not wrong to worry that the recent fires are the latest in a long line of hate. If Dylann Roof’s solo crusade in the name of white supremacy did not start the race war he yearned for, the subsequent backlash against the Confederate battle flag does seem to have invigorated racist groups. Supremacist Web sites spew vitriol. The neo-secessionist group League of the South has begun to channel fear of what it calls “cultural genocide” against the region into an opportunity for recruitment. It is hard to watch hatred surge and churches burn in so short a span of time and not wonder if the two are related. It is hard for African Americans in the South to see the same and not fear. Investigators should deliver answers as quickly as they can.
More on the day's top stories below the fold.
Over at the week, Ryan Cooper calls for increased investment in public housing:
It's time to bring back public housing in a big way. In cities that are facing a looming affordability crisis, it serves as a key bulwark that must be strengthened. [...] Of course, public housing has an absolutely terrible reputation, one that is partly deserved. Back in the 1950s and '60s, when much of the U.S.'s public housing was constructed, the dominant aesthetic was gigantic, poorly conceived towers that concentrate the very poor. They were also often constructed on land obtained by bulldozing existing low-income housing that was in equal or better shape.
However, as Rachel Cohen demonstrates in a sharp piece, what remains still serves as basically functional housing for 2.2 million Americans, many of whom would have nowhere else to go. In high-pressure rental markets like Washington, D.C., public housing is essentially the only low-income housing that's left.
Ross Eisenbrey at US News writes in support of President Obama's overtime pay changes:
On this Fourth of July, we gather with friends and family around barbeques and picnic tables across the country to celebrate the American patriots who built this country. But as many of us enjoy a well-deserved day off, millions of low- and middle-income workers are being required to work on a federal holiday without any sort of overtime compensation. [...]
Restoring the right to overtime pay will give millions of workers two things they sorely need: more time and more money. The Labor Department's proposed rule will help rebuild an economy that works for all Americans, not just the wealthy few.
The Denver Post calls out the US Chamber for fighting for deadly tobacco:
Yes, tobacco is a business and the Chamber of Commerce is the world's largest trade group. But there are limits to what it should defend, especially when many members of the Chamber are health care organizations involved in smoking cessation programs.
On a final note,
Colby Itkowitz asks why more Republicans won't dump Trump:
[T]he overall reaction from much of the rest of the Republican field has ranged from tepid criticism to, in at least one case, strong words of support.
Trump has put the rest of the GOP in a difficult position with his assertions that Mexico was sending "rapists," killers and drug dealers across the border into the United States. While most of the candidates would rather pretend Trump doesn't exist, the remarks -- and his refusal to disavow them -- have made that impossible [...] “They can’t control that debate,” he said in an interview prior to the blow up over Trump's remarks on Mexicans. “They’ve lost total control when Trump is in the room. They can make Rick Santorum change his opinion on an issue. Can’t do that with Trump. They’re screwed.”