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But the complete argument for revoking Kushners clearance is actually much broader.

Kushner and the White House would have had little credibility if theyd denied the claims in the Washington Post and Reuters reports, but the fact that they havent seriously challenged them should be read as confirmation. If Kushner had not requested illegal access to secure Russian communication facilities he would have every interest in refuting reporting to the contrary. That he has not done so suggests an awareness that such an explicit denial might ultimately be contradicted by evidencea secret recording of the meeting, or the testimony of ousted National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, who is the target of an FBI investigation.

So the intelligence end-run reporting is almost certainly true, and it is thus also almost certainly true that Kushner lied on his clearance form. That these contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak didnt simply slip his mind. And that, knowing all this, he nevertheless encouraged his father-in-law to fire the FBI director.

The threat to security is at least twofold. First, by seeking the channel in this way, Kushner implicitly revealed that there are things he was happy telling the Russian government that he didnt want the U.S. government, then under Barack Obamas control, knowing. Nobody with such motives, if they were known to the government, would ever have received a clearance. Second, by telling lies to the U.S. government that the Russian government may have had the capacity to expose, Kushnerjust like Flynnwas vulnerable to blackmail.

Again, Paul Ryan seems not to care about any of this, much as he and other leading Republicans, like Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, dont care that Trump went to Europe and vandalized the Western alliance. This kind of enabling behavior defines the Republican Party today, and is often and correctly interpreted as part of the endless collateral damage Republicans will tolerate in pursuit of tax cuts. But the focus on Ryans motives, rather than his actions, reduces his abdication of duty to a partisan or ideological calculation. Something appropriately left in the realm of politics.

But its much more severe than that. Trumps election was a catastrophically destabilizing event in and of itself, and people like Ryan were complicit in it. But to an under-appreciated extent, the amount of damage Trump would ultimately be capable of inflicting was a question for Congress as much as Trump himself. America cant unelect Trump, or annul his presidency, but it would be straightforward for the countrys other political branch of government to signal to the world that it would never allow a U.S. president to permanently upend the foundation of trust underlying the post-war global order without good reason. If a presidents advisers have malign intent with state secretsin many cases secrets shared between nationsnothing says Congress has to tolerate it. If the president himself is reckless with those secrets, or with his foreign policy in general, nothing in the Constitution says Congress must sit on its hands. Quite the contrary.

Instead, Trump returned to the U.S. in a wake of outraged howls from allied countries, and amid news reports that his top adviser tried to subvert U.S. intelligence agencies with the help of a Russian spy, and the top Republican foreign policy guy in Congress said the presidents first trip abroad was executed to near perfection, while GOP leaders shrugged off Kushners mind-boggling improprieties.

What theyre telling the world is that if another figure like Trump emerges promising to upend U.S. alliances and run a rogue, untrustworthy administration, one of Americas two political parties will welcome him, and help him get away with it.

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How Republicans Are Helping Trump Destroy the U.S.'s Global Credibility - New Republic

Robert E. Moffit 4:25 p.m. ET May 29, 2017

Congressional Budget Office(Photo: Jim Lo Scalzo, epa)

Obamacare is wrecking individual and small group markets. This year, premium cost increases in the individual markets are averaging 25%, and the thousands of dollars in deductibles are breathtaking. Many middle-class folks in these markets are stuck paying the equivalent of a second mortgage.

Washingtons inflexible regulations are also helping to jack up health care costs, pricing younger and healthier persons out of the market, and thus driving costs even higher. This costly experiment in government central planning has resulted in shrinking enrollment, sharply declining competition and narrow medical networks.

Theres nothing new here. In the 39 states with federal exchanges, HHS reports, average monthly premiums rose from $232 to $476 from 2013 to 2017.

Congressional Republicans promised to fix this mess, and the Congressional Budget Office has given their bill a mixed review. The fiscal news is positive, with CBO estimating the legislation would cut the deficit by $119 billion over 10 years. But the insurance coverage news is negative, with CBO estimating that 23 million fewer persons would have health insurance in 2026.

The GOP should be skeptical of CBOs coverage estimates. It has been an abysmal performance. For example, CBO projected initially that 21 million persons would enroll in exchange plans in 2016. The actual enrollment: 11.5 million.

OUR VIEW:

Republican health care bill indicted, again

To be fair, the CBO admits the uncertainty of its own estimates: Such estimates are inherently uncertain because of the ways in which federal agencies, states, insurers, employers, individuals, doctors, hospitals and other affected parties would respond to the changes made by the legislation are all difficult to predict.

Congressional Republicans should take a deep breath. While they should take CBOs report seriously, they must not treat CBO projections as Holy Writ. They should use the Senate version of their bill to fashion good policy that will further reduce costs and protect the vulnerable. They need to fulfill their promises and press ahead.

Robert E. Moffit is a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation.

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Republicans, on CBO estimates, be skeptical - USA TODAY

New York Times

Rebuked Twice by Supreme Court, North Carolina Republicans Are Unabashed New York Times RALEIGH, N.C. In Washington, efforts by this state's Republicans to cement their political dominance have taken a drubbing this month. On May 15, the Supreme Court struck down a North Carolina elections law that a federal appeals court said had been ... Cooper v. Harris - Supreme Court of the United StatesSupreme Court of the United States Supreme Court ruling wipes out Republican-drawn House districts in NCUSA TODAY all 57 news articles »

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Rebuked Twice by Supreme Court, North Carolina Republicans Are Unabashed - New York Times

Eight candidates six Republicans and two Democrats are vying in June 13 primaries for a chance to succeed retiring Del. Peter F. Farrell, R-Henrico.

Farrell, 33, who has held the seat since 2012, surprised many Virginia politicians when he announced in March that he would not seek re-election. Farrell, who has an 18-month-old daughter and a growing investment firm, said that it was a tough decision, but with a young family and a growing business I cannot give the job as delegate the time and energy that it deserves.

The six Republicans in the GOP primary are Graven Craig, Surya Dhakar, George Goodwin, John McGuire III, Matt C. Pinsker and Jay F. Prendergast. The two candidates in the Democratic primary are Melissa M. Dart and Lizzie Drucker-Basch.

A registered voter in the district may cast a ballot in the Republican primary or the Democratic primary, but not in both contests.

Traditionally, the 56th has been a solidly Republican district. While Democrat Hillary Clinton carried Virginia in November, Republican Donald Trump carried the 56th District by nearly 20 percentage points.

Farrell succeeded Del. Bill Janis, a Republican who represented the district from 2002 to 2012. Janis did not seek re-election in 2011, choosing instead to mount an unsuccessful run for Henrico County commonwealths attorney.

Democrats have not fielded a candidate for the seat since 2009, when Janis was elected with nearly 70 percent of the vote.

The district includes Louisa County, which makes up 40.26 percent of the district, and parts of Henrico, Goochland and Spotsylvania counties.

Here is a look at the candidates:

Graven Craig is a personal injury attorney at his law firm in Louisa, where he has lived and worked since 1997. He is one of four founders of the United Self Defense Law Firm, which specializes in defending gun owners who use them in self-defense.

A native of Charlottesville, Craig attended the University of Maryland for his undergraduate degree before earning a law degree from George Mason University. He has been married for 21 years and is a father to three teenagers.

Craig said he wants to protect civil liberties outlined in the Bill of Rights, which he described as having come under attack because of government overreach.

Craig said he also seeks to ensure fiscal responsibility in Virginia, calling it concerning that the General Assembly this year raided the rainy day fund to balance state spending.

We need to figure out where we can cut some spending, and were going to have to have the courage to cut spending, he said.

Surya Dhakar says he wants to abolish state income taxes, rein in government spending, eliminate overreaching regulations on businesses, and provide affordable health care to Virginians.

A dentist with his own clinic in Glen Allen, Dhakar leads the Republican candidates in campaign contributions with $58,173 to date, far more than any of his rivals, according to the Virginia Public Access Project.

He has lived in Henrico County since 1995 when he began dental school at Virginia Commonwealth University. He previously obtained a doctorate in ocean science from Old Dominion University in Norfolk.

Dhakar said he supports Republican gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespies proposed 10 percent personal income tax cut over three years, adding that he wants to eliminate state income taxes entirely if the proposed cuts go well.

He said he has not seen any delegates who have proposed any tax cuts or proposed ... removing regulations for businesses.

George Goodwin is a retired senior intelligence analyst who runs a cow and calf farm with his son in Louisa, where his family history spans generations. He went into the U.S. Air Force following graduation from Virginia Military Institute in Lexington. He holds degrees from VMI and the University of Virginia.

After working with the Virginia Department of Transportation as a highway engineer, Goodwin served as director of the National Ground Intelligence Center. After retirement, Goodwin worked as a campaign manager for the state Senate bid of Republican Tom Garrett now the 5th District congressman and did the same for state Sen. Mark J. Peake, R-Lynchburg.

Goodwin served as a legislative adviser for Garrett and Peake. He said his four years of experience in the legislative process is what sets him apart from the other candidates.

I can go down there on Day One and be effective because I know how it operates, he said. Ive done it.

Goodwin said he hopes to do away with unfunded mandates and make Virginia more business-friendly by getting rid of restrictive regulations on small businesses.

John McGuire III is a former Navy SEAL and founder of SEAL Team Physical Training Inc., an outdoor fitness training program with locations in Richmond, Henrico, Charlottesville, Washington and Atlanta. He lives in Henrico with his wife and five children.

McGuire said the strengths he would bring to the voters of the 56th are his abilities to be a leader and team-builder. While the run is his first for public office, McGuire said he has excelled in the military and in business when he was still brand-new, which he attributes to his gift of uniting people.

McGuire said it would be premature before hes elected to say what exactly he would do in the district, but he said hes interested in growing businesses in Virginia and wants to continue providing support for veterans and law enforcement officers.

I just want to make sure we have a better future for our grandchildren, McGuire said.

Matt C. Pinsker is a captain in the Army Reserve and an adjunct professor of homeland security and criminal justice at Virginia Commonwealth University.

He also works with his own law firm that specializes in criminal defense for people suffering from addiction. As a small-business owner, Pinsker said he sees the negative effects of high taxes and regulation on businesses.

Im really the only candidate whos not only talked the talk but walked the walk, he said.

A lifelong conservative, Pinsker attended Mills E. Godwin High School where he founded a Republican club before graduating from the College of William & Mary. He lives with his wife near his family home in western Henrico.

Pinsker said he actively works to help veterans who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, gives law enforcement officers support and training as a professor, and fights to preserve conservative values. He added that those are some of the issues he would work toward resolving as a delegate.

Jay F. Prendergast works in commercial media at Studio Sound, a nationwide company that produces commercials for television and radio. He was a radio personality in Virginia Beach for more than a decade before moving to Henrico in 2007 with his wife and four children.

A native of Alexandria, Prendergast calls himself a forever Virginian. He attended T.C. Williams High School and went on to earn a degree in broadcasting from the University of Virginia.

In 2006, Prendergast unsuccessfully ran for a City Council seat in Chesapeake an experience he said provided a good lesson on local elections. Compared with the other candidates, Prendergast said he holds similar conservative views but distinguishes himself in that he has a flexible schedule to work the position full time.

He said he believes in holding government accountable and promoting fiscally responsible practices, saying he would promote a true free-market economic system for the people of the 56th.

If you free the people up to pursue their dreams, thats the best way to get things done, Prendergast said.

Melissa M. Dart works full time as a health care administrator with AllyAlign Health, a small company based in Henrico. She has worked in the industry for 20 years, which she said gives her detailed understanding of an issue important to all members of her district.

Dart is married and has three young children. She attended the University of Richmond for her undergraduate degree and has a masters in health care from Virginia Commonwealth University.

The motivation to run for office came to Dart after the confirmation of U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, she said, because she was concerned how it could affect the public school systems nationwide.

Dart says she thinks the Democratic Party has a real shot at winning the 56th, and her campaign is important to her personally because a woman has yet to be elected to that office in the district.

I think that the demographics have changed, and I think a Republican being in this seat for so long doesnt represent the true progressive voices that are more and more a part of this district, Dart said.

Lizzie Drucker-Basch owns a property renovation company that rehabs historic buildings in the Richmond area.

The small-business owner has lived in western Henrico County for 15 years and has three children who have gone to public schools there. She serves on the board of directors for the Disability Law Center of Virginia and on the Henrico County Special Education Advisory Committee. She holds degrees from Syracuse University and the University of Chicago.

A first-time candidate for office, Drucker-Basch said she thinks the Democratic Party has gotten away from its roots and its base. Drucker-Basch dismissed the idea that the district is inherently Republican, saying the constituents want good jobs and education opportunities for their children the same desires she has for her own family.

Its going to be Republican if we dont show up and show that we care, she said.

Continued here:
6 Republicans, 2 Democrats seek retiring Del. Farrell's seat - Richmond.com

President Trump and House Republicans celebrate the passage of the GOP health-care bill in early May. (Evan Vucci/AP)

Republicans have had seven years to figure out how they want to replace Obamacare, and this is what they've come up with: a plan that, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, would lead to 23 million more people not havinginsurance and, in states that wanted to, sick people being burdened with much, much higher costs.

Maybe they needed eight years?

The real question here is why. Why weren't Republicans able to put a plan together that people actually, you know, like theirs is polling in the low 20s and why did it take so long? And the answer is pretty simple: Republicans are philosophically opposed to redistribution, but health care is all about redistribution. For a long time, they tried to wish that away, and it was only when that wasn't an option anymore that they moved on to Plan B: trying to pass the least redistributive billthey can before anyone noticed how much it doesn't redistribute.

That last part isn't working so well.

Now, if we could start from scratch, Republicans would like our health-care system to work the way Singapore's does. Everyone would have catastrophic insurance to protect against true medical emergencies and then use health savings accounts to pay for routine care out of pocket. It's not just that this would make people pay their own way as much as possible. It's also the idea that making them do so would make them shop around for the best deal.

There are two problems with this, though. First, as economist Ken Arrow pointed out long ago, picking the right medical care is a lot different from picking the right car. People don't know enough to be good comparison shoppers, and they're not going to scrimp when their health is on the line. But second and more importantly we don't have the low health-care costs you need to make all thiswork. Singapore's government, you see, has been able to keep costsdown because it owns most of the country's hospitals, it employs a lotof the doctors, and it subsidizes cheaper treatments to try to get people to choose them. The result is that they spend only about 5 percent of their GDP on health care compared with the 18 percent we do. Which is really all you need to know about why their system works for them but wouldn't for us. It's a lot easier to pay for their own health care when that costs three or four times less what it does here.

How have Republicans dealt with this? Well, for the most part, they haven't. They still want people to use HSAs, to pay higher deductibles, to have more skin in the game that will supposedly turn them from patients into consumers never mind that that would just price a lot of people out of the market altogether. That's actually a feature, not a bug. Health care is only a major priority for Republicans insofar as they can make it redistribute less money. So while conservative wonks might be focused on trying to make the health-care system more of a free market, conservative politicians are more interested in what that means for their tax cuts.

Just look at Trumpcare. It's only a health-care bill to the extent that it takes health care away from the poor and middle class to pay for a tax cut for the rich. Indeed, over the next decade, it would cut Medicaid by $834 billion and health-care subsidies by $276 billion, all to finance a trillion dollars' worth of tax cuts mostly benefitingwealthy investors.

But that was still too redistributive for the far-right House Freedom Caucus. They didn't just want to stop the rich from having to pay for the poor. They also wanted to stop the healthy from having to pay for the sick. So they added an amendment that would allow states to opt out of Obamacare's basicrules. Insurance companies wouldn't have to charge people with preexisting conditions the same as people without them, and could sell plans that didn't include essential benefits such as hospitalizations, mental health and maternity care. That would allow young, healthy people to save money by buying bare-bones plans, while older, sicker people would have to pay more for theirs since they'd be the only ones buying those types of comprehensive plans. The insurance market, in other words, would bifurcate. Healthy people would buy affordable plans that didn't cover a lot, and sick people would try to buy unaffordable ones that did until they couldn't. Republican Mark Meadows, who more than anyone else pushed for these changes, was reportedly reduced to tears when he found out that they'd mean a lot of people with preexisting conditions would lose their coverage, which makes you wonder what he thought they were doing.

The rest of the GOP sure knew.

Read the rest here:
Why Republicans are so bad at health care - Washington Post