Tens of people watched a “major policy address” by billionaire oligarch Howard Schultz on Thursday, in which the coffee mogul claimed he could fix the country with platitudes, vague ideas, and impressive-sounding adjectives.
Yet, while Schultz’s speech was heavy on words like “leadership,” “opportunity,” and attacks on the “far left” and the “far right,” the major policy address contained virtually no policy ideas wha...
politics
Trump’s plan to ‘defeat AIDS’ lacks ambition
As teased earlier in the week, President Donald Trump pledged in his State of the Union address Tuesday to “eliminate the HIV epidemic in the United States within ten years.”
Noting incredibly scientific strides, Trump promised, “Together, we will defeat AIDS in America and beyond.”
Following the speech, Health & Human Services Secretary Alex Azar released additional detail about the strategy, which for the most part, contains core components that...
Trump talks unity but offers no olive branch
President Donald Trump paid lip service to unity and bipartisanship during his second State of the Union address Tuesday night. But he put forth no solution to the divisive problem facing the country later this month: another potential government shutdown.
Trump used the bulk of his address to mislead the country about immigration and border security, economic development and criminal justice, abortion and foreign policy. He inexplicably claimed credit for preventing a war with Nort...
Idaho Republicans seek to limit Medicaid expansion against the will of voters
Idaho Republicans are looking into several proposals aimed at hobbling a successful ballot initiative to expand Medicaid in the state, joining a growing list of red states trying to limit health care coverage against the will of voters.
Republican lawmakers have considered plans to apply work requirements, co-pays, and lifetime limits. They also plan to ask the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to grant the waivers before the ballot initiative goes into effect on Jan....
Utah Senate passes bill limiting Medicaid expansion in favor of costly alternative
The Utah Senate voted Monday to partially repeal a ballot measure that would have expanded Medicaid to nearly 150,000 low-income residents in the state, weeks after voters overwhelmingly cast their ballots in favor of the initiative.
The legislation now moves to the state House, where it is also expected to pass. Gov. Gary Herbert (R) is also expected to sign the measure.
Senators voted 22-7 largely along party lines to pass GOP-sponsored legislation that would cap the pool o...
Cory Booker launches 2020 campaign with attempt to rewrite Big Pharma history
Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) is running for president, hoping, as he said in his announcement video last week, to “channel our common pain back into our common purpose.”
The former Newark mayor announced his campaign Friday morning, doing away with the pesky business of exploratory committees and “testing the waters” to plunge right into the fray. He spent his first day on a breakneck sprint, doing three radio interviews — all with hosts of color — bef...
Momentum founders push benefits of NHS-style healthcare in US
Emma Rees and Adam Klug seek British volunteers to back free healthcare campaign
Two of the founders of the leftwing pressure group Momentum are to launch a campaign asking British volunteers to back a campaign for free healthcare in the US by telling Americans about the benefits of the NHS.
The idea is to sign up activists who are prepared to talk up the British healthcare system as a good example of how a campaign such as “National Medicare For All” in the US would work. It comes as part of a campaign by America’s National Nurses United union.
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Dick Saslaw was the lone VA Democrat to rush to Northam’s defense. It could cost him re-election.
Virginia’s US senators Tim Kaine (D) and Mark Warner (D) late Saturday joined a growing chorus of politicians and organizations calling on Gov. Ralph Northam (D) to resign, after a racist photo from his 1984 medical school yearbook page was published by a right-wing website.
Yasmine Taeb, a progressive candidate for the Virginia State Senate, told ThinkProgress that it shouldn’t have taken them so long.
“The two highest officials in our state are older white men who w...
Ocasio-Cortez inspires Democratic presidential hopefuls to come out swinging on climate change
As the Democratic presidential primary field grows more crowded by the day, something feels a bit different this time: In the face of increasingly dire scientific warnings and a president committed to denying the existence and severity of climate change, Democratic presidential contenders are calling for urgent action to address the crisis in their first appeals to voters.
“Climate change is an existential threat to us, and we have got to deal with the reality of it,” Se...
What single-payer advocates want to hear from 2020 Democratic primary contenders
In the fall of 2017, with more than three years to go before the next presidential election, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) introduced Medicare for All legislation in the Senate. The bill racked up a long list of high-profile co-sponsors, many of whom were already being talked about as 2020 contenders.
Since then, Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Kamala Harris (D-CA), and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) — all co-sponsors of Sanders bill — have jumped into the Democratic fray. So, to...