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Along with getting good grades and listening to their parents, LeBron James has encouraged kids in his foundation's educational program to stand up for their beliefs.

On Tuesday night, the superstar gave a lesson in how it's done.

Concluding a day of fun and games at an amusement park, James turned serious when speaking about the recent violence and tragedy in Charlottesville. James also took a pointed swipe at President Donald Trump, calling him the "so-called president."

While holding his young daughter, Zhuri, James stood on stage before an excited crowd of students, parents and others connected to the LeBron James Family Foundation and delivered his emotional message.

"I know there's a lot of tragic things happening in Charlottesville," James said to cap the annual event at Cedar Point amusement park. "I have this platform and I'm somebody that has a voice of command, and the only way for us to get better as a society and for us to get better as people is love. And that's the only way we're going to be able to conquer something as one."

Then, James, who endorsed Hillary Clinton last year and introduced her at a rally in Cleveland just two days before the election, went at Trump, whom he has criticized in the past.

"It's not about the guy that's the so-called president of the United States, or whatever the case. It's not about a teacher that you don't feel like cares about what's going on with you every day. It's not about people that you just don't feel like want to give the best energy and effort to you. It's about us. It's about us looking in the mirror. Kids all the way up to the adults. All of us looking in the mirror and saying, 'What can we do better to help change?' And if we can all do that and give 110 percent, then that's all you can ask for.

"So, shout-out to the innocent people in Charlottesville and shout-out to everybody across the world that just want to be great and just want to love. Thank you, and I love you all."

James' remarks ended a star-studded show that included pop stars Jordin Sparks and Usher as well as his Cavaliers' teammate J.R. Smith. They stood alongside him for his message along with his sons, Bronny and Bryce.

There had been a celebratory vibe all day, as James hosted nearly 7,000 of his foundation's students and their families, who strolled around the immense park best known for its roller-coasters wearing light blue T-shirts with "We Are Family" across the fronts.

It was as if James' hometown of Akron had all gone out together for the day, and that was exactly the point of the event to celebrate the successes of kids committed to making more of their lives.

Now in its sixth year, James' foundation has brought hope to children who might not have any otherwise. If the students meet certain criteria, stay in the program and graduate, they can receive full tuition to the University of Akron.

"That means everything," Latasha McCullough said as she sat with her husband, Arthur, and children Arlissa and Arsea while waiting for James to appear on stage.

The McCulloughs have been directly impacted by James and his work, and they're forever grateful.

"He doesn't have to do anything," Latasha said. "All he is responsible for are his kids, his family, go to work and provide for his, but he does it for his city. He does it for everybody, everybody's kids. All the things he didn't have growing up, he's giving it to our kids with no problem and he's not being selfish. It's constant and consistent, you earn what you get."

James has grown his foundation beyond its initial goals of tackling the city's drop-out rate. Next year, the charity will open the I Promise School, designed to help students who have already fallen behind and need extra attention.

Michelle Campbell, executive director of the LeBron James Family Foundation, is awed by what the group has accomplished.

James has led the way.

"It's never enough with him," she said. "He is always pushing, just like on the basketball court, pushing and pushing. I could have never imagined what we have done and are doing, but with his belief and what he wants to do and his drive and his ability to put all these partners around us. We can't fail.

"It started out with working with kids and changing a child, then OK, we got the family involved and we learned that some didn't have their high school diplomas, so we broke down those barriers. Now he's changing a whole community. He's uplifting this whole community, on his back."

See the rest here:
LeBron James calls Donald Trump the 'so-called president' - Chicago Tribune

Of that, just 8 percentage points will result from medical inflation, and 2 percentage points will stem from the reinstatement of an Obamacare health insurance tax; the balance will be related to the uncertainty that Mr. Trump has created around key pieces of Obamacare.

The largest portion of the total about 15 percentage points is connected to the potential demise of the cost-sharing reductions (known as C.S.R.s), payments made by the government to insurers to help cover out-of-pocket costs like co-pays and deductibles that lower-income Americans cant afford.

(The Congressional Budget Office said on Tuesday that premiums for the most popular health insurance plans would rise by 20 percent next year, and federal budget deficits would increase by $194 billion in the coming decade, if Mr. Trump ends the subsidies.)

Those subsidies, which were created by the Obama health care legislation and which benefit seven million Americans, have been in limbo since House Republicans sued in 2014, contending that they needed to be appropriated by Congress, which wasnt going to happen as long as Republicans controlled each chamber.

Figures for silver plans.

Income less than 150% of FPL

Between 200250% of FPL

Income less than 150% of FPL

Between 200250% of FPL

Average deductibles with subsidies, by income level.

Income less than 150% of FPL

Between 200250% of FPL

Income less than 150% of FPL

Between 200250% of FPL

Conservatives won the first round in court, but that decision was stayed pending appeal, allowing both the Obama and Trump administrations to continue to make the monthly payments.

President Trump has threatened to end the subsidies but has yet to take definitive action. A decision was promised by Aug. 4, but Mr. Trump decamped to his New Jersey golf resort with nary a word about C.S.R.s.

As a result, many of the insurance companies that have already announced their increases have either baked in increases assuming loss of the subsidies or say that they will impose further hikes if the subsidies are not continued.

The silence around the C.S.R.s is consistent with the new administrations overall approach to the A.C.A.: continually badmouthing it and taking small steps to undermine it without unleashing a full-force assault.

Even without repeal and replace legislation emerging from Congress an unlikely event at this point the administration has enormous authority to shape the functioning of the A.C.A.

As Tom Price, the secretary of health and human services, has said repeatedly, there are 1,442 places in the existing law that provide him with some measure of discretion in how the act is implemented.

For example, the Internal Revenue Service said this year that it would start accepting tax returns even if the filer has not confirmed having insurance or submitting the penalty.

Around the same time, the new team pulled advertising designed to encourage enrollments, causing sign-ups for 2017 to fall modestly short of expectations, especially among younger and healthier Americans, who are much more likely to wait until the last minute to enroll.

More recently, the administration canceled contracts with two companies that helped Americans in 18 cities find plans.

All of these actions and more could amount to undermining the individual mandate, a step that Mr. Gaba says would add another 4 percentage points to 2018 premium increases.

Breakdown of reasons for 2018 rate hike requests.

Cuts to cost-sharing subsidies

Non-enforcement of mandate

Federal health insurance tax

Total average premium increase

Cuts to cost-sharing subsidies

Non-enforcement of mandate

Federal health insurance tax

Total average premium increase

At the same time, some steps toward preparing for the next enrollment period are proceeding normally, such as an annual meeting in June with navigators who guide consumers in their choices of plans.

In addition, the Trump team has been allocating funds to states with weak exchange markets to encourage insurers to continue to provide coverage.

But what else the administration will or wont do as the November opening of the enrollment period approaches remains a mystery.

Asked last week by The Washington Post to clarify, a spokeswoman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services would say only, As open enrollment approaches, we are evaluating how to best serve the American people who access coverage on HealthCare.gov.

An hour later, the spokeswoman, Jane Norris, tried to withdraw the statement and refused to comment further. Ms. Norriss office did not respond at all to my inquiry.

A bipartisan group of senators is trying to draft legislation to stabilize Obamacare. But with Congress gone, any new laws will come too late for the Sept. 5 deadline for setting 2018 premiums.

So it well may be up to Mr. Trump to decide, in effect, the fate of the exchanges, which supply about 12 million Americans with their coverage. With final premium increase decisions due soon, even inaction could be devastating.

As the president has acknowledged on occasion and as public opinion polls confirm, the failure of Congress to pass any legislation means that the new administration owns the health care issue politically. Continuing to let it flounder in the twilight zone will be damaging not only to Mr. Trumps political health but more important, to the health of millions of Americans who deserve better.

View original post here:
How Donald Trump Is Driving Up Health Insurance Premiums - New York Times

That's not new -- but it is very, very important both to understand his reaction to Charlottesville as well as his presidency going forward.

"As the nation turns its eyes to the general election, I have one question that continues to nag at me as I think about the possibility of Trump in the White House: Can he be empathetic? Like, at all? And does he need to be?"

"Ultimately, I think a lack of empathy is just one piece of a portrait of a person who is unbalanced and damaged," Stuart Stevens, a Republican consultant who has long vocally opposed Trump, told me of Trump at the time. "He has spent his life in a bubble, surrounded by hired yes men and women who have never told his inner child to grow up."

That may be an overly-harsh analysis. But, it's hard to dispute Stevens' assertion that Trump's capacity for empathy is extremely low and, when he is required to reach out to people who he doesn't know or who don't support him, he is extremely uncomfortable and often simply unwilling to do it.

Trump's two Charlottesville speeches are prime evidence. In his Saturday remarks, Trump seemed to be entirely focused on ensuring that people didn't blame him for these violent acts and making clear that protesters "on many sides" were responsible for what happened.

Particularly in Monday's speech, it was clear that Trump was checking a box that his advisers insisted he needed to check after swinging and missing so badly Saturday. They told him to read the speech, so he did. But, he quite clearly didn't feel as though it was necessary to do so.

Ask people close to Trump and they will insist he is a kind and understanding person.

And, there is little question that Trump is extremely close and fiercely loyal to his family and a very small inner circle of friends. But that is a very different thing than being empathetic about the struggles of people you've never met or who you know didn't vote for you or don't like you.

For Trump, being president has always been about kicking ass and reasserting America's spot at the front of the line. It's sort of like this moment at a NATO summit at the end of May:

And, it worked for him during the campaign! People -- especially Republicans -- were sick of politics as usual. The color-within-the-lines politicians hadn't done much of anything they liked so they were willing to take a chance on someone who didn't sound or act like anyone who had ever run for president before.

People didn't think Trump really cared much about them. But they wanted change more than they cared about being cared about.

The problem for Trump -- as so starkly exposed by his response(s) to Charlottesville -- is that being president is a very different thing than running for office. Where a lack of empathy doesn't stand out all that much as a candidate -- there is a president in place doing that empathizer-in-chief job -- it stands out hugely when you are actually the President and the country turns to you for unity and inspiration.

And when you deliver a speech in which you cast an incident of white supremacist violence that left a woman dead as a both-sides-do-it situation, you lose credibility even with people who want to believe you have it in you to be more and better than you were as a candidate.

Empathy is not usually the sort of thing you can just start having. And it's not something that Trump even seems terribly concerned that he lacks. But, as president, empathy matters. There will be more moments over these next three and a half years where Trump will be called on to recognize and identify with the real grief people are feeling while also reassuring them that better days will come.

After what happened over the last 96 hours in Charlottesville, it's not clear Trump has it in him to do that.

Read more:
Donald Trump is missing this key ingredient to being a successful president - CNN

CNN Special Report "Twitter and Trump" with Bill Weir explores the President's fraught relationship with the social media platform Friday at 9 p.m. ET.

"Meanwhile: 39 shootings in Chicago this weekend, 9 deaths. No national media outrage. Why is that?"

Posobiec is a well-known figure on Twitter -- he has more than 181,000 followers -- thanks to his vociferous defenses of Trump and his willingness to promote conspiracy theories.

He is, to put it kindly, an unreliable source. He peddles falsehoods. He is a provocateur, more interested in making headlines than adhering to established facts.

So why the hell would Trump retweet Posobiec?

What's FAR more likely is that Trump knew Posobiec was an ally and liked the counter-narrative to Charlottesville offered by the murders in Chicago.

Remember this: In Trump's world, there isn't really right and wrong. There are people who love him/work for his interest and people who hate him/work against his interests. There is no gray area between those two poles.

If you are in the love category, you are, by definition, good. The reverse is true for those Trump puts in the hate column.

Posobiec likes Trump and supports Trump. That's all Trump cares about. That Posobiec has pushed conspiracy theories and is a card-carrying member of the alt-right doesn't matter to Trump. Those are Posobiec's issues! Not Trump's! All Trump is doing is retweeting someone making a good point!

Of course, Trump himself saw his candidacy born in a conspiracy theory -- Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States -- and has continued to peddle false conspiracy theories (Ted Cruz's father was involved in the JFK assassination, Muslims were celebrating on New Jersey roofs on 9/11, Barack Obama wiretapped phones in Trump Tower) throughout his candidacy and presidency.

There's one other piece of this Posobiec retweet. Not only does Trump divide the world between those who love him and those who hate him, he loves the people that love him.

If you are nice to Trump, Trump will be nice to you. It's as simple as that. That's why Trump retweeted something from a known conspiracy theorist. And why he'll do it again. And again.

UPDATE: This post has been updated to add context about the shootings in Chicago.

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Donald Trump retweeted an alt-right conspiracy theorist. Here's why. - CNN

The heads of Congress black, Hispanic, Asian and progressive caucuses sent a letter to the White House on Monday demanding the dismissal of top aides Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller and Sebastian Gorka, saying their presence in the White House has emboldened white supremacists.

The letter came after a white supremacy rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, turned violent, leavingone person dead and others injured when a man drove a car into a crowd of counterprotesters. Trump has faced criticism for his delay in condemning white supremacist groups following the violence, first blaming many sides before denouncing the hate groups on Monday.

The letter accuses the three advisers of encouraging white supremacist groups and says they should be removed because Americans deserve to know that white nationalists, white supremacists, and neo-Nazis are not in a position to influence U.S. policy.

The authors cite Bannons role as former chairman of Breitbart News, a site that promotes white nationalist views. The New York Times reported Monday that Bannon could be on the verge of being dismissed from the White House.

The lawmakers also express concern over links between Miller and Richard Spencer, a prominent white nationalist, and Gorkas ties to a far-right Hungarian group aligned with the Nazi party.

In this time of tumult in our country, Americans deserve a leader that will bring us all together and denounce those who seek to tear us apart. In that vein, we strongly urge you to move expeditiously to remove Steve Bannon, Sebastian Gorka and Stephen Miller from the White House. The ideology and political agenda of these men have no place in the highest office in the land, the letter says.

The letter is signed by Democratic Reps. Barbara Lee (Calif.), Judy Chu (Calif.), Cedric Richmond (La.), Michelle Lujan Grisham (N.M.), Mark Pocan (Wis.), Ral Grijalva (Ariz.) and David Cicilline (R.I.). Christopher Huntley, a Lee spokesman, said Lee led the effort on the letter and wanted to united lawmakers across a diverse range of backgrounds to speak to the White House after the Charlottesville violence.

Read the full letter below:

This article has been updated with the signed letter and list of lawmakers who sent it.

Here is the original post:
Lawmakers Demand Donald Trump Fire Top Aides, Saying They Encourage White Supremacists - HuffPost