How your voices made a difference last week: AHCA is one small battle in a war we are winning

Courtesy of 5 Minute Activism

The abysmal health care plan recklessly rammed through the House by the GOP was a hard pill to swallow.

But there’s ample reason not to despair.

This is only one small battle in the larger war we’re waging against the Republican administration’s gutting of our democracy. The bill still has to pass the Senate–which, within hours of the vote, had already promised to scrap it entirely and start over. If it passes, that bill will then have to once again pass in the House in its new form…and then be approved again by both houses. That’s a long road, with opposition at every step from us and an increasingly angry electorate that shows steadily growing approval of the existing Affordable Care Act. In fact, despite the GOP’s rabid emphasis on “repeal and replace,” the Affordable Care Act is proving far more popular–on both sides of the aisle–than they may have expected, a recent poll shows. Far more popular than Donald’s own approval ratings, in fact–55% of Americans approve of Obamacare, versus an approval rating for Donny hovering around a paltry 40%. And a broad swath of doctors, hospitals, and insurers have condemned the TrumpCare plan.
That means this recent legislation is likely to be an unpopular decision with voters–especially once the Congressional Budget Office report comes out in the next weeks (because the GOP didn’t think it important to wait for it, though they insisted on it for the ACA). By then most House Republicans will be officially on the record as having voted for a plan that the CBO report is likely to show will cost millions their coverage, and this hasty, ill-considered forced vote is likely to backfire in Republicans’ faces.

How do you like them apples? Here’s more good news:

For a guy who prides himself on his negotiating skills, Donald had to make so many concessions in his budget proposal to keep the government open that several news outlets assessed it as resembling “more of an Obama administration-era budget than a Trump one.” No border wall, half the military funding he promised, no EPA staff cuts and only a 1% budget hit to the department, and no defunding of Planned Parenthood were just some of the concessions Donny got out-negotiated into. In a statement the White House suggested that a government shut-down might be necessary if Democrats keep “mistreating” Donald and hurting his feelings. No, seriously

Mark Green, Donald’s second nominee for army secretary, has withdrawn from consideration amid an avalanche of outcry against his Islamophobic, anti-LGBTQ words and actions in the past

FOX News’s apparent culture of sexual harassment and racism faces yet another blow this week, when network copresident Bill Shine resigned amid yet another harassment scandal, this time for turning a willfully blind eye to complaints about sexual harassment and racism, and possibly helping to conceal it. And yet another lawsuit has been filed against the network, this time for gender bias, completing the network’s dubious trinity of sexual, racial, and gender discrimination

When Donald’s administration launched the entirely unnecessary racist-propaganda VOICE hot line for people who were victimized by a crime by illegal immigrants, the Twitterverse put out a call and you marvelous people inundated the ridiculous, racist hot line with reports of extraterrestrials abusing Earthlings.

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *