Tag: Trump White House

For Trump’s ‘Party of Healthcare,’ there is no health-care plan

Republicans have no intention of heeding President Trump’s urgent demands for a new health-care plan to replace the Affordable Care Act, fearing the potential political damage that such a proposal could cause in 2020 and hoping he will soon drop the idea, according to interviews with numerous GOP lawmakers, legislative staffers and administration aides.

Not only is there no such health-care overhaul in the works on Capitol Hill — there are no plans to make such a plan.

Senate Republicans, who were caught off guard by Trump’s rapid shift to focus on health care last week, said the White House would need to make the first move by putting forward its own proposal. But administration officials said nothing firm is in the works.

View the complete March 30 article by Seung Min Kim and Josh Dawsey on The Washington Post website here.

Trump says Linda McMahon will step down as Small Business administrator

President Trump announced Friday that Small Business Administrator Linda McMahon will leave her position next month as she transitions to a role with a political group supporting his reelection campaign.

Trump made the announcement during a press availability from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla. The lavish setting and Trump’s effusive praise for McMahon underscored the nature of their close relationship, and suggested her departure comes on good terms.

“We’ll be making the new nomination and appointment in the very short distance,” Trump said as he and McMahon sat on a couch at the property. “And that will be in consultation with Linda, but I just have to say that this is an outstanding woman who’s done an outstanding job.”

View the complete March 29 article by Brett Samuels on The Hill website here.

By striking at Obamacare, Trump could unravel his own drug pricing proposal

By backing the wholesale repeal of the 2010 health care law, President Donald Trump could unravel his own plan on prescription drug prices and undermine his messaging on an important issue ahead of the 2020 election: the climbing cost of medicines.

Less than two weeks before the midterm elections last year, Trump delivered a proposal to rein in the costs of outpatient drugs by pegging them to the lower prices paid by foreign countries.

The policy was endorsed by advocates for lower drug prices and denounced by the powerful lobby for drugmakers, appearing to fulfill a promise Trump made in a speech in the Rose Garden earlier that year to take on the Big Pharma “gravy train.”

View the complete March 29 article by Emily Kopp on The Roll Call website here.

Trump had ‘Infrastructure Week.’ Amy Klobuchar does him one better.

U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar is campaigning in San Francisco. Credit: Justin Sullivan, Getty Images

The Minnesota senator and presidential hopeful unveiled a $1 trillion plan to help rehabilitate America’s aging bridges and roads.

Recurring plans to hold an “Infrastructure Week” have amounted to naught during the Trump administration, and have become something of a running joke even as the nation’s road and bridges continue to crumble and fall into disrepair.

Democratic presidential contender Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) unveiled a comprehensive plan on Thursday to show them how it’s done.

The Minnesota senator introduced a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan — her first major campaign policy proposal since announcing her White House bid last month —  that she said would be her top budget priority if elected, drawing a sharp contrast to President Donald Trump.

View the complete March 28 article by Addy Baird on the ThinkProgress website here.

‘Oh my god! My brain doesn’t go that dark!’: MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace loses when her guest guesses the motives behind Trump’s ‘politics of cruelty’

Credit: MSNBC screen grab

On MSNBC’s “Deadline: White House,” host Nicolle Wallace and her guests discussed the administration’s bizarre and disturbing (not to mention politically inept) decisions to go after aid to Puerto Rico, funding for the Special Olympics, and endorsement of the conclusion that the courts should invalidate the entirety of Obamacare.

The panel observed that, in light of the relatively good news this week from Attorney General Bill Barr saying that Special Counsel Robert Mueller will not bring a charge of conspiring with the Russian government against anyone in President Donald Trump’s orbit, these moves look particularly ill-timed and self-destructive. Bloomberg editor Tim O’Brien noted that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is well-suited to weaponize these issues against Republicans. Continue reading “‘Oh my god! My brain doesn’t go that dark!’: MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace loses when her guest guesses the motives behind Trump’s ‘politics of cruelty’”

Trump’s decision on health care law puts spotlight on Mulvaney

President Trump’s decision to call for ObamaCare’s complete dismantling in court is shining the spotlight on Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff who reportedly pushed for the action.

Mulvaney, a former member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, argued in favor of backing a lawsuit to nullify the Affordable Care Act during a White House meeting with other officials, according to two published reports.

The intervention in a case brought by attorneys general from more than a dozen GOP states has frustrated congressional Republicans by handing a new campaign argument to Democrats — just as that party was staggering from the end of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe.

View the complete March 28 article by Peter Sullivan and Jordan Fabian on The Hill website here.

Remember Jared Kushner’s Middle East peace plan?

Appearing in front of a congressional committee on Wednesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was asked a simple question: When is the United States going to unveil the long-awaited Israel-Palestinian peace plan being crafted by the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner?

“I think we can say in less than 20 years,” America’s top diplomat said, laughing. “I prefer not to be more precise.”

The remark was intended in jest, but it highlighted an unfortunate fact: The Trump administration’s peace plan has already been a long time coming, and few details have been revealed. Pompeo was smiling, but those hoping the plan may be the solution to one of the Middle East’s most intractable problems fear they may be waiting not for Kushner, but for Godot.

View the complete March 28 article by Adam Taylor on The Washington Post website here.

Barr: White House To ‘Review’ Mueller Report Before Release

After special counsel Robert Mueller finished his report last week, Democrats warned that Trump’s cronies would scheme to conceal the full results of the investigation from the American people.

They were right.

On Tuesday afternoon, Trump’s attorney general, William Barr, said he will allow Trump to review Mueller’s final report before Congress or the public can see it. The news was shared by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), one of Trump’s staunchest supporters in Congress.

View the complete March 26 article by Dan Desai Martin on the National Memo website here.

White House Obamacare reversal made over Cabinet objections

The Trump administration’s surprising move to invalidate Obamacare on Monday came despite the opposition of two key Cabinet secretaries: Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and Attorney General William Barr.

Driving the dramatic action were the administration’s domestic policy chief, Joe Grogan, and the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russ Vought, according to three sources with direct knowledge of the decision. Both are close allies of White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, who helped to engineer the move.

But Monday’s terse, two-sentence letter from the Department of Justice to a federal appeals court reversing the administration’s previous partial opposition to a lawsuit challenging the 2010 health care law, took many Republicans aback — in part because they see it as bringing high political risk for a party that has failed to unite behind an Obamacare alternative and which lost House seats in the 2018 midterms when Democrats made health care a focus of their attacks.

View the complete March 26 article by Eliana Johnson and Burgess Everett on the Politico website here.

Sarah Sanders fuels new hostility against the press with ‘Mueller Madness’ tweet

Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders tweeted out the names of individual reporters, calling them “haters” of President Trump.

The White House has been celebrating what it views as vindication of President Donald Trump on the Mueller probe by attacking the media harshly.

The move comes amid increasing hostility against journalists from Trump’s staunchest supporters, and as authorities crack down on foiled plots to violently target the members of the press whom Trump himself has called a threat to the country.

Monday night — just one day after Attorney General William Barr delivered his summary of special counsel Robert Mueller’s findings to lawmakers on Capitol Hill — White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders tweeted out a graphic from The New York Post containing a “Mueller Madness” bracket of various media pundits who were believed to be biased against Trump. The bracket also included the names of several reporters who had written or reported on the probe.

View the complete March 26 article by Zack Ford on the ThinkProgress website here.