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Former GOP Governor Warns Trump Bill Will Devastate Rural Health Care

The Republican-controlled. Senate is expected to vote Monday night on President Donald Trump's signature domestic policy legislation, and one former high-ranking Republican is now urging his fellow conservatives to take a stand against it.

During a Monday segment on MSNBC's "The Weeknight," former Montana Governor Marc Racicot — a Republican who led the Big Sky State between 1993 and 2001 — slammed the bill as uniquely harmful for Americans in rural states like his. After hosts Michael Steele, Symone Sanders-Townsend and Alicia Melendez played a clip of Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) defending the bill as good for the country, Racicot blasted his fellow Republicans as being in thrall of an "autocrat" and being more afraid of angering Trump than hurting their own constituents.

"That's patent nonsense. It's absolutely ludicrous," Racicot said. "In the state of Montana ... we have 56 counties. We're spread over 150,000 square miles, and 50 out of our 56 counties do not have the kind of facilities that allow for people to be treated without Medicare and without Medicaid."

"We don't have rural clinics or hospitals that can respond," he continued. "In addition to that, we have we have seven Indian reservations that, again, are placed in in harm's way ... the infrastructure that we put in place as a result of Medicaid serves those families as well. So it's just unbelievable to me that these Republicans would proceed thinking that they're people of conscience, and somehow they're doing something good for the country. I don't think they even know what's in the bill."

The Senate's version of the legislation already cuts Medicaid by roughly $1 trillion over 10 years, meaning many rural hospitals in predominantly red states like Montana are at risk of closing if the current version of the bill is signed into law. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va) has already acknowledged that her constituents could be deeply impacted by the legislation.

Racicot went on to opine that one main reason the bill could be passed is because Republicans in Congress are operating "upon the basis of bigotry and the whining and complaining and grievance and resentment" of their fellow Americans. He added that it was "incredibly unfortunate" that so many members of his party were working "to the great detriment of the people of this country."

"What I'm really fearful of is that when they find out what this does, when they learn what it is — and I wish we could avoid the catastrophe — but I'm fearful we can't avoid this calamity until it happens," Racicot said. "And then it's going to be an ultimate disaster."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

'It All Falls Apart': GOP Senate Lacks Majority To Pass Trump's Big Ugly Bill

In a rare admission of uncertainty, Republican senators are privately conceding that President Donald Trump’s "Big, Beautiful Bill" may “fall apart” before the self-imposed July 4 deadline, Semafor reported Thursday.

Trump is reportedly banking on his signature hardball tactics in trying to secure passage of the legislation by Independence Day. However, GOP lawmakers say that strategy is faltering in the Senate amid mounting procedural hurdles and internal dissent, per the report.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) told Semafor: “I like the president, I respect him, I certainly respect how difficult his job is. I don’t want to make it more difficult. But we can’t keep mortgaging our kids’ future. And he understands that about me."

Sen. Johnson is currently against the bill and is said to have banded with two fellow conservative senators as a bloc: “We all have to be a yes before any of us are a yes," he said.

According to the report, the bill is not only short of sufficient support right now, but is also boasting a hefty amount of blank space for now. That’s because Republicans are still hustling to win approval for provisions that their nonpartisan rules referee deemed ineligible for protection from a Democratic filibuster.

Since it’s difficult to estimate the costs or effects of passage anymore, senators are trying to slow the rush to finish a bill that will affect almost every American in some way.

Meanwhile, as lawmakers prepared to scrap their weekend and recess plans, Trump invited some Republicans to a Thursday event that amounted to what one called a “mass arm-twisting," per Semafor.

One person close to the White House, who was not identified in the report, told Semafor that the president needs to change the deadline.

“He has to shift the deadline, or it all falls apart,” the source said, per the report. “Procedurally, how would it get on his desk by July 4? They don’t have the votes and a bunch of it the parliamentarian gutted," they added.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Johnson Privately Confirms Deep Medicaid Cuts He Denied On Fox News

Twenty-four hours after House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) used Fox News’ platform to claim Democrats are lying when they say that the GOP’s One Big Beautiful Bill cuts Medicaid, Politico reported that he is privately warning House Republicans will lose their majority if the Senate version’s Medicaid cuts are enacted.

Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt asked Johnson during a Tuesday interview to explain the differences between the House and Senate versions of the legislation on “Medicaid and the SALT deductions and other areas,” and to respond to Democrats “that are pushing this narrative that's not true that Republicans are cutting Medicare and Medicaid.”

Johnson responded that the Democratic claims are “nonsense” because “we are not cutting Medicaid” but instead “strengthening the program for the people that desperately need it and deserve it” by instituting work requirements. He said Democratic ads saying otherwise had been “taken down.” He did not address the part of the question about how the House and Senate Medicaid provisions differ — though he did go on to warn Senate Republicans they would be “playing with fire” if they touch the House bill’s boost to the cap of the State And Local Tax deduction.

But when Johnson talks to Republican power players instead of Fox viewers, he is saying something very different, Politicoreported on Wednesday:

Speaker Mike Johnson is warning in private that Senate Republicans could cost House Republicans their majority next year if they try to push through the deep Medicaid cuts in the current Senate version, according to three people granted anonymity to describe the matter.

That comes as Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) cautions GOP senators that those same cutbacks could become a political albatross for Republicans just as the Affordable Care Act was for Democrats.

“[Barack] Obama said … ‘if you like your health care you can keep it, if you like your doctor we can keep it,’ and yet we had several million people lose their health care,” the in-cycle senator told reporters Tuesday. “Here we’re saying [with] Medicaid, we’re going to hold people harmless, but we’re estimating” millions of people could lose coverage.

While the Senate’s proposed cuts are even steeper, the House bill, contrary to what Earhardt and Johnson suggested to Fox’s audience, also includes devastating Medicaid cuts. It would drive nearly 8 million people off the Medicaid rolls over the next decade, the Congressional Budget Office found. Analysts say those cuts, along with other health cuts in the bill, would result in more than 11,000 medically preventable deaths annually and could force rural hospitals to close.

These Medicaid cuts are hideously unpopular, but Fox figures are helping Johnson keep his speakership by downplaying their impact to viewers — when they talk about them at all. Indeed, Fox & Friends did not address the Medicaid cuts on Wednesday, including after Politico’s report contradicted Johnson’s claims to their viewers.

Meanwhile, though Johnson told Earnhardt that Democratic claims about the GOP’s Medicaid cuts were so obviously false that ads on them have been taken down, an ad denouncing Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) for having “voted for the biggest Medicaid cut in history” has run more than 100 times on TV stations in his district this week, according to a Media Matters review of the Kinetiq database.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

'We've Been Lied To': Margie Says Iran Strike Exposed Ruinous Rift In GOP

One of President Donald Trump's loudest supporters in Congress has become increasingly vocal in her opposition to his latest decision to conduct strikes on Iran.

CNN reported Monday that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) is now directly warning her party that the "very big divide" could end up costing Republicans their majorities in Congress next year if the GOP becomes bogged down in another foreign war while Americans' material needs go unmet. The Georgia Republican sought to stake out common ground between herself and the president, telling CNN that both she and Trump were elected on a promise of "no more foreign wars, no more regime change."

"We’ve been lied to too many times, and I think it’s right to be skeptical," Greene said in response to a question about whether Trump's policies risked losing the support of the MAGA faithful.

"If this war were to continue, and we were to see, sadly, see American troops coming home with on flag-draped coffins, I think you would see Americans totally saying the same thing I’m saying, I hope that never happens again," Greene said, emphasizing that she still believes "President Trump has us on a path to peace."

According to Greene — who has consistently opposed sending resources to Ukraine in its war with Russia — American voters are expecting their leaders to put their concerns front and center, arguing that voters are "very much focused on their American life and their American problems." And she said that new escalations in the Middle East could prove to be a tipping point for many voters next fall.

"Republicans need to earn Americans’ votes," she said. "I don’t think we’re earning our votes in the midterm, and that’s on Congress."

Greene unleashed on the Trump administration on social media earlier on Monday, saying that as a 51 year-old American, she had "watched our country go to war in foreign lands for foreign causes on behalf of foreign interests for as long as I can remember." And she added that while she supports Israel's right to defend itself, she opposed U.S. military involvement in Israeli matters.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

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Smart. Sharp. Funny. Fearless

Former GOP Governor Warns Trump Bill Will Devastate Rural Health Care

'It All Falls Apart': GOP Senate Lacks Majority To Pass Trump's Big Ugly Bill

Johnson Privately Confirms Deep Medicaid Cuts He Denied On Fox News

'We've Been Lied To': Margie Says Iran Strike Exposed Ruinous Rift In GOP

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