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Secretive Republican healthcare bill sickens Democrats BBC News US Democrats are up in arms about secretive Senate Republican efforts to repeal Obamacare, with no sign of a bill a week before a crunch vote. President Donald Trump's party has been busily crafting a behind-closed-doors healthcare bill without holding ... Republican Senators to Get Their Health Care Bill This WeekNBCNews.com The secretive Senate health care process is wrong. Just ask Republicans.CNN International Murphy, Democrats Go On Hunt For Republican Health Care BillHartford Courant HuffPost -New Republic -CNN all 882 news articles »

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Secretive Republican healthcare bill sickens Democrats - BBC News

The Trump administration has not said whether the government will continue paying subsidies to keep costs down for people with Obamacare. If it doesnt, middle-income people could see their rates jump.

Lonnie Carpenter, above, a self-employed roofer, said it would have been tough to survive without his insurance after a back injury.

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3. Days after Officer Jeronimo Yanez was acquitted of all charges in the fatal shooting of Philando Castile, a black motorist in Minnesota, a video of the shooting was released by state investigators.

Millions of people had seen the aftermath of the shooting because Mr. Castiles girlfriend had livestreamed it on Facebook.

The new video, shot from the dashcam of the police car, shows how a mundane conversation about a broken taillight devolved within seconds into gunfire. But it also leaves some questions unanswered.

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4. The death of Otto Warmbier, the American student who was returned from North Korea in a coma, above, drove a new wedge between Washington and Pyongyang.

Three other Americans are still imprisoned in North Korea. President Trump condemned the North for its brutality, but he and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson stopped short of announcing fresh sanctions.

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5. The bodies of seven American sailors were flown home as the U.S. and Japanese authorities ramped up their investigations in the fatal collision of a cargo vessel and the U.S.S. Fitzgerald off the coast of Japan.

The biographies of the sailors who died in Saturdays collision, above, illustrate how much the American military relies on recruits from immigrant communities.

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6. Federal agents are using surveillance equipment adapted from military use in Iraq and Afghanistan to patrol the Mexican border. Experts say technology can create a virtual wall thats as effective as a physical one, at far lower cost.

And within Mexico, human rights lawyers, journalists and activists have been targeted by spyware that an Israeli company sold to the government for use against criminals and extremists.

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7. Our videographer embedded with Iraqi troops on the front lines of the war against the Islamic State in Mosul.

Iraqs second-largest city had been controlled by the militants for two years. The soldiers we followed were greeted as liberators by residents. One family even named a newborn after the units 33-year-old commander, Major Sajjad al-Hour, above.

Ben Solomon, who shot the video, describes the experience in this essay.

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8. In Portugal, more than 60 people were killed in a raging wildfire this week. Our correspondent drove into the countryside to interview survivors and firefighters, passing burned-out cars and melted road signs on his way.

Deadly blazes have become increasingly severe and routine in Portugal, spurred by poor land management and hotter, drier summers because of climate change.

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9. Theres an opera renaissance underway in Paris.

The Opra Comique, one of the citys oldest performance sites, is hoping to attract new audiences by reimagining what modern opera could be.

Its latest production, the Baroque opera Alcyone, hasnt been performed in Paris in 246 years and the new version includes avant-garde staging, and even acrobats.

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10. For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, summer begins at 12:24 a.m. Eastern on Wednesday.

Thats the summer solstice, when the hemisphere will dip toward the sun, basking in its warmth for longer than any other day.

It offers the perfect opportunity to ponder the explosive ball of plasma that makes our very existence possible. Above, last years solstice in Santa Monica, Calif.

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11. Finally, Beyonc and Jay-Z havent confirmed the news, but that didnt stop the late-night hosts from congratulating them on the birth of their twins.

For the first time in history, people actually want to see pictures of kids on Facebook, Trevor Noah joked on The Daily Show. Above, the singer at the Grammy Awards in February.

Have a great night.

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Photographs may appear out of order for some readers. Viewing this version of the briefing should help.

Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p.m. Eastern.

And dont miss Your Morning Briefing, posted weekdays at 6 a.m. Eastern, and Your Weekend Briefing, posted at 6 a.m. Sundays.

Want to look back? Heres last nights briefing.

What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at briefing@nytimes.com.

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Georgia, Republican Party, Otto Warmbier: Your Tuesday Evening Briefing - New York Times

To any nefarious hackers looking for information that could be used to sway elections or steal Americans identities, the file compiled by a GOP data firm called Deep Root Analytics offered all manner of possibilities.

There in one place was detailed personal information about almost every voter in the U.S. It was a collection of some 9.5 billion data points that helped the firm assess not only how those Americans would probably vote, but their projected political preferences. In some cases, the data collectors had scoured peoples histories on Reddit, the social media platform, to match vote history with social media use, and well-informed predictions were made about where each voter would stand on issues as personal as abortion and stem cell research.

Its the kind of sensitive information that, if a bank or a big-box retailer or almost any other corporation had failed to protect it, would have triggered major trouble with regulators. But there it sat on the Internet, without so much as a password to guard it, for 12 days.

Luckily for the Republican Party and Deep Root, an Arlington, Va.-based firm that handles data management and analysis for the party, it was a cybersecurity consultant who came across the treasure-trove of political data this month, not a foreign agent. There is no indication that the database had been tapped by any other unauthorized parties while it was unprotected.

But the exposure of the data, which some are describing as the largest leak of voter information in history, is a jolting reminder of how deeply the political parties are probing into the lives of voters and how vulnerable the information they are compiling is to theft.

The Deep Root incident is the latest in a series of such problems with political data, the most infamous being the case of the Russian hack of the Democratic National Committee. As cybersecurity experts sound an increasingly loud alarm about the potential consequences, the lapses keep happening often with nobody held accountable for them.

This is a catalog of human lives, with intrinsic details, said Mike Baukes, chief executive of UpGuard, the Mountain View, Calif., firm that came across the file during a routine scan of cloud systems.

Every voter in America is potentially in there. The scale of it is just staggering, and the fact that it was left wide open is wholly irresponsible.This is happening all the time. We are continually finding these things. It is just staggering.

Privacy experts were skeptical that political operatives will change their ways following the latest incident.

The state of security for massive data sets is so incredibly poor despite a daily drumbeat of data breached, said Timothy Sparapani, a former director of public policy for Facebook who is now a data privacy consultant at the firm SPQR Strategies, based in Washington. It is shocking. It is embarrassing. People ought to lose their jobs.

Sparapani said if the culprit had been a private firm, it would be subjected to punitive actions by attorneys general, consumer lawsuits and big fines from regulators. But political operations face no such repercussions.

As a voter, you are left with almost no recourse because our laws have not caught up to the massive computing power which is readily available to gather enormous data sets and make them searchable at the click of a button, he said. The breadth and depth of data collection by these companies is not well understood. If it were, I think the average voter would be frightened.

UpGuard was able to access the file merely by guessing a Web address. It alerted Deep Root as well as federal authorities.

Deep Root apologized in a statement, but also suggested the incident had been overblown.

The data file is our proprietary analysis to help inform local-television ad buying, the statement said. It noted that much of the voter information the analysis is built on is readily provided by state government offices. The firm said it has put security procedures in place to prevent future leaks.

Other digital strategists warned, however, that the failure to protect such detailed information not only raised major privacy and security concerns, but also may have tipped off political adversaries to the inner workings of the Republican Partys closely guarded digital strategy.

The GOP contracted with Deep Root during the presidential campaign. The firms co-founder, Alex Lundry, led the data efforts of GOP nominee Mitt Romney in 2012 and then worked for the unsuccessful presidential campaign of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush last year.

GOP officials said the data belonging to the party that was exposed was limited to very basic information about voters, such as their party registration. They said none of the GOPs sensitive strategic data was exposed. The party has suspended work with the firm pending an investigation by Deep Root into security procedures.

The failure by Deep Root to protect its massive database was particularly troubling to some advocates at a time when Congress is investigating how Russia exploited data vulnerabilities to meddle in last years presidential election.

This is data used for opinion manipulation, said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the nonprofit research group Electronic Privacy Information Center, based in Washington. It needs to be regulated. And there needs to be consequence for breaches. We have a major problem in this country with data security, and its getting worse. The foundation wants Congress to hold hearings on political data security.

But holding political parties and contractors accountable for their data practices has proven tricky. David Berger, an attorney with the Bay Area-based firm Girard Gibbs who has represented consumers affected by data breaches at Anthem and Home Depot, said part of the problem is voters are not demanding changes loudly enough.

When a retail company fails to protect the privacy of its customers, Berger said, the company suffers and lawmakers hear about it from the victims.

When people see Deep Root, they are not going to necessarily associate that with the [Republican Party] or anything else, he said. If your average American knew the amounts of data and profiling that is already put together by these companies about every single one of us, people would be very concerned. But theres no face here, and they try to keep quiet.

Halper reported from Washington and Dave from Los Angeles.

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A Republican voter data firm probably exposed your personal information for days and you don't have much recourse - Los Angeles Times

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A Georgia special congressional election on Tuesday is being treated as a bellwether of voter sentiment following the chaotic opening act of Donald Trumps presidency, so it is not much of a surprise that it has drawn a significant degree of Hollywood interest.

Rosie ODonnell, Jane Fonda, Jessica Lange, Sean Daniel, Connie Britton, Sam Waterston and Kyra Sedgwick are among those who have donated to Democrat Jon Ossoffs campaign, while others have been participating in phone banks to get out the vote and a few, like actress Alyssa Milano, have volunteered to go door to door in the suburban Atlanta district.

What they have not been doing is flooding the district for star-filled rallies or specially produced videos, as the GOP has tried to characterize Ossoff, a documentary filmmaker, as a creature of the liberal elite.

Ossoffs opponent, Karen Handel, and a slew of other Republican groups have tried to make an issue out of Ossoffs support outside the district, even though she, too, has drawn outside backing.

Several weeks ago, the Congressional Leadership Fund, a GOP Super PAC, produced an ad that tried to link Ossoff to Kathy Griffin, in the midst of a backlash over Griffins use of a bloody Trump head effigy in a photo shoot. Ossoffs campaign objected to the spot, and the only connection that Griffin had to his campaign was that she retweeted a supportive statement about his candidacy.

Griffins image again was used in a more recent spot from another group, Principled PAC, warning that Ossoff must be stopped because of the unhinged left. With last weeks shooting at a Republican congressional baseball practice, the ad goes so far as to claim that the unhinged left is endorsing and applauding shooting Republicans.

Another spot, called Hollywood Versus Georgia, hammers Ossoff for outside campaign contributions. The ad also is from the Congressional Leadership Fund, which is based not in Georgia but in Washington, and has spent $7 million so far to defeat Ossoff.

This seems to be a tactic of the GOP, Milano said via e-mail. Their offense is to make voters feel like outsiders are coming in for our own special interests which dont align with the community. Its been a successful game plan thus far so I get it.

She added,When I get involved in any race (like I did for Rob Quist as well), I show up. Boots on the ground. I go door to door. I make phone calls, I try to educate and empower to hopefully inspire people to want make a difference and exercise their right to vote.

Quist fell short in his bid to win a Montana congressional seat earlier this month, defeated by Greg Gianforte.

The Ossoff race has gotten even more attention, as a kind of proving ground that Democratic activism and energy following Trumps inauguration can translate into an electoral win. The Georgia seat, vacated by Tom Price after he became Secretary of Health and Human Services, leans Republican. Price won reelection by 23 percentage points last year, but Trump just barely won the district over Hillary Clinton.

That has helped make it a prime opportunity for Democratic activists to score an upset. Daily Kos, the liberal website, helped lead efforts to stir up online contributions and volunteering for Ossoff. He fell just short of winning an outright majority in an April election, which would have avoided Tuesdays runoff.

Since then, Republicans and Democrats have poured money into the race, with total spending expected to surpass $50 million, the most expensive congressional race in history.

Democrats will be looking to the race for cues in how to approach the 2018 midterms.

I think the general consensus if he wins this race, there could be 50 House seats available to us in the 2018 midterms, said Lara Bergthold, a strategist at Los Angeles communications firm RALLY, who is among those who has been volunteering for Ossoff making phone calls.

She said that Ossoffs campaign has been more interested in getting outside supporters engaged in making phone calls, while he has concentrated on fundraising within the district.

Bergthold said that a victory would give Democrats a sense of whether a strategy of grassroots interaction works. If he loses, it is going to give us enough time before 2018 to study what is not working.

It will cause great reflection if he loses, Bergthold said. She still thinks that the fact that Ossoff has been able to make a competitive run in the runoff in a Republican district is a good sign for Democrats.

Milano was shooting a pilot, Insatiable, in Georgia, and quickly realized that if the show got picked up the 6th district might be where Id live. She drove early voters to the polls, walked door to door and worked the phone banks.

After Trump was elected, I decided to dedicate my time and passion to trying to flip seats, she said.

Even as Republicans attack Ossoff for his showbiz support, Milano said that donations make these campaigns happen.

And honestly, these campaigns should be driven by the community, not the entertainment industry, she said. The entertainment industry should donate money to these campaigns so the community can be successful in wanting to participate in the political process. Also, getting out the vote. Low voter turnout is a big issue. If the entertainment industry can use their platforms to help get out the vote, thats important.

She and others have been using Twitter to speak out on the race. House of Cards creator Beau Willimon tied Republican efforts to pass Obamacare repeal-and-replace legislation to Handels fortunes. He also weighed in on Trumps attacks on Ossoff for living outside the district.

Willimon also called for an upset in another special election on Tuesday in a South Carolina congressional district, where Democrat Archie Parnell is facing Republican Ralph Norman for a seat that was held by Mick Mulvaney. Mulvaney resigned his seat to become director of the Office of Management and Budget.

So far, the biggest beneficiaries of the Georgia spending bonanza are the broadcast stations, which are seeing an unexpected windfall in TV ads. One station, WXIA-TV, reportedly added a newscast on its sister station to give more airtime to the onslaught of political ads.

Evan Tracey, a media and public affairs executive and specialist in political ad spending, said that advertising will probably make up about $40 million of total spending.

This is kind of the world we are living in. This is kind of the strength test for Trump going into 2018, he said. The candidates raising a ton of money, the parties putting every available resource into this and you have the Super PACs on top of that. This is what you get.

He said that it is not just TV stations that are benefiting but local cable and radio. If you have some way to reach voters in that district, someone is buying you now, he said.

The 2018 elections will be different because spending will be diffused across many different competitive seats. Until then, there will be other special elections that also could see an influx of spending.

This will be the biggest race until then, Tracey said. We are kind of in that place right now.

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Hollywood Helps Jon Ossoff in Georgia Special Election, and Republicans Pounce - Variety

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The Republican effort to repeal and replace ObamaCare is plagiarism.

Remember those kids in high school who would always ask to copy your homework? I was not exactly a distinguished student before I dropped out, but I did get As in all the classes I wasn't failing. My response to these requests was invariably the same: "Sure, but just be sure to change a few things so that Mr. Young doesn't notice." That's what the GOP effort to repeal and replace ObamaCare has become. At some unspoken level, Republicans realize that the Affordable Care Act is an A paper. Now they just have to find some wrong answers to add.

I like to think of our esteemed bicameral legislature as a typical American high school. It has its nerds (Paul Ryan), its jocks (surely you can imagine Chuck Schumer snapping somebody's waistband), its insufferably earnest class presidents (Ben Sasse), its shorts-wearing stoner bros (Rand "Aqua Buddha" Paul), its class clowns (does anyone doubt that Louis Gohmert is an expert in fart noises?), that weird girl who wears wolf sweaters and has horses and always kills it doing Shania Twain karaoke at the annual talent show (Claire McCaskill).

A lot of worksheet copying takes place in Washington. Republicans want to find a more or less workable middle ground between single-payer health care and the absolute free market for medical services that we are never going back to even Ted Cruz only wants to raise funds off the insinuation that we could eliminate the welfare state altogether. Unfortunately, the Affordable Care Act did exactly that, which is why after seven years Republicans have been unable to come up with anything substantially different. Paul Krugman is right when he says that the GOP's response when asked what they want to accomplish with the American Health Care Act have basically amounted to "Er. Ah. Um.'" But that's not because their last-minute secret revisions to their replacement package represent some sinister plot. They are clumsy, random, and painfully desperate.

The Republicans are stupid, not deliberately cruel. Embracing single payer, the obvious and straightforward solution that long ago presented itself to our hockey-loving, beer-chugging, hunting and fishing neighbors to the north, is unacceptable to their fire-breathing geriatric constituents, who simultaneously loathe government and don't want to see anything happen to Medicare. In front of them is a plan devised by the Heritage Foundation in the '90s that is messy but not ipso facto unacceptable. The only problem is that it was passed by a guy with a D behind his name.

Time to get out the eraser. Going line by line through what we know of the AHCA reminds me of the occasional glances I would get at what became of my impeccably phrased responses to such questions as "What was the significance of the Montgomery Bus Boycott?" and requests to "Name five policies associated with post-bellum Radical Republicans."

"Should we have an individual mandate enforced by a tax penalty in order to prevent free-riders and maintain the size and scope of risk pools?" Yes err, no, we should let insurers charge a fee when people let coverage lapse.

"Should the federal government give the states money to fund the expansion of Medicaid, which has done far more to ensure that people don't fall through the cracks than the messy system of exchanges ever will?" Well, hmm, yes, but, well, no what's a phrase we've heard before? "Block grants." Yes, those.

"What about a tax credit based on income?" Ugh, let's scrap it and replace it with one based on what's a thing? Age? Yeah, age. That'll look like we're trying.

"Is the so-called Cadillac tax on actually good employer-provided insurance bad?" Yes, at least it is through 2025: We just won't collect the revenues. Oh, and let's be sure to get a few things deliberately wrong: health savings accounts, so far from being useless for poor people, are, uhhh, good and useful. Okay, time to hand in the paper.

The AHCA is not an actual health-care plan. It is a lazy student's cop-out, a truth so blinkeringly obvious that no amount of sloppy pencil work will conceal it. It certainly would not have fooled Mr. Young, a very indulgent and obliging man. This is not true of the party's libertarian right wing, which loathes the new bill as much as the rest of us do.

ObamaCare will never be truly replaced because it is already the replacement Republicans want they just can't admit it without getting an F.

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The Republican health-care plan is just bad plagiarism - The Week Magazine