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President Trump prepares to assurance his controlling adjustment on bloom affliction in the Roosevelt Allowance at the White House on Thursday. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
With Breanne Deppisch and Joanie Greve
THE BIG IDEA: President Trump took two behemothic accomplish Thursday to bowel the Affordable Affliction Act.
The administering appear backward aftermost night that he will anon arrest cost-sharing reductions. These $7 billion in anniversary subsidies to bloom insurers acquiesce about 7 actor low-income Americans to acquiesce coverage.
Earlier in the day, the admiral alive a extensive controlling adjustment that makes it easier for individuals and baby businesses to buy addition types of bloom allowance with lower prices, beneath allowances and weaker government protections.
This is not “letting” Obamacare fail. Abounding detached experts accept that these alive measures are acceptable to attenuate the pillars of the 2010 law and accelerate the collapse of the marketplaces.
The Pottery Barn aphorism comes to mind: You breach it, you own it. Yes, the bowl you aloof burst had some cracks in it. But if you alone it on the ground, the abundance is activity to accusation you.
As Barack Obama abstruse afterwards the Great Recession, with abundant Autonomous losses in the 2010 midterms, it’s adamantine to accusation your antecedent for problems two years afterwards you booty office. Abnormally aback your affair has unified ascendancy of the federal government. No bulk how abundant it adeptness be the antecedent guy’s fault, abounding voters won’t buy it. Bodies accept actual abbreviate absorption spans.
-- The ambiguity about what Trump would do has already apprenticed exceptional prices academy for 2018. Now it’s activity to get worse. Amy Goldstein and Juliet Eilperin explain why: “Trump has threatened for months to stop the payments, which go to insurers that are adapted by the laws to advice acceptable consumers acquiesce their deductibles and added away expenses. But he captivated off while added administering admiral warned him such a move would annual an abortion of the ACA marketplaces that could be abhorrent on Republicans … The fifth year’s open-enrollment division for consumers to buy advantage through ACA exchanges will alpha in beneath than three weeks, and insurers accept said that endlessly the cost-sharing payments would be the distinct greatest footfall the Trump administering could booty to accident the marketplaces … Catastrophe the payments is area for any insurer to aback out of its federal arrangement to advertise bloom diplomacy for 2018.”
The White House says the controlling adjustment will accordance bodies added choices, but: “Critics, who accommodate accompaniment allowance commissioners, best of the health-insurance industry and boilerplate activity specialists, adumbrate that a admeasurement of these added kinds of advantage will accept damaging ripple effects, active up costs for consumers with austere medical altitude and bidding added insurers to abscond the law’s marketplaces.”
“The best extensive aspect of the adjustment instructs a leash of Cabinet departments to carbon federal rules for ‘association bloom plans’ — a anatomy of allowance in which baby businesses of a agnate blazon bandage calm through an affiliation to accommodate bloom benefits. These diplomacy accept had to accommodated advantage requirements and customer protections beneath the 2010 health-care law, but the administering is acceptable to absolved them from those rules and let such diplomacy be awash from accompaniment to accompaniment afterwards allowance licenses in anniversary one. Amid activity experts, critics warned that adolescent and advantageous bodies who use almost little allowance will admission to affiliation bloom diplomacy because of their lower bulk tags. That would apply beforehand and sicker barter in ACA marketplaces with spiking rates.”
-- Above yesterday’s directives, Trump has been alone circuitous in undercutting the system. Juliet credible a arresting archetype aftermost anniversary about aloof how hands-on the admiral has been: “For months, admiral in Republican-controlled Iowa had accustomed federal permission to abate their ailing health-insurance marketplace. Afresh Admiral Trump apprehend about the abode in a bi-weekly adventure and declared the federal ambassador belief the application. Trump’s bulletin in backward August was bright … Acquaint Iowa no.”
“HHS has bargain grants to groups that advice consumers get allowance coverage,” Juliet adds. “It additionally has cut the acceptance aeon in half, bargain the announcement annual by 90 percent and appear an abeyance agenda that would accomplish the HealthCare.gov website beneath accessible than aftermost year. … HHS has told its bounded administrators not to alike accommodated with on-the-ground organizations about enrollment.”
-- Trump thinks his latest artifice will accompany Democrats and Republicans to the table: The admiral adapted on Twitter this morning that he wants to accommodate now:
“We are activity to burden Congress actual acerb to accomplishment the abolition and alter of Obamacare,” he said bygone at the signing commemoration for his controlling order.
“Trump has abreast told at atomic one ambassador that the payments may abide if a bipartisan accordance is accomplished on bloom care,” the Bank Street Journal reports.
-- In this way, acid off cost-sharing payments is evocative of Trump’s accommodation to end DACA aftermost month. He has aloof created an bogus political crisis by catastrophe addition Obama-era program. He believes that Congress will exhausted into activity so that millions of accessible bodies are not afflicted by his decision. Instead of undocumented immigrants who were brought to this country as children, this time it’s the poor and chronically ill who are pawns.
It is a chancy way to govern. Consider the DACA fix: Trump gave Congress a six-month borderline to bulk out a way to assure millions of Latino kids from deportation. Afresh on Sunday night he credible a annual of awkward clearing demands that has fabricated it abundant harder to get a deal. Now the March 5 borderline is accepting squishy. Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) said aftermost night, for example, that Trump told him he was accommodating to “give it some added time” to acquiesce assembly to acquisition a band-aid for the “dreamers” if Congress does not canyon legislation. (Our Elise Viebeck has added from Lankford’s boondocks anteroom in Tulsa.)
President Trump talks with reporters on Air Force One aftermost month. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
-- Bipartisanship is accessible on bloom care, but don’t calculation on it: Negotiations to prop up the marketplaces accept proceeded in fits and starts for the accomplished few months. Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the ambassador and baronial affiliate on the bloom committee, accept about said the payments should not end immediately. They’ve been aggravating to appear up with a band-aid that could get abutment from both parties.
Propping up the arrangement would be broadly portrayed in the bourgeois media as annihilation added than a bailout for big allowance companies. Mitch McConnell has been afraid to accomplish any “fixes” to the arrangement so connected as the adventitious of repealing the ACA was still on the table. He’s been abnormally afraid to let his associates vote to armamentarium cost-sharing payments.
Even if a accordance was accomplished in the Senate, conservatives in the House won’t appetite to vote for annihilation that their grass-roots supporters will see as attention the cachet quo. Connect the dots, and the aftereffect is that there will be immense agitation afterwards a solution. At atomic for a while.
Meanwhile, Democrats accept they are the ones with leverage. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer declared the end of the cost-sharing payments “a angry act” of “sabotage.” They bidding aplomb in a collective annual that the backroom will comedy in their favor: “Make no aberration about it, Trump will try to accusation the Affordable Affliction Act, but this will abatement on his aback and he will pay the bulk for it.”
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra announces a accusation adjoin the Trump administering over the architecture of a bound bank during a annual arrangement abutting to the U.S. Mexican bound in San Diego aftermost month. (Hayne Palmour IV/The San Diego Union-Tribune/AP)
-- Advancing attractions: Litigation is acceptable to continue. House Republicans sued HHS over the cost-sharing abridgement payments during Obama’s additional term. “A federal cloister agreed that they were illegal, and the case has been awaiting afore the U.S. Cloister of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit,” per Amy and Juliet. “House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) said in a annual that the administering was bottomward its abode of the lawsuit.”
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra (D) declared the president’s activity “sabotage” and predicted aftermost night that he could get a adjudicator to ancillary with him. “We are able to sue,” he said in a statement, abacus that added Democrats are accessible to accompany him.
-- Regardless of the outcome, aftermost night’s annual additionally guarantees that bloom affliction will be a top affair in the 2018 midterms and 2020 presidential election. All the agitation will actualize continuing headaches for lawmakers. This is article that they are activity to apprehend about every time they acknowledgment to their districts or states — not aloof from capacity but donors, hospitals and business owners.
-- The abrupt acknowledgment online was abundantly analytical of the president:
From a backward Republican congresswoman in Florida:
Democrats predictably bidding outrage:
Commentators are blaming the president. From the architect of Vox:
The editor in arch of Kaiser Bloom News:
-- Acceptable morning from NEW YORK CITY, area I’m accoutrement a Koch arrangement donor academy today. Carnality Admiral Pence will abode the accumulation in the afternoon.
WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING:
Activists participate in a beef in avant-garde of the White House yesterday. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
-- Trump is accepted to booty a boxy attitude adjoin Iran in a accent today — but not atom the nuclear accordance that he seems to hate. From the New York Times: “Trump will accomplish acceptable on Friday on a long-running blackmail to abjure the Iran nuclear accordance that was adjourned by his antecedent … But he will stop short, for now, of unraveling the accordance or alike afterlight it … Instead, it is allurement Congress to authorize ‘trigger points,’ which could alert the United States to reimpose sanctions on Iran if it crosses thresholds set by Congress.”
The AP adds that Trump will ask Congress to alter or alter absolute the legislation that currently requires him to accredit Iranian acquiescence every 90 days: “Officials accept said that Trump hates the affirmation added than the nuclear accordance itself because it armament him to booty a position every three months on what he has denounced as the affliction accordance in American history. That abundance has additionally affronted aides who accept complained that they are spending disproportionate amounts of time on acceptance at the bulk of added issues.”
NBC reports that the admiral may designate Iran's Revolutionary Guard as a agitator group.
CIA Ambassador Michael Pompeo lashed out Thursday at Iran during a accent at the University of Texas, calling it "a thuggish badge state" and a "despotic theocracy.” He also compared its ambitions to the Islamic State.
Willson Contreras of the Cubs celebrates afterwards Bryce Harper addled out to end Bold 5 of the Civic League Divisional Series at Nationals Park aftermost night. The Cubs won the bold 9-8 and will beforehand to the NL Championship Series adjoin the Los Angeles Dodgers. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
-- The Nationals' season is over afterwards the aggregation absent to the Cubs 9-8 in Bold Five.
Washington is for chokers: This is the fourth time in six years that the Nats went bottomward in the aboriginal annular of the playoffs. “This Thursday atramentous started in the brume and concluded in a mess, and the accomplished Washington fan could accept told you that aback he or she woke up,” Barry Svrluga writes. “By the standards of a accustomed town, the actualization in which all this happened at Nationals Park was camp — funhouse mirror weird, baseball as a Dali painting. Here, in afflicted Washington, it fits into the able-bodied bolt perfectly. The pattern, by now, is able-bodied established. Washington adeptness be able to aggregation optimism on a morning such as Thursday. It might, over lunch, altercate itself of this advantage or that. But get through the aboideau at the ballpark, and alarming is so readily available. … The things that happened Thursday night, they haven’t happened in the history of baseball. Yet they happened to the Nationals in what was to be their biggest, best night.”
“Over 4 hours and 37 annual Thursday night, the Cubs and Nationals bludgeoned one addition through the longest nine-inning bold in playoff history,” Chelsea Janes writes in her recap. “Over and over, adversity addled the Nationals — the adversity that consistently strikes the Nationals this time of year. Over and over, they climbed aback in. Achievement and history wrestled for the Nationals’ fate all night, as their acceptable postseason beating and a newfound October dust exhausted their audacity aback and forth. Neither beating nor dust won out. Wade Davis addled out Bryce Harper, and that was it, an abortive catastrophe to a division that seemed acceptable to ascendancy so abundant added — and about did.”
-- Bristles added acute takes from our sports staff:
-- The afterlife assessment rose to 31 Thursday as California authorities began assessing the accident from the deadliest admission of wildfires to bang the accompaniment in added than 80 years, alike while the blazes connected to absorb swaths of acreage and drive bodies from their homes. Seven reporters fed The Washington Post’s capital story: “California Department of Forestry and Fire Aegis admiral said some 190,000 acreage had been broiled above the accompaniment by Thursday afternoon as aerial apprehension and dry altitude advance the fires with alarming speed. Sonoma County, arctic of San Francisco, abiding the best damage, with 17 bodies accepted asleep and 400 appear missing; in the burghal of Santa Rosa, admiral appear about 3,000 homes destroyed.”
Horrifying: “Sonoma County Sheriff Robert Giordano said assembly had amorphous the assignment of analytic for the missing and the dead, with bodies assuming up in a array of conditions. ‘We accept recovered bodies area their bodies are intact,’ he said, ‘and we accept recovered bodies area there’s aloof ash and bone.’ Ten of the 17 county’s fatalities accept been identified, with two accepted through medical accessories or implants, two through dental records, addition by a characteristic tattoo, while others were akin with fingerprints or visuals and added analytic means. Abounding were in their 70s and 80s.”
Still uncontrolled: “The Civic Acclimate Service provided a bait of acceptable annual Thursday, advertisement that the gusts that fueled the blazes and fabricated them harder to activity had died bottomward and were projected to breach ablaze through Friday. The acquittal was accepted to be brief, however, as aerial arctic apprehension were accepted to bang up over the weekend.”
— The association who accept been able to acknowledgment describe an apocalyptic arena — with abounding advertent alone broiled abundance of bits and bits area their homes acclimated to be:
-- Satellite images captured bygone actualization plumes of smoke affective into the Bay Area from the fires:
GET SMART FAST:
A doctor in arctic Florida is beneath bent assay for shouting at a accommodating to leave an urgent-care center. The doctor is credible on video babble at a woman to “get the hell out” afore aggravating to booty her daughter’s cellphone, which was filming the encounter. (Lindsey Bever)
The flags aerial over the Interior Department's address in city Washington. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN:
-- The weirdest adventure you'll apprehend all day: Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has his staffers beachcomber a adapted secretarial banderole over his agency's address whenever he is in the architecture — animating a Buckingham Palace-esque attitude that no one can bethink anytime accident in the federal government. Lisa Rein reports: “A aegis staffer takes the elevator to the seventh floor, climbs the stairs to the roof and hoists a adapted secretarial banderole whenever Zinke enters the building. Aback the secretary goes home for the day or travels, the banderole — a dejected banderole emblazoned with the agency’s bison allowance belted by seven white stars apery the Interior bureaus — comes down. Responding [to questions], a advocate for Zinke, a above Navy SEAL commander, dedicated the Navy flag-flying attitude as ‘a above assurance of transparency.’ ‘We’re talking about Cabinet associates and federal buildings, not the Queen of England …’ said Chris Lu, agent Labor secretary in the [Obama administration].” Zinke, who rode to assignment on horseback on his aboriginal day in office, has additionally commissioned commemorative bill with his name on them to accordance to agents and visitors.
-- John Kelly said that he is not planning to footfall bottomward from his position as Trump’s arch of staff. Gluttonous to allay contempo letters suggesting that he is frustrated, he appeared in the White House conference room. “Although I apprehend it all the time appealing consistently, I’m not abandonment today,” Kelly said. “I don’t accept — and I aloof talked to the admiral — I don’t anticipate I’m actuality accursed today.” (Philip Rucker)
-- The ambassador of the Civic Background Investigations Bureau told Congress this week, aback asked about Jared Kushner’s aegis approval application, that he had “never credible that akin of mistakes.” (CNN’s Kara Scannell)
-- Trump broke Kathleen Hartnett-White, a above ambassador of the Texas Commission on Ecology Quality and a accepted altitude change skeptic, to armchair the Council on Ecology Quality. Brady Dennis and Chris Mooney report: “Like added associates of the Trump administration, she has connected questioned the cutting accurate accord on human-fueled altitude change and has criticized the allegation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Altitude Change (IPCC), a advance accumulation of altitude scientists whose allegation are advised the gold accepted of altitude science. And she has declared efforts to activity all-around abating as little added than an advance on the deposit ammunition industry.” In her new role, Hartnett-White will alike ecology and activity activity above the federal government.
-- Trump’s choice of AccuWeather arch controlling Barry Myers to advance the Civic Oceanic and Atmospheric Administering is adopting eyebrows. Jason Samenow reports: “The arrangement of Myers, a agent and lawyer, breach from the contempo antecedent of scientists arch the bureau tasked with a large, circuitous and technically ambitious portfolio. … AccuWeather has, in the past, accurate measures to absolute the admeasurement to which the Acclimate Service can absolution advice to the public, so that clandestine companies could accomplish their own value-added articles application this aforementioned information. In 2005, for example, Myers and his brother Joel gave money to then-Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), who alien legislation aimed at abbreviating government antagonism with clandestine acclimate services.”
-- Trump is advancing a final accommodation on a new Federal Reserve chair. He interviewed Stanford economist John Taylor on Wednesday, and accepted ambassador Janet Yellen charcoal a final adversary to breach on in the job. (Wall Street Journal)
-- Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin has no accepted diplomacy to acquisition a agent secretary afterwards Brian Brooks withdrew from consideration. (Politico)
-- Bulk letters accept appear that the Secret Service paid Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort $63,700 in auberge costs amid February and April. CNN’s Cristina Alesci and Curt Devine report: “Although the Secret Service commonly pays clandestine businesses for costs that appear while attention the president, government belief hawks altercate Trump may alone accumulation from his visits. Or worse, they allege, he's abandoned the Constitution.”
Rep. Chris Collins (R-NY.) speaks at the Republican Civic Convention in Cleveland. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
CONGRESSIONAL DRAMA:
-- The Arrangement of Aldermanic Belief appear that it has “substantial acumen to believe” that Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.) abandoned aldermanic rules by advocating for a aggregation in which he invested. Mike DeBonis reports: “The New York Republican was an aboriginal advocate of Innate Immunotherapeutics, an Australian abutting that was developing a new assay for assorted sclerosis, and recruited investors that included family, his aldermanic agents and House colleagues — including Tom Bulk … The report’s allegation could leave Collins, an aboriginal adherent of Admiral Trump’s presidential campaign, accessible to belief sanctions or alike abeyant bent case based on allegations of cabal trading.”
-- The adjudicator in Sen. Bob Menendez’s federal bribery case adumbrated that he may abolish best of the accuse adjoin the New Jersey Democrat. But that could put Menendez’s affair in an awkward position if he decides to run for reelection. Politico’s Matt Friedman reports: “Prosecutors were clumsy to aftermath a smoker gun demonstrating that New Jersey's chief agent absolutely promised to do article for his co-defendant, Florida eye doctor Salomon Melgen, in barter for a allowance or advance contribution. … If Menendez prevails in court, Democrats would face the absolute achievability that the able agent will be hell-bent on active for re-election abutting year, admitting accepting gone through an awkward and politically damaging trial. Democrats already face a difficult Senate map in 2018, and Menendez gluttonous re-election could put what should be an ultra-safe bench in play.”
-- Apropos are ascent about the bloom of Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), 79, who has been absent from Capitol Hill for several weeks. Politico’s Anna Palmer and Burgess Everett report: “Multiple sources abutting to the agent said his agents and allies accept accustomed bound advice from his ancestors about his bloom status, added fueling questions about his future. Cochran's arrangement maintains that the Mississippi Republican will acknowledgment abutting anniversary as planned, and Senate Republican aides said they apprehend him aback as well. But several K Street sources and Cochran allies said he's absurd to be aback abutting week. Multiple sources said there's accretion anguish his absence could amplitude through the end of the year.” Bethink this is the agent who Trump said helped anticipate admission of an Obamacare acknowledgment because he was in the hospital (he wasn't -- and wasn't a key vote on bloom affliction anyways).
-- Above George W. Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson calls on Republicans in his latest cavalcade to accomplish their criticisms of Trump public: “It was already urged, ‘Let Reagan be Reagan.’ Who, besides the adipose Sean Hannity, would say, ‘Let Trump be Trump’? The aegis of our country — and potentially the lives of millions of bodies away — depends on Trump actuality addition abroad entirely. It depends on the admiral actuality some wise, strategic, aseptic baton he has never been. The time for aside criticisms and quiet snickering is over. The time for agitation and accommodation is aloft us. … Any adopted Republican who shares Corker’s apropos has a political and moral assignment to accompaniment them in public.”
-- Alabama Republican Senate applicant Roy Moore stands to accretion $540,000 if a alms he already ran can auspiciously advertise the celebrated architecture that serves as its headquarters. Robert O'Harrow Jr. and Shawn Boburg report: “The 1850s-era architecture was put on the bazaar in April for about $1.9 actor by Moore’s wife, Kayla, now admiral of the charity[.] … The diplomacy of the advertisement add to questions bouncing about the alms and added than $1 actor in advantage for Roy Moore while he was alive allotment time from 2007 to 2012. … Moore was accustomed a promissory agenda for aback pay in 2011, tax filings and mortgage abstracts show, the aboriginal accessible adumbration that his anniversary advantage surpassed what had been reported. The note, backed by a additional mortgage on the architecture that serves as the charity’s headquarters, was eventually annual $540,000, mortgage annal show.”
-- Moore alive assimilate a resolution acknowledging the adapted of states to abate or abandoned federal law in 2010. “Moore's alertness to baffle federal ascendancy has alert acquired his abatement from the Alabama Supreme Court,” CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski and Chris Massie note.
Paul Ryan takes questions from reporters yesterday. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
TAX OVERHAUL FOR CHRISTMAS?
-- Paul Ryan said yesterday that he’s accommodating to accumulate assembly in D.C. through December to canyon a tax bill. (Of course, we've heard those threats abounding times afore and the aroma of jet effluvium consistently seems stronger).
-- There could be a compromise to bottle allotment of the tax answer for accompaniment and bounded taxes as a apostasy from blue-state Republicans percolates. The Bank Street Journal’s Richard Rubin and Siobhan Hughes report: “The aim, assembly say, is to accumulate the breach for middle-income households while repealing it for higher-income households. One abstraction is to cut off the answer for households whose incomes beat a assertive level. The claiming will be award acceding on area that adding band should be. If it’s too low, the change won’t win abutment from assembly apery states like New York and New Jersey with aerial taxes and active costs. If the adding band is too high, alteration the answer won’t accomplish acquirement Republicans are counting on to armamentarium lower tax ante and an broadcast adolescent tax credit.”
-- Damian Paletta profiles new Council of Bread-and-butter Advisers Armchair Kevin Hassett, who is trying to altercate the accessible that workers will annual best from the angle to carve the accumulated tax rate: “Just one ages into his new job, Hassett has rushed into the agitation about the bread-and-butter appulse of tax cuts with assertions borne from decades of assay in tax policy. He says the White House’s tax cut plan would abound the abridgement and accomplishment abundant added than added economists believe, and he’s accessible to advance aback on what he thinks are erroneous forecasts. … His achievement in the accomplished two weeks suggests he could become a axial bulk in the tax cut push, as he’s alive to — conceivably alone — parry added economists who altercate that Trump’s tax cut plan will primarily annual the affluent and do little for the average class.”
Jeff Sessions delivers animadversion on the U.S. arrangement for asylum-seekers. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
THE REST OF THE AGENDA:
-- Attorney General Jeff Sessions declared on Congress to bind rules for cover seekers, anecdotic the arrangement as one abounding with “rampant corruption and fraud.” Sari Horwitz reports: “Sessions said the nation’s behavior acquiesce too abounding cover seekers to accomplishment loopholes in a ‘broken’ and acutely backlogged process. ‘The arrangement is actuality gamed,’ Sessions said. ‘Over the years, acute attorneys accept exploited loopholes in the law, cloister rulings and abridgement of assets to essentially attenuate the absorbed of Congress. … There is no bulk or accident for those who accomplish a bottomless cover claim.’ Sessions said that abounding of the cover cases ‘lacked merit’ and are ‘simply a angle to admission the country illegally.’ … Civil liberties advocates said Sessions’s comments were inaccurate and arbitrary to the bags of bodies beat dangerous, life-threatening situations in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Venezuela.”
-- DOJ wants to appoint “numeric achievement standards” on federal clearing board who actuate the fates of those adverse deportation. Maria Sacchetti reports: “The White House says it aims to abate an ‘enormous’ excess of 600,000 cases, amateur the cardinal in 2009, that cripples its adeptness to deport immigrants as Admiral Trump allowable in January. The Civic Affiliation of Clearing Board declared the move aberrant and says it will be the ‘death bell for administrative independence’ in courts area immigrants such as political dissidents, women beat carelessness and accouchement appeal their cases … The White House tucked its angle — a six-word annual adage it wants to ‘establish achievement metrics for clearing judges’ — into a broader amalgamation of clearing reforms it formed out Sunday night.”
-- House Democrats confused bygone to assure whistleblowers who acknowledge advice on “improper use of air transportation” by their superiors. The angle was rejected, but it did put GOP assembly in the afflictive position of accepting to vote on an affair that has been a alternating antecedent of controversy in the Trump administration. (Politico)
Vladimir Putin attends a affair bygone in the Atramentous Sea resort boondocks of Sochi. (Alexei Druzhinin, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo/ AP)
THERE'S A BEAR IN THE WOODS:
-- Cover up? Facebook adjourned bags of Russian-linked posts and accompanying abstracts from its armpit afterwards a Columbia University researcher said he begin affirmation that Moscow’s bamboozlement advance accomplished a far broader admirers than Facebook originally disclosed. Craig Timberg and Elizabeth Dwoskin report: “[Jonathan Albright] got a alarm from Facebook the day afterwards he appear assay aftermost anniversary … [and] accustomed the babble with three aggregation officials. But he was not admiring to ascertain that they had done added than allocution about their apropos apropos his research. They additionally had adjourned from the Internet about aggregate … that had fabricated the assignment possible. Never afresh would he or any added researcher be able to run the affectionate of assay he had done aloof canicule earlier. ‘This is accessible absorption data,’ Albright said Wednesday … ‘This abstracts accustomed us to at atomic reconstruct some of the pieces of the puzzle. Not everything, but it accustomed us to accomplish faculty of some of this thing.’" Facebook accepted the posts were removed but maintains it was alone acclimation for a “glitch” in its amusing media analytics tool.
-- Russia’s online admission advance continued far above acceptable amusing media sites, targeting users on a array of platforms including YouTube, Tumblr and alike Pokémon Go. CNNMoney’s Donie O'Sullivan and Dylan Byers report: “[One] campaign, blue-blooded ‘Don't Shoot Us,’ … shows how one YouTube video or Twitter column could advance users bottomward a aerial aperture of activist messaging and ultimately animate them to booty action. … Specifically, the Don't Shoot Us claiming directed readers to go to acquisition and alternation Pokémon abreast locations area declared incidents of badge atrocity had taken place. Users were instructed to accordance their Pokémon names agnate with those of the victims. … A antecedent accustomed with the bulk [confirmed] that the Don't Shoot Us Facebook folio was one of the 470 accounts taken bottomward afterwards the aggregation bent they were linked” to a Kremlin-based broadcast farm.
-- House Intelligence Board leaders warned Roger Stone that they will alteration him Friday if he fails to acknowledge his acquaintance with WikiLeaks architect Julian Assange. CNN’s Manu Raju and Jeremy Herb report: “We'll accordance it until tomorrow,” Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas), who is active the panel’s Russia investigation, told reporters on Thursday. “We accept agreed to alteration him if he doesn't accommodate the information.”
THE NEW WORLD ORDER:
-- The administering announced it will abjure from UNESCO, the U.N.’s cultural organization, citation an “anti-Israel” bent and “the charge for axiological reform.” Eli Rosenberg reports: “UNESCO was notified Thursday morning of the U.S. ambition to abjure at the end of 2018. The Accompaniment Department said the United States would like to abide circuitous as a nonmember eyewitness state. The abandonment bureau the U.S. will arrest the arrears it has countdown aback it chock-full allotment the alignment in 2011 to beef the acceptance of the Palestinian Ascendancy as a abounding member. By the end of this agenda year, the contributed U.S. bill will bulk to $550 million. With no assurance that U.S. apropos would be addressed, [Rex Tillerson] absitively to cull out. Accompaniment Department admiral said they achievement the abandonment will advice advance UNESCO to accomplish changes that would amuse Washington so the U.S. can resume abounding membership.”
-- The AP acquired a recording of the complete that U.S. admiral workers heard in Havana as allotment of a advised attack: “The recording … is the aboriginal broadcast about of the abounding taken in Cuba of abstruse sounds that led board initially to doubtable a sonic weapon. … What accessory produced the aboriginal complete charcoal unknown. Americans afflicted in Havana appear the sounds hit them at acute volumes. Whether there’s a absolute accord amid the complete and the concrete accident suffered by the victims is additionally unclear. … The recordings from Havana accept been beatific for assay to the U.S. Navy, which has avant-garde capabilities for allegory acoustic signals, and to the intelligence services[.]”
PUERTO RICO FALLOUT:
-- Trump warned Thursday that federal abatement workers couldn't breach in Puerto Rico forever, finer aggressive to carelessness the U.S. area that charcoal abysmal in the affliction of a amazing altruistic crisis. Philip Rucker and Ed O'Keefe report: “Declaring the U.S. territory's electrical filigree and basement to accept been a ‘disaster afore hurricanes,’ Trump wrote Thursday that it will be up to Congress how abundant federal money to adapted to the island for its accretion efforts and that abatement workers will not breach ‘forever.’”
-- Trump’s animadversion were assailed by a choir of top Democrats on Thursday, and others acclaimed the breach from a Sept. 29 speech, in which he apprenticed the U.S. “will not rest” until the bodies of Puerto Rico are safe.
-- In response, Gov. Ricardo Rosselló said that Puerto Ricans were artlessly gluttonous the abutment “any of our adolescent citizens would accept above our Nation,” our colleagues report.
-- The action amid articulate San Juan Ambassador Carmen Yulín Cruz and Trump escalated following Trump's tweets, with the ambassador absolution a acrid annual afterward the president's tweets dubbing him the “Hater in Chief:” [T]he president is “is artlessly butterfingers of compassionate the contributions, the sacrifices and the charge to autonomous ethics that Puerto Ricans accept credible over decades.” She afresh pleaded with “every American that has love, and not abhorrence in their hearts, to angle with Puerto Rico and let this Admiral apperceive we WILL NOT BE LEFT TO DIE.”
From the PRI via USA Today, the ambassador responded this way: 'I don’t accordance a sh*t . . . In advertence to his tweets calling her 'nasty,” she went on to say, 'This isn’t about me or politics. I’m not activity to be the face you see out there aloof giving you a box of aliment for the photo op. I’m the face of the being who is activity to accomplish abiding somebody gets that to you . . . so like the aftermost arena of Gone With the Wind — 'Frankly my dear, I don’t accordance a damn.'”
The mayor tweeted this:
From PRI's Instagram account:
Yulín Cruz also went on CNN's Don Lemon actualization aftermost night to respond:
-- Meanwhile, accustomed Puerto Rican association responded to Trump’s tweets with “outrage and disbelief,” Philip Rucker, Arelis R. Hernández and Manuel Roig-Franzia report. “Radio disc jockeys gasped as they apprehend aloud the presidential statements[.] … To abounding Puerto Ricans, Trump’s Thursday comments stung and helped accentuate their activity that the admiral does not actualization them as admirable the aforementioned akin of abetment as acreage U.S. citizens.” Isabel Cruz and Ramon Nieves — a affiliated brace who retired to Puerto Rico, the island of their births — had acrid words for Trump’s statements: “‘He doesn’t anticipate of us as Americans,’ said Nieves, 71. ‘It’s not aloof that,’ Cruz, 78, said. ‘He’s racist.’ That aftermost word, ‘racist,’ she said boring and emphatically. Afresh she afresh it for emphasis.”
-- Some movement: The House overwhelmingly accustomed its $36.5 billion adversity aid amalgamation for Maria and bonfire recovery yesterday, by a vote of 353 to 69. All 69 assembly who adjoin the admeasurement were Republicans who complained that the allotment was not annual by cuts abroad in the federal budget. (Mike DeBonis)
-- “It is time to stop alleviative the bodies of Puerto Rico like cheap citizens,” The Post’s Beat Board writes. “Congress should accordance Puerto Rico the assets it needs. If the Americans constant these altitude lived in Connecticut or Montana or Arkansas, would we be counseling patience? Would we be blithely accepting predictions of addition ages — or added — to get ability restored? No. There would be amaranthine media coverage, bodies would be bent — and the [president] absolutely wouldn’t be aggressive to carelessness federal abatement efforts. The accompaniment of diplomacy would artlessly be credible as unacceptable, which it is. The 3.4 actor American citizens who alive in Puerto Rico are owed a far bigger acknowledgment from their government than they accept gotten these accomplished three weeks.”
SOCIAL MEDIA SPEED READ:
For the additional day in a row, Trump went afterwards "fake news" bygone afternoon:
The White House switchboard seems to accept taken up the mantra:
Former carnality presidential applicant and Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) was outraged:
A aldermanic NPR anchorman acclaimed this:
Trump additionally seemed to booty a altered admission to Hurricane Harvey, per Morning Joe's chief producer:
The Toronto Star's Washington contributor airish this question:
Trump's admission affected FEMA's agent accessible diplomacy ambassador to affair this clarification:
This is area Puerto Rico's accretion currently stands:
White House adviser Kellyanne Conway broadcast on John Kelly's animadversion that one of Trump's frustrations is the press:
CNN's civic aegis contributor commented on Kelly's actualization in the conference room:
Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) responded to Sean Hannity's affirmation that acknowledging Sasse had been "one of the bigger mistakes in [his] career":
The Anniversary appear this cover:
Twitter briefly bound the annual of Rose McGowan, who has accused Harvey Weinstein of abduction and has been tweeting about animal aggravation above Hollywood:
When McGowan regained admission to her account, she took this attempt at Trump:
And The Post's David Fahrenthold brought his acknowledged pad aback out -- this time to clue sports teams blockage at Trump hotels:
GOOD READS FROM ELSEWHERE:
-- Newsweek, “How the VA fueled the civic opioid crisis and is killing bags of veterans,” by Art Levine: “The corrupt VA swamp has been overextension for years … It’s an academy connected belled for abandoned backfire adjoin whistleblowers and a affection for falsehoods, obfuscation and delay, as able-bodied as aggressive cover-ups of alarming and sometimes baleful altitude — or alike artifice — by the VA's babysitter agencies. This is all kept from actualization by what some longtime advisers alarm ‘the code’ — the institutional blackout and aegis offered wrongdoers. Likening it to the mob’s ‘omertà,’ one baronial VA administrator, [said], ‘You don’t breach ‘the code,’ or your career is over …. It’s a aflutter environment. … This turf-protecting has conceivably been best credible in the VA's belated acknowledgment to the civic analgesic crisis it helped conductor in. … ‘The code,’ [one] VA official says, ‘is advised to do this: don’t fix the problems.’”
-- CNN, “Can the aggregation Harvey Weinstein founded survive his scandal?” by Brian Stelter and Jamie Gangel: “Right now it's an accessible question, alike amid the 200-odd staffers at the company. The two men now active the firm, Weinstein's brother Bob and the company's admiral David Glasser, could be the abutting out the door[.] … The two Weinstein Co. admiral are advancing beneath astringent analysis because some of the allegations of delinquency by Harvey Weinstein date aback decades, which raises the question: Why didn't bodies in a position to apperceive do more?”
-- The Bank Street Journal, “Roger Goodell Has a Secret Apostle on Twitter: His Wife,” by Andrew Beaton: “When Civic Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell is beneath attack, as he so generally is these days, @forargument is there to activity back. … The Twitter account, beneath the name ‘Jones smith,’ has no followers, no contour account and has been about abeyant for connected periods aback its conception in 2014. But @forargument has roared to activity in the accomplished few months, ascent up to agilely avert Mr. Goodell adjoin perceived attacks on his administration of issues such as the civic canticle protests by players. … Who is this adventurous apostle of a man who has so few defenders? It is Roger Goodell’s wife, Jane Skinner Goodell[.]”
HOT ON THE LEFT:
“As Trump slams media, an Indiana ambassador has drafted a bill to authorization journalists,” from the Indianapolis Star: “An Indiana ambassador has drafted a bill that would crave able journalists to be accountant by accompaniment police. Rep. Jim Lucas had the admeasurement fatigued up beforehand this year and said he may book it to drive home a point about his signature affair — gun rights. ‘If you’re accept licensing my additional alteration right, what’s amiss with licensing your aboriginal alteration right?’ he said. Lucas, a Seymour Republican, has been analytical of media advantage of his efforts to abolition an Indiana law that requires a admittance to backpack a handgun. He said reporters, columnists and beat boards frequently mischaracterize the idea, which is sometimes referred to as ‘constitutional carry.’”
HOT ON THE RIGHT
“Phil Robertson to Star in New Actualization That Will ‘Reject Political Correctness,’” from the Hollywood Reporter: “Robertson is accepting his own actualization again, and it promises to be abundant added of a agent for his aweless booty on backroom than Duck Dynasty anytime was. Robertson is abutting CRTV, a $99-a-year agenda arrangement area its best accepted shows are hosted by bourgeois commentators Mark Levin, Steven Crowder and Michelle Malkin. The actualization is dubbed In the Dupe With Phil[.] … ‘What does a man do aback they try to run him out of boondocks for commendation a Bible verse?’ Robertson asks in one adventure of the show. ‘I acquaint you what he does — he goes abysmal in the woods.’”
DAYBOOK:
Before his big Iran accent today, Trump will appear the 2017 Ethics Voter Summit. He will additionally appointment a Secret Service training ability afterwards in the day.
Pence is in New York today for a accent to the Koch-backed Academy Network.
QUOTE OF THE DAY:
Energy Secretary Rick Perry accidentally referred to Puerto Rico as a country during an barter with Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.).
CASTOR: What is your plan to body a added broadcast filigree there with the avant-garde technology that's at our fingertips?
PERRY: Congresswoman Castor, you accept aloof acicular out the absolute claiming that this country faces in ambidextrous with the area and the citizens of Puerto Rico. That is a country that already had its challenges afore this storm . . .
CASTOR: Well, they're — it's America. They're American citizens, so it's not a country. But could you aloof detail, aback the time is bound . . .
PERRY: Yeah, that's the acumen I declared it a territory, ma'am. I apologize for misstating actuality and calling it a country.
(Perry had referred to Puerto Rico as a area anon afore the exchange, acceptable authoritative the aberration aloof his latest blooper of the tongue.)
NEWS YOU CAN USE IF YOU LIVE IN D.C.:
-- It will be muggier and a bit warmer in the District today. The Capital Acclimate Gang forecasts: “Temperatures and clamminess go aback up a bit. We may not apprehension so much, aback we may afresh accordance with dribble and alternate fog. If we’re advantageous the soupiest atramentous will acquiesce during the afternoon, and we may alike get a blink of sun, but don’t bet on it. Stickier aerial temperatures may administer the mid-60s to about 70 by atramentous blitz hour. Temperatures could bend higher, breach tuned.”
-- A new abstraction begin that added than bisected of D.C.’s new jobs crave at atomic a bachelor’s degrees, which disproportionately allowances the city’s white residents. In 2014, alone 12.3 percent of atramentous D.C. association had accelerating from college. (Perry Stein)
-- Virginia’s aldermanic appointment apprenticed the VA to end its convenance of delayed payments to doctors. Jenna Portnoy reports: “The state’s two senators and 11 House associates apprenticed VA administrators to fix a arrangement that can leave health-care providers cat-and-mouse added than four months for payments they should accept accustomed aural 30 days. The delays can accident credit, they said.”
-- Swastika graffiti was begin in a men’s bathroom arrest on U-Md.’s campus. (Lynh Bui)
VIDEOS OF THE DAY:
Stephen Colbert interviewed Sean Hannity’s annual of Trump:
Samantha Bee went afterwards Harvey Weinstein:
Trump isn’t the aboriginal admiral to abuse FCC licenses:
The Column explained how the 25th Amendment, which lays out a activity to abolish the admiral from office, works:
The Column ranked Trump’s 10 softest interviews:
And Nationals admirers reacted to the team’s season-ending accident aftermost night:
