Day 179: Zombiecare is Back in the Grave

Some big news on the zombiecare bill:

• Over the weekend, John McCain had surgery, and said he would be out from the Senate for a week, possibly more. This put McConnell in a bind, as McCain's vote would be critical after two Republican defections. The vote was then postponed.
• Insurance companies came out against the bill, deriding it as completely unworkable.
• Today, news came out of two further defections (from the conservative wing), essentially killing the bill completely. It now appears that Republicans cannot craft a bill that they can pass to replace Obamacare. Trump has repeated his calls for a straight-up repeal; this is essentially guaranteed to be dead on arrival.
• Give yourselves a pat on the back, but don't fool yourself into thinking that this is over.

In the Donny Jr Belongs in Jail narrative:

• Adam Schiff summed up things very well. The administration has completely destroyed their credibility on this one (not that they had any to begin with).
• Donny Jr's lawyer went on the defensive on Sunday, claiming that the Secret Service (who pride themselves on being apolitical) were at fault for not stopping the meeting. Only problem: Donny Jr wasn't under Secret Service protection at that stage. Or was he saying that the Turnip himself was actually present?
• Here's a look at the timeline of that fateful day. It's very possible that Trump was actually in that meeting. Either way, he almost certainly knew about it.
• Donny Jr's attorney was paid $50,000 in June. I wonder what they were worried about.

In other news:

• Trump has once again claimed he's signed more bills than anybody ever. This is wrong by a long shot, and the NY Times has you covered with all the details. The present total is 42 bills, 15 of which were CRA bills to undo Obama regulations, 14 were ceremonial and routine lawmaking, 5 were bureaucratic tweaks, 4 were space and science, and 4 were veteran's affairs. None of these bills constitute major policy.
• Trump has reluctantly signed off on the Iran nuclear deal once again. Apparently this took a lot of convincing from basically everybody.
• The administration has released its agenda for the NAFTA renegotiation talks. I don't know enough about economics to comment meaningfully on this, however.
• A judge has ordered Mar-A-Lago to release their visitor logs, in response to a transparency lawsuit. I seem to recall that their record-keeping was abysmal, so I don't know how much we'll learn.
• Sessions wants police to increase their seizure of property and cash under civil forfeiture laws. This is a terrible idea, because those laws do not require convictions, let alone charges to be brought, to justify the permanent seizure of assets. Because police departments keep the assets they seize, this is a terrible incentive for police to undertake profiling and arbitrary seizures. In short, these laws are terrible, and Sessions wants more of them.
• How do you think the USA's reputation is holding up abroad? Perhaps on issues like anti-corruption and ethics? The resigning ethics chief for the USA claims we're presently a complete laughing stock. But I could have told you that...
• The first section of Trump's wall to be built would completely destroy a wildlife refuge established in 1943. Fucking fantastic.
• The military had a program to recruit soldiers from other countries to make use of their language skills, in exchange for a pathway towards citizenship. Those soldiers are now deportation fodder. This is how we treat our allies. This is disgusting.
• Is election hacking a problem? An analysis from South Carolina suggests 150,000 attempts to hack their registration database on election day last year (sorry, paywall - WSJ).
• This is apparently "Made In America" week, according to Trump at least. Too bad his companies (and his daughter's) don't do that. To add insult to injury, the DHS just added 15,000 visas for low-pay immigrant workers.