GOP blame-a-thon over health bill crash, but no clear path
GOP blame-a-thon over health bill crash, but no clear path
WASHINGTON (AP) — The resounding Senate crash of the seven-year Republican drive to scrap the Obama health care law incited GOP finger-pointing Friday but left the party with wounded leaders and no evident pathway forward on an issue that won’t go away.
In an astonishing cliff-hanger, the GOP-run Senate voted 51-49 to reject Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s last ditch attempt to sustain their drive to dismantle President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul with a starkly trimmed-down bill. The vote, which concluded shortly before 2 a.m. EDT, was a blistering defeat for President Donald Trump and McConnell, R-Ky., who’ve made uprooting the statute a top priority.
“They should have approved health care last night,” Trump said Friday during a speech in Brentwood, New York. “But you can’t have everything,” he added, seemingly shrugging off one of his biggest legislative setbacks.
Trump reiterated his threat to “let Obamacare implode,” an outcome he could hasten by steps like halting federal payments to help insurers reduce out-of-pocket costs for lower-earning consumers.
Senate Democrats were joined in opposition by three Republicans — Maine’s Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Arizona’s John McCain. The 80-year-old McCain, just diagnosed with brain cancer, had returned to the Capitol three days earlier to provide a vote that temporarily kept the measure alive, only to deliver the coup de grace Friday.
British baby Charlie Gard at center of legal battle dies
LONDON (AP) — Charlie Gard, the terminally ill British baby at the center of a legal and ethical battle that attracted the attention of Pope Francis and U.S. President Donald Trump, died Friday. He was one week shy of his first birthday.
Charlie’s parents fought for the right to take him to the United States for an experimental medical treatment for his rare genetic disease, mitochondrial depletion syndrome, which left him brain damaged and unable to breathe unaided. His case ended up in the courts when doctors opposed the plan, saying the untested therapy wouldn’t help Charlie and might cause him to suffer.
A family spokeswoman, Alison Smith-Squire, confirmed Charlie’s death on Friday, a day after a judge ordered that he be taken off a ventilator at the Great Ormond Street Hospital in London and moved to an undisclosed hospice for his final hours.
“Our beautiful little boy has gone, we’re so proud of him,” his mother, Connie Yates, said in a statement.
Charlie was seemingly healthy at birth but soon began to weaken. He was admitted to Great Ormond Street Hospital, Britain’s premier children’s hospital, when he was two months old and remained there until almost the end of his life.
A wild week highlights White House, Congress divide
WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House sits two miles from the U.S. Capitol, but this week, it might as well have been a world away.
In Congress, Republicans labored around the clock in an ultimately futile bid to overhaul the nation’s health care system. At the White House, officials labored to keep their jobs amid a highly public — and at times, shockingly vulgar — feud between President Donald Trump’s senior advisers that culminated with Friday’s firing of chief of staff Reince Priebus.
Rarely has the gap between the priorities of a president and lawmakers in his own party been so stark. By week’s end, Trump had become largely irrelevant as Republicans’ tried to fulfill a seven-year promise to voters on health care. Trump’s involvement was mainly limited to the occasional tweet. At a closed-door meeting of the House Republican caucus Friday, at least one lawmaker bemoaned the impact of the White House’s internal drama.
“That which is weird is getting weirder at the White House,” Rep. Mark Sanford, R-S.C., said after the meeting. “Let’s break through this stuff, let’s produce results. The internal White House warfare is in fact an impediment to doing so.”
The Pennsylvania Avenue divide stretched beyond the health care debacle this week. When the president issued a surprise edict-by-tweet banning transgender people from the military, several high-profile GOP senators rejected the decision. When Trump mused about firing Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Republican lawmakers quickly took Sessions’ side.
Wisconsin governor calls special session on Foxconn deal
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — With an aggressive timeline to turn dirt as early as this year, Gov. Scott Walker on Friday called the Legislature into special session to consider a $3 billion incentive package to complete a deal with global electronics giant Foxconn to invest $10 billion on a new manufacturing facility in southeast Wisconsin.
Walker ordered the Legislature to return to work as early as next week to consider the bill, which would have to be passed by the end of September under a deal he signed Thursday with Foxconn CEO Terry Gou.
The plant would be the first outside of Asia to produce liquid crystal display monitors used in computers, televisions and other areas. Walker calls it a once-a-generation opportunity to transform Wisconsin’s economy.
The envisioned factory, expected to open in 2020, would be 20 million square feet on a campus that spans 1.56-square-miles in what Walker is calling the “Wisconn Valley.” It would initially employ 3,000 people, but the deal calls for that to grow to 13,000 within six years.
An exact location has not been determined, but Foxconn is looking at sites in Racine and Kenosha counties.
Pakistan’s prime minister resigns after high court ruling
ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistan’s beleaguered Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif stepped down Friday after the Supreme Court ordered him removed from office over allegations of corruption, plunging the nuclear-armed nation into a political crisis.
The five-judge panel acted on petitions filed by Sharif’s political opponents alleging that he and his family failed to disclose assets stemming from last year’s “Panama Papers” leaks. The court ordered that criminal charges be filed against Sharif and four relatives.
In a unanimous decision, the court said he had not been “truthful and honest,” and it also dismissed him from the National Assembly — the lower house of Parliament.
Sharif immediately resigned in what he called a show of respect for the judiciary, even though he said the court’s decision was unjustified.
The landmark ruling threw Pakistan, which is battling attacks by Islamic militants, into political disarray and raised questions about who will succeed Sharif — and even who is running the country at the moment.