Lucia Graves at The Guardian writes—John McCain had the chance to do the right thing on healthcare. He failed:
Had McCain simply voted no to the question of whether the Senate should begin debate on a repeal or replacement of Obamacare, which squeaked by in the Senate with a vote of 51-50, the chamber’s leader Mitch McConnell might well have been forced to do the very thing McCain claimed to want: restore the chamber to order.
Instead, McCain, who was recently and tragically diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer, and who returned to DC explicitly to help save the GOP healthcare bill, voted yes.[...]
The grim reality is that health insurance is of the utmost importance when it comes to surviving cancer, the second leading killer in America after heart disease. Put simply, the uninsured are much more likely to die than those with insurance – and sooner. [...]
The only question is whether it’s a matter of 22, 32 or “just” 15 million people who will lose access. What we can say with confidence is whatever version moves forward, McCain’s lost more than his good health – he’s lost his decency.
The Editorial Board of the Los Angeles Times opines—Trump's transgender tweet wasn't just the usual morning rant; it's dangerously bad policy:
In the pantheon of Donald Trump tweets, his three-part missive Wednesday morning declaring that transgender people would not be allowed in the military was not his most rude, mindless or irrational. But it is deeply troubling nevertheless. He essentially called for a step backward in time that goes counter to all the slow but necessary progress the United States has made in recent years in its treatment of transgender people. [...]
Shamefully, Trump made his toxic policy pronouncement on the anniversary of the day that President Truman ordered the military desegregated. What an ignoble way to mark that anniversary.
At the very least, the Defense Department should be allowed to finish its review. Trump should rescind his comments in tomorrow morning’s tweet storm.
Lynn Sweet at the Chicago Sun-Times writes—Trump leaves transgender troops in limbo:
President Donald Trump blindsided his own Defense Department and Congress when he announced via Twitter Wednesday a ban on transgender people serving in the military, a major policy shift so little thought out that Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders could not even say if it impacted soldiers on active duty.
You don’t treat soldiers willing to die for the nation that way.
This shabby treatment makes hollow Trump’s effusive praise just a few days ago — at the commissioning ceremony for the USS Gerald R. Ford — that “we are so very blessed with warriors who are willing to serve America in the greatest fighting force in the history — the United States military.”
Talk about fake.
Banning transgender people from the military now has popped into play, even though Trump pledged to stand by the LGBT community during his presidential campaign. As Trump said in this June 2016 Twitter post, “I will fight for you while Hillary brings in more people that will threaten your freedoms and beliefs.”
Talk about fake.
Richard Kim at The Nation writes—Donald Trump’s Ban on Transgender Troops Is Not a Distraction. It’s the point:
Look, I get it. The Russia scandal is a big fucking deal. Transgender people are a small fraction of the overall military, and transition-related costs consume at most 0.13% of annual healthcare expenditures for active-duty troops, all of which seems like less of a big fucking deal—unless of course you happen to be a transgender service member or vet. The manner in which Trump rolled out this reversal—apparently without consulting the Pentagon, even though he claimed he had—indicates that it was hastily planned, although such haphazard actions should be expected by now. And the timing—hours after the Senate failed to repeal and replace Obamacare—suggests some sort of strategery. Moreover, Trump has a long history of using Twitter to seek nothing more than ego gratification, or to indulge in petty feuds that are, yes, also a distraction. Chaos-Evil alignments are confusing that way.
But in this case, none of these tendencies should supplant a more basic truth. First and foremost, Trump’s announcement was transactional.
As both the New York Times and Politico reported, Trump intended his tweets as a sop to the far-right evangelical faction, led by Missouri Congresswoman Vicky Hartzler, which sought to bar the military from paying for transition surgery or hormone therapy for transgender service members, and which was threatening to withdraw support for Trump’s promised wall along the Mexican border until their demands were met. The GOP House leadership resisted. Trump caved—or at least tried to—in a pronouncement that far exceed Hartzler’s proposal. Whether or not his transactional politics succeeds presumably depends on his ability to carry out his promise, which will be challenged in courts, as well as the conservative faction’s acceptance of whatever happens next.
At The Guardian, Jill Abramson writes—Trump is a coward. At least it limits the damage he does:
Like most bullies, Donald Trump is really a coward.
Although he spent a dozen seasons on “The Apprentice” playing the boss who loved saying “You’re fired,” he doesn’t have the guts to lower the boom as president.
When he did fire former FBI director James Comey, he hid behind the skirts of deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein. With his beleaguered press secretary Sean Spicer he waited until the poor man resigned after weeks of mean-spirited critiques behind Spicey’s back, of everything from his suits to his speaking style. [...]
Cowards pick on the vulnerable. [...]
Cowards make empty threats. [...]
The president is lucky that unlike the Republicans in Nixon’s day, his party and its congressional members are cowards, too. There is no Howard Baker, asking “What did the president know and when did he know it,” or a Barry Goldwater, who had the courage to tell Nixon that his support in the Congress had crumbed to dust because of his lawlessness.
Trevor Timm at The Guardian writes—If Trump wants to fire Jeff Sessions, let him – it would be a gift to America:
Think about all the abhorrent policies Sessions has already put into motion in his five short months at the helm. He has provided legal backing for Trump’s extreme immigrations policies. He has argued that authorities can keep grandparents apart from their family when enforcing Trump’s controversial travel ban. He is laying the groundwork to crack down on the millions of people who use recreational marijuana in states where it is now legal. He has planned a crackdown on leakers and whistleblowers, while also refusing to rule out prosecuting news organizations directly for doing their job.
He plans on essentially dismantling the vital civil rights division at the justice department and giving local police officers a free hand to continue to discriminate against African Americans. He wants to reverse the Obama-era policy on mandatory minimum sentences and press for still longer terms, whose impact is so extreme they are rightly seen as racist. Sessions has rejected scientific findings about improving the forensic evidence process that has led to countless innocent people being thrown in prison. The list goes on.
Sessions is exerting more power over millions of Americans than any other Trump cabinet member and is an unmitigated disaster for civil rights, civil liberties and criminal justice reform. If Trump wants to fire him, then good!
At The Washington Post, E.J. Dionne Jr. writes—The norms of government are collapsing before our eyes:
The news is being reported on split screen as if the one big story in Washington is disconnected from the other. But President Trump’s lawless threats against Attorney General Jeff Sessions have a lot in common with the Senate’s reckless approach to the health coverage of tens of millions of Americans.
On both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, we are witnessing a collapse of the norms of governing, constant violations of our legitimate expectations of political leaders, and the mutation of the normal conflicts of democracy into a form of warfare that demands the opposition’s unconditional surrender.
Trump’s latest perverse miracle is that he has progressives — along with everyone else who cares about the rule of law — rooting for Sessions. The attorney general is as wrong as ever on voter suppression, civil rights enforcement and immigration. But Sessions did one very important thing: He obeyed the law.
At TomDispatch, William D. Hartung writes—The Hidden Costs of “National Security” Ten Ways Your Tax Dollars Pay for War -- Past, Present, and Future:
You wouldn’t know it, based on the endless cries for more money coming from the military, politicians, and the president, but these are the best of times for the Pentagon. Spending on the Department of Defense alone is already well in excess of half a trillion dollars a year and counting. Adjusted for inflation, that means it’s higher than at the height of President Ronald Reagan’s massive buildup of the 1980s and is now nearing the post-World War II funding peak. And yet that’s barely half the story. There are hundreds of billions of dollars in “defense” spending that aren’t even counted in the Pentagon budget.
Under the circumstances, laying all this out in grisly detail -- and believe me, when you dive into the figures, they couldn’t be grislier -- is the only way to offer a better sense of the true costs of our wars past, present, and future, and of the funding that is the lifeblood of the national security state. When you do that, you end up with no less than 10 categories of national security spending (only one of which is the Pentagon budget). So steel yourself for a tour of our nation’s trillion-dollar-plus “national security” budget. Given the Pentagon’s penchant for wasting money and our government’s record of engaging in dangerously misguided wars without end, it’s clear that a large portion of this massive investment of taxpayer dollars isn’t making anyone any safer.
At The Nation, Robert L. Borosage writes—Democrats Are Finally Waking Up Two new economic agendas are moving the party in a starkly populist direction:
Congressional Democrats rolled out an economic agenda for the 2018 elections this week, and despite its bland title, “A Better Deal: Better Jobs, Better Wages, Better Future,” the agenda reflects the growing strength and influence of the populist movement inside the Democratic Party.
Meanwhile, Our Revolution, the group that grew out of Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign, along with the National Nurses Union, Fight for 15, People’s Action, and others launched the “Summer for Progress,” an activist push to get at least half of the Democratic House caucus to endorse the “People’s Platform,” another stab at an economic agenda for Democrats. The contrast between the two documents reveals the both the scope and the limits of the new Democratic consensus.
Both documents assume that resistance is not enough. “Democrats have failed to articulate a strong, bold economic program…. We also failed to communicate our values to show that we were on the side of working people, not the special interests. We will not repeat the same mistake,” said the “Better Deal” agenda from Democratic Congressional leadership. The groups pushing the “Summer for Progress” agreed: Democrats “must lay out a bold vision for how we create a country that works for everyone—not just the very wealthy.”
Both the People’s Platform and the Better Deal agenda are designed to offer a small number of bold, clear reforms to put before voters. The Better Deal agenda is focused on the economy; the People’s Platform includes broader issues. Neither is intended to be a comprehensive platform. Foreign-policy and national-security issues are excluded, as are most social issues.
Susan Monyak at The New Republic writes—Republican congressmen keep implying they want to do violent things to female senators:
Republican congressmen keep implying they want to do violent things to female senators.
Representative Buddy Carter of Georgia used some choice language on Wednesday in his criticism of Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski. Speaking to MSNBC’s Ali Velshi, Carter defended Donald Trump’s Twitter attack against Murkowski, who, along with Susan Collins of Maine, were the only two Republican senators to vote against the motion to proceed on the GOP’s health care legislation earlier this week. When asked what he thought about the president’s attack, Carter replied, “I think it’s perfectly fair. Let me tell you, somebody needs to go over there to that Senate and snatch a knot in their ass.”
In case you’re wondering what in the world that means, Urban Dictionary defined “snatch a knot” as: “To hit someone, usually used in a threat of punishment or retribution. A knot is generally snatched in one’s ass, though variants include the neck and the head.”
Jeet Heer at The New Republic writes—The Rot of the Republican Party Is Nearly Complete:
It’s hardly news that McCain’s soaring speeches are belied by his own actions. Still, the yawning gap between McCain’s votes and his criticism of the GOP health care effort is a microcosm of the core problem: The Republican Party is so intellectually bankrupt that they are pushing ahead with a plan that they themselves know is terrible, merely so they can put a point on the scoreboard. This did not happen overnight, and it’s showing no signs of abating. Rather, it’s only getting worse under Trump, and there’s no telling what damage they will do together before voters get wise to it.
How did the Republicans end up with such a mess? Don’t accept McCain’s account that “both sides have let this happen.” The fact is, while Obamacare was passed with only Democratic votes, it was the work of a party that takes policy seriously, that openly debated every aspect of the Affordable Care Act for months before it passed, that allowed the bill to be scrutinized by the Congressional Budget Office, that held town halls and public hearings. Trumpcare, by contrast, is being jammed through what Vox’s Dylan Scott calls “an unprecedentedly opaque process” with “no final text” and “no Congressional Budget Office score.”