Vox Sentences: SCOTUS gets the ban back together

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The Senate health care bill gets a CBO score; the US Supreme Court gives Trump a win on his travel ban; the prime minister of India goes to Washington.

CBOh no

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• The latest version of the plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act would leave 22 million people more uninsured by 2026, according to the latest report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. [Congressional Budget Office]
• As expected, the bill would predominantly affect the poor. Many of those people who would lose insurance are low-income Medicaid recipients, as the bill would cut Medicaid spending by $772 billion over the next decade. [Vox / Dylan Scott]
• Each time House and Senate Republicans release a new version of the bill, the number of uninsured people goes down by about a million (the health care bill passed by the House would have left 23 million uninsured, and an earlier version of that bill would have left 24 million uninsured). It’s still an extremely high number of uninsured people, and could prove to be too much for some Senate Republicans, who will decide the bill's fate.
• Still, the bill is hurtling toward a vote before the upcoming July 4 recess. The bill was released on Thursday, and there are just a few more days until senators are expected to vote. A big consequence of the speedy process is less time to catch gaps in the bill, some of which have already been discovered. [Vox / Sarah Kliff]
• One of the issues with the bill that consumer advocates recently noticed is that it could raise health insurance premiums for small businesses. Another glaring omission was the initial lack of a continuous coverage clause, which would penalize Americans for not maintaining their health insurance. That had been left out of the bill’s original draft, but made it into a newer draft released on Monday. [Vox / Sarah Kliff and Dylan Scott]
• Right now, one of Mitch McConnell’s toughest challenges is satisfying concerns of both far-right Republicans and those in the middle, like Sens. Dean Heller of Nevada, Susan Collins of Maine, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. Murkowski has said she won’t vote for a bill that defunds Planned Parenthood (which this one does, for one year). [NYT / Robert Pear and Thomas Kaplan]
• Then there are the conservatives. Republican senators including Rand Paul of Kentucky, Mike Lee of Utah, Ted Cruz of Texas, and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin say the bill simply doesn’t go far enough to cut costs. Johnson has also said he thinks there’s far too little time before the vote. [NYT / Robert Pear and Thomas Kaplan]
• No matter the outcome, the bill simply does not make good on Donald Trump's repeated promise to lower health costs for Americans. During the 2016 campaign, Trump promised “insurance for everybody” that would be cheaper, and told his supporters he would not cut expanded Medicaid. Many of these people could see their insurance stripped or become a lot more expensive if the bill passes. [Washington Post / John Wagner, Abby Phillip, and Jenna Johnson]
• For more health care coverage, don't miss Vox's daily health care newsletter, edited by Sarah Kliff. [Click here to subscribe automatically for this email address.]

Trump's travel ban is back — for now

Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

• President Trump scored a big — if temporary — win on his travel ban today, as the US Supreme Court announced it would hear arguments on the ban later this fall and, in the meantime, lifted a block the lower courts had placed on its implementation. [Vox / Dara Lind]
• The people primarily affected by the Court’s decision are tourists from the six majority-Muslim nations — Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen — as well as refugees. (Iraq was in Trump’s first ban but has since been cut.) The ruling will not affect foreigners coming into the US to study, teach, or work at American businesses. It also won’t impact people who are coming to stay with family members. [Vox / Dara Lind]
• That is less restrictive than what the Trump administration initially wanted; the initial executive order Trump signed on January 27 applied to students, workers, and people who were coming to the US to visit family. At least three of the Supreme Court justices agree with him. Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and newest Court member Neil Gorsuch wrote they would have supported the ban taking full effect, with even more restrictions on travelers. [BuzzFeed / Chris Geidner]
• Up until this point, ruling of these lower courts has allowed travel and refugee resettlement programs from these countries to go on unimpeded.
• In a statement released this afternoon, Trump praised the Court’s decision to take up the case and called the ruling a “victory” for the country’s national security. [Bradd Jaffy via Twitter]
• From the beginning of the ban, the Trump administration has argued that barring people from the majority-Muslim nations designated by his administration will keep the country safer. But that’s a dubious claim to make, given that none of the perpetrators in 9/11 or the 10 fatal attacks on US soil since then are from those countries. [Washington Post / Mark Berman]
• In fact, several of the attackers in the shootings and attacks since 2001 were born in the United States and later radicalized. The majority of the attackers were born in Saudi Arabia, a key US ally that Trump visited last month. [Washington Post / Mark Berman]
• Trump’s first ban caused massive protests and chaos at US airports when it was first implemented. Soon lower courts started ruled against the ban, saying it is unconstitutional because it discriminates against people based on their nationality or religion. Trump’s own rhetoric against Muslims was cited by federal judges in their ruling on the issue. [CNN / Steve Almasy and Darran Simon]
• As drafted by the Trump administration, the ban is supposed to be temporary, with the moratorium on travel taking place for 90 days and a 120-day halt to the refugee program while the government looks at how it vets refugees. While the Court plans to hear the case, it could be moot by then, because the ban’s timeline could potentially be up. [Washington Post / Robert Barnes]

Modi goes to Washington

Win McNamee/Getty Images

• Today’s meeting between President Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Washington, DC, is being billed as a business-as-usual meeting between the world’s two biggest democracies.
• But beneath the surface of the “no frills” visit by Modi, there are serious issues between India and the United States that are being hammered out, especially when it comes to immigration and climate change policy. [Washington Post / Max Bearak]
• Among the most contentious issues for the two leaders is the future of the H-1B visa program under the Trump administration. The program allows high-skilled workers to come work in the US, and it’s especially important for the tech industry and Silicon Valley. [Recode / Tony Romm]
• On the campaign trail, Trump had promised to end the program “forever.” In April the US Department of Homeland Security announced it would be taking a closer look at H-1B applicants, and the Department of Justice warned employers not to discriminate against American workers over foreign ones. This had important implications for Indian workers, who get three-quarters of the program’s visas. [Washington Post / Tracy Jan]
• Anti-immigration rhetoric became especially serious earlier this year, when two Indian engineers were shot at a bar in Kansas by a man who had told them to get out of his country. One later died, and the incident sparked fears of increased hate crimes toward Indians in the US under Trump. [NYT / John Eligon, Alan Blinder, and Nida Najar]
• Climate change, and Trump’s public griping about India’s energy production, is another issue where the American president and Modi are at odds.
• Announcing his decision to pull out of the Paris climate accords earlier this month, Trump complained that India would be able to double its coal production, which he thought was an unfair double standard. India is the third-biggest emitter of carbon dioxide behind China and the United States, and as a developing nation, it’s trying to grow its economy quickly, emitting lots of greenhouse gases in the process. [CNN / Ben Westcott]
• But Modi has also spoken out about the risks of climate change after growing anger in the country over air pollution and recognition that India and its economy will suffer under a warming climate. [Reuters / Nita Bhalla]
• Beyond these issues, some hope Modi’s visit will help put to rest the notion that relations with India just aren’t much of a priority for the Trump administration, which has yet to appoint an ambassador to the country. [NPR / Julie McCarthy]
• Don’t expect any quick answers to these questions; Modi’s visit was not open to questions from the press. [David Makamura via Twitter]

Miscellaneous

• Leigh Ann Wilson voted for Donald Trump because she believed he would solve the opioid crisis in her home state of West Virginia. This weekend, she spoke at Bernie Sanders’s health care rally in the state, slamming Trump for his response to the opioid crisis so far. [STAT / Max Blau]
• As a 19-year-old college student at Harvard, Jared Kushner got his feet wet with real estate deals in Somerville, Massachusetts. He made millions, but many of his properties had serious problems and complaints from tenants. [Boston Globe / Matt Viser]
• Nursing home residents are still prime targets for abuse on social media, as care workers take demeaning and in some cases vulgar photos and videos of them on Snapchat and other social media apps. Despite getting more scrutiny from government officials, it’s an ongoing problem. [ProPublica / Charles Ornstein]
• Venmo revolutionized the way people can pay each other, wiring money through apps. Now, it’s planning to develop its own debit card. [Recode / Jason Del Ray]
• Undocumented immigrants who fled to Canada after Trump was elected are now stuck in legal limbo, as the sheer number of new people is swamping that country’s immigration system. Without the right papers, people’s lives are on hold — they can’t work or go to school. [Reuters / Anna Mehler Paperny and Rod Nickel]

Verbatim

• "It really is a 747 landing on a suburban driveway." [Josh Holmes to Axios / Jonathan Swan]
• “We used to go after newsmakers no matter what side they were on. And Trump is a guy who is running for President with a closet full of baggage. He’s the ultimate target-rich environment. The Enquirer had a golden opportunity, and they completely looked the other way.” [National Enquirer staffer to Jeffrey Toobin / The New Yorker]
• “John Mayer? You don’t see a bunch of kids emulating John Mayer and listening to him and wanting to pick up a guitar because of him.” ]George Gruhn to Washington Post / Geoff Edgers]
• “It very much started, as the lore goes — and there’s always stories told about cocktails that aren’t really verifiable because people are drinking and not writing stuff down — that Allen’s started as something the lobstermen would take out with them and put in their coffee as they went out on the water at three, four in the morning.” [Andrew Volk to Atlas Obscura / Dan Nosowitz]
• “As more young people decide to pursue four-year degrees, college towns are siphoning students out of the rural heart of the Farm Belt and sending them, degrees in hand, not back to Oskaloosa but to the nation’s urban centers.” [WSJ / Dante Chinni]

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