Last Call For White Out In The Senate Dems, Con't

Back in early December I talked about the pretty shameful hiring record of Senate Democratic staffers and the near total lack of diversity among chief of staff positions.  After being publicly shamed for this, Senate Dem leader Chuck Schumer is now promising to fix the problem.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer will on Tuesday ask his caucus to adopt extensive new rules to promote staff diversity, including a version of the NFL’s “Rooney Rule,” which will require Senate offices to interview at least one minority applicant for senior staff openings in the future. 

The diversity measures are part of a wider package of caucus rules that Schumer will put forward on Tuesday. The Democratic leader has also vowed to publish official diversity statistics from Senate offices on the website of the Senate Diversity Initiative, which hosts a resume bank for potential Senate staffers of color and will be the subject of beefed-up efforts to work with every individual Democratic Senate office on diverse hiring practices.

The efforts follow intense criticism from interest groups and minority staffers regarding the paltry share of non-white Senate Democratic staff. Several studies, including a 2015 report from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, have exposed a severe demographic disconnect between the party’s policymakers in Washington and its core constituencies in the states. 

The report found that just 7 percent of top Senate staffers (counting chiefs of staff, legislative directors, communications directors, and committee staff directors) were people of color. It also noted that while African-Americans provided nearly one-quarter of the Democratic Party’s votes, only one top Senate Democratic staffer was black. 

“We must ensure the Senate be more reflective of our country’s diverse population,” Schumer said in a statement. “Expanding the diversity initiative, following the Rooney rule and dedicating ourselves to increasing diversity are important steps we can take to help achieve that goal and better serve our country.” 

Schumer has already announced the new initiatives to several interested parties, including a group of minority lobbyists that had been working to improve diversity in the Senate and at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, where the group met with Schumer two weeks ago. Schumer also publicized the effort earlier this month at a gathering of the New York State Association of Black and Puerto Rican Legislators.

Schumer’s office is still working with Senate legal advisers to figure out exactly how to survey office diversity and post results, but promoters of the new measures see the official statistics as a centerpiece of the plan.

I'm all for this, and Senate Dems deservedly got hell for this.  Shaun King pointed this out months ago and he gets no small amount of credit for forcing Schumer and the Dems to practice what they preach on diversity.

It was unacceptable going forward, and I'm very glad to see Schumer make good on this.  Good job, Democrats.

We Don't Need No Education, Con't

On the final day of Black History Month, the Trump regime decided it was going to shoot a photo op with presidents of several Historically Black Colleges and Univesities (HBCUs) coming to the White House for help in preserving the legacies of these important institutions.  What the HBCU presidents got instead was the DeVos special.

President Donald Trump’s efforts to bolster relations with historically black colleges erupted in controversy Tuesday after Education Secretary Betsy DeVos released a statement equating the history of the schools — founded during an era of racial segregation — to “school choice” policies. 

“HBCUs are real pioneers when it comes to school choice,” DeVos said in the statement, released Monday night in advance of Trump’s planned signing of an executive order giving the schools more clout. “They are living proof that when more options are provided to students, they are afforded greater access and greater quality. Their success has shown that more options help students flourish.”

Now, DeVos's statement only makes sense if you completely ignore the fact that HBCUs were founded in response to American collegiate apartheid.  Literally, these colleges were founded because black students were not allowed to go to white colleges and universities in the Jim Crow era. In 1962 when James Meredith attended Ole Miss, it led to statewide riots and more than 30,000 National Guard troops called into action to deal with them.

What it had nothing to do with was "school choice" policies.  Why DeVos would choose to so viciously and stupidly gaslight away a century of black history, well that's what the Trump regime does, guys.  Everything was really great back in the Jim Crow south, and black people even had their own colleges!

DeVos also seemed to reject one thing the schools are really hoping to get from the administration: More money. One school president told POLITICO that the colleges had asked the White House to back a $25 billion investment in infrastructure improvements on their campuses in their meeting with DeVos Monday. They also advocated for year-round Pell grants and to maintain or increase funding that goes to schools that serve low-income students. 

“Rather than focus solely on funding, we must be willing to make the tangible, structural reforms that will allow students to reach their full potential,” DeVos said in her statement.

Tangible structural reforms, huh.  But no money to pay for them.

If you want to know what's coming for K-12 education for American kids under the Trump regime, look at the way HBCUs are treated.  It's an era where the framework of segregation by class and race already exists.  Imagine your school district becoming Ivy League white schools, and HBCUs for black students.  That's what's coming.  And like DeVos and HBCUs now, it will be sold as "pioneering school choice" when of course, the actual choice part won't exist.

The Bar Was Set Six Inches Into The Ground

Donald Trump somehow failed to set himself on fire last night while vomiting on anyone during his first joint address to Congress, meaning that in the eyes of many pundits, "it's the most presidential he's been so far".  That's not a high bar, but they couldn't help themselves.  But Ed Kilgore cautions that while the speech's tone was not horrible, the actual content was a vague garbage dump when it came to policy.

Republicans are practically at each other’s throats over how to repeal and replace Obamacare — the party’s top policy priority. Trump has in the past complicated this effort by endorsing a quick replacement plan — on which Republicans are far from agreement — and by insisting the new plan cover as many people as the system being demolished. He did almost nothing tonight address the quandaries his fellow Republicans face on health care policy, other than a brief statement of support for the idea of tax credits to help pay for insurance, presumably a rebuke to conservatives who openly worried such credits would represent a new entitlement. What did Trump want Congress to do about Medicaid, which Obamacare optionally expanded, splitting Republican governors over that key safety net program’s function and future? “[W]e should give our great State Governors the resources and flexibility they need with Medicaid to make sure no one is left out.” That’s about as vague as you can get. And there was nothing at all about how to pay for whatever comes next after Obamacare.

Speaking of taxes: Tax cuts are right behind Obamacare on the congressional GOPs urgent action list. There are big differences of opinion among Republicans about the size and structure of tax cuts, and in particular how to deal with the new administration’s demands that the tax code discriminate against companies that import goods and export jobs. In tonight’s speech Trump devoted more time to the feelings of Harley-Davidson’s executives about other countries’ tax codes than to any exposition on what the U.S. tax code should look like. And indeed, his only real mention of taxes was as an intro to an equally vague disquisition on the need for fair as well as free trade—a theme that has provided leaden ballast to thousands of political speeches for many decades.

The third big topic on which Republicans needed his guidance was the budget, and if they expected any specificity on that crucial priority, they were bitterly disappointed. Trump repeated his commitment to a big defense spending increase, and did display an understanding that providing that would mean getting rid of the spending cap agreement under which defense spending would be “sequestered” if budget targets were missed. As to how those caps would be cast aside—something that in the normal course of events would require 60 Senate votes and a lot of Democratic support—we heard nada. And there was also nothing about the rest of the budget, including the fraught subject of which entitlement programs would be on and off the table.

So, no specifics.  And why should he have them?  The Trump regime has shown multiple times through its botched slate of executive orders that when it comes to specifics, they're not very good at getting even the basic stuff done without running into the Constitution and the courts.

Keep in mind though that while Trump's tone was different, the theme still remains that immigrants are an existential threat to the US, and they they will be "dealt with".  He still seeks to divide the country. Never forget that.

StupidiNews!

• The Trump regime will, for now, delay implementation of a new executive order banning Muslim immigration in the wake of last night's joint address to Congress.
• Attorney General Jeff Sessions says the Justice Department will "pull back" from civil rights suits against police department patterns and practices and focus instead on a "few individuals".
• The US and South Korea are beginning annual joint military exercises this week amid growing tension with North Korea over nuclear testing.
• Brexit tensions are causing London homeowners to deeply discount the price of homes for sale after home prices nearly doubled since 2009.
• An outage with Amazon Web Services knocked out thousands of US web sites yesterday as the company has now restored service and is looking at the root cause.

Last Call For The Criminalization Of Dissent

Some good news to end the evening for once: Arizona Republicans have abandoned their bill to turn protesting the Trump regime into a state felony after outrage spread across the country over the legislation.

The speaker of the Arizona House said he won't hear a bill that makes participating in or helping organize a protest that turns into a riot an offense that could lead to criminal racketeering charges, a move prompted by widespread criticism that the legislation sought to limit First Amendment rights. 

The measure passed last week by the Senate drew nationwide attention, particularly from civil libertarians, because it classified violent protest as an organized crime and said protesters who didn't initially intend to riot could still face criminal charges. That attention led Speaker J.D. Mesnard to decide Monday to kill it for the session. 

Mesnard told The Associated Press that people all across the country now believe that the Arizona Legislature is trying to enact a law that will suppress their First Amendment right to assemble. 

"It's gotten a lot of attention, and frankly whether it's fair or unfair, whether its accurate or inaccurate, at this point doesn't matter," he told the AP. "That's certainly not what the Legislature wants to be about — I know that's not what the sponsor wanted in the first place. The best way to send a very clear signal that we're not doing it is to not move the bill." 

The Republican House speaker controls the path of legislation through his chamber, so Mesnard's decision means the bill is dead. 

The Arizona legislation is the latest in a string of proposals in Republican-led states intended to crack down on protests. South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard is pursuing legislation to make it clear that his emergency response powers apply to destructive protests, create new trespassing penalties and make it a crime to obstruct highways, a move prompted by protests in North Dakota over the Dakota Access pipeline. A recent Washington Post tally showed efforts in 18 states, with proposals like stiffer penalties for blocking highways to increased trespassing penalties on critical infrastructure.

Arizona's bill was the most egregious, and the intent was certainly to turn the state's next Black Lives Matter or immigration protest into an opportunity to declare thousands to be felons, throw them in prison (or deport them) and remove their right to vote.  Like most states, Arizona does not allow felons to vote, and if convicted of multiple felonies, that disenfranchisement is permanent.

But several other states are moving to criminalize mass protests.  Republicans in Arizona may have been defeated for now, but eventually this bill or something like it will be passed, and it will be used against people of color to disenfranchise. harm, or even kill.

More Buyer's Remorse In The Bluegrass State

Another month, another story of GOP voters here in Kentucky now terrified that they will lose their Medicaid expansion in the state, and are turning to Trump to beg to be spared.

Whitesburg, Kentucky, is a quiet town nestled in the Appalachian Mountains and close to the Virginia border – coal country. It has a population of 2,100 and a deep history of hard work and perseverance. 

“Around here you keep a job and you do as they say no matter what because you’ve got to work to survive,” said Mike Taylor, a former coal truck driver. 

Coal has been at the heart of the local economy for generations, but it’s also the root of health issues for many. 

Taylor was diagnosed with “Black Lung,” a deadly lung disease caused by breathing in coal dust, in 2015. He is on three different inhalers and uses an oxygen tank and a nebulizer machine. 

When he gained insurance through the ACA’s Medicaid expansion, he began seeking regular care at Mountain Comprehensive Health Corporation, a community clinic where his physician, Dr. Van Breeding, also happens to be his old high school classmate. 

“These people need care,” said Breeding, a primary care physician. “I take care of classmates of mine everyday … people who I went to kindergarten with who are disabled now, who can’t work. So imagine you’re 55 years old and you’re worn out.” 

“And these are the people who have been helped by the Affordable Care Act and these are the people who we can’t turn our backs on,” he added. 

Breeding believes the ACA is crucial to the health of his community. His father was a coal miner, he said, so he is all too familiar with the toll Black Lung disease can take. 

“We're seeing that it's a political war over health care and the collateral damage is the patient's health and life and the quality of life,” Breeding said. “Change the name if ‘Obamacare’ is offensive to Republicans, change the name, and call it what you will, but provide these people who are desperate, and I mean desperate, desperate for some type of health care.” 

Taylor said the health insurance he has under ACA not only saved his life, but also helped his brother-in-law and his former coworkers. 

“It’s a good thing to have it. The insurance,” he said. “I think they just need to reform it.”

But as I keep saying, these people voted for Republicans up and down the line, at the state level last year when they elected Matt Bevin in 2015, and again last year handing the state legislature over to the GOP and decimating the Democrats, re-electing Rand Paul, and giving Trump a 17-point win.

Now all of a sudden they're worried that when Obamacare was going to be repealed, it was going to affect them.  They never thought that would happen, that it would only be taken away from those people in order to benefit people like themselves, because they're good people.

Turns out of course Republicans only care about people making six figures or more.  Turns out when Bevin turns Medicaid into a program like Indiana's "skin in the game" plan where you pay the premium or lose everything, and on top of that funding is cut to shreds by Republicans in Congress turning it into a block grant, not only will the 450,000 people who got health insurance lose it, but hundreds of thousands more will get kicked off the program too.

Maybe by 2020 when the state's uninsured rate is back up to 25% or so, maybe people here will get it.

Sen. Udall's Balancing Act

New Mexico Dem Sen. Tom Udall has an...interesting...plan for solving the Supreme Court issue: talk a current justice into retiring, leaving seven on the high court, then confirming both Neil Gorsuch and Obama nominee Merrick Garland at the same time.

Sen. Tom Udall has an idea that could place both Judge Neil Gorsuch and Judge Merrick Garland on the Supreme Court at the same time. 

The Democrat from New Mexico presented the plan Monday morning to Gorsuch, President Donald Trump's nominee for the Supreme Court, as well as to Gorsuch's team of White House aides and former Sen. Kelly Ayotte, who's been attending Gorsuch's meetings with senators. 

His proposal is for Trump to meet privately with Supreme Court justices who are interested in retirement. If one of those justices decided they would be willing to retire, and if Trump promises to nominate Garland, President Barack Obama's unconfirmed former SCOTUS pick, in their place, then the retiring justice would submit a letter of resignation contingent on that promise. 

Then, both Garland and Gorsuch would be voted on simultaneously. 

It's a far-fetched idea, and Udall told reporters he got no response or comment from Gorsuch's team in the room. But he added that he's been talking to other senators about it. 

A spokesman from Gorsuch's team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

If this sounds familiar, that's because we've seen this before, just not in this administration.

The idea closely follows a plot line from an episode of "The West Wing" television show. In season 5, episode 17, "The Supremes," a spot on the Supreme Court opens up and the White House works out a deal with another justice to retire so they can replace him with both a liberal justice while Republicans can get their pick of a more conservative justice. 

Jennifer Talhelm, communications director for Udall, told CNN that the senator did not get the idea from the West Wing, and that while he has maybe seen an episode or two, he doesn't watch the show. 

She said Udall has wanted to see Trump pick Garland all along, and his more recent idea came after he was speaking with a constituent who said they'd like to see both Garland and Gorsuch on the Supreme Court. 

Speaking to reporters, Udall also recalled the time that President Lyndon B. Johnson wanted his adviser Abe Fortas on the Supreme Court, so he persuaded Justice Arthur Goldberg to retire by promising him the position of ambassador to the United Nations. 

So what would be Trump's motivation to move ahead with this idea? 

"It's a good chance for Trump to try to unite the country," Udall said.

I can see the draw, but Republicans aren't about to go for this.  They know that Gorsuch will get confirmed, and there's an extremely good chance that either Justice Ginsburg, Breyer, or Kennedy will retire by 2020, giving Trump a second pick to tilt the court to a 6-3 conservative bent that would end legalized abortion, affirmative action, and maybe even same-sex marriage.  It would certainly continue the Roberts Court path of rolling back the New Deal and Great Society.

Udall makes a good pitch, and it's as good as it's going to get for Democrats.  But Republicans don't want to unite the country, they want to dominate it, and leave liberals and liberalism broken, bleeding, and crushed on the floor, without rights, without power, and without hope.

StupidiNews!

• Three people are dead and two injured after a small plane crashed into a residential neighborhood in Riverside, California.
• Police in Philadelphia are investigating vandalism at a Jewish cemetery, the incident marks the second US Jewish cemetery where headstones were knocked over this year.
• Former President George W. Bush is optimistic about America despite what he calls a "pretty ugly" climate in Washington under the Trump regime.
• Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte is predicting his Liberal Party will remain in power after national elections on March 15, but polls show Geert Wilders' Freedom Party is still leading.
• New documents suggest ride-sharing giant Uber's self-driving car pilot program in California ran into major issues, with vehicles running six red lights when in autonomous mode.

Last Call For Assurance Insurance

Kentucky GOP Gov. Matt Bevin takes to a FOX News opinion column to lead the charge of the Trump-era response to kicking tens of millions off health insurance: five weeks in, Trump is the best POTUS ever and you can just shut up.

On a larger scale, President Trump shares the desire of most Americans to see the failed ObamaCare law repealed and replaced.

Voters took note that ObamaCare was a massive and highly complex law with many layers of bureaucracy. It should be no surprise that replacing it will result in some vigorous debate and, at times, disagreement.

The president made a brilliant choice when appointing Tom Price as Health and Human Services Secretary. As a former physician and congressman, Secretary Price brings much experience and knowledge to the health care issue. Now that he has been confirmed, we can begin to build consensus on how best to accomplish replacement of this disastrous law. 

Finally, President Trump can elaborate on his economic agenda and the positive response by investors to his pro-business vision. 

In Kentucky, we are meeting regularly with business leaders who are encouraged about our state’s recent passage of pro-business legislation and who are now considering our state as a possible location for expansion. Likewise, President Trump’s commitments to tax reform and deregulation have encouraged investors to propel the stock market to new heights. 

The president’s address to Congress can provide investors with more specifics of his economic agenda and, in so doing, confirm the optimism investors have expressed.
The Trump administration can be proud of these accomplishments and the impressive array of additional cabinet appointments, including Kentuckian Elaine Chao as Secretary of Transportation.

The American people are not fooled by the media's non-stop negative narrative which is intended to overshadow the president's positive vision and his remarkable pace of significant achievements.

I mean, I thought Bevin was a small-scale grifter and basically in a protracted fight to fleece Kentuckians out of as much money as possible before he ends up getting investigated for fraud.  But he's hitched himself to the Trump Train and he's fully prepared to take the state careening into the canyon when the bridge to reality ahead is out.

Trump's "remarkable pace of significant achievements" is the most unerringly stupid thing I've seen written about the man so far.  Leave it to my idiot governor to be the one saying it.

Of course, it's Bevin who will take the guillotine when he gets done kicking a tenth of the state off Medicaid, but I'm sure he'll end up getting a nice job with either the Trump regime or with FOX News after his failed re-election bis in 2019.

Just Don't Deport The Good Ones, Donny

When Trump voters were more than happy to cast their ballot for the guy who promised to "get rid of the Mexicans" and all that?  They didn't mean get rid of the "good Mexicans", just the "bad hombres". Or something.

West Frankfort, Illinois, overwhelmingly voted for President Donald Trump last fall, but now some residents are upset after the Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested and detained a beloved local Mexican restaurant owner. 

The New York Times reports that ICE last week detained Juan Carlos Hernandez Pacheco, the owner of the La Fiesta restaurant in the town of 8,000 people located in southern Illinois. 

While residents in the town said that they were still supportive of the president’s moves to deport undocumented immigrants, they told the Times that the president should make more exceptions for people like Pacheco, who have not only been exemplary local businessmen, but also pillars of the community who take part in local charity events. 

“I think people need to do things the right way, follow the rules and obey the laws, and I firmly believe in that,” local resident Lori Barron told the paper. “But in the case of Carlos, I think he may have done more for the people here than this place has ever given him. I think it’s absolutely terrible that he could be taken away.” 

West Frankfort Mayor Tom Jordan similarly praised Pacheco as a “great asset” to the community who “doesn’t ask for anything in return.” 

And Richard Glodich, the athletic director at a local high school, wrote a letter in support of Pacheco in which he slammed ICE for arresting “a GOOD MAN that should be used as a role model for other immigrants.” 

The specific reason that ICE decided to target Pacheco for arrest is still unknown. ICE wouldn’t comment on the specificity of Pacheco’s case, and would only say that “every day, as part of routine operations, ICE officers target and arrest criminal aliens and other individuals who are in violation of our nation’s immigration laws.”

Hey, Carlos made pretty good enchiladas and besides, it was the only Mexican restaurant worth a damn in town, right guys?

Look, Trump voters.  This is exactly what you voted for.  This is what you said you wanted, you wanted the wall, you wanted them rounded up, you wanted to stop them from "taking your jobs". Well now there's possibly some prime commercial restaurant space available in West Frankfort, so who's going to step up?

I have all kinds of sympathy for Carlos and his employees.  He clearly and obviously contributed to the community.  But guess what?  You voted to wreck that arrangement because you wanted "jobs" and you wanted "America first".  This is what you get.  We warned you guys over here on this side that this was what was coming for years if you put the GOP back in charge, and you said "Well, at least he's not that Clinton bitch."

Now all of a sudden there's so much buyer's remorse across America.  Reap that whirlwind, guys. There's a lot more of that crop coming to you, and soon.

Orange You Glad You Have A Budget Plan

The Trump regime's proposed budget is mostly useless, like all White House budget plans (since Congress actually writes the numbers) but it at least lets us know what the top priorities are for this White House.  Apparently that top priority is preparing for war, and a hell of a lot of it.

President Donald Trump is proposing major defense spending increases and big cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency, State Department and other federal agencies in a proposed budget to be presented soon to Congress, said a person familiar with the plan.

The outline of the budget will be made public as early as Monday, according to two White House officials. They declined to comment further on what the budget may entail. Trump is scheduled to make an address to Congress on Tuesday night.

Congress ultimately determines how the federal government’s money is spent, and the White House budget is mostly an opening bid in what could be a protracted process to set a federal spending plan for the upcoming fiscal year.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Trump’s first budget won’t touch entitlement programs such as Social Security or Medicare. It will instead focus on ways to produce long-term economic growth by slashing taxes, he said in an interview taped Friday and broadcast Sunday on Fox News Channel.

The New York Times reported Sunday evening that the budget will assume economic growth of 2.4 percent, below the 3 percent growth Trump has pledged. Mnuchin said that the administration thinks a combination of tax cuts and regulatory relief will lead to economic growth of 3 percent or higher. “We’re going to make sure this works,” he said in the Fox interview. “This is all about creating growth.”

The proposed cuts to the State Department are substantial, maybe as much as 30% (and even more draconian to the EPA.)  Meanwhile, the Pentagon will get a significant increase in funding at the direct expense of domestic programs.  Social Security and Medicare still have "third-rail" status, but other domestic safety net programs like Medicaid, SNAP benefits, child care subsidies, federal education programs like free and reduced-price school lunches?  They are expected to be gutted.

In other words, the very programs that Trump voters depend on the most will be the first to go in order to pay for more F-35s and nukes, and most of all, tax cuts for the rich.  Now, the Trump regime will say this will create millions of new jobs that will eliminate the need for social programs, but we all know that coal jobs and manufacturing jobs aren't coming back, so the reality is Trump is going to screw over his base and continue to blame that on those people for four years.

I'm betting the Ryan Austerity Budget isn't too far off from this, if anything it will have more domestic program cuts and less defense spending to allow for even larger tax cuts for the 1%.

But stay tuned folks.  The Age of GOP Austerity Cuts are coming.

StupidiNews!

• A "historic blunder" found "La La Land" announced as Best Picture when the actual winner was "Moonlight" in last night's Oscars.
• Donald Trump says he will reveal details of the GOP plan to replace Obamacare at his joint address to Congress on Tuesday.
• Trump's pick for Secretary of the Navy, Philip Bilden, has withdrawn due to financial conflict of interest requirements, the second Trump armed forces nominee to do so this month.
• Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao is warning the nation's governors that they will have to get behind a national Trump plan to pay for infrastructure.
• A new medical study finds rates of reported suicide attempts among teenagers decreased in states that allowed same-sex marriage earlier.

Repeal And Repulse

The House GOP plan to repeal Obamacare is starting to take shape, and surprise, there's no "replace".  It's a disaster that will leave tens of millions with no health insurance, and tens of millions more with more expensive plans that cover far less than under the ACA.

Republican replacement plans for Obamacare would lead to significant declines in the number of Americans with health insurance coverage, according to an analysis presented Saturday at the National Governors Association and obtained by Vox.

The analysis was conducted by the health research firm Avalere Health and the consulting firm McKinsey and Company.

The analysis includes graphs on what the Republican plan to overhaul Obamacare’s tax credits, generally making them less generous, would do. They are based on the recent 19-page proposal that Republican leadership released about their plan to repeal and replace Obamacare. In particular, they look at the effect of switching from income-based tax credits (which give poor people more help) to age-based tax credits, where everyone would get the same amount.

The report estimates what would happen in a hypothetical state with 300,000 people in the individual market that has also expanded Medicaid. In the individual market, enrollment would fall 30 percent and 90,000 people would become uninsured.

An additional 115,000 people in that hypothetical state may also lose coverage because they are enrolled in Medicaid and cannot find an affordable private plan.

The report estimates that coverage declines would be even higher in states that did not expand Medicaid — largely those run by Republican governors. There, the report presents an example of a state with 235,000 in the individual market. It estimates that coverage would decline by 120,000 people, about 50 percent.

Combined with Medicaid block grants, which would be billions in cuts to state Medicaid programs *on top of* eliminating funding for expanded Medicaid, you're getting the picture here: Republicans would not only take the state of insurance back to the Dubya era, it would be even worse because Medicaid would be gutted.

And this is why Republicans are terrified.  They know they're about to be burned at the stake for this.

Electing To Send A Message

Not only did Democrats keep the Delaware State Senate in yesterday's special election, but Stephanie Hansen won by an impressive margin, with pretty good turnout to boot.  Maybe Dems will start turning out after all.

In the most expensive special election in Delaware history ― a contest to decide which party controls the state Senate ― Democrat Stephanie Hansen was on track to annihilate her Republican rival on the back of extraordinary turnout.

The last time her opponent, John Marino, ran in this district, in 2014, he lost by just 2 points. Hansen’s 58-42 percent victory over Marino on Saturday ensured that Democrats will maintain control of the state Senate. It also notched a big Donald Trump-era win for a new generation of Democratic activists shocked into action by the November election.

“We turned back that win from Washington and made sure it won’t hit Delaware,” Hansen said in her victory speech Saturday night.

While Hansen’s campaign was focused on local issues, she saw a huge swell of support after nationwide Women’s March protests on Jan. 21. Protesters, many of them out in the streets for the first time, have been turning their energy toward local and state politics. The first major election since the uprising was Delaware’s.

Hansen’s campaign received huge support. More than 1,000 volunteers worked during the course of the campaign, and about 500 ― many from nearby states ― showed up Saturday for Election Day. Hansen received more than 14,000 contributions of less than $100 from small donors spread all over the country.

“That’s more volunteers than I’ve had in nine elections,” exclaimed state Sen. Dave Sokola (D), of Hansen’s Election Day workers.

“It’s overwhelming to see all these people,” said Kelly Wright, a resident of Hansen’s district. “It’s making me emotional to see that people come take a bus two-plus hours away.”

The turnout of volunteers made a huge difference as Hansen crushed her Republican opponent with unusually high turnout for a special election.

Democrats made the mistake of convincing themselves wins like these for the GOP in 2009 and 2013 were flukes, or just local anomalies.  Republicans aren't going to make that same mistake, and they are definitely going to be ready to fight back hard.   But with Trump at 44% and falling, Republicans are going to have a hell of a time doing that effectively.

Tie everyone to Trump, and the Dems just might come out ahead.

Sunday Long Read: The New Cold War

This week's Sunday Long Read is the New Yorker's tour de force on Putin, Russia, and the badly compromised Trump regime, the Obama administration, and Hillary Clinton.  It's an excellent recap of the last 18 months, and pretty good tool to see what's ahead for America.

The 2016 Presidential campaign in the United States was of keen interest to Putin. He loathed Obama, who had applied economic sanctions against Putin’s cronies after the annexation of Crimea and the invasion of eastern Ukraine. (Russian state television derided Obama as “weak,” “uncivilized,” and a “eunuch.”) Clinton, in Putin’s view, was worse—the embodiment of the liberal interventionist strain of U.S. foreign policy, more hawkish than Obama, and an obstacle to ending sanctions and reëstablishing Russian geopolitical influence. At the same time, Putin deftly flattered Trump, who was uncommonly positive in his statements about Putin’s strength and effectiveness as a leader. As early as 2007, Trump declared that Putin was “doing a great job in rebuilding the image of Russia and also rebuilding Russia period.” In 2013, before visiting Moscow for the Miss Universe pageant, Trump wondered, in a tweet, if he would meet Putin, and, “if so, will he become my new best friend?” During the Presidential campaign, Trump delighted in saying that Putin was a superior leader who had turned the Obama Administration into a “laughingstock.” 

For those interested in active measures, the digital age presented opportunities far more alluring than anything available in the era of Andropov. The Democratic and Republican National Committees offered what cybersecurity experts call a large “attack surface.” Tied into politics at the highest level, they were nonetheless unprotected by the defenses afforded to sensitive government institutions. John Podesta, the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s campaign and a former chief of staff of Bill Clinton’s, had every reason to be aware of the fragile nature of modern communications. As a senior counsellor in the Obama White House, he was involved in digital policy. Yet even he had not bothered to use the most elementary sort of defense, two-step verification, for his e-mail account. 

“The honest answer is that my team and I were over-reliant on the fact that we were pretty careful about what we click on,” Podesta said. In this instance, he received a phishing e-mail, ostensibly from “the Gmail team,” that urged him to “change your password immediately.” An I.T. person who was asked to verify it mistakenly replied that it was “a legitimate e-mail.” 

The American political landscape also offered a particularly soft target for dezinformatsiya, false information intended to discredit the official version of events, or the very notion of reliable truth. Americans were more divided along ideological lines than at any point in two decades, according to the Pew Research Center. American trust in the mainstream media had fallen to a historic low. The fractured media environment seemed to spawn conspiracy theories about everything from Barack Obama’s place of birth (supposedly Kenya) to the origins of climate change (a Chinese hoax). Trump, in building his political identity, promoted such theories.

“Free societies are often split because people have their own views, and that’s what former Soviet and current Russian intelligence tries to take advantage of,” Oleg Kalugin, a former K.G.B. general, who has lived in the United States since 1995, said. “The goal is to deepen the splits.” Such a strategy is especially valuable when a country like Russia, which is considerably weaker than it was at the height of the Soviet era, is waging a geopolitical struggle with a stronger entity.

And that's where we are today, a country so hopelessly fractured we remain on the verge of breaking down into a new, far more frightening configuration.  The GOP spent years tearing the country apart. All Putin had to do was find two ends on either side of a tear to grab on to, and to pull as hard as he could.

What will survive the Trump regime?  I couldn't tell you.  But it sure as hell won't be the America I thought we were in January 2009.