Late Friday, U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., threw an adjustable spanner into Senate Republican plans for a last-ditch attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
It’s still alive, if barely, and didn’t get any healthier with the weekend statement from Susan Collins of Maine that she’s a likely “no” vote. And so we have some last-minute sweetening.
Other senators have been notably quiet. Among them is Georgia's Johnny Isakson. The third-term GOP senator was undecided going into the weekend, but he sounded positive notes about the bill during an interview with Denis O'Hayer of WABE (90.1FM) on Friday morning.
We expect to hear more from him today. His colleague David Perdue, we previously told you, said he was “all in.”
Yet largely forgotten in this debate is the plight of Georgia’s hospitals – the big city ones that handle a huge load of indigent patients, and rural ones with little income outside of Medicare patients.
And then there's this piece from the AJC's James Salzer:
Outside the AJC, we have Andy Miller of Georgia Health News, who joined forces with the Huffington Post to produce a piece that begins thusly:
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Vice President Mike Pence is in Alabama today, joining the Senate Republican effort to save one of its own, incumbent Luther Strange. Polls show Roy Moore, a former Alabama chief justice, ahead in Tuesday's special election/primary runoff.
Donald Trump's visit to Huntsville was intended to help fix that, but the president's warm remarks about Moore, and his high-profile condemnation of the take-a-knee movement in the NFL may have complicated things.
Alabama may be one place where Trump isn’t in control of his own brand. On Sunday, we received a fundraising email from a Moore-supporting Super PAC, that keyed on Trump’s demand that football team owners should "Tell that son of a bitch he's fired." It begins this way:
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Sally Yates, the former acting U.S. attorney general fired by President Trump, will appear at an Ohio fundraiser this evening for Steve Dettelback, a Democratic candidate for state attorney general, according to USA Today.
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Hidden within German Chancellor Angela Merkel's weekend re-election victory was worry over a 13 percent showing by the nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD)party. From the Wall Street Journal:
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The Wall Street Journal is also reporting that former Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus and his wife, Wilma, has given more than $100,000 to a GOP legal defense fund for President Donald Trump and his son.
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Lust and Wisdom must soon co-exist -- on the Powder Springs City Council. As GeorgiaPol.com recounts, Patricia Wisdom defeated Henry Lust back in December 2015 for an at-large spot on the Cobb County town's board. But Lust didn't cave into desires to quit politics. He qualified to run for an open position last month, and his lone opponent was recently disqualified from running. Thus Lust prevails, if by default. We can't wait to see how Lust and Wisdom get along over there.
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The inspector general at the Department of Health and Human Services has launched an investigation into Secretary Tom Price's private jet use. This came after news that the former Georgia lawmaker, who once railed against bureaucrats flying private, and his staff chartered at least two dozen flights in recent months, at a combined public expense of $300,000. He announced over the weekend that he'll be curtailing the practice until after the investigation is completed.
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Speaking of Price's HHS department, it announced on Friday that it plans to shut down its website for 12 hours at a time on all but one Sunday during Obamacare's upcoming open enrollment season. Most of those hours are overnight, but some critics called the move a deliberate attempt to undermine the health care law.
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Former Insider Daniel Malloy has a captivating look at Democrat Stacey Evans' childhood that includes this snippet from the gubernatorial candidate's mother, Kim Godfrey: Though she leans Democratic, she voted for Donald Trump in November, giving him credit for "standing up for us." Read the entire piece at Ozy.
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U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Decatur, wants more information about the way the Atlanta credit firm Equifax and its two main competitors handle customer lawsuits in the aftermath of the firm's massive data breach. The Lithonia Democrat and three colleagues wrote Equifax, TransUnion and Experian late last week seeking more information on whether they plan to include forced arbitration language – which often requires customers to forgo the ability to sue the company in court as they sign up for service -- in their terms of service going forward.
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Johnson's colleague Doug Collins tonight plans to hold his first town hall since his tumultuous in-person event last month. This time, though, the Gainesville Republican will answer questions over the phone beginning at 7:30 p.m. The format makes things easier for Collins since he's in Washington this week for the House session. It also gives his staff more power to make sure the event does not go off the rails.
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