The House of Representatives will vote Thursday on the American Health Care Act, a bill President Donald Trump has enthusiastically endorsed and what the administration considers its best and perhaps only chance to repeal and replace Obamacare. It’s the first and possibly biggest test so far of Trump’s ability to push forward his legislative agenda with a sizable Republican majority in the House and a marginal one in the Senate. And even on the day of the vote, it’s difficult to see how the bill ends up on the president’s desk in its current form—or even how it passes the House.
That’s because a number of conservative House members are concerned it doesn’t repeal and replace Obamacare sufficiently. These members of the Freedom Caucus have a message for House speaker Paul Ryan and President Trump: “start over.” The Freedom Caucus has something like 20 to 30 members, but fortunately for House leadership they’ve often not held together as a bloc to derail legislation supported by an otherwise united GOP conference. Unfortunately for Ryan, some moderate and even other non-far-right Republicans, concerned about the spending cuts and insurance changes the new bill would implement, have started dropping their support.
It’s possible the 35 to 40 Republican votes against the bill overestimate the opposition and that Ryan and House leadership believe they can call some bluffs by forcing a vote. Do Republicans really want to see a chance to repeal Obamacare go down like this? But it’s also possible leadership recognizes they can’t pass it and delays the vote. That will be embarrassing for Ryan, but it will also reflect poorly on Trump and the White House, which has spent the last several days trying to twist as many arms as possible.
Will Conservatives Get What They Want?
Some conservatives argue it didn’t have to be this way. Philip Klein at the Washington Examiner reports that Senator Mike Lee of Utah, who has been vocal in his opposition to the House bill, has asked the Senate parliamentarian about what could pass the Senate’s reconciliation rule requirements.
This seems to have prompted some last-minute discussions about House leadership updating the bill to repeal more regulations—and to get wayward conservative members to finally jump on board.
More on Potential Changes to North Korea Policy
The Trump administration has launched a full-scale review of the United States policy toward North Korea. According to a White House source the review, which is ongoing and was initiated primarily by deputy national security advisor K.T. McFarland, began before North Korea launched four missiles into the Sea of Japan earlier this month. That action occurred during Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe’s official visit to the United States and was seen as a provocation in response to the visit.
The guiding principle of the review, says the White House source, is that the current policy toward North Korea (dubbed “strategic patience” during the Obama administration) has done nothing to stem the totalitarian hermit state’s pursuit of long-range nuclear-capable missile technology. The White House has declared the era of strategic patience with North Korea is “over” and on Tuesday, press secretary Sean Spicer read a statement to the press that the United States “is exploring a new range of diplomatic, security, and economic measures in response to the grave and escalating threat posed by North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.”
This review is necessarily exploring a number of options, including new economic sanctions, and has already occupied multiple meetings of the Principals Committee.
“We’re way farther along on this issue than on any other,” says the White House source.
Containment of the North Korean nuclear program will require Chinese cooperation, the thinking in the White House goes. But Beijing, as always, complicates things when it comes to North Korea. My colleague Ethan Epstein reports from Seoul on how new Chinese sanctions are putting South Korea in a bind as it tries to defend itself against North Korea with a missile-defense system created in partnership with the United States. China would prefer South Korea remain in its own orbit rather than America’s.
Team Trump Ends Up in Federal Intel Reports
House Intelligence chairman Devin Nunes’s cryptic Wednesday press conference raised more questions than it answered. Here’s Jenna Lifhits on what Nunes revealed:
Nunes then traveled to the White House to brief the president. The whole incident has drawn the ire of Nunes’s Democratic counterpart on the Intelligence committee, Adam Schiff, who said in a statement Wednesday that Nunes did not share the information with Schiff before sharing it with the White House.
Schiff, meanwhile, has said the identities of those Trump team members remained masked in the relevant intelligent reports—and that Nunes has no evidence they were unmasked.
Song of the Day
“Tightrope,” Janelle Monáe (feat. Big Boi).
