The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) has released its Congressional Scorecard for the 115th Congress — and it’s revealed some shocking drop-offs.
With Republicans in control of both Congress and the White House, lawmakers showed far less concern for the LGBTQ community, voting against their interests and ignoring legislation that would protect them.
Unlike in previous sessions, lawmakers over the past two years didn’t vote on a single bill that would have directl...
politics
Beto O’Rourke asserts ‘man-made climate change is a fact’ in heated Texas Senate debate
Texans finally got a taste of where the state’s Senate hopefuls stand on climate issues on Tuesday night, as Democrat Beto O’Rourke and Republican Ted Cruz presented their wildly different green views during their second-ever debate.
Sparring in San Antonio, the event marked a shift from the pair’s first debate in Dallas last month. With only three weeks left to go before Texans head to the polls, O’Rourke has sharpened his talking points against Cruz as poll...
Health care CEO accused of cheating Medicare to sell opioids
Mashiyat Rashid, a health care clinic CEO, pleaded guilty to fraud and money laundering. DOJ says he used Medicare patients to build an opioid dealing operation.
McConnell says the debt is ‘very disturbing.’ Here’s what that means for the social safety net.
The same lawmakers who exploded the federal deficit by gifting millionaires and billionaires a favorable corporate tax bill are now telling the public that the way to fix the deficit is to shred the social safety net.
On Tuesday, after the Treasury Department released figures showing the federal deficit for Fiscal Year 2018 rose 17 percent to reach $779 billion, Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was interviewed by Bloomberg. He was asked about the growing debt and deficit....
Trump’s new pick to lead Medicaid ran Maine’s public health department into the ground
The Trump administration is putting the health insurance of millions of Americans in the hands of a former Maine official best known for undermining the public health infrastructure in her state to put low-income families at risk.
Mary Mayhew, Maine’s former health commissioner, was tapped on Monday to run the national Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) programs. Mayhew will now control the $350 billion budget of the two health insurance programs ser...
Here’s a list of every vulnerable House Republican who voted to gut pre-existing conditions coverage
Ahead of the midterm elections, Republicans are positioning themselves as members of the party that will protect people with pre-existing conditions. But this campaign strategy simply doesn’t match up with their voting record on health care.
“Republicans only will always protect patients with pre-existing conditions,” said President Donald Trump during a campaign rally for Rep. Andy Barr (R-KY) over the weekend.
Meanwhile, the truth is Barr voted to weaken p...
As Republicans campaign against immigration, Democrats look the other way
With the midterms just three weeks away, Democrats campaigning in red states have been advised to spend “as little time as possible” talking about immigration, according to a memo obtained by The New York Times from centrist think tank Third Way and the more liberal Center For American Progress.
ThinkProgress is an editorially independent newsroom housed at the Center for American Progress.
The memo, which has been shared at a number of briefings for Democrats, says candidate...
The ‘blue wave’ may be real, but it’s unlikely to affect the Senate
It’s looking increasingly likely that the House may be hit by a “blue wave” this November, but new analyses have noted Senate Democrats are unlikely to experience the same kind of good fortune.
Right now, FiveThirtyEight gives Democrats a four in five chance of taking back the House. Democrats also have an advantage in generic ballot polling, leading the GOP 50.3 percent to 41.6 percent with less than a month to go before the midterm election, and rating reports li...
Trump lies about Medicare for All, says universal health care doesn’t work anywhere in the world.
President Donald Trump has been spreading a lot of misleading statements or flat-out lies about “Medicare for All” — a progressive health policy gaining traction among Democrats.
Most recently, Trump said that providing health insurance to everybody doesn’t work anywhere in the world. He avoided calling the policy Medicare for All — likely because 60 percent of the American public favors the idea. Instead, he referred to it as “socialist” he...
Missouri Senate nominee misleads on his pre-existing condition hypocrisy
Josh Hawley, the Republican nominee against Missouri’s US senator Claire McCaskill (D), has made protecting people with pre-existing conditions a key part of his campaign platform — even as he undermines those protections as his state’s attorney general.
Asked to reconcile that hypocrisy on Sunday, Hawley pretended that requiring that insurance companies offer some policy to the more than 100 million Americans with pre-existing medical conditions is the sa...