With his jacket off and sleeves rolled up, House Speaker Paul Ryan made the case for the Republican health care law Thursday, walking through a 35-minute PowerPoint presentation to a packed crowd of reporters and millions of viewers watching on the three cable TV networks. It was quintessential Ryan, calmly explaining the details of the American Health Care Act looking more like a college professor than a professional politician.
But in making his case, Ryan made a series of misleading statements, both about the current state of Obamacare and the details of the replacement bill. Three stand out:
Three misleading claims from Paul Ryan's Obamacare lecture
San Francisco Asks Federal Judge to Block Trump’s Order on Sanctuary Cities
San Francisco has asked a federal judge to block President Trump’s order threatening to deny federal funding to sanctuary cities that don’t actively pursue undocumented immigrants. City authorities on Wednesday asked U.S. District Judge William H. Orrick for a preliminary injunction against the president’s executive order until a lawsuit against it can be heard.
The city’s motion argued that Trump’s order infringes on the sovereignty of cities and exceeds the president’s authority. City Attorney Dennis Herrera described Trump as a “bully” for threatening to withhold federal funding for public aid programs.
UN: Up to 450,000 IDPs expected in cramped Mosul camps
There may not be enough space in camps to accommodate the tens of thousands of internally displaced people (IDP) currently fleeing their homes in western Mosul amid intense fighting in the city, a United Nations official has said.
At least 50,000 people have made their way to the camps on the eastern side of the Tigris River, but the UN warns that if the number rapidly increases, they will be hard pressed to find a place for the new arrivals.
On International Women's Day, a statue of little girl defiantly stares down Wall Street bull
The iconic bull statue on Wall Street may have met his match, and she's female.
On the eve of International Women's Day, an asset management company placed a statue of a little girl in front of Manhattan’s iconic charging bull to highlight a lack of gender diversity and equality in the workplace.
Israel denies redress to thousands of Palestinians
Israel has given itself almost complete immunity from paying compensation in cases where its soldiers have killed, injured or disabled Palestinian civilians, an Israeli human rights group has warned.
In a report released on Wednesday, entitled Getting Off Scot-Free, B'Tselem said that Israel had violated its obligations under international law by denying many thousands of Palestinians redress in Israeli civil courts.
Donald Trump’s Worst Deal
The President helped build a hotel in Azerbaijan that appears to be a corrupt operation engineered by oligarchs tied to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
Heydar Aliyev Prospekti, a broad avenue in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, connects the airport to the city. The road is meant to highlight Baku’s recent modernization, and it is lined with sleek new buildings. The Heydar Aliyev Center, an undulating wave of concrete and glass, was designed by Zaha Hadid.
The state oil company is housed in a twisting glass tower, and the headquarters of the state water company looks like a giant water droplet. “It’s like Potemkin,” my translator told me. “It’s only the buildings right next to the road.” Behind the gleaming structures stand decaying Soviet-era apartment blocks, with clothes hanging out of windows and wallboards exposed by fallen brickwork.
Arctic sea ice could disappear even if world achieves climate target
Arctic sea ice could vanish in summers this century even if governments achieve a core target for limiting global warming set by almost 200 countries, scientists have said.
The ice has been shrinking steadily in recent decades, damaging the livelihoods of indigenous people and wildlife, such as polar bears, while opening the region to more shipping and oil and gas exploration.
SCOTUS: Racially Biased Juries Have No Secrecy
The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that courts must make an exception to the usual rule that jury deliberations are secret when evidence emerges that those discussions were marred by racial or ethnic bias.
“Racial bias implicates unique historical, constitutional and institutional concerns,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority in the 5-to-3 decision.
Former Trump adviser Carter Page also met with Russian envoy
When Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak traveled to the GOP convention last summer, he met with then Sen. Jeff Sessions, as well as with two other Trump campaign advisers, including oil industry consultant Carter Page.
Page, at the time an unpaid foreign policy adviser to Trump, engaged in a conversation with the ambassador at the same July 20 luncheon in Cleveland where Sessions, now attorney general, and Kislyak chatted, according to J.D. Gordon, a national security adviser to the Trump campaign who was also present at the lunch.
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