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By Topher Spiro By Topher Spiro March 3 at 6:00 AM Topher Spiro is the vice president for health policy at the Center for American Progress and a former staffer to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.)

At a news conference, March 2, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) spoke about Republican lawmakers' plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. (Reuters)

Public opinion about the Affordable Care Act is consistently favorable and on an upswing. Faced with the prospect of repeal, crowds of constituents are confronting lawmakers across the country to express their anguish in town halls. But still, Republicans are rushing to rip apart the health insurance coverage that millions of people depend on.

That rush is a particularly bitter irony for anyone who, like me, worked on writing the ACA originally. Republicans accused Democrats eight years ago of drafting the health-care law in secret, despite dozens of public hearings and work sessions. But now its their own process that is highly secretive, with U.S. Capitol Police guarding a basement room where the draft legislation is kept hidden from voters, the news media and even members of Congress.

The GOP tried to use one quote in particular to drive itsmessage back then. In 2010, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said that we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy. What Pelosi meant was that people would realize the benefits of the law once they became tangible which is exactly what polling shows has happened. But Republicans spun and truncated the quote to suggest that Democrats were hiding something.

In fact, the process to enact the Affordable Care Act was thorough and transparent. I was there for the whole thing, as a Democratic staffer for the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee.

[Bernie Sanders: If Trump doesnt rescue Obamacare, he must admit hes a liar]

In the House, Democrats held a series of public hearings before introducing a public discussion draft in June 2009. The House then held more public hearings before introducing new legislative text in July. All three relevant committees held markups committee work sessions to amend the legislation and the full House vote on the amended legislation did not take place until November.

In the Senate, the HELP Committee held 14 bipartisan roundtables and 13 public hearings in 2008 and 2009. During the committees markup in June 2009, Democrats accepted more than 160 Republican amendments to the bill.

Beginning in May 2008 20 months before the Senate vote and six months before Barack Obama, who would later sign the bill into law, was even elected president the Senate Finance Committee held 17 public roundtables, summits and hearings. In 2009, Democrats met and negotiated with three Republicans for several months before the tea party protests caused the GOP to back away from negotiations. The Finance Committee held its markup in September, and the full Senate vote did not take place until December.

In both the House and the Senate, scores by the independent Congressional Budget Office were available before each vote at each stage of the process. These scores are estimates of the effects of legislation on the budget and on the number of people who would be covered by health insurance.

Thats not remotely like whats happening in Washington now. Its Republicans who are rushing to jam through their legislation to repeal the law in a highly secretive process. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) said this week on NBCs Today show, Were not hatching some bill in a back room and plopping it on the American peoples front door. In fact, thats exactly what theyre doing.

Only Republicans can see the bill text before the markup next week, and its only on view in a basement next to the Capitol. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) was denied entry into the room Thursday when he tried to go read the bill. Worse, Republicans plan to mark up the proposal and take a vote without having a score from the CBO which means no one will know what repealing the law will do to people who are covered under the ACA until after the committee votes on it.

[Why Trump is already waffling on Obamacare]

Republicans have held no public hearings on their restructuring ideas. They do not plan to have any committee markups in the Senate. Legislation is still not public one month from the planned vote in the Senate. And needless to say, Republicans made no attempt to conduct a bipartisan discussion about improving the Affordable Care Act instead of abolishing it.

Democrats used a special budget procedure known as reconciliation which can be used to avoid a filibuster to make tweaks to the Affordable Care Act after final passage. Now Republicans are using that very same procedure but right away, at the beginning of the legislative process, and to make radical changes.

Its true that some behind-the-scenes negotiation, discussion and drafting is part of every legislative process including the process to enact the ACA. But in that case, versions of bill text and their CBO scores were publicly available for many months before the final vote. An extended public debate took place for more than a year. Whats truly remarkable now is that the entire process has been behind closed doors.

Theres a reason, of course, why Republicans want to hide their bill and its effects: Under every iteration of their plan, deep cuts to Medicaid and much lower tax credits for private insurance would cause millions of people to lose their coverage.

Republicans are making their members walk the plank with blindfolds on because they have no other choice. They promised, over and over again, to repeal the ACA, and now theyre going to try to do it no matter how. Their internal divisions are rampant and grow by the day. This is no way in a democracy to consider and shape legislation affecting tens of millions of people with many lives hanging in the balance.

And ultimately, what was false about the Affordable Care Act is true about the secret basement bill: They have to pass the bill to find out whats in it.

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We won't know what's in the Republican health-care repeal plan until they pass it - Washington Post

WASHINGTON An increasing number of Republicans in Congressare questioning whether Attorney General Jeff Sessionsis fit to oversee an investigation into Russias role in the election.

House Oversight ChairmanJason Chaffetz(R-Utah) led the calls for the former senator to recuse himself on Thursday amid reports that hefailed to disclose conversations he had with the Russian ambassador to the U.S.

Late Wednesday night,The Washington Post reported that Sessions spoke twice last year with the Russian official and didnt tell lawmakers during his January confirmation hearing. Sessions had met with Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in his capacity as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, according to Justice Department officials.U.S. investigators have also looked into Sessions communications as part of a larger investigation into possible links between Trumps campaign and the Russian government, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

Democratic leaders on both sides of Capitol Hill called on Sessions to resign entirely. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said it would be better for the country.House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Sessions lied under oath.

On Thursday, the calls for Sessions to recuse himself began to trickle in as Republicans doubted he could impartially oversee the Justice Departments probe into Russias interference in the 2016 election.

Chaffetz came out with one of the most direct statementson Thursday.

Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) joined in. I think it would be best for him and for the country to recuse himself from the DOJ Russia probe, he said, but added that Sessions was a former colleague and friend.

Conservative Reps. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) and Rep. Ral Labrador (R-Idaho) also called for Sessions to step aside.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said it would just be easierif Sessions stepped aside.I think for the trust of the American people, you recuse yourself in these situations, yes, McCarthy said on Morning Joe. Helater walked back his comments.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said earlier Thursday that its valid to ask why Sessions didnt disclose the conversations.

It is potentially the case that there is going to be Justice Department recommendations or referrals based on anything regarding the campaign [and] that depending on what more we learn about these meetings, it could very well be that the attorney general, in the interest of fairness and in his best interest, should potentially ask someone else to step in and play that role, Rubio said on NPRs Morning Edition. Im not interested in being part of a witch hunt, but I also will not be part of a cover-up.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein(D-Calif.), a ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, called on Sessions to either recuse himself or resign as attorney general.

However, Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Richard Burr (R-N.C.) said he trusts Jeff Sessions, adding the attorney general would know when to recuse himself. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), the Senate Republican Whip, said it was too prematureto say whether Sessions should step aside, while Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), a member of Intelligence Committee, said, The best I can tell there was no real revelation.

After the report initially broke, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said he wasnt going to make a decision based on news articles, but conceded that a special prosecutor may be necessary.

If there is something there, and it goes up the chain of investigation, it is clear to me that Jeff Sessions, who is my dear friend, cannot make this decision about Trump, Graham said during a CNN town hall.

This article has been updated with more details, including comment from Amash, Labrador, Burr, Cornyn and Feinstein.

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Growing Number Of Republicans Call On Jeff Sessions To Step Aside - Huffington Post

House Republican leaders feel so good about their bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act that theyre trying to hide it from public scrutiny until the last possible minute.

Bloomberg Politics and the Washington Examiner on Wednesday reported that GOP leaders are putting the finishing touches on the legislation, and are ready to show their colleagues what its going to look like. Nothing is quite final, but the tentative plan is to have the House Energy and Commerce Committee, one of three House panels with jurisdiction, consider the proposal next Wednesday. If the committee signs off, it would be a major step toward legislation passing in the full House and, eventually, enactment of a law wiping the 2010 health care law off the books.

For now, according to Bloomberg, leaders are planning to make the bill available only to committee members, who will have to view a printout in a dedicated reading room. No copies will be allowed out of the room.

Committee rules call for making legislation public no less than three calendar days before hearings, which means that Republicans will have to post a version by 11:59 p.m. on Monday if they want markup to start sometime on Wednesday. But Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.), who sits on the committee, told Bloomberg that the vote might take place before the Congressional Budget Office and Joint Committee on Taxation get a chance to produce formal estimates of the bills effects on insurance coverage and the federal budget.

It looks like, unfortunately, based on the delays, we may be marking it up and voting on it before we have a score, Collins said.

Unfortunate thats one way to put it. More than 20 million people now depend on the Affordable Care Act for coverage. Many more people are affected by regulations or taxes that the law introduced. It seems unconscionable to vote to strip away health care insurance for twenty million people without knowing how many would (or wouldnt) be covered under a new GOP plan, Sarah Binder, a George Washington University professor and expert on Congress, told The Huffington Post in an email. Norm Ornstein, a political scientist at the American Enterprise Institute, suggested that marking up legislation without those formal assessments would be reckless, dangerous, and irresponsible.

Not to mention ironic.Conservative mythology holds that Democrats wrote the Affordable Care Act in secret, ramming it through Congress before anybody understood what was in it even though in reality, Democrats spent over a year litigating their proposal through committee hearings and floor debates, with CBO and JCT analyzing proposals every step of the way. Just this week, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said, while appearing on NBCs Today show, that were not writing some bill in the back room... like Obamacare was written.

Republicans may have good reason to keep their plans under wraps for as long as possible. For seven years, theyve been saying they could come up with an alternative to the law that would cover as many or more people, with better insurance, all at lower cost. But an earlier, draft version of the legislation that leaked to Politico a week ago offered a glimpse of what they actually have in mind.

That bill called for rescinding the laws expansion of Medicaid eligibility, and then transforming the whole program so that the federal government would no longer guarantee a level of insurance benefits for every person who qualifies. The proposal would have continued to make financial assistance available to people who buy private coverage on their own but, critically, it would have delivered the assistance in a different way, with aid shifting away from the poor and the old and toward the rich and the young. Amid all of this, the bill would have rolled back regulations designed to make insurance plans more comprehensive and more widely available.

A series of assessments of the proposal and its predecessors all yielded the same conclusion. Some people would be better off, primarily because theyd get new tax breaks or lower insurance premiums assuming they were healthy enough not to worry about medical bills. But many millions who now have coverage would lose it, and even many of the people whose premiums would fall would end up facing substantially higher out-of-pocket expenses.

One finding in particular might help clarify what exactly Republicans are proposing to do. It comes from a study by economist Linda Blumberg, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute. Using an earlier version of Republican legislation, Blumberg decided to figure out what kind of insurance a low-income person using the new Republican tax credits could actually buy on the market, assuming that person had no extra money for premiums. She found that, among the oldest consumers buying plans, the tax credits in the bill could pay for only a very skimpy policy one that, for a single person, came with a deductible of $25,000, covered only generic drugs and excluded such services as mental health and rehabilitative services.

Its an extreme example, and the bill that Blumberg analyzed was less generous than the one that got all the attention last week. But, tellingly, that new bill provoked protests from leaders of the House Freedom Caucus and Republican Study Committee not because its assistance was inadequate but because, in their view, it was too generous. In particular, these Republicans were upset that the financial aid in the proposal came in the form of refundable credits, which means people too poor to pay income taxes still would get the money.

Several of these House Republicans, along with some allies in the Senate, vowed to vote against any bill with refundable credits. This has been the major legislative drama of the past few days, and its anybodys guess whether the hard-liners are serious about blocking leaderships bill even if that means blowing up the whole repeal effort or whether theyre merely posturing in order to please their supporters, and perhaps gain leverage for future negotiations. The new bill presumably takes into account the conservative objections, one way or another.

Regardless, its worth recognizing just where on the political spectrum this debate is now happening. Its an argument between between conservatives and extreme conservatives, over whether a proposal that would strip health insurance from millions of Americans goes far enough.

But neither sides vision sounds a lot like better health care, which is what President Donald Trump and many GOP leaders have been promising they would deliver.

Clarification: Languagehas been amended to more accurately reflect Bloombergs report on plans for legislators to view the bill.

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Now Republicans Are Keeping Their Obamacare Plans A Secret - Huffington Post

This article first appeared on the Just Security site.

Congressional Republicans responses to Russian attacks on the American political system have ranged from inadequate to damaging.

Republican leadership seeks to bury this investigation in the secrecy and narrow jurisdiction of the intelligence committees. But the leaders of these committees are too close to the facts and politics to run a credible investigation.

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And the committees are too narrow in focus to address all of the issues presented.

Moreover, the executive branch is compromised. We need a credible, independentand comprehensive investigation in the model of the 9/11 Commission.

I have managed congressional investigations of both the Bush and Obama administrations on matters of national security. I also spent years in the White House under two different presidents responding to them. That experience makes it clear to me that Republican congressional leaders are laying the groundwork for a whitewash.

There are three main approaches one could take to conduct an investigation of these allegations pursuant to the legislative power granted to Congress in Article I of the Constitution: regular order, a select committeeor a bipartisan commission.

The Lenin Mausoleum, center, in Red Square on December 14, 2000, in Moscow. Andy Wright writes that the Russia allegations about interference in the 2016 election and contacts with Trump campaign officials are important as a matter of intense public interest. They go to citizen confidence in our democratic elections. Burying this investigation in the intelligence committees would preclude Americans from getting the whole picture. Yet Republican congressional leaders are laying the groundwork for a whitewash. Oleg Nikishin/Newsmakers/Getty

Regular order would allow current congressional structures to handle the Russia investigation. This would likely result in stifling control of information by the intelligence committees, and is especially vulnerable to partisanship. To the extent other committees get in on the act, it would likely generate information silos rather than a comprehensive picture. For reasons of politics and control, regular order is the strong preference of Republican leaders.

Related: Robert Reich: What did Trump know of the Russian plot?

A select committee would create a temporary panel comprised of an array of committee leaders chosen by the Senate and House leadership. It has the benefit of broad jurisdiction and subject matter expertise but still remains within partisan structures. This is an approach championed by Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).

A bipartisan commission would bring together a collection of towering public servants and policy experts to manage the investigation. These would be people who are no longer in electoral politics. Congress would delegate its investigative power, including subpoena power, to the commission.

This type of commission has been used to investigate civil rights issues in the 1950s, President John F. Kennedys assassination, the 9/11 attacks and the war in Iraq in 2005, among other issues of national concern. This is the model introduced by RepresentativeElijah Cummings (D-Md.) and Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.). It is also the one I have been calling for since last August.

So far, Republican leaders are not only resisting creating a bipartisan commission but they are also refusing to allow a select committee to investigate.

In December, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) rejected a call by McCain to establish a special select committee. While McConnell called allegations of Russian interference disturbing, he argued the intelligence committee is more than capable of conducting a complete review of this matter. Asked about a bipartisan commission, McConnell indicated that the Senate would handle the Russia investigation in regular order. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) dismissed similar calls.

Not all investigations are created equal. Here are five reasons why the Republican preference for regular order falls far short of the mark:

The Russia investigation simply covers too many substantive areas to fit it solely in the intelligence committee bucket. To be sure, it will intimately involve assessments by the U.S. intelligence community about the extent of Russian cyberattacks, motives and goals of such attacks, identities of Russian intelligence personnel and third-parties who may have assisted Russia and counterintelligence and Russian infiltration of the U.S. government and political system.

But the Russia allegations touch on numerous issues that are the subject of other committees jurisdictions. The armed services committees have a stake in the military dimensions to Russian disinformation campaigns and strategic goals, as do the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and House Foreign Affairs Committee.

The Senate and House judiciary committees conduct primary oversight of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and have primary legislative jurisdiction over the criminal laws at issue. The House oversight committee and Senate homeland security committee have interagency oversight jurisdiction over cybervulnerabilities to U.S. government systems, as well as handling of classified and unclassified government records.

Both homeland security committees will have a stake too. The investigation potentially implicates a host of policy areas: sanctions, retaliation, cybersecurity, election integrity, military capability, personnel procedures, geopolitics, and intelligence performance.

The ultimate authority for a congressional investigation is grounded in the legislative power granted in Article I of the Constitution. To the extent the results of the investigation call for legislative policy responses, more committees subject matter expertise needs to be brought to bear. Other committee chairs have indicated an intent to investigate, including SenatorBob Corker (R-Tenn.) (Senate Foreign Relations Committee) and SenatorLindsey Graham (R-S.C.) (Senate judiciary crime and terrorism subcommittee) and several mixed messages from RepresentativeJason Chaffetz (R-Utah) (House oversight committee).

Even if they all moved forward in earnest, there would be a hodgepodge of cross-cutting information. Democrats might actually benefit from a feeding frenzy of information leaks and procedural fights. But that would not be good for the country. Only a select committee, or bipartisan commission model, could coordinate information across all the subjects to develop a definitive account.

Republican leaders on the Hill initially proposed that any investigation of Russian interference or infiltration be tasked exclusively to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI). As more damaging revelations dribbled out into public view and after Michael Flynns removal as national security adviser, McConnell relented to pressure from other senators to a degree.

There are significant secrets that need to be protected in connection with this investigation. We need to protect the sources and methods of American intelligence collection. We also need to protect foreign governments from retribution for intelligence sharing. The recent mysterious deaths of a number of Russian diplomats bring such concerns into focus.

As a matter of regular order, the intelligence committees have exclusive jurisdiction for matters requiring disclosure of sources and methods even where there is otherwise overlapping subject matter jurisdiction. They also rarely hold open session hearings or issue public findings.

These committees are good at protecting American secrets even as they conduct intelligence oversight. However, the 9/11 Commission dealt with similar issues. It wrangled access to several Presidential Daily Briefs (PDBs), considered a crown jewel in executive privilege and secrecy and handled it just fine.

This structural secrecy also serves McConnells and Ryans political interests. They want to arm their members with something they can sell to angry constituents as an investigation. If they can confine the primary investigation to the intelligence committees, they generate a valuable talking point.

A member of Congress can brush aside months of questions by saying an investigation is ongoing. I witnessed that approach to ending discussion of Russia firsthand from my congressman, RepresentativeBuddy Carter (R-Ga.), last week at his contentious town hall in Savannah. Add to that the secrecy of these particular committees, and there is little oxygen to fuel new press stories or rile angry constituents.

These Russia allegations are just too important as a matter of intense public interest. They go to citizen confidence in our democratic elections. Burying this investigation in the intelligence committees would preclude Americans from getting the whole picture.

Executive branch leadership is compromised as it relates to the Russia investigation. As such, an investigation grounded in the independent legislative power of Article I power is essential.

Core allegations and questions go to the nerve center of the White House. Michael Flynn resigned as national security adviser, disgraced as a matter of credibility and under a cloud of suspicion as to his ties to Russia. Flynn reportedly lied to Vice President Mike Pence and others in the West Wing. Then-acting Attorney General Sally Yates briefed White House Counsel Don McGahn on credible evidence of Flynns security risk two weeks ago, which he shared with President Donald Trump.

At a minimum, Trump has misrepresented the state of his knowledge about Flynn to the American people.

The Department of Justice is similarly hobbled. FBI Director James Comey is radioactive due to his conduct during the 2016 presidential race, which prompted The Wall Street Journal to call for his resignation. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is factually and procedurally incapable of credibility on this topic. He was at the center of Trumps campaign, having spoken about WikiLeaks and allegations of Russian hacking during it.

Exploring the basis of Sessionss knowledge would be on any investigators to-do list. Further, during his confirmation hearings, Sessions refused to commit to recusing himself from investigations touching on Trump. Calls for a special prosecutor grow louderand now include some Republicans.

To be sure, executive branch intelligence, law enforcement and accountability agencies should continue to do their work on the Russian allegations as appropriate. But there is a premium on gathering facts outside of the executive branch.

The White House enlisted the intelligence committee chairs to help rebut the revelations about Trump associates ties to Russian intelligence. Burr and Nunes are the very people Hill GOP leaders tasked with primary responsibility for the Russia investigation.

On February 15, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer actually dialed the phone and remained on the line while Chairman Burr and Director of Central Intelligence Mike Pompeo (creating another executive branch problem) discredited stories about Russian contacts with Trump campaign associates.

Reportedly, Burr and Pompeo told reporters that all I can tell you is the [Times] story is not accurate. They refused to give any specified reasons the stories were false beyond a top-line declaration of inaccuracy. When an intelligence committee tells a reporter all I can tell you, it suggests the reason is the information is grounded in classified intelligence that cannot be shared.

That is the day after Burr stood shoulder to shoulder with his Vice Chairman, SenatorMark Warner (D-Va.), to announce that the Senate intelligence committee would broaden its investigation. Burr said:

We are aggressively going to continue the oversight responsibilities of the committee as it relates to not only the Russian involvement in the 2016 election, but again any contacts by any campaign individuals that might have happened with Russian government officials.

Its very difficult to square that statement with agreeing to do press surrogate work on behalf of the White House the next day. Burr now faces predictable backlash.

House intelligence committee chair, RepresentativeDevin Nunes (R-Calif.), also helped the White House with pushback, although he reportedly called reporters on his own with numbers provided by Spicer. He also has compared Russia allegations to McCarthyism and raised concerns about a witch hunt against innocent Americans.

On Monday, Nunes denied having any evidence of phone calls or contacts between Trump campaign officials and Russian intelligence. He went on to say the real focus should be on the major crimes of those leaking information to the press.

When I was on the Hill, my chairman would not talk publicly about the substance of HPSCI investigations. He would not even talk about nonpublic HPSCI matters with his House oversight national security subcommittee staff with security clearances.

Here, Nunes has not conducted an investigation and is spinning a lack of effort as a lack of evidence. There is no legal prohibition on contact between the White House and the House and Senate intelligence committees. The White House can certainly make its case to the committee members about why a news narrative about Russia is incorrect.

Ive been trying to remember if I ever coordinated with the White House on messaging about the subject matter of one of our investigations. I cant. I received several plaintive calls from Obama administration officials. I recall one polite but particularly pointed call from Jeh Johnson when he was general counsel to the Department of Defense objecting to a subpoena threat we had issued.

But here the Trump White House provided staff support for the committee chair like it was fundraising call-time on a matter that is the declared subject of a committee investigation. In a blow to bipartisanship, neither Burr nor Nunes informed their Democratic counterparts before they took up the White House cause.

These actions darken already bleak prospects of bipartisan cooperation. White House media coordination here undermines the legitimacy of the intelligence committee probes.

One of the core allegations roiling our government is Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election. Neither party is capable of handling this in a non-partisan manner because of the close nexus to election legitimacy and outcome. Members of Congress with an eye on winning reelection and a party majority really cannot be expected to provide the kind of independence we need for this fact-finding mission.

In my previous posts, I argued that allegations of Russian influence operations implicate two overlapping paradigms: domestic electoral politics and international geopolitics. As I said in December:

The overlap stems from the partisan utility of the alleged Russian operations themselves. If Russia sought to help Donald Trump, he and his supporters have some political incentives to deny it in order to avoid a taint to his legitimacy. In turn, his critics have incentives to undermine the legitimacy of his election by Russian association.

Looming political campaigns increase the need for independence from Congress and the Executive Branch. As divisive as our politics have been, we still have scores of distinguished Americans with the credibility to lead an investigation of this sensitivity and magnitude. We have former public officials, intelligence professionals, diplomats, veterans, congressional investigators, prosecutorsand academics who could answer the call.

We need a definitive investigation with bipartisan credibility like the 9/11 Commission. So far, with few exceptions, Hill Republicans are only offering the appearance of an investigation, rather than the hard-hitting, fact-driven, and independent investigation America deserves.

Andy Wright is a professor at Savannah Law School and former associate counsel to the president in the White House Counsels office.

Excerpt from:
Why are Republicans Dodging a True Russia Inquiry? - Newsweek

To the editor: If California Republicans are energized by President Trumps election, so are the thousands of Californians including many Republicans who are showing their opposition by lobbying, demonstrating, writing and calling legislators. (California's Republican Party is buoyed by Trump, but struggles for relevance at home, Feb. 27)

If Republicans have any chance of winning in this state, it seems clear that they must distance themselves from the demagoguery of the Trump administration (something they seem unwilling to do) and come up with sensible, sustainable policies to address issues Californians care about: the environment, human rights, equality of opportunity, excellence in education and affordable universal healthcare.

Being in a blue state offers the California GOP a unique opportunity to help tilt the Republican Party back toward the thoughtful conservatism and democratic principles for which it has been known in the past.

Betty Guthrie, Irvine

..

To the editor: Progressives, independents and Democrats are energized in support of the environment, education, women and more.

The Republicans cannot be energized if they continue to put party first enriched, maybe, but not energized.

Frank J. Lepiane, San Diego

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook

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How California Republicans can do their party and the country a big favor - Los Angeles Times