Reading List: January 13, 2017

A week from today, we’ll have a new President.

I wrote about the GOP’s plan to repeal and delay the ACA to force the Democrats to come to the table in 2018 for Paste.

After almost a decade of “repeal and replace,” it appears the GOP’s grand scheme to deal with the Affordable Care Act may be in trouble. The Senate defunded the act last night but House Republicans are wary of repealing without replacement—Speaker Paul Ryan may not have the votes. The only way forward is to kick the can down the road for another two years and rely on the Democrats to help them replace the law in advance of the midterm elections. It will probably work, if The New York Times’s reporting from December on GOP messaging is any indication.

At The Concourse, Hamilton Nolan takes the national media to task for not challenging Trump at yesterday’s press conference.

Today we saw a “press conference” by our incoming president at which he put forth a farcical plan to allow his own sons to continue running his vast business empire while he is president, and spoke at length about his belief that as president it is impossible for him to have meaningful conflicts of interest, which is why he felt comfortable presenting his decision to turn down a $2 billion business deal with a Middle Eastern real estate mogul as something noble, rather than as an obvious decision that would be made as a matter of course under a normal presidential administration. He dismissed serious reporting that reflected poorly on him as “fake news,” and promised to retaliate against news outlets that displeased him. These things are not normal. These things are not okay. These are actions that flout well-established ethical and civil norms.

Glenn Greenwald, at The Intercept, watches with horror and revulsion as the Democrats cheer on the deep state in its fight against Trump. You shouldn’t support either side, Greenwald says.

Craving Deep State rule is exactly what prominent Democratic operatives and media figures are doing. Any doubt about that is now dispelled. Just last week, Chuck Schumer issued a warning to Trump, telling Rachel Maddow that Trump was being “really dumb” by challenging the unelected intelligence community because of all the ways they possess to destroy those who dare to stand up to them.

And Unanimous Dissent goes after the 13 Democrats who voted against importing cheaper pharmaceutical drugs from Canada:

https://soundcloud.com/the-district-sentinel/unanimous-dissent-11217-with-democrats-like-these