1. Jack Shafer: Trump Doesn’t Want to Be President

Donald Trump doesn’t really want to be president. If he did, he’d nominate candidates to the 350 important but vacant administration jobs and get on with the job of governance. He doesn’t seem to want to be commander in chief of the armed forces, either, having outsourced Afghanistan troop-level decisions to Secretary of Defense James Mattis. Don’t burden him with foreign policy—which so daunts him that he’s postponed an official trip to Britain because (as some report) he fears the inevitable protests that will greet him. Nor is he much interested in upholding the oath he took on Inauguration Day, promising to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” He proves this lack of interest every day by ignoring the Constitution’s foreign emoluments clause.

Instead, Trump lusts for the job of White House communications director, a position that has been open since mid-May, when Michael Dubke resigned. By not replacing Dubke, Trump has telegraphed his preference to be his own communicator in chief and amplified that preference by constantly second-guessing Sean Spicer, his hapless press secretary. Trump’s unhappiness with Spicer has been public knowledge since the opening weeks of his administration, as the president has routinely contradicted him and reportedly bad-mouthed him behind closed doors. In recent weeks, Trump has expressed his dark discontent with Spicer by replacing him with Sarah Huckabee Sanders at the White House daily briefings—the way Casey Stengel used to platoon Moose Skowron and Joe Collins at first base. June 22, 2017 http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/06/22/trump-doesnt-want-to-be-president-215292

2. Rick Klein: The Senate’s Unhealthy Start on Health Care

“It’s a discussion draft that will leave much to discuss, and it’s unlikely to get prettier from here. The history of health care bills in Congress provides a clear lesson: process matters. On that count, the Senate’s health care effort is off to a distinctly unhealthy start, with members of the GOP’s conservative and moderate wings sounding similar only in their skepticism around a bill that’s been kept from even most of them until today. The secrecy has built anticipation and trepidation around the details, and now people will be able to judge the impact on their lives. Medicaid cuts, pre-existing conditions, abortion and Planned Parenthood; there’s enough cobbled together to convince senators that they’ll want to hear from constituents, or at least stakeholder groups, before taking votes that leadership insists need to happen before the Fourth of July.”

“‘I’ve been talking about a plan with heart,’ President Trump said Wednesday night in Iowa, in another implicit dig at the House bill he once celebrated, adding that he told senators to ‘add some money to it.’ Nobody is against ‘heart.’ But the details are not even an easy sell at campaign-style rallies, much less congressional hearings and voter gatherings, with an effort that starts out as unpopular as this does.” http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/note-senates-unhealthy-start-health-care/story?id=48202692

3. Eugene Robinson: With Health Care Bill, the GOP Is Mounting a Historic Heist

Fundamentally, what Republicans in both chambers want to do is cut nearly $1 trillion over the next decade from the Medicaid program, which presently serves almost 70 million people. Medicaid provides health care not just for the indigent and disabled but also for the working poor -- low-wage employees who cannot afford health insurance, even the plans offered through their jobs.

Additionally, about 20 percent of Medicaid spending goes to provide nursing home care, including for middle-class seniors whose savings have been exhausted -- a situation almost any of us might confront. Roughly two-thirds of those in nursing homes have their care paid by Medicaid.

Why would Republicans want to slash this vital program so severely? You will hear a lot of self-righteous huffing and puffing about the need for entitlement reform, but the GOP's intention is not to use the savings to pay down the national debt. Instead, slashing Medicaid spending creates fiscal headroom for what is euphemistically being called "tax reform" -- a soon-to-come package of huge tax cuts favoring the wealthy. June 23, 2017 https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2017/06/23/with_health_care_bill_the_gop_is_mounting_a_historic_heist_134262.html

4. Henry A. Waxman: Republicans aren't just repealing Obamacare, they are gutting a guarantee of healthcare for the poor

Three million and $1.6 trillion. The first number represents an estimate of the children who would lose healthcare coverage under the bill Republican senators worked on in secret and finally unveiled on Thursday. The second number reflects the total amount of Medicaid cuts — in the form of the elimination of the Medicaid expansion for working families that was part of the Affordable Care Act, capped federal spending for Medicaid and additional cuts proposed in the president’s budget — that would go to pay for tax breaks for billionaires.

As with the House version of the American Health Care Act — also written in secret and passed in reckless haste — the Senate revision would end Medicaid as we know it. In essence, Trumpcare would abandon the federal government’s 52-year responsibility to guarantee healthcare for those unable to afford it on their own.

Legislation needs to pass sufficient public scrutiny or it’s unworthy of becoming law. If monumental, transformative legislation can be written in the dark and enacted in a rush— and children’s lives are compromised or ruined so that billionaires can get tax cuts they don’t need — it would rank among the worst scandals in U.S. history. Americans of conscience must mobilize now to stop this from happening. 6/22/17 http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-waxman-ahca-abandons-working-families-20170622-story.html

5. David Frum What Happens When a Presidency Loses Its Legitimacy?

Day by day, revelation after revelation, the legitimacy of the Trump presidency is seeping away. The question of what to do about this loss is becoming ever more urgent and frightening.

The already thick cloud of discredit over the Trump presidency thickened deeper Friday, June 23. The Washington Post reported that the CIA told President Obama last year that Vladimir Putin had personally and specifically instructed his intelligence agencies to intervene in the U.S. presidential election to hurt Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump.

It’s not seriously disputed by anyone in a position of authority in the U.S. government—apart from the president himself—that Donald Trump holds his high office in considerable part because a foreign spy agency helped place him there. So now what?. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/06/what-happens-when-a-presidency-loses-its-legitimacy/531447/

6. Gene B. Sperling and Michael Shapiro: How the Senate's Health-Care Bill Would Cause Financial Ruin for People With Preexisting Conditions

The Senate health care bill will open the door to states forcing people with pre-existing conditions into segregated markets that will lead them to pay far, far higher costs than everyone else. People with pre-existing conditions could run into new annual or lifetime limits on how much insurance coverage they can get. That means those with the most serious chronic health conditions (and their families) will be at increased risk of financial devastation and even bankruptcy. The bottom line is that the backdoor discrimination the Senate plan allows against those with pre-existing conditions is as cruel as the discrimination in the House bill which the Senate claimed to fix.

This bill will take American healthcare back to what everyone in the U.S. should recognize was a completely broken system before the Affordable Care Act. It will takes the country back to a system in which companies often profited not by how well they provided healthcare but by how well they discriminated against or screened out those who faced the most challenges. President Trump promised “insurance for everyone” and lower costs, but this bill will bring the country back to a system in which insurance only works for the healthy, and the sick can’t afford the coverage they need. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/06/ahca-senate-bill-preexisting-conditions/531375/

7. John Cassidy: The Dubious Counting at the Center of the G.O.P.’s Health-Care Reform

After Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, released a draft of the Senate health-care bill, on Thursday morning, the media finally began focussing on the essence of what Republicans are proposing: an enormous redistribution of wealth into the pockets of the already-wealthy. The bill would modify the health-insurance subsidies introduced under the Affordable Care Act and dramatically cut Medicaid, all to deliver a big tax cut to the nation’s richest households. But there’s another aspect of the legislation that has received less attention, and that’s the way it staggers its various provisions, and claims billions of dollars in savings that are far from guaranteed.

If McConnell’s proposal were signed into law, the tax cuts for families earning more than a quarter of a million dollars a year would take effect immediately—in fact, they would be backdated to the start of the 2017 tax year. June 23, 2017 http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/the-dubious-counting-at-the-center-of-the-gops-health-care-reform

8. Jeet Heer: The Twin Authoritarians Who Are Endangering American Democracy

If the Republican Party needs Trump, the president is equally dependent on the GOP. Given his manifest disinterest in policy and the details of governance, he would be unable to pass anything without crafty leaders like McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan. But there is a more sinister dimension to Trump’s alliance with these Republican leaders: Congress has the power to check the president, including impeachment and removal if necessary. Ryan and McConnell are the bulwarks protecting Trump from a wide range of areas where he should be held accountable. If they wanted to, they could push for laws requiring him to reveal his taxes, force him to place his assets in a blind trust, and use nepotism rules to limit the power of family members, among a range of other checks.

In theory, Trump could reject a health care bill from Congress on the grounds that it would violate his campaign promises to protect Medicaid and “to have insurance for everybody.” He’s reportedly grumbled in private that the House bill, which closely matched the Senate’s, is “mean.” But that should not raise the hopes of Obamacare’s defenders. A presidential veto, or even the threat of one to lessen the cruelty of the AHCA, is out of the question. Reveling in his emerging kleptocracy, Trump is smart enough to know that he has to stay on Ryan and McConnell’s good side if he wants to hold on to the presidency. June 25, 2017 https://newrepublic.com/article/143503/twin-authoritarians-endangering-american-democracy

9. The News & Observer Editorial: Senate GOP health care bill fails

Mitch McConnell pronounced the ACA a “failure” and President Donald Trump, of course, called it a “disaster” hundreds of times on the 2016 campaign trail. But there were problems with Republicans’ criticisms: First, they weren’t accurate and were steeped in the politics of hate, trying to get the conservative GOP base stirred up about the president; second, Trump had no clue what the ACA was or how it worked.

The truth is, 22 million people now have health insurance who might not have had it; the federal deficit didn’t explode, which Republicans predicted; and the ACA was paid for with taxes on the wealthiest Americans and on medical industry companies. The ACA needed fine-tuning, of course. But it was not a failure, and far from it – for example, the millions of Americans who were helped by Medicaid expansion, another benefit of the ACA.

The Senate version of its replacement is steeped in reckless disrespect for the intelligence of the American people, and a callous and even dangerous attitude toward the poor and the middle class when it comes to ensuring their health care. Which it doesn’t. http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/editorials/article157703099.html

10. Frank Rich: Just Wait

Unlike Nixon, who had to contend with Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, Trump has the shield of a Republican Congress led by craven enablers terrified of crossing their Dear Leader’s fiercely loyal base. That distinction alone is enough to make anti-Trumpers abandon all hope.

I’m here to say don’t do so just yet. There’s a handy antidote to despair: a thorough wallow in Watergate, the actual story as it unfolded, not the expedited highlight reel that most Americans know from a textbook précis or cultural artifacts like the film version of All the President’s Men. If you look through a sharp Nixonian lens at Trump’s trajectory in office to date, short as it has been, you will discover more of an overlap than you might expect. You will learn that Democratic control of Congress in 1973 was not a crucial factor in Nixon’s downfall and that Republican control of Congress in 2017 may not be a life preserver for Trump. You will find reason to hope that the 45th president’s path through scandal may wind up at the same destination as the 37th’s — a premature exit from the White House in disgrace — on a comparable timeline.

But as was also true with Nixon, some time and much patience will be required while waiting for the endgame. The span between Nixon’s Second Inaugural and his resignation was almost 19 months. Trump’s presidency already seems as if it’s lasted a lifetime, but it’s only five months old. Never forget that the Watergate auto-da-fé wasn’t built in a day. June 25, 2017 http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/06/frank-rich-nixon-trump-and-how-a-presidency-ends.html

11. Jack Shafer: America’s Mayor

Watching Trump campaign for president—and now, watching him try to be president—it’s apparent that the superficial duties of the job, the kind of civic theater that mayors specialize in, are at the heart of his model of leadership. Doesn’t he look happiest when boarding Marine One or Air Force One, stepping into his armored limo, gripping-and-grinning, traveling to Saudi Arabia to collect chintzy honors from a king, calling on the pope, filling the federal equivalent of potholes, and being photographed with world leaders? When he blows kisses to Vladimir Putin, it feels less like serious diplomacy toward a belligerent nation than like courting Moscow as a future sister city.

The superficial duties of the job, the kind of civic theater that mayors specialize in, are at the heart of Trump’s model of leadership.

Our classic big-city mayors all cut a similar figure. Even after winning office, they kept campaigning, stumping for their causes without apology. They blustered in the name of the neighborhoods, the parishes and the synagogues. They feuded with their enemies. Loudly. They “fixed” things, looked for deal-making partners and struck alliances. They maintained peace between labor and capital, and they kept civil order. They played the booster. The classic mayors knew how to shame companies from moving their headquarters out of town, how to crowd their way to the center of any photo opportunity, how to junket and how to get results. Most of all, classic mayors were virtuosos in the art of blowing their own horns.

Like your average mayor, Trump thinks he won office on the strength of his personal charms. When he speaks, he sounds like that mayor who delights in hearing the sound of his own voice, whether he’s addressing a captive audience or a joint session of Congress, or making girl talk on the phone with bestie Putin. The deeper responsibilities of the job, however—the nation-scale responsibilities—daunt him. http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/06/26/trump-president-style-mayor-215294

12. David Brooks: The G.O.P. Rejects Conservatism

Because Republicans have no national vision, they seem largely uninterested in the actual effects their legislation would have on the country at large. This Senate bill would be completely unworkable because anybody with half a brain would get insurance only when they got sick.

Worse, this bill takes all of the devastating trends afflicting the middle and working classes — all the instability, all the struggle and pain — and it makes them worse. As the C.B.O. indicated, the Senate plan would throw 22 million people off the insurance rolls. It would send them to private insurance plans that they could not afford to buy. Under the Senate bill, deductibles for poor families would be more than half of their annual income. The plans are so incompetently and cruelly designed that as the C.B.O. put it, “few low-income people would purchase any plan.”

This is not a conservative vision of American society. It’s a vision rendered cruel by its obliviousness. I have been trying to think about the underlying mentality that now governs the Republican political class. The best I can do is the atomistic mentality described by Alexis de Tocqueville long ago:

“They owe nothing to any man, they expect nothing from any man; they acquire the habit of always considering themselves as standing alone, and they are apt to imagine that their whole destiny is in their own hands. Thus not only does democracy make every man forget his ancestors, but it hides his descendants and separates his contemporaries from him; it throws him back forever upon himself alone and threatens in the end to confine him entirely within the solitude of his own heart. JUNE 27, 2017 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/27/opinion/the-gop-rejects-conservatism.html?_r=0

13. Jonah Shepp: Jared Kushner’s Road Map to Nowhere

President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner spent the better part of last week in the Middle East, meeting with Israeli and Palestinian leaders in an attempt to relaunch U.S.-brokered peace talks. Shockingly, the trip was not a great success.

Maybe Trump thinks Kushner has some special insight into the Middle East on account of his Jewish heritage, or maybe Kushner just fancies himself a budding statesman and convinced his doting father-in-law to let him play action-hero diplomat in the most volatile region of the world. In any case, Trump’s willingness to hand his daughter and son-in-law the keys to the government whenever they want to drive it constitutes a level of reckless, corrupt nepotism the likes of which this country has rarely seen. June 28, 2017 http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/06/jared-kushners-road-from-jerusalem-to-nowhere.html