Democrats are reviving fight against Republican health bill
Senate WASHINGTON Democrats— ramped up opposition Monday to the emerging Republican health care bill, launching a series of mostly symbolic moves including speeches that were expected to go late into the evening and a push to slow other Senate business to a crawl.
The aim, Democrats said, was to draw attention to the secretive process Republican leaders are using to craft their bill and argue that the GOP proposals would hurt Americans. They are focusing this week on nonbinding protests amid concern that the investigations into President Donald Trump and his campaign are diverting from efforts to derail a Senate version of the bill.
Senate Republican leaders hope for a showdown vote before lawmakers leave town at the end of next week, an ambitious timeline that would spare Republicans from constituent pressure over the Fourth of July recess.
Democrats fear that Republicans will unveil a bill that would have sweeping effects on health care, then within days try to pass it with only limited debate.
At one point Monday evening, more than a dozen Democratic senators sat at their desks on the Senate floor and took turns standing and asking for committee hearings on the bill and for the text to be released for greater scrutiny. “If Republicans won’t relent and debate their health care bill in the open for the American people to see, then they shouldn’t expect business as usual in the Senate,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.
Tech titans visit D.C.
The White House on Monday urged technology CEOs to pitch in on Mr. Trump’s effort to modernize government.
“Our goal is to lead a sweeping transformation of the federal government’s technology that will deliver dramatically better services to citizens, stronger protection from cyberattacks,” the president told the tech titans during the first major meeting of the Trump-commissioned American Technology Council.
The four-hour event included working groups on issues like improving the federal government’s digital services for everyday Americans.
Dems press Flynn
Two top House crats — Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland and Rep. Eliot Engel of New York — are questioning whether Michael Flynn failed to report a 2015 trip to the Middle East to federal security clearance investigators.
Late plug for Handel
Mr. Trump on Twitter urged voters in the key special House race in Georgia’s 6th District to elect Tuesday the Republican candidate, Karen Handel, so his health care, tax and border security policies can move forward.
HIV/AIDS council
Six members announced they were quitting the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS amid frustrations that the president “simply does not care.”