Day 46: A New Ban

Today, for your viewing pleasure, let me present you with four stories so vile that reading even only their titles is guaranteed to curdle the milk on your fridge!

• Trump issued a new executive order today to enforce his new Muslim ban. Some of the blatantly unconstitutional parts of the previous order were removed, but the thing is still despicable and completely unnecessary. This will likely lead to less chaos than before due to the order containing some implementation details (and a 10-day grace period), but it's still horrendous. Expect court action within the next few days. (Full text)
• The House revealed its new plan to replace the Affordable Care Act (aka "Obamacare"). Two pieces of early analysis. I haven't read much into the details, but the basic premise seems to be to gut Medicaid and remove the "individual mandate". In order to encourage people to have health insurance, a coverage "gap" will allow insurance companies to charge a 30% premium. Make no mistake: they are playing with people's lives here, and people will die as a result of this. Oh, did I mention that it includes a clause to entire strip Planned Parenthood of funding?
• The administration offered to continue Planned Parenthood funding if they stop offering abortions, threatening to cut funding if not. This is a ridiculous effort to claim the moral high ground by saying that Planned Parenthood isn't negotiating in good faith. Of course, none of the federal funding that Planned Parenthood receives goes towards abortions (thanks to the Hyde Amendment), so this is ridiculous at best. A friendly reminder that the vast majority of the services that Planned Parenthood provides are not abortions.
• Ben Carson, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, claimed today that slaves imported against their will to North America were "immigrants" with dreams "that their great grandchildren would be happy", after waxing nostalgically about the times when there were no minimum wages or labor laws. This is a despicable rewriting of history.