GOP Abandons Bid for Health Repeal Vote
Senate won't vote on GOP health care bill. CNN: "The Senate will not vote on the Graham-Cassidy bill to repeal Obamacare, Republican leaders announced Tuesday, dealing a devastating blow to President Donald Trump and GOP lawmakers who tried to make a last-ditch attempt to deliver on the party's years-long campaign promise... Even as McConnell and his colleagues vowed that their goal of overhauling the country's health care system was far from over, Tuesday marked a clear end to the latest campaign to try to jam through a partisan bill to gut the Affordable Care Act. The budget vehicle Republicans were using to move the bill forward without any Democratic support was set to expire at the end of this week."
Trump to Cut Refugees to U.S. by Half
Trump to cut number of refugees in U.S. by more than half. Foreign Policy: "President Donald Trump has decided to allow the resettlement of no more than 45,000 refugees in the United States next year, according to a former and a current U.S. official, ending months of contentious debate inside the administration. That will bring the number of refugees allowed into the United States to the lowest level since establishment of the resettlement program in 1980. The long-awaited decision comes less than a week after Trump told the United Nations General Assembly that the United States prefers to prevent refugees from leaving their region and resettling in the United States. It comes at a time when the ranks of the world’s refugees have swelled to more than 22 million, placing an enormous burden on countries from Bangladesh to Turkey.
Ousted AL Justice Moore Wins GOP Senate Primary
Luther Strange's defeat is bad for Trump. It's worse for McConnell. AL.com: "A firebrand Alabama jurist wrested a U.S. Senate nomination from an appointed incumbent backed by millions of dollars from national Republicans, adding a new chapter Tuesday to an era of outsider politics that ushered Donald Trump into the White House yet leaves his presidency and his party in disarray. Roy Moore's 9-point victory over Sen. Luther Strange, backed by the White House and Republican leaders on Capitol Hill, ranks as a miscalculation and temporary embarrassment for the president; it's a more consequential rebuke for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, whom Moore said should step aside as GOP floor chief."
HHS Secretary Price Chartered Jets With Public Funds for Personal Travel
Price used private jets to meet family and friends. Politico: "Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price took a government-funded private jet in August to get to St. Simons Island, an exclusive Georgia resort where he and his wife own land, a day and a half before he addressed a group of local doctors at a medical conference that he and his wife have long attended. The St. Simons Island trip was one of two taxpayer-funded flights on private jets in which Price traveled to places where he owns property, and paired official visits with meetings with longtime colleagues and family members. On June 6, HHS chartered a jet to fly Price to Nashville, Tennessee, where he owns a condominium and where his son resides. Price toured a medicine dispensary and spoke to a local health summit organized by a longtime friend. He also had lunch with his son, an HHS official confirmed. An HHS official said both the Georgia and Tennessee trips were for official government business and were paid for by the department."
Sessions Bars Questions From "Free Speech" Forum
Georgetown Law students and faculty protest speech by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. WaPo:"Dozens of Georgetown University students gathered Tuesday on the steps of McDonough Hall to protest an address from Attorney General Jeff Sessions that lambasted schools for infringing on students’ free-speech rights. The students were joined by faculty members who initially took a knee and later linked arms. They took turns speaking into a bullhorn, decrying Sessions, the process the university used to bring him to campus and posing questions they would have asked the attorney general had they been allowed into the event. 'We, the disinvited, find it extraordinarily hypocritical that AG Sessions would lecture future attorneys about free speech on campus while excluding the wider student body,' third-year law student Ambur Smith said into the bullhorn. Some of the roughly 100 protesters who gathered outside at Georgetown’s law school wore duct tape over their mouths. They held signs that proclaimed, 'DEPORT HATE, FREE SPEECH IS NOT HATE SPEECH,' and 'Sessions is afraid of questions.'"
Tax Cuts Unlikely To Create Jobs
Inside the tax cut equals job growth myth. Reclaimtheamericandream.org: "Riding a tide of tax cuts and rising profits over four decades, the captains of Corporate America have shifted $1 trillion each year from the paychecks of middle class Americans into massive payoffs to Wall Street investors and CEO pay packages. And now they want you to believe, once again, that cutting corporate taxes will benefit average workers. Measured against the historical record, that’s a hollow claim that borders on economic fake news. Factually, it flies in the face of the actual performance of American business, which over the past 40 years has generated what Citibank once called the greatest inequality of income in any major nation since 16th century Spain."
More from OurFuture.org:
Unfair Trade, Uncertainty Killing American Aluminum and Steel. Leo Gerard: "The Trump administration promised to stop illegal trade in steel and aluminum by the end of June. Now the administration says it won't act until after tax legislation passes. In the meantime, mills continue to close."
