Former House Speaker John Boehner threw cold water Thursday on the prospect of congressional Republicans following through on their pledge to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.
“They’ll fix Obamacare,” the former Ohio congressman predicted at a conference hosted by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society in Orlando, Florida. “I shouldn’t have called it repeal and replace because that’s not what’s going to happen. They’re basically going to fix the flaws and put a more conservative box around it.”
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Boehner’s comments come as his former colleagues face an uncertain path forward on dismantling then-President Barack Obama’s signature achievement. The party has yet to settle on a replacement plan, and many members are facing criticism at town hall meetings this week from constituents who are upset about the potential ramifications of Republicans following through on the campaign pledge.
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The former speaker noted the difficulty Republicans would confront in getting everyone on board.
As a team of elite U.S. commandos found themselves under unexpectedly heavy fire in a remote Yemeni village last month, eight time zones away, their commander in chief was not in the Situation Room.
It’s unclear what he, personally, was doing. But his Twitter account was busy promoting an upcoming appearance on the Christian Broadcasting Network.
“I will be interviewed by @TheBrodyFile on @CBNNews tonight at 11pm. Enjoy!” read a tweet from President Donald Trump’s personal account on Saturday, Jan. 28.
Whether it was Trump himself or an aide who sent out that tweet at 5:50 p.m. ― about half an hour into a firefight that cost a Navy SEAL his life ― cannot be determined from the actual tweets, and the White House isn’t saying. Likewise, it’s not clear who deleted the tweet some 20 minutes later, or why the new president, just a week on the job, chose not to directly monitor the first high-risk military operation on his watch.
The Republican leader of the United States Senate was asked last week if he believed the Republican president’s denial that his campaign colluded with the foreign power that was trying to help him win.
Mitch McConnell’s answer: “I have no idea.”
His office later said that McConnell misunderstood the question ― that he thought he was being asked if he personally knew whether Trump’s campaign had colluded with Russia. Regardless, McConnell’s four words represent the new president’s problem in a nutshell. Having made falsehoods a staple of his public discourse, Donald Trump now faces enormous hurdles in getting even his presumptive allies to put their names behind his credibility.
Trump has made untrue statements about the size of his inauguration crowd, the “standing ovation” he received at CIA headquarters, the “millions” of “illegal” votes cast in the November election, the murder rate, the news coverage given to terror attacks, and, just Saturday at his Florida “campaign” rally, about the amount of vetting refugees trying to enter the country must undergo and about a nonexistent terror incident in Sweden.
A top aide to President Trump’s housing secretary nominee, Ben Carson, was fired and led out of the department’s headquarters by security on Wednesday after writings critical of Mr. Trump surfaced in his vetting, according to two people briefed on the matter.
Shermichael Singleton, who was one of the few black conservatives in the Trump administration, had been working at the Department of Housing and Urban Development since Jan. 23 as a senior adviser. He was preparing a cross-country tour for Mr. Carson, who is expected to be confirmed by the Senate this month.
But according to the two people briefed, Mr. Singleton’s background check had not been completed. As it was being finished this week, Mr. Trump’s advisers turned up public writings by Mr. Singleton that appeared during the later stages of the campaign in which he was deeply critical of the candidate.
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Ben Carson, right, greeted Shermichael Singleton, a top aide, before the start of his confirmation hearing to be secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development last month.Credit Al Drago/The New York Times
Congressional Republicans, who craved unified control of the government to secure their aggressive conservative agenda, have instead found themselves on a legislative elliptical trainer, gliding toward nowhere.
After moving to start rolling back the Affordable Care Act just days after President Trump was sworn in last month, Republican lawmakers and Mr. Trump have yet to deliver on any of the sweeping legislation they promised. Efforts to come up with a replacement for the health care law have been stymied by disagreements among Republicans about how to proceed. The same is true for a proposed overhaul of the tax code.
The large infrastructure bill that both Democrats and Mr. Trump were eager to pursue has barely been mentioned, other than a very general hearing to discuss well-documented needs for infrastructure improvements. Even a simple emergency spending bill that the Trump administration promised weeks ago — which was expected to include a proposal for his wall on the Mexican border — has not materialized, leaving appropriators idle and checking Twitter.
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Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, left, and Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, during a news conference on Wednesday where they discussed plans to replace the Affordable Care Act.Credit Al Drago/The New York Times .
The Defense Department might propose that the US send conventional ground combat forces into northern Syria for the first time to speed up the fight against ISIS, CNN has learned.
“It’s possible that you may see conventional forces hit the ground in Syria for some period of time,” one defense official told CNN.
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But the official emphasized that any decision is ultimately up to President Donald Trump, who has ordered his defense secretary to come up with a proposal to combat ISIS before the end of the month.
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The move would significantly alter US military operations in Syria if approved and could put troops on the ground within weeks.
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Until now, only small teams made up largely of Special Operations forces have operated in Syria, providing training and assistance to anti-ISIS opposition groups on the ground.
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Conventional units operate in larger numbers and would require a more significant footprint of security protection both on the ground and in the air.
Embattled White House national security adviser Michael Flynn resigned Monday night, an abrupt end to a brief tenure.
His departure came just after reports surfaced that the Justice Department warned the Trump administration last month that Flynn misled administration officials regarding his communications with the Russian ambassador to the United States and was potentially vulnerable to blackmail by the Russians.
“I inadvertently briefed the Vice President-elect and others with incomplete information regarding my phone calls with the Russian ambassador. I have sincerely apologized to the President and the Vice President, and they have accepted my apology,” Flynn wrote, according to a copy of his resignation letter obtained by CNN.
Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch told a US senator Wednesday that President Donald Trump’s tweets about the judiciary are “demoralizing” and “disheartening.”
In a meeting with Connecticut Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Gorsuch, who’s largely been silent since Trump nominated him last week, took exception to Trump calling a federal judge in Seattle a “so-called judge” after blocking the President’s travel ban.
“He said very specifically that they were demoralizing and disheartening and he characterized them very specifically that way,” Blumenthal said of Gorsuch. “I said they were more than disheartening and I said to him that he has an obligation to make his views clear to the American people, so they understand how abhorrent or unacceptable President Trump’s attacks on the judiciary are.”
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Supreme Court nominee Gorsuch( on right), Sen. Sen. Richard Blumenthal urges Gorsuch to make public remarks
In a stunning moment on the Senate floor, Sen. Elizabeth Warren clashed with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Tuesday night after McConnell determined the Massachusetts Democrat had violated a Senate rule against impugning another senator.
In an extremely rare rebuke, she was instructed by the presiding officer to take her seat.
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Tuesday night’s rule means Warren will be barred from speaking on the floor until Sessions’ debate ends, McConnell’s office confirmed. The debate is expected to conclude Wednesday night.
“She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted,” McConnell said on the Senate floor.
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The emotional exchange occurred during debate on the nomination of Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama, to be attorney general. Warren was reading from a 1986 letter Coretta Scott King, the widow of Martin Luther King Jr., had written to Sen. Strom Thurmond critical of Sessions who was then a nominee to be a federal judge.
Vice President Mike Pence cast a historic tie-breaking vote Tuesday to confirm Betsy DeVos as the next education secretary after the Senate was evenly divided over the controversial pick.
The 51-50 vote ends Trump’s toughest confirmation battle yet. Senate Democrats debated through the night and into Tuesday morning in a last-ditch attempt to derail DeVos, buoyed by support from Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine.
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DeVos was sworn into office shortly after 6 p.m. ET. Pence administered the oath of office and said his confirmation vote earlier in the day was “the easiest vote I ever cast.”
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Throughout the fight, Democrats argued they needed “Just one more!” to lure away another Republican vote. But Senate Republican leaders succeeded in delivering a victory to Trump in a confirmation fight that very few expected to become as tough as it did.
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
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Supreme Court nominee Gorsuch( on right), 
Betsy DeVos confirmed
James' World 2 