Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price resigned Friday afternoon, the White House said in a statement, following significant backlash over news that he has taken multiple private jets and military flights — all coming at a significant cost to taxpayers.
PRICE OUT pic.twitter.com/YmfgPZiFgv
— Hadas Gold (@Hadas_Gold) September 29, 2017
The president accepted the resignation earlier today, the statement said. Trump will des...
ThinkProgress
Provision buried in new Senate budget resolution is a major blow to transparency
A provision tucked into the Senate budget resolution released Friday could be a blow to transparency in the legislature.
The resolution calls for repealing a requirement that a vote on legislation cannot be held unless the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has scored the legislation and made their report public for at least 28 hours.
The rule is established in section 3205 of the Congressional Budget for fiscal year 2016, which “[e]stablishes a Senate point of order against ...
Senate, House, and Trump all poised to rip open pristine Arctic landscape in hunt for oil
Forces in Congress are moving to open the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling, bypassing debate by including the controversial move in the upcoming appropriations bill.
Alaska’s coastal plain, 1.5 million acres of protected land known as Area 1002, is the primary breeding ground for a unique herd of 195,000 porcupine caribou — which are, in turn, a staple for the indigenous Gwitchin tribe, who say their way of life would be irreparably change...
Utah senator politicized bill that provides insurance to kids. Now his state is the first casualty.
Funding for the Children Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which covers 8.9 million children, expires Saturday because lawmakers were too busy trying to repeal-and-replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
CHIP provides low-cost health insurance to children in families that earn too much money to qualify for Medicaid. Enacted in 1997, CHIP is a companion program to Medicaid, where states had the option to set up an independent CHIP program or extend Medicaid eligibility to children up t...
Tom Price took military jets abroad, bringing total cost of travel to more than $1 million
Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price took military jets to Europe and Asia, Politico reported Thursday evening, bringing the total cost to taxpayers of Price’s travel to more than $1 million since May.
Price has been under scrutiny since Politico began reporting on his extensive use of chartered flights last week. On Thursday afternoon, Price said he would pay back the costs of his own seat on those chartered flights — just over $50,000 out of the total cost of more t...
Illinois governor reverses course, will expand abortion access for low-income residents
It’s been a surprisingly successful week for reproductive rights activists, after Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner (R) said Thursday he would sign into law a bill that would expand taxpayer-subsidized abortions for those covered by Medicaid and state employee insurance.
In April, Rauner said he would veto the bill, but reversed course after meeting with activist groups both for and against the legislation.
“I believe that a woman living with limited financial means should not be pu...
The Supreme Court’s legitimacy problem
Neil Gorsuch, the man who occupies a seat on the Supreme Court because Senate Republicans held it open until Donald Trump could fill it, is on a bit of a victory tour.
Last week, the staunchly conservative judge spoke at the University of Louisville’s McConnell Center — as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the center’s namesake and the man who orchestrated the strategy that placed Gorsuch on the Supreme Court, sat just a few feet away. McConnell, who a...
Media outlets parrot Trump’s unequivocally false claims about his tax plan
On Wednesday afternoon, President Donald Trump gave a speech about tax reform, saying his proposed plan would not benefit the “wealthy and well-connected” and is “not good” for him. The problem with that claim is that the opposite is in fact true.
As ThinkProgress’ Rebekah Entralgo reported, two key aspects of the plan, repealing the estate tax and eliminating the alternative minimum tax, would both be good for Trump and other wealthy people. What we know about Trump’s t...
Experts confirm gender identity is biological and say insurers should cover trans health needs
The Endocrine Society, an international organization of medical experts and biological researchers, has released a new set of guidelines for caring for transgender patients. Along with the guidelines, the organization has issued a position statement calling on federal and private insurers to cover the costs of all medical interventions a physician might prescribe for a transgender patient, including hormone replacement therapies and surgeries.
The updated guidelines and position sta...
Here are all the ways Trump could still sabotage Obamacare
Following the failure of the latest Republican health care bill, which couldn’t muster enough votes to pass, President Donald Trump took to Twitter on Wednesday to promise, yet again, to kill Obamacare.
With one Yes vote in hospital & very positive signs from Alaska and two others (McCain is out), we have the HCare Vote, but not for Friday!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 27, 2017
That’s a good reminder that the pu...