Trump Is Blocking A Pandemic Relief Package To Prevent Congress From Keeping The Post Office Alive

On Wednesday, Trump, lying, tried stampeding Congress and bending it to his will by declaring there won't be a pandemic relief package. The Washington Post reported that " A new attempt to restart economic relief negotiations between the White House and Democrats ended just minutes after it began on Wednesday, with President Trump appearing to cast doubt on the whole process by announcing a deal is "not going to happen." The sociopath in the White House said "The bill’s not going to happen because they don’t even want to talk about it, because we can’t give them the kind of ridiculous things that they want that have nothing to do with the China virus."

The Reuters story made it clear what he's up to: trying to wreck the U.S. Post office in the hope of being more easily able to steal the election in November. Patricia Zengerle and David Morgan reported that on Thursday he said "his team was rejecting Democrats’ bid to include funds for the U.S. Postal Service and to shore up election infrastructure in a new coronavirus relief bill, as he vowed to block money to facilitate mail-in voting. Señor Trumpanzee: "The items are the post office and the $3.5 billion for mail-in voting. If we don’t make the deal, that means they can’t have the money, that means they can’t have universal mail-in voting. It just can’t happen." Zengerle and Morgan reminded their readers that "Roughly one in four U.S. voters cast their ballots by mail in 2016, and Trump himself has voted by mail. But Trump and his fellow Republicans have criticized state efforts to make voting by mail more widely available, saying without evidence it could lead to widespread fraud. Election exerts say mail voting is as secure as any other method."

Pelosi said any coronavirus relief bill should include billions of dollars to protect not just Americans’ right to vote but also essential services, like mailing prescription medicines, during the pandemic.

“You would think they’d have a little sensitivity, but so obsessed are they to undermine absentee voting that this is their connection there,” Pelosi told reporters. “So the president says he’s not putting up any money for absentee voting and he’s not putting up any money for the Postal Service, undermining the health of our democracy.”

...New Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who has donated $2.7 million to Trump and his fellow Republicans since 2017, has ordered operational changes and a clampdown on overtime in a bid to fix the financially troubled Postal Service, which reported a net loss of $2.2 billion in the last quarter.

Cost-cutting measures put in place by DeJoy have led to mail delays across the country, raising concerns that they could complicate mail-based voting. State election officials have scrambled to expand mail-voting capacity as experts say the pandemic could prompt up to half of all U.S. voters to cast their ballots by mail.

The Postal Service in recent months has encouraged election officials to send their ballots using regular first-class mail, rather than the cheaper and slower bulk mail rate that many states use, to ensure ballots are delivered in a timely manner.

In the past, the Postal Service has generally treated all election and political mail as if it were first-class, the service’s internal watchdog said in a 2019 report. That has caused some Democrats to accuse DeJoy of trying to undermine mail-in voting.

GOP sleaze-bags Steven Mnuchin and Mark Meadows are leading the charge for Trump. Lisa Mascaro reported for AP that "With talks stalemated, Trump has resorted to bypassing Congress, issuing the executive actions that Meadows warned would come if the White House failed to reach a deal. The president’s orders for jobless aid and other actions are only expected provide modest relief to some 20 million Americans at risk of eviction and even more who are out of work, halving unemployment assistance to $300 a week. On a conference call with Republican senators, Meadows and Mnuchin left the impression there are no new talks scheduled with Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi."

CNN went right to the point: Trump "opposes much-needed funding for the United States Postal Service because he doesn't want to see it used for mail-in voting this November. By directly linking USPS funding to mail-in voting, Trump is fueling allegations that he is trying to manipulate the postal system for political gain. The pandemic has led to record-shattering levels of voting-by-mail, but Trump has tried to restrict the voting method because he says it will hurt his re-election and Republicans across the board."

Biden's campaign manager, Andrew Bates: "The President of the United States is sabotaging a basic service that hundreds of millions of people rely upon, cutting a critical lifeline for rural economies and for delivery of medicines, because he wants to deprive Americans of their fundamental right to vote safely during the most catastrophic public health crisis in over 100 years."

This is a highly unpopular stance by Trump and Democratic congressional candidates are increasingly using it to beat up on the Trump enablers they're running against. Few members have been more slavishly devoted to Trump than Omaha's Donald Bacon and progressive Democrat Kara Eastman took him to task yesterday for his refusal to denounce Trump's efforts at sabotaging the post office (and the election). She noted that The US Postal Service employs over 600,000 Americans, including almost 100,000 veterans and that people of color comprise 40% of the USPS workforce. "Congressman Bacon, this continued attack on the Postal Service is undermining workers and serving to promote voter suppression," Eastman said. "The US Postal Service is an American institution, protected by the Constitution. Donald Trump and Republican politicians like Don Bacon have been trying to undermine it for years and are now sabotaging it to rig the election. This attack on the USPS is an attack on American service and values. It’s time for Bacon to stand up to his party and stop these attacks on one of our most basic and fundamental institutions."

"We cannot allow this administration to sabotage the Post Office so they can cheat the election. Folks across the nine counties of the Texas 10th district need the Post Office to safely vote by mail, get prescription medications delivered, or run their small business," said Mike Siegel, a public school teacher turned civil rights attorney running in the gerrymandered central Texas district to unseat Republican corporate crony Michael McCaul, an unabashed Trumpist. "My opponent has taken over $50,000 from corporate PACs with a direct interest in gutting the post office. I am not taking a dime of corporate PAC money."


Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) sits on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, where he serves as the chairman of the Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and is on 2 other subcommittees-- the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus and the Subcommittee on Government Operations, which is where all the action is on the Republican Party play to destroy the post office. "The GOP attack on the Post Office," he told me today, "is definitely a sinister attack on the 2020 Election itself and we must do everything we can to stop it. But it’s also more broadly an effort to kill American democracy. The Post Office has been a central crossroads and symbol of American communications, culture, and political community from the beginning of the Republic. In the name of our first postmaster Benjamin Franklin and all the other great Americans who worked for the Post Office, including Abraham Lincoln and Harry Truman, we must take down the campaign to destroy the Post Office. This is the struggle of our lifetime."

Southern California congressman and realist Ted Lieu wasn't sugar-coating the dire nature of this disaster. He told me today that "This election is too important for me to promise things to make you feel better but won’t actually happen. The stark truth is the House cannot adequately fund the Post Office without the consent of Trump. The only option is a veto override with the Republican controlled Senate. That is not going to happen. That means our only solution is to empower the voters. We need you to spread the word that if people are going to vote by mail, they need to mail their ballot at least 10 mailing days out from Nov 3, which would be Oct 22. That’s how we win."

Adam Christensen is the progressive Democrat trying to flip Ted Yoho's north-central Florida district blue. Much of that district is rural and dependent on the post office. "This attack on one of governments best run and organized agencies," he told me, "is an attack on rural America. It is an attack on small business owners and those that rely on USPS everyday for shipping. It is an attack on our towns and our neighbors who are tired of paying outrageous fees for basic services. Attempting to destroy good paying jobs in our community and replace them with corporate monopolies is what has killed our town centers for the last 30 years. The Republican party is dying but it appears that they want to finalize the destruction of the middle class on their way out."

Trump Has Given Up On The Pandemic-- The World Has Given Up On Trump

Opposition Research by Nancy Ohanian

Señor Trumpanzee has officially reached out to crazy right-wing governor Kristi Noem (R-SD) to find out what the process is for getting his likeness added onto Mount Rushmore. I'm not joking. I wonder how long it would take to dynamite it. Trump, apparently, doesn't understand it is supposed to represent the greatest and more admired American presidents, not the worst and most despised president.

Last week, the U.S. breezed through the 5 million confirmed cases mark. Because of Trump and his enablers another 63,246 cases were confirmed on Friday, 54,199 more cases on Saturday, and another 47,849 yesterday, bringing the total to 5,199,444-- about 2 million more than all of Europe combined (including Russia). The population of the U.S. is 331,002,651, while the population of Europe is 747,678,099. So why does Europe have 3,035,997 cases and the U.S. 5,199,444 cases? Donald J. Trumpanzee is the simple answer. A more complex answer-- though not a lot more complex-- would be that there are millions of people in the U.S. who freely voted to make Trumpanzee their leader, many of whom planning on voting for him again, despite the last 3 year of catastrophe. Toxic brew.

Over the weekend 4 Washington Post reporters, Philip Rucker, Yasmeen Abutaleb, Robert Costa, Josh Dawsey, collaborated on a piece, The Lost Days Of Summer: How Trump Fell Short In Containing The Virus, that shows how the Trumpist Regime has just given up on the pandemic. Former radical right psychopath North Carolina Congressman Mark Meadows-- current radical right psychopath Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is in charge of coordinating the executive branch, including its coronavirus response. "But," wrote The Post quarter, "in closed-door meetings, he has revealed his skepticism of the two physicians guiding the anti-pandemic effort, Deborah Birx and Anthony Fauci, routinely questioning their expertise. Meadows no longer holds a daily 8 a.m. meeting that includes health professionals to discuss the raging pandemic. Instead, aides said, he huddles in the mornings with a half-dozen politically oriented aides-- and when the virus comes up, their focus is more on how to convince the public that President Trump has the crisis under control, rather than on methodically planning ways to contain it. During coronavirus meetings, Meadows has repeatedly questioned the scientific consensus that wearing masks helps contain the spread of the novel coronavirus, officials said. He has regularly raised with Fauci and others a range of issues on which he thinks Fauci has been wrong, and he personally monitors the infectious-disease expert’s media appearances. When he catches Fauci sounding out of sync with Trump, the chief of staff admonishes the doctor to 'stay on message,' officials said-- and he has impressed upon Fauci, Birx and other public health professionals that they should not opine on restrictions or make policy in the media."

If the administration’s initial response to the coronavirus was denial, its failure to control the pandemic since then was driven by dysfunction and resulted in a lost summer, according to the portrait that emerges from interviews with 41 senior administration officials and other people directly involved in or briefed on the response efforts. Many of them spoke only on the condition of anonymity to reveal confidential discussions or to offer candid assessments without retribution.

“Right now, we’re flying blind,” said Thomas Frieden, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Public health is not getting in the way of economic recovery and schools reopening. Public health is the means to economic recovery and schools reopening. You don’t have to believe me. Look all over the world. The U.S. is a laggard.”

Under mounting pressure to improve the president’s reelection chances as his poll numbers declined, the White House had what was described as a stand-down order on engaging publicly on the virus through the month of June, part of a deliberate strategy to spotlight other issues even as the contagion spread wildly across the country. A senior administration official said there was a desire to focus on the economy in June.

It was only in July, when case counts began soaring in a trio of populous, Republican-leaning states-- Arizona, Florida and Texas-- and polls showed a majority of Americans disapproving of Trump’s handling of the pandemic, that the president and his top aides renewed their public activity related to the virus.

...Trump and many of his top aides talk about the virus not as a contagion that must be controlled through social behavior but rather as a plague that eventually will dissipate on its own. Aides view the coronavirus task force-- which includes Fauci, Birx and relevant agency heads-- as a burden that has to be managed, officials said.

...[I]n recent interviews, several governors and mayors in some of the nation’s hardest-hit areas questioned the president’s credibility and the value of his presentations.

“You can be out front, but if you’re not providing accurate and truthful information, it can hurt rather than help,” said Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner (D), whose city has been a major hot spot. “Correct information is vital. People are listening, and they will respond based on what they’re hearing. And they look to their leaders at all levels of government... That trust factor is critical. If you lose that, it’s very difficult to govern.”

Jack Chow, a U.S. ambassador for global HIV/AIDS during the George W. Bush administration and a former World Health Organization assistant director general, said, “It’s extraordinary that a country that helped eradicate smallpox, promoted HIV/AIDS treatment worldwide and suppressed Ebola-- we were the world’s leader in public health and medicine, and now we can’t even protect our own people from the most devastating epidemic in decades.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said Trump’s push for a speedy return to normal had deadly consequences. Asked who was to blame for the pandemic’s dark summer turn, Pelosi said, “1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.”

“The delay, the denial... the hoax that it’s going to go away magically, a miracle is going to happen, we’ll be in church together by Easter, caused death,” Pelosi added.

...Although Fauci, Birx and other medical professionals sit on the coronavirus task force, many of the more pressing decisions lately have been made by the smaller group that huddles in the morning and mostly prioritizes politics. The cadre includes Meadows, senior adviser Jared Kushner and strategic communications director Alyssa Farah.

The policy process has fallen apart around Meadows, according to four White House officials, with the chief of staff fixated on preventing leaks and therefore unwilling to expand meetings to include experts or to share documents with senior staffers who had been excluded from discussions. This breakdown in order, for instance, has given room for trade adviser Peter Navarro to push his ideas directly with Trump and to submit an opinion piece to USA Today attacking Fauci.

...Health officials said they have been dismayed that there is no consistent message from the White House advising what people should be doing to help stem the tide of coronavirus infections, such as wearing masks and social distancing. Some internal administration models suggest that full adherence to those measures could yield the same result as the shutdown, and officials recognize that it would be better for the public health and psyche of the nation and the economy if the country could avoid another full shutdown.

Luciana Borio, a director for medical and biodefense preparedness at the National Security Council during the first two years of the Trump administration, decried “a response in disarray hampered by a lack of clear, consistent public health-oriented guidance to the public.”

“It’s very difficult to know who to trust,” Borio said. “To expect the public to sort out the facts in a time of tremendous stress leads to inconsistent and disparate actions, and that really hurts our collective effort to fight the virus.”

What also has frustrated a number of the president’s allies and former aides is that he simply seems uninterested in asserting full leadership over the crisis, instead deferring to state leaders to make the more difficult decisions while using his presidential bully pulpit to critique their performances. He deputizes Pence to handle much of the actual communication with states and other stakeholders in the fight against the virus.

Since the start of the pandemic, the U.S. response has been plagued by a chronic shortage of diagnostic tests, the supplies needed to run them and the lab capacity to process them in a reasonable time to maximize their effectiveness, according to state officials.

The Trump administration has resisted devising a national testing program and instead ceded the task to state governments, even as cases of infection average more than 60,000 a day and some people wait 10 days or longer for test results, delays that render the results essentially useless.

State officials, leaders of the American Medical Association and other medical groups as well as some officials in the administration have pushed for a stronger federal solution to the problems of testing.

...Despite repeated calls to invoke the Defense Production Act to help resolve testing-supply shortages, the administration has resisted doing so. Trump and several White House aides have instead continued to think that it is politically advantageous to cede the issue to the states to avoid taking ownership or blame for the issue, even though testing shortages are largely seen as a federal failure.

“The thing that disturbs me is I think the public has to know it doesn’t have to be this way,” said Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-NJ) said. “Other countries have taken this virus seriously, trusted their public health officials and scientists, and now they’ve flattened the curve,” he said. “Meanwhile, our situation gets worse and worse every day and some Americans think, ‘Oh, that’s just the way it is.’ But that isn’t how it has to be.”

Even Trump has taken to sounding defeatist at times, as if he had given up trying to save lives. When the president claimed in a recent interview for HBO that the virus was “under control,” Axios reporter Jonathan Swan interjected.

“How?” Swan asked. “A thousand Americans are dying a day.”

“They are dying, that’s true,” Trump said. “It is what it is.”

Some people familiar with Trump’s thinking said the president is preternaturally averse to difficult challenges that don’t produce immediate results.

“He’s just not oriented towards things that even in the short term look like they’re involving something that’s hard or negative or that involves sacrifice or pain,” a former senior administration official explained. “He is always anxious to get to a place of touting achievements and being the messenger for good news.”

The Associated Press noted on Sunday that "the failure of the most powerful nation in the world to contain the scourge has been met with astonishment and alarm in Europe. Italy was hit first and hit hard, but "after a strict nationwide, 10-week lockdown, vigilant tracing of new clusters and general acceptance of mask mandates and social distancing, Italy has become a model of virus containment... Much of the incredulity in Europe stems from the fact that America had the benefit of time, European experience and medical know-how to treat the virus that the continent itself didn’t have when the first COVID-19 patients started filling intensive care units. Yet, more than four months into a sustained outbreak, the U.S. reached the 5 million mark... Health officials believe the actual number is perhaps 10 times higher, or closer to 50 million, given testing limitations and the fact that as many as 40% of all those who are infected have no symptoms.

With America’s world’s-highest death toll of more than 160,000, its politicized resistance to masks and its rising caseload, European nations have barred American tourists and visitors from other countries with growing cases from freely traveling to the bloc.

France and Germany are now imposing tests on arrival for travelers from “at risk” countries, the U.S. included.

...When the virus first appeared in the United States, Trump and his supporters quickly dismissed it as either a “hoax” or a virus that would quickly disappear once warmer weather arrived. At one point, Trump suggested that ultraviolet light or injecting disinfectants would eradicate the virus. (He later said he was being facetious).

Trump’s frequent complaints about Dr. Anthony Fauci have regularly made headlines in Europe, where the U.S. infectious-disease expert is a respected figure. Italy’s leading COVID-19 hospital offered Fauci a job if Trump fired him.

Trump has defended the U.S. response, blaming China, where the virus was first detected, for America’s problems and saying the U.S. numbers are so high because there is so much testing. Trump supporters and Americans who have refused to wear masks against all medical advice back that line.

“There’s no reason to fear any sickness that’s out there,” said Julia Ferjo, a mother of three in Alpine, Texas, who is “vehemently” against wearing a mask. Ferjo, 35, teaches fitness classes in a large gym with open doors. She doesn’t allow participants to wear masks.

“When you’re breathing that hard, I would pass out,” she said. “I do not want people just dropping like flies.”

And health officials watched with alarm as thousands of bikers gathered Friday in the small South Dakota city of Sturgis for an annual 10-day motorcycle rally. The state has no mask mandates, and many bikers expressed defiance of measures meant to prevent the virus’s spread.

Dr. David Ho, director of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, who is leading a team seeking treatments for COVID-19, decried such behavior, as well as the country’s handling of the virus.

“There’s no national strategy, no national leadership, and there’s no urging for the public to act in unison and carry out the measures together,” he said. “That’s what it takes, and we have completely abandoned that as a nation.”

When he gets on Zoom calls with counterparts from around the globe, “everyone cannot believe what they’re seeing in the U.S. and they cannot believe the words coming out of the leadership,” he said.

...Many Europeans point proudly to their national health care systems that not only test but treat COVID-19 for free, unlike the American system, where the virus crisis has only exacerbated income and racial inequalities in obtaining health care.

“The coronavirus has brutally stripped bare the vulnerability of a country that has been sliding for years,” wrote Italian author Massimo Gaggi in his new book Crack America (Broken America), about U.S. problems that long predated COVID-19.

Gaggi said he started writing the book last year and thought then that the title would be taken as a provocative wake-up call. Then the virus hit.

“By March the title wasn’t a provocation any longer,” he said. “It was obvious.”

At the same time, Rebecca Falconer reported at Axios that New Zealand also has a COVID election coming up, but a very different one for Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern than Trump's November reckoning. "New Zealand," wrote Falconer, "has now gone 100 days with no detected community spread of COVID-19... New Zealanders are going to the polls on Sept. 19. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has been widely praised for her leadership that saw NZ lock down hard for several weeks before all domestic restrictions were lifted in June. She sees her government's response to and recovery from the coronavirus outbreak as key to her Labour Party being re-elected. Ardern announced at a briefing Saturday that Labour's re-election campaign that is heavily focused on continuing with the economic recovery, pledging NZ$311 million ($205.32m) for a 'Flexi-wage' subsidy scheme to help businesses give jobs to some 40,000 Kiwis. Labour is well ahead in the polls of its nearest rival, the National Party, led by Judith Collins. But conservative Collins told RNZ Saturday she's still confident of winning under her party's platform 'Strong team, More Jobs, Better Economy.' Collins is the third leader to be appointed by the National Party this year. New Zealand has 23 active coronavirus cases. All are NZ residents newly returned from abroad, who are staying in managed isolation facilities. The border remains closed to non-residents and all newly returned Kiwis must undergo a two-week isolation program managed by the country's defense force. All travelers tested three times before they leave. Police are stationed outside hotels where travelers are in quarantine. Officers have taken prosecutorial action against several returned travelers who've breached these rules by fleeing the facilities under the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act."

Reporting solo for the Washington Post yesterday, Ashley Parker wrote that many people have just stopped caring what Trump says because everyone knows he's full of crap and nothing that comes out of his mouth is ever anything but attempted manipulation. "More than 3½ years into his presidency," wrote Parker, "Trump increasingly finds himself minimized and ignored-- as many of his more outlandish or false statements are briefly considered and then, just as quickly, dismissed. The slide into partial irrelevance could make it even more difficult for Trump as he seeks reelection as the nation’s leader amid a pandemic and economic collapse. In battling the coronavirus crisis, which has left more than 158,000 Americans dead, many of the nation’s governors have disregarded the president’s nebulous recommendations, instead opting for what they believe is best for their residents. So have the nation’s schools, with many of the country’s largest districts preparing for distance learning when they reopen this fall, despite Trump’s repeated calls for kids to return to classrooms in person. And the president’s own top public health officials are routinely contradicting him in public-- offering grim, fact-based assessments of the raging virus in contrast to his own frequently rosy proclamations."

North Carolina Fascist Mark Meadows Making His Move?

Buzz on Capitol Hill is that Mark Meadows may give up his safe House seat for a year-- if he lasts a year-- as Trump's chief of staff. No doubt he feels he won't be able to get anything done in a Congress firmly dominated by Democrats but could make a mark running the show for the chief executive described by Anonymous in A Warning as someone with severe attention deficit disorder.

"Take, for instance," wrote Anonymous, "the process of briefing the president of the United States, which is an experience that no description can fully capture. In any administration, advisors would rightfully want to be prepared for such a moment. This is the most powerful person on earth we are talking about. But before a conversation with him, you want to make sure you've got your main points lined up and a crisp agenda ready to present. You're about to discuss weighty matters, sometimes life-and-death matters, with the leader of the free world. A moment of utmost sobriety and purpose. The process does not unfold that way in the Trump administration, Briefings with Donald Trump are of an entirely different nature. Early on, briefers were told not to send lengthy documents. Trump wouldn't read them. Nor should they bring summaries to the Oval Office. If they must bring paper, then PowerPoint was preferred because he is a visual learner. Okay, that's fine, many thought to themselves; leaders like to absorb information in different ways. Then officials were told that PowerPoint decks needed to be slimmed down. The president couldn't digest too many slides. He needed more imagines to keep his interest-- and fewer words. Then they were told to cut back the overall message (on complicated issues such as military readiness or the federal budget) to just three main slides. Eh, that was still too much. Soon West Wing aides were exchanging 'best parctices' for success in the Oval Office. The most salient advice? Forget the three points. Come in with one main point and repeat it-- over and over again, even if the president inevitably goes off on tangents-- until he gets it. Just keep steering the subject back to it. ONE point. Just the one point. Because you cannot focus the commander in chief's attention on more than one goddamn thing over the course of a meeting, ok? Some officials refused to believe this is how it worked. 'Are you serious?' they asked, quizzing others who's briefed the president. How could they dumb down their work to this level? They were facilitating presidential decisions on major issues, not debates on where to go out for dinner... More changes were ordered to cater to Trump's peculiarities. Documents were dramatically downsized, and position papers became sound bites. As a result, complex proposals were reduced to a single page (or ideally a paragraph) and translated into Trump's 'winner and losers' tone."

Unfake News by Nancy Ohanian

In her review of the book, Jennifer Szalai wrote that "Attempts by the 'adults in the room' to impose some discipline on a frenzied (or nonexistent) decision-making process in the White House were 'just a wet Band-Aid that wouldn’t hold together a gaping wound,' Anonymous writes. The members of the 'Steady State' (the term 'Deep State' clearly stings) have done everything they can, to no avail. Anonymous is passing the baton to 'voters and their elected representatives'-- only now the baton is a flaming stick of dynamite."

This might seem ideal to a manipulative ideologue like Mark Meadows, who wrote that he always considered himself a "fat nerd" and who lied about getting a college degree when he just got an associates degree. before getting into Congress in 2012, he was a real-estate agent. He tried getting the chief of staff job for himself when Trump fired John Kelly in January and now, as Trump prepares to off Mulvaney, Meadows is trying again.

You think Trump's policy agenda is bad? Meadows' is in an entirely different dimension. Meadows is like a laser-focused modern-day Mussolini compared to Trump's bumbling Charlie Chaplin character.

David Drucker of the Washington Examiner wrote that Meadows recently "accompanied Trump to New York to attend a mixed martial arts fight and then joined the president a couple of days later for a campaign rally in Lexington, Kentucky-- trips and locales with no connection to the Republican congressman’s western North Carolina House district... Meadows's frequent presence in the White House, is leading some Republican aides and lawmakers in the House to believe the congressman is auditioning to become chief of staff."

Meadows, 60, is playing a critical role in the House Republican effort to undermine the Democratic case for impeachment, which centers around a telephone conversation Trump had with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The president asked Zelensky to open an investigation into Joe Biden, the former vice president, and his son, Hunter Biden. Democrats charge that Trump threatened to withhold U.S. military aid from Kyiv unless Zelensky complied.

...“He’s one of the president’s favorite members of the House and will be extremely important as this impeachment witch hunt moves forward,” said Jason Miller, a Republican operative who advised Trump’s 2016 campaign.

Given that, Republican insiders suspect that if Meadows does get the White House chief of staff post, it would become his until after the likely Senate trial concludes early next year. Meanwhile, Meadows is in a position to offer Trump a detailed, inside account of the unfolding impeachment proceedings.

So what happens if Trump does fire Mulvaney and replace him with Meadows? Well, aside from God save the country... there's the 11th district of North Carolina. Completely gerrymandered and with a PVI of R+14, it's the reddest congressional district in the state. Trump won it 63.2% to 34.0%, his best performance in North Carolina. The western district contains all or pieces of 16 counties. Meadows was reelected last year 178,012 (59.2%) to 116,508 (38.8%), losing just one county, Buncombe (even though Asheville was excised from the district to make it redder). Meadows spent $1,310,318 to Phillip Price's, his Democratic opponent, $232,177.

Price wants to run again this cycle and he's in a primary with Steve Woodsmall. Both are running on progressive platforms. This district was drawn to elect Republicans. Until the districts are redrawn to represent people not parties and politicians, NC-11 is pretty much unflippable.

No One Wants To Be Trumpanzee's Chief Of Staff. Can You Blame Them?

Eliana Johnson and Alex Isenstadt, in their reporting for Politico, reminded readers what a top of the pile DC job presidential chief of staff is. But for the two Trump has gone through, Reince Priebus and John Kelly? Both "left as diminished and arguably humiliated figures, unable to control the wild chaos" inside the monkey house: Mission Impossible is how people in DC see the job. Nick Ayers, a self-made multimillionaire, ex-male prostitute and former lobbyist, currently Pence's chief of staff and his closest confidant (after Mother), was Trump's first-- and only choice-- but Ayer's either:

• got passed over when someone told Trump he used to be a male prostitute or
• passed on the job when he realized he'd have to commit through the bitter, likely historic (in a very bad way) end, and what that would do to his future prospects or
• knew he'd be in trouble when the Senate started scrutinizing his personal finances and wormed out of the job or
• Trump found out Ayers had been gossiping about him and freaked.

We'll never know for sure which one or which combination is sending Ayers back to Georgia. What we do know is that a tough job in the best of circumstances, has turned into the worst job in the country-- and about to get worse: saving the Trump presidency from itself and keeping Trump and his family out of prison... while also running the United States government and trying to keep the economy from falling off a cliff.

Names being floated include neo-fascist North Carolina Congressman Mark Meadows, Blackstone managing director Wayne Berman, Citizens United president and Trumpets fanatic Dave Bossie, Chris Christie, U.S. Trade Rep. Robert Lighthizer, Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin, Mick Mulvaney, the acting Attorney General who-will-never-be-confirmed Matthew Whitaker, and... wait for it... Reince Priebus. The Politico team says they made a round of calls last night about the chief of staff job and "heard the same thing over and over again: No one wants it this time, and it’s an exceedingly bad phase of the administration to take the helm. Whoever takes over right now would likely be at Trump’s side when special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s report drops, when Democrats on Capitol Hill start hammering him and as the market continues to slump."

Rahm Emanuel, Obama's first-- and disastrous-- Chief of Staff, told the NY Times helpfully/smugly that "Someone needs to get the White House under control-- but the president won’t let it happen."

CNN released a new SSRS poll this morning with data from last week-- and, remember, it's been all bad news since then. Trump's job approval

• Approve- 39%

• Approve strongly- 30%
• Approve moderately- 9%
• Disapprove- 52%

• Disapprove strongly- 44%
• Disapprove moderately- 8%
• No opinion- 9%

Since Trumpanzee can't find anyone remotely qualified and willing to take the thankless job, it looks like John Kelly will stay on at least into January-- probably much longer-- despite Trump's foolish announcement Saturday that Kelly would be out before the end of the year. Trump's a moron and was bragging this morning about how proud he would be to shut down the government. Worth watching him meeting with Pelosi this morning-- Schumer was there as well-- and... that was not a Pence stuffed toy next to Trump; it actually was Mike Pence. I wonder why he didn't bother inviting Ryan, McCarthy and McConnell-- or at least McCarthy. (You can skip the first five and half minutes of Trump babbling sheer nonsense about the wall.) I bet Pelosi's approval numbers shoot up after this meeting.



What If Meadows Takes The Job?

Mark Meadows is a hard-right-- some would say neo-fascist-- asshole who chairs the Freedom Caucus. He represents North Carolina's 11th congressional district, the reddest district in the state-- with a PVI of R+14. Obama lost it both times and Trump beat Hillary 63.2 (his best showing in North Carolina) to 34.0%. The district includes all or part of 16 western North Carolina counties. The biggest, population-wise, Buncombe County, went for Hillary 55.7% to 41.1%. In the 2016 primary Buncombe was Bernie's strongest county in the state and he won it with 62.1%. In fact, Bernie won more votes on primary day than Trump did (30,913 to 8,430) and more votes than the entire GOP field did combined! The Republican legislature, however, managed to split Buncombe County up in a way as to prevent a competitive district from emerging. Most of the city of Asheville, the heart of Buncombe, was chopped off and grafted onto another ultra Republican district, Patrick McHenry's 10th, diluting the Democratic vote in both districts. The Buncombe part of Meadows' district voted D+10 last month and the Buncombe part of McHenry's district voted D+ 39.

District-wide, Meadows won 177,230 (59.2%) to 115,824 (38.7%) against Democrat Phillip Price. The counties bordering on Tennessee are among the most dependably Republican in the whole country. The 4 westernmost counties, Cherokee, Clay, Macon and Graham, routinely give Republicans massive leads in any contest. This cycle Meadows raised $1,773,788 to Price's $237,843. The DCCC ignored the race entirely.

I only bring this up to warn Democrats that if Trump picks Meadows, triggering a special election, it is a dead-end for Democrats. The district is designed to elect Republicans and until Republican gerrymandering is finally thrown out in court and Buncombe County reunited-- which will happen eventually-- NC-11 is off-limits to Democrats.

Trump's Congressional Warriors-- Untouchable?

Trump has the worst and most incompetent cabinet of any American president. And the most corrupt. By far. The fish rots from the head, right? And his supporters in Congress! What a bunch! We've talked a lot about Devin Nunes here... but there are others just as bad. Kyle Cheney did a little round up for Politico readers Monday. Short version: Matt Gaetz (FL), Ron DeSantis (FL), Jim Jordan (OH) and Mark Meadows (NC). DeSantis is running for governor of Florida in November-- more on that below-- and the 3 others don't have serious challenges for re-election. Here's are 4 with the PVIs of their districts and the percentage of votes Hillary got in each:

• Gaetz (FL-01) R+22 (28.2%)
• DeSantis (FL-06) R+7 (39.9%)
• Jordan (OH-04) R+14 (30.7%)
• Meadows (NC-11) R+14 (34.0%)

Trump calls them his "warriors": a band of four House Republicans defending Trump with a relentless counterattack against the Justice Department’s Russia investigation that thrills the president even as it unsettles some House GOP colleagues who think they’re going too far.

This crew of hard-charging conservatives, whom Trump singled out by name in late April, have emerged as some of Washington’s most prominent Republicans, enjoying direct lines to the Trump White House and flights on Air Force One.

"Look, we have some absolute warriors," Trump told Fox News on April 26 when asked about his relationship with Congress, name-checking "Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows and Matt Gaetz and [Ron] DeSantis.”

Their emergence underscores a reality of the Trump era: power and prominence on Capitol Hill these days often flow not to the most senior lawmakers but to Republicans who display allegiance to a president who prizes loyalty. None of the four holds a powerful committee chairmanship, but they have something just as important: regular airtime on Fox News. And their pressure campaign against the Justice Department and FBI has put Mueller’s boss, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on the defensive.

The scorched-earth approach by the relatively junior members-- only Jordan has served more than three terms-- is in some ways reminiscent of the way a young GOP congressman named Newt Gingrich, joined by a group of back bench House colleagues, shocked Washington in the mid-1980s with their theatrical attacks on Democratic leaders.

It has similarly enraged liberals today, who say that Trump’s “warriors” care only about protecting the president-- and may even be conspiring with him to create a pretext for firing Rosenstein.

On Thursday, the left-leaning public watchdog group Democracy21 accused Meadows and Jordan of “colluding to obstruct and potentially give Trump control over” Mueller’s probe. Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, says they are “trying to sabotage” Mueller, and “want to force a confrontation with the Deputy Attorney General.”

It all helps explain why Gaetz, a 35-year-old freshman from Florida, routinely gets calls from the president, including critiques of his Fox News appearances, and has flown at least twice on Air Force One. In a November House floor speech, Gaetz called on Mueller to resign, warning of the “risk of a coup d'état in this country if we allow an unaccountable person with no oversight to undermine the duly-elected president of the United States.”

The 39-year-old DeSantis, who last week called for criminal investigations of former FBI director James Comey and his former deputy Andrew McCabe, won Trump’s early endorsement in Florida’s contested GOP primary for governor. He has also proposed cutting off funding for Mueller’s investigation.

Meadows, 58, a North Carolinian who chairs the conservative House Freedom Caucus, speaks with Trump on a regular basis and has been floated as a potential successor for the beleaguered White House chief of staff, John Kelly.

He and Jordan, who is vice chairman of the Freedom Caucus, have led the charge against Rod Rosenstein, against whom they have drafted articles of impeachment in response to what they call Rosenstein’s unacceptable delays in turning over documents related both to Mueller’s investigation-- as well as the 2016 FBI probe into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, which they suspect should have resulted in criminal action against Clinton. The two men even visited the Justice Department last month for a tense face-to-face meeting in which they demanded a faster response to their document requests.

...Jordan, a 54-year-old fifth-term congressman from Ohio who has been particularly loyal to Trump-- he drew national attention last month for telling CNN he has never heard the president lie-- said he believes the Justice Department is biased against the president and has lost sight of the principle of “equal treatment under the law."... The four House Republicans have taken the lead on Russia in the weeks since the House Intelligence Committee, chaired by the Trump-friendly Rep. Devin Nunes, wrapped up its probe into Russian election interference, which featured aggressive GOP questioning of the Justice Department.

Jordan, Gaetz and DeSantis sit on the House Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over the Justice Department. Meadows, Jordan and DeSantis are also on the House Oversight Committee, which has broad authority to question the executive branch and has probed the FBI's handling of the 2016 Clinton investigation and other decision-making by the bureau as the Trump-Russia probe was launched.

...Gaetz and his allies said they are stepping up the pressure now, for fear that Justice Department officials like Rosenstein are playing a long game, hoping that-- with midterm elections coming and Republicans lagging in the polls-- time is on their side.

"I worry that there may be some people at the Department of Justice and the FBI who think they can wait us out, who think that Democrats will retake the majority and that oversight will fizzle to a burnt ember," he said. "We’ve got to keep the fire going now.”

Gaetz has raised $597,891 and his Democratic opponent, Phil Ehr has raised $127,253. Jordan has raised $327,443 and his Democratic opponent, Janet Garrett has raised $57,510. And Meadows has raised $519,911 and his likeliest Democratic opponent, Scott Donaldson, has raised $47,853.

The most likely of the quarter to suffer at the hands of voters for his extremism is DeSantis, the far right candidate for Florida governor. It's an open seat and DeSantis has to first face a crowded primary including establishment Republican Adam Putnam. Most polls show Putnam beating DeSantis, even though Trump has endorsed DeSantis, as have Sheldon Adelson the Mercers and neo-fascists Sean Hannity, David Bossie, Foster Friess and Mark Levin. Every poll shows evert Democrat beating DeSantis. Blue America has endorsed Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, easily the best of the Democratic field, and you can contribute to his very grassroots campaign at the ActBlue gubernatorial thermometer on the right.

If We Had An Actual Democracy, Trump Would Be Repealed And Replaced In A Week... Just Based On His Healthcare Madness!

If your daddy was a crooked multimillionaire who left you a bundle, healthcare isn't that complicated... at least for yourself. You just go to the doctor-- even a silly one-- and you write a check. If an incompetent and ignorant son of a crooked multimillionaire hoodwinks enough people to get elected president, healthcare gets more complicated. Who knew?

All that nonsensical babble about the best healthcare, more for less and guarantees to not touch Medicare or Medicaid... all pure hot air to sucker low-info, desperate voters. And it worked. Trump acquiesced to GOP predators Tom Price, Paul Ryan and Mike Pence come up with "his" plan? What could go wrong. Well, only 12% of Americans like what they've come up with for starters. The new Senate version, TrumpCare 3.0, is a bust. McConnell couldn't cobble together the 50 votes he needed to pass it. So far, it doesn't look like he was able to cobble together even 40 votes. So Trump seems to have bought into the Rand Paul-Ben Sasse plan-- just repeal the Affordable Care Act, kick 32 million Americans off healthcare and come up with "something" at some point in the future... somehow. That plan won't even get 12%.

Señor Trumpanzee, wrote Thomas Kaplan and Robert Pear for the NY Times "gave his blessing in a Twitter post after a Republican dissatisfied with the current repeal bill, Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, floated it as a backup plan. Mr. Sasse sent a letter to the president and made a pitch on Fox News on Friday as an agreement on a new version of the Senate’s repeal bill remained elusive." Rand Paul, the Koch Brothers and other predatory Republicans who are eager to thin out the herd, have been for this all along and they applauded the meeting of the tiny minds, "presenting a new headache to Senate leaders who are trying to focus their conservative and moderate troops on finding a compromise. Republican leaders in Congress had embraced the repeal-now-replace-later mantra in January, envisioning legislation that would end the Affordable Care Act in several years as they work on a replacement. But that plan was blown up quickly when Mr. Trump publicly demanded a replacement be adopted simultaneously. Since then, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan have meticulously set up a timeline using special Senate rules to fulfill Mr. Trump’s repeal-and-replace wishes."

But Señor Trumpanzee has changed his drug-addled mind again. The radical right Republicans seem to have freaked out this week when more mainstream GOPers "veered away from their original approach and said they were discussing whether to keep a tax imposed by the Affordable Care Act on the investment income of the most affluent Americans. The revenue could be used to increase insurance subsidies for lower-income people." To the far right, that would mean war.

In his letter to the president, Mr. Sasse said that if a deal on a revised health care bill had not been struck by the time the Senate returns from its Fourth of July recess on July 10, Mr. Trump should call on Congress to “immediately repeal as much of Obamacare as is possible” under the rules that must be followed to avoid a filibuster, with a one-year delay on the repeal bill’s implementation.

Then, he said, lawmakers should get to work on replacing the health law, and should scrap their planned August recess.

“On the current path, it looks like Republicans will either fail to pass any meaningful bill at all, or will instead pass a bill that attempts to prop up much of the crumbling Obamacare structures,” Mr. Sasse wrote. “We can and must do better than either of these-- both because the American people deserve better, and because we promised better.”

...Subsidies in the Senate bill were already beginning to look like those in the Affordable Care Act, which are tied to a person’s income and local insurance costs. However, the Senate subsidies are less generous than those under current law.

The repeal bills written by House and Senate Republicans would both provide tens of billions of dollars in assistance to health insurance companies to help stabilize insurance markets and hold down premiums. Many of the same Republicans attacked such payments, when made by the Obama administration, as a bailout for the insurance industry.

But as senators tried to come to an agreement, Mr. Trump effectively tossed in a distraction that may not be possible anyway. This winter, Congress passed a budget resolution for the current fiscal year that included special parliamentary language that allows passage of one health care bill without the possibility of a filibuster in the Senate. If senators use that language to repeal the Affordable Care Act without a replacement, Congress would have to go through the entire process again, with another budget, another set of instructions and now a bill to replace the Affordable Care Act.

But the parliamentary language-- known as reconciliation instructions-- in the next budget was supposed to ease passage of an overhaul of the tax code, not health care.

Besides, a clean repeal of the Affordable Care Act with no replacement could have even more trouble clearing the Senate than the current effort.

Mr. Trump’s foray on Twitter only underscored to some Republicans how inconsistent he has been as a partner. In May, he cheered passage of a House plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, only to later denounce the House bill as “mean.”

Mr. Trump and congressional Republicans have also vacillated over how to sequence the repeal and replacement of the Affordable Care Act.

In December, House Republican leaders outlined an extended timetable to repeal now, replace later, only to watch Mr. Trump reject that in January as unacceptable.

“It’ll be repeal and replace,” Mr. Trump said. “It will be essentially simultaneously. It will be various segments, you understand, but will most likely be on the same day or the same week, but probably, the same day, could be the same hour.”

Trump is certainly confused about government's role in healthcare. North Carolina congressional candidate Matt Coffay definitely isn't. He's a dedicated single-payer advocate and it's part of the platform he's running on-- against anti-healthcare fanatic Mark Meadows. Last night Matt told us that "Meadows is largely responsible for the provisions in the House health care bill that will allow insurance companies to charge people more if they have pre-existing conditions. He pushed for a massive Medicaid cut. He's responsible for the 23 million people who will lose health care coverage, including more than 100,000 people here in our district alone. He falsely believes that this trillion dollar tax cut for the wealthy will somehow lead to better health care. Well, he's wrong. My position is simple: we need to ensure that every single person in this country has access to quality health care. We need Medicare for All. When I'm in Congress, one of my first acts will be to co-sponsor HR 676, the House Medicare for All bill. It's long past time we joined every other developed country on the planet and created a universal health care system." You can support Matt's campaign by tapping on the Blue America thermometer on the right.

A Republican Who Used To Be In The House: "You Republicans In The House Have Been Lying Non-Stop About What You're Not Going To Cut"

I don't watch Morning Joe but Bernie tweeted some of this rant Friday and it really is awesome. Before he became a Morning Zoo host on MSNBC Joe Scarborough was a Republican congressman from Florida's Panhandle (basically Alabama)-- 1995 'til 2001 when he was forced to resign after being implicated in the death of a 28 year old staffer, Lori Klausutis, a case that was dropped after the resignation.

Yesterday Scarborough lit into his old party repeatedly calling them liars and saying they are "going straight to hell politically." He seemed overwrought, complaining that the "lie through their teeth every day... My party is going straight to hell politically. They really are. They're going straight to hell. They have embraced the coarsening of culture where the truth means absolutely nothing, conservative values mean absolutely nothing... Did [Mick Mulvaney] say we don't cut Medicaid? That is just a lie. That is a certifiable lie... If you want to do it, embrace it. Don't lie about it. Stop lying about it. We know you're lying about it. We're not stupid, and you Republicans in the House have been lying non-stop about what you're not going to cut."

It sounds better than it reads. Watch that clip up top. And backing up Scarborough's assertion that the House Republicans are all mimicking compulsive, congenital liars Donald Trump, Mike Pence, Tom Price, Mick Mulvaney and, worst of all, Paul Ryan is the CBO score that came out this week showing just how devastating TrumpCare would be for millions of Americans-- and all so the people least in need of tax breaks, get massive ones. Thursday the Center for America Progress posted what those numbers are like in every congressional district, based on the CBO’s projections. By 2026, on average, about 53,000 fewer people will have coverage in each congressional district but people in some districts are hurt far more than others. The South Florida districts, for example are hit especially hard. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, one of the last hold-outs among Democrats refusing to co-sponsor John Conyers' Medicare-For-All Act, is in a Broward/Miami-Dade district where 88,700 people will lose coverage.

Worse yet is how badly folks in western North Carolina fare under this plan-- not just twice as badly as the average congressional district-- but under the very provisions forced on Congress by the congressman from western North Carolina: Freedom Caucus headman Mark Meadows. We spoke to the progressive Democrat running for his seat this cycle, Matt Coffay. "My opponent, Mark Meadows, crafted and pushed the AHCA 2.0 bill through the House," he told us. "He specifically inserted the state waiver loopholes that, according to CBO, are going to result in 23 million Americans losing their health coverage.

"Now, the Center for American Progress has released a report detailing coverage losses state-by-state. They've also run the numbers on how many people will lose health coverage in each Congressional district nationwide. This isn't just how many people will lose their private insurance--this is how many people will flat out lose healthcare, including Medicaid and employer-provided insurance plans.

"The national average across all 435 Congressional districts is 53,000. But here in Western North Carolina, in NC-11, that number is 102,600. That's right: Mark Meadows crafted AHCA 2.0, and it's going to result in more than one hundred thousand people in his district losing health coverage. That's twice the national average.

"Nearly half of those people are on private insurance; another 47,500 are on Medicaid, and will lose their benefits. This law impacts everyone: whether you're low income and receiving Medicaid, or running a small business and buying your own insurance, or receiving benefits through your employer, you stand to lose your coverage.

"When I'm in the House, one of the first bills I intend to sign onto as a co-sponsor is H.R. 676: Medicare for All. It's time we passed a bill that ensures healthcare for every American, and not a bill that takes coverage away from working people."

The other western North Carolina district that gets devastated-- 102,000 citizens of NC-05 will be without health insurance-- by this is radical right Republican's Virginia Foxx. And like Meadows, Foxx has a dedicated progressive activist holding her accountable this cycle, Jenny Marshall. Earlier today Jenny told us that "1 out of every 7 citizens in the 5th district will lose their healthcare within the next 9 years. For years Virginia Foxx has voted against the best interests of fellow North Carolinian's. She refuses to invest in their future with good paying jobs, their education, and their health. 57% of the households earn less than $49,000 and 75% earn less than $75,000 annually. They cannot afford to choose between putting food on their table and the rising cost of healthcare. Since North Carolina refused to expand Medicaid, people bought their new healthcare plans using subsidies from the government. Under Trump's budget those subsidies are eliminated then couple that with the CBO report on the AHCA, we are going to have a catastrophic loss of access to healthcare in the 5th district. In contrast to Foxx's opinion, I view healthcare as a basic right and therefor advocate for a single payer plan that provides people with the security of knowing their healthcare needs are covered."

 

Is The CBO Score A Death Sentence For The Republican Congressional Majorities?

The CBO sums up their report on the new version of TrumpCare with one sentence: "CBO and JCT estimate that enacting the American Health Care Act would reduce federal deficits by $119 billion over the coming decade and increase the number of people who are uninsured by 23 million in 2026 relative to current law." The original version would have kicked 24 million off their health insurance but it would have reduced the deficit by $150 billion. The NY Times reported that the Senate Majority Turtle (R-KY) looked at it and sniffed "I don’t know how we get to 50 at the moment... but that’s the goal."

Congressional Republicans spent the day running around quacking out their focus group-tested talking points: "The status quo under Obamacare is completely unacceptable and totally unsustainable... Prices are skyrocketing, choice is plummeting, the marketplace is collapsing and countless more Americans will get hurt if we don’t act." Snd doing all in their power to undercut, sabotage and destabilize the Affordable Care Act, regardless of how much it hurts people in need of healthcare.

Democrats say much of that instability stems from Republican efforts to repeal and undermine the Affordable Care Act. The Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer of New York, harshly criticized House Republicans for voting on their revised repeal measure without an updated analysis from the budget office.

“Republicans were haunted by the ghost of C.B.O. scores past, so they went ahead without one,” Mr. Schumer said. That action, he said, was reckless-- “like test-driving a brand-new car three weeks after you’ve already signed on the dotted line and paid the dealer in full.”

The House repeal bill was approved on May 4 by a vote of 217 to 213, without support from any Democrats. It would eliminate tax penalties for people who go without health insurance and would roll back state-by-state expansions of Medicaid, which have provided coverage to millions of low-income people. And in place of government-subsidized insurance policies offered exclusively on the Affordable Care Act’s marketplaces, the bill would offer tax credits of $2,000 to $4,000 a year, depending on age.

A family could receive up to $14,000 a year in credits. The credits would be reduced for individuals making more than $75,000 a year and families making more than $150,000.

Senior Republican senators say they want to reconfigure the tax credits to provide more financial assistance to lower-income people and to older Americans, who could face much higher premiums under the House bill.

The House bill would roll back a number of insurance requirements in the Affordable Care Act, which Republicans say have driven up the cost of coverage.

In the weeks leading up to passage of the House bill, Republican leaders revised it to win support from some of the most conservative members of their party.

Under the House bill, states could opt out of certain provisions of the health care law, including one that requires insurers to provide a minimum set of health benefits and another that prohibits them from charging higher premiums based on a person’s health status.

Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) emphasized in a statement to his constituents that the new version is even worse than the old version. "Twenty days ago, House Republicans turned their backs on millions of Americans by passing the American Health Care Act. The Congressional Budget Office’s score released today confirms what we had known all along; dismantling our healthcare system will leave millions uninsured, roll back basic coverage, and increase premiums for the most vulnerable populations. It will send costs skyrocketing for seniors and those with pre-existing conditions in order to provide financial windfall to millionaires and billionaires... Instead of dismantling the progress that has been made to improve health care in this country, we should work together on behalf of our constituents to make common sense improvements to the ACA. We should pass a public insurance option to ensure plan prices are competitive, allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices to reduce the costs of prescriptions, reduce deductibles and make premium tax credits more generous. Unfortunately, the majority is interested in nothing more than political gamesmanship, but a game that risks American lives is one that must never be played."

Progressives in Congress agreed with Grijalva and his no Progressive Caucus co-chair, Mark Pocan (D-WI), said in his own statement that "this latest CBO score confirms that Trumpcare is a terrible proposal and people will pay more for less coverage, if they can even afford it. What’s really alarming is that less healthy people, like those with a preexisting condition, could face extremely prohibitive costs for coverage and essentially be priced out of buying insurance. This means people with diabetes or a heart condition could wind up uninsured, which would be devastating for many families. On top of that out-of-pocket expenses for essential health benefits such as maternity care and prescription drugs would skyrocket. This is just a bad bill that was never intended to help people, only to give $600 billion in tax cuts to the wealthiest in this country, insurance companies, and Big Pharma."

Ruben Kihuen (D-NV), who seems likely to run for the Nevada Senate seat held by Republican Dean Heller next year, pointed out that the CBO score reaffirms that Trumps and Ryan’s "vision for healthcare reform is completely off the mark... hell-bent on repealing the Affordable Care Act no matter the cost, even if it means 23 million more people would be uninsured by 2026. The CBO estimates that health insurance premiums for those nearing retirement could increase 800%, and that a 64-year-old making $26,500 would go from paying 6.4% of their income towards their insurance premiums to a whopping 60.8%. That’s indefensible and immoral! This new CBO score is further evidence of what we already knew to be true-- the American Health Care Act is a bad deal for all Americans, but especially Nevadans who have benefitted immensely from the Affordable Care Act.

Unfortunately, Republicans in the House decided to pass this bill without seeing its true cost. I hope they read this report and think long and hard about who they really serve: their leadership in Congress or their constituents back home." In fact, one last stat: In the old version of TrumpCare (pre-Meadows/MacArthur), a 64 year old worker making $26,5000 a year would have had an unbelievable premium of $14,600 per year to be covered. After Mark Meadows and Tom MacArthur worked their magic, that same worker's premium would go up to $16,100 annually. Was that what they were trying to do? Was that what Paul Ryan was trying to cover up when he rushed the House vote through without a CBO score? These people are disgusting-- and an existential threat to our families and our nation.

Matt Coffay is the candidate running in western North Carolina against the Republican who managed to make TrumpCare even worse-- by eviserating the provisions protecting people with preexisting conditions (that candidate Trump solemnly pledged to keep)-- Mark Meadows, the Freedom Caucus chair. There are few races anywhere in the country that would send an "enough is enough" signal to the GOP than seeing Coffay defeat Meadows in 2018-- and you can help him do that by tapping on the thermometer on the right. This is what Matt told NC-11 residents after the CBO score was published:

Today, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its report on the AHCA: the disastrous bill that Mark Meadows crafted in secret with other Republican leaders, and pushed through the House several weeks ago.

CBO’s report confirms all of our worst fears. Meadows’ health care bill will kick 23 million Americans off of their health insurance. Over $800 billion will be cut from Medicaid, involving caps on Medicaid payments and termination of federal matching funds-- which we desperately need in North Carolina, a state that failed to expand Medicaid. Further, CBO determined that nationally, one in six people live in an area where private policies will be “destabilized” as states-- like North Carolina-- opt out of Essential Health Benefits, and allow insurance companies to charge more to people with pre-existing conditions. People in these areas will suffer under this law.

Western North Carolina is one of these areas.

CBO concluded that “less healthy people” will face “extremely high premiums.” And because of the rush to get this report out-- because Meadows chose to ram this bill through the House-- CBO hasn’t even had time to assess the wider reaching macroeconomic effects on the U.S. economy.

This report is clear: Mark Meadows has crafted and passed a bill that will hurt the people of this district. This bill will take away health insurance for thousands of folks in Western North Carolina. It’ll make health care unaffordable for people with pre-existing conditions.

And it cuts over $800 billion from Medicaid, funding that is critical here in Western North Carolina. We’ve already seen Angel Medical Center in Franklin shut down its labor/delivery services, and Harris Regional Hospital in Sylva do away with its hospice and palliative services, because of Medicaid cuts.

How many more people have to lose access to health care before Meadows is satisfied?

Let’s put an end to this insurance company, profit-driven madness. When I’m in Congress, I will support H.R. 676: Medicare for All. It’s time for universal health care. Let’s send Meadows home, and put a progressive in his place.