On Monday, the Trump administration finalized its “public charge” rule, which will more forcefully impose a health and wealth test on people seeking green cards or temporary visas in the United States.
The 800-page final rule itself begins: “This final rule amends DHS regulations by prescribing how DHS will determine whether an alien applying for admission or adjustment of status is inadmissible to the United States … because he or she is likely at any time t...
politics
The 2020 presidential election might be the first to hinge on gun control
When is the right time to have a meaningful, substantive debate on gun control?
The correct answer, of course, is “yesterday.” For Republican lawmakers, the answer is “never.” For the field of Democrats running for president, the answer might finally be “now.”
It’s taken a few years — a few decades, perhaps — longer than one would hope, but Democrats in Congress and on the campaign trail are beginning to find their voice on the issue of gun control.
As recently as a f...
Lindsey Graham vows to repeal Obamacare if GOP takes control in 2020
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) admitted to a local radio station this week that if Republicans regain control of Congress in the 2020 elections, they will do what they failed to during the first two years of the Trump administration: repeal Obamacare.
In a Monday radio interview first flagged by the progressive blog Joe. My. God., Graham explained that the next election would be about health care repeal.
“This is what 2020 is about. If we can get the House back and keep our major...
Before Trump criticized the urban poverty he uses to attack Democrats, he profited from it
Cities are the problem, President Donald Trump told a typically riled-up crowd Thursday night in Cincinnati, and their problems are Democrats’ fault.
The latest iteration of the president’s evolving attack on urban — and specifically majority-black — communities expanded past Baltimore to encompass Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago. In each case, he said, “these communities have been run exclusively by Democrat politicians” whose tapping of federal programs amounts...
There’s a party running on unpopular ideas in 2020, and it’s not the Democratic Party
The Republican Party has a problem. It’s abandoned the kind of popular reforms that will appeal to middle-of-the-road voters, and insists on running on unpopular ideas.
Worse, instead of rallying behind a sensible, moderate candidate with a history of winning elections in a blue state, the GOP frontrunner for the 2020 nomination is an unpopular former reality show host with little experience in elected office, and who has literally never won the popular vote in any election.
The problem from hell facing anyone who wants single-payer health care
Earlier this week, Senator and presidential candidate Kamala Harris (D-CA) released an outline for her version of “Medicare For All.” The plan would give everyone the immediate right to buy into Medicare as an alternative to private insurance, then would gradually transition everyone into an “expanded Medicare system” over the course of ten years.
Though Harris says that she would guarantee “universal coverage,” her end goal is not technically a s...
The slick, underhanded way Republicans plan to keep Michigan gerrymandered
The state of Michigan does not hold free and fair legislative elections. In 2018, Democratic state house and senate candidates received tens of thousands more votes than their Republican counterparts. Yet Republicans have solid majorities in both houses.
Meanwhile, the state’s congressional districts are so aggressively gerrymandered that, in 2012, when President Obama won the state by over nine points, Republicans still captured nine of Michigan’s 14 U.S. House seats.
Senator John Cornyn thinks you are stupider than a slab of meat
Imagine the utter contempt that Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) must hold for the American people.
“Again and again, Democrats have refused to join Republicans in guaranteeing coverage for pre-existing conditions,” Cornyn tweeted Monday morning. The tweet was in response to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) stating it had been two years since Senate Democrats blocked President Donald Trump from repealing critical health care rules.
Again and again, Democrats ...