First up: The secret working group of white, male Republicans in the Senate finally revealed their new scheme, dubbed the "Better Care Reconciliation Act", to rewrite 1/5th of the US economy by replacing ObamaCare with what Donald Trump has promised would be a healthcare plan "with heart" that was less "mean" than the version he celebrated after its narrow passage by Republicans in the US House several weeks ago.
The release of the new Senate plan did not go well. Democrats, independents, and healthcare advocates alike — not to mention elderly protesters in wheelchairs dragged away from outside the office of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — slammed the legislation for its massive tax cuts to the wealthy in exchange for deeply cruel cuts to federal Medicaid funding, and the promise of stingier premium subsidies for less generous health care policies.
A number of Republicans in the Senate also currently oppose the plan as written, because it doesn't repeal ObamaCare enough, but we'll see if they change their tune before the bill comes up for a vote next week, as promised by McConnell, before Congress leaves for the July 4th recess. The GOP can only afford to lose the support of two Republicans among their 52-seat caucus.
Then, we're joined by BuzzFeed News journalist and "FOIA terrorist" JASON LEOPOLD, to discuss the newly unearthed Dept. of Defense damage assessment of the hundreds of thousands of documents on the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, as well as diplomatic cables, leaked by US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning in 2010.
During her trial, Government officials charged that the disclosures caused massive damage to national security and endangered counts lives of both US personnel and our allies, but is that what the DoD's own secret 2011 assessment — finally released this week in heavily redacted form in response to Leopold's Freedom of Information Act request — actually found? We discuss that and the "passionate responses" he has received since publishing the assessment.
We also discuss the new White House ban on cameras during press briefings and how the Trump Administration compares to previous administrations on matters of government secrecy and document classification.
"In the overall picture, you have an administration that operates under intense secrecy that wants to limit access — 'access' being the key word there — that journalists depend upon. Access is really important, and it's really important to be able to confront government officials," Leopold tells me, while placing the news about the ban in context with the Trump Administration's secrecy and on-going battle with journalists elsewhere. "This type of behavior trickles down to various levels within the federal government and, I've seen, it also goes into local and state governments, as well. This intense secrecy, where elected officials who are accountable to the people are simply not interested in speaking — and then try and set up some new rules that basically bars the press from confronting them."
Leopold goes on to cite the increased difficulty he is beginning to have prying documents loose via FOIA requests under the Administration, while noting that "some of these agencies are having trouble trying to figure out how to respond to requests, largely because you have a President now who is tweeting, who is arguably declassifying — instantly declassifying — information that would otherwise remain secret."
Speaking of which, finally today, Trump tweeted that, despite his previous suggestions, he has no audio tapes of his one-on-one conversations with now-fired FBI Director James Comey. But is he telling the truth, or bluffing yet again?
You can find Brad's previous editions here. And tune in to radio Sputnik five days a week.
