Congress’ analyst: Millions to lose coverage under GOP bill
Congress’ analyst: Millions to lose coverage under GOP bill
WASHINGTON (AP) — Fourteen million Americans would lose coverage next year under House Republican legislation remaking the nation’s health care system, and that figure would grow to 24 million by 2026, Congress’ nonpartisan budget analysts projected Monday. The figures dealt a blow to a GOP drive already under fire from both parties and large segments of the medical industry.
The report by the Congressional Budget Office flies in the face of President Donald Trump’s aim of “insurance for everybody,” and he has been assailing the credibility of the CBO in advance of the release. Administration officials quickly took strong issue with it.
It also undercuts a central argument that he and other Republicans have cited for swiftly rolling back former President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul: that the health insurance markets created under the 2010 law are unstable and about to implode. The congressional experts said that largely would not be the case and the market for individual health insurance policies “would probably be stable in most areas either under current law or the (GOP) legislation.”
Even though Republican tax credits would be less generous than those under “Obamacare,” the combination of those credits and other changes to lower premiums would attract enough healthy people to stabilize markets under the new plan, the report said.
In a talking point embraced by Republicans, the budget office concluded that the GOP measure would reduce federal deficits by $337 billion over the coming decade. That’s largely because the legislation would cut Medicaid and eliminate subsidies Obama’s law provides millions of people who buy coverage.
White House appears to soften Trump’s claim on wiretapping
WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House on Monday appeared to soften President Donald Trump’s unproven assertion that his predecessor wiretapped his New York skyscraper during the election. The shift came as the Justice Department faced a deadline to provide lawmakers evidence to back up Trump’s explosive claim.
More than a week after Trump leveled his allegations in a series of early morning tweets, spokesman Sean Spicer said the president wasn’t using the word wiretapping literally, noting that Trump had put the term in quotation marks.
“The president used the word wiretap in quotes to mean broadly surveillance and other activities,” Spicer said Monday. He also suggested Trump wasn’t accusing former President Barack Obama specifically, but instead referring to the actions of the Obama administration.
Spicer’s evolving explanation underscores the bind Trump has put his own White House in. Current and former administration officials have been unable to provide any evidence of the Obama administration wiretapping Trump Tower, yet the president’s aides have been reluctant to publicly contradict their boss.
Trump himself has not commented on the matter since his March 4 tweets, in which he said he had “just found out that Obama had my “wires tapped” in Trump Tower just before the victory.” He also wrote: “Is it legal for a sitting President to be ‘wire tapping’ a race for president?”
Poland confirms Minnesota man as Nazi commander
WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poland will seek the arrest and extradition of a Minnesota man exposed by The Associated Press as a former commander in an SS-led unit that burned Polish villages and killed civilians in World War II, prosecutors said Monday.
Prosecutor Robert Janicki said evidence gathered over years of investigation into U.S. citizen Michael K. confirmed “100 percent” that he was a commander of a unit in the SS-led Ukrainian Self Defense Legion.
He did not release the last name, in line with Poland’s privacy laws, but the AP has identified the man as 98-year-old Michael Karkoc, from Minneapolis.
“All the pieces of evidence interwoven together allow us to say the person who lives in the U.S. is Michael K., who commanded the Ukrainian Self Defense Legion which carried out the pacification of Polish villages in the Lublin region,” Janicki said.
The decision in Poland comes four years after the AP published a story establishing that Michael Karkoc commanded the unit, based on wartime documents, testimony from other members of the unit and Karkoc’s own Ukrainian-language memoir.
Turkey sanctions the Netherlands over ministers’ treatment
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey announced a series of political sanctions against the Netherlands on Monday over its refusal to allow two Turkish ministers to campaign there, including halting high-level political discussions between the two countries and closing Turkish air space to Dutch diplomats.
Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus, briefing journalists after the weekly council of ministers meeting, said the sanctions would apply until the Netherlands takes steps “to redress” the actions that Ankara sees as a grave insult.
“There is a crisis and a very deep one. We didn’t create this crisis or bring it to this stage,” Kurtulmus said. “Those who did have to take steps to redress the situation.”
Other sanctions bar the Dutch ambassador entry back into Turkey and advise parliament to withdraw from a Dutch-Turkish friendship group
The announcement came hours after Turkey’s foreign ministry formally protested the treatment of a Turkish minister who was prevented from entering a consulate in the Netherlands and escorted out of the country after trying to attend a political rally.
Scotland seeks new independence referendum amid Brexit spat
LONDON (AP) — Scotland’s leader delivered a shock twist to Britain’s EU exit drama on Monday, announcing that she will seek authority to hold a new independence referendum in the next two years because Britain is dragging Scotland out of the EU against its will.
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said she would move quickly to give voters a new chance to leave the United Kingdom because Scotland was being forced into a “hard Brexit” that it didn’t support. Britons decided in a June 23 referendum to leave the EU, but Scots voted by 62 to 38 percent to remain.
Scotland must not be “taken down a path that we do not want to go down without a choice,” Sturgeon said.
The move drew a quick rebuke from Prime Minister Theresa May, who said a second referendum would be hugely disruptive and was not justified because evidence shows most Scottish voters oppose a new independence vote.
May accused Sturgeon’s Scottish National Party of political “tunnel vision” and called the referendum “deeply regrettable.”