But first, we begin with the seeming unending string of natural disasters slamming North America of late. After a quick riposte from French President Emmanuel Macron in response to U.S. President Donald Trump's failure at the U.N. General Assembly to mention "climate change" or his withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement on Tuesday — even as yet another Category 5 hurricane was about to slam the US — we cover the latest on several ongoing disasters. In Mexico, hundreds are dead and as many as a thousand still unaccounted for following Tuesday's catastrophic earthquake. And, in Puerto Rico, the power is out across the entire island after the record winds and rain of Hurricane Maria slammed ashore early on Wednesday, putting some 3.5 million US citizens in dire danger.
Then, amidst all of that, Republicans continue their last ditch frantic attempt to repeal and replace ObamaCare before a deadline will make it much more difficult to do so at the end of the month. That, despite the Affordable Care Act's continuing success in helping to provide medical care to tens of millions of Americans, and the fact that the latest GOP repeal scheme will seriously hurt those in both 'red' and 'blue' states with enormous cuts to health care funding and the gutting of many long-sought protections offered by the Affordable Care Act.
Most galling, perhaps, is the hypocrisy of Republican US Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana (pictured above), one of the new bill's lead sponsors and a doctor himself. Cassidy had publicly promised, during the last round of GOP attempts to gut ObamaCare, that he would vote against any scheme that did not pass what he dubbed at the time as "The Jimmy Kimmel Test". That was a reference to the touching story regarding the late night comedian's son who was born with congenital heart disease during the previous attempts by Republicans to kill the ACA earlier this year.
On Tuesday night, at the top of his show, Kimmel offered a sharp and very well-informed response to Cassidy's hypocrisy. We share that accurate response on today's show.
Finally, speaking of remarkable hypocrisy, we're joined by investigative journalist RACHEL LEVEN of The Center for Public Integrity to discuss her new exposal this week, with Jamie Smith Hopkins, documenting dozens of major US corporations — from Google to eBay to Walmart to Coca-Cola to General Electric and more — who publicly declared their "opposition" to Trump's withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, even while those very same companies invested millions of dollars in a Republican political group leading the fight to kill the Obama plan meant to meet the emissions reduction standards under the landmark global pact.
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