NEWSWEEK - 09/16/2019 4 STATES REALIZE TRUMP HAS NO REAL COMPETITION!

Happy Monday, If you had any doubt that the Republican party is now the Trump party, look no further than South Carolina, Arizona, Nevada and Kansas. All four states are preparing to cancel their 2020 Republican primary elections as the president faces two challengers to the nomination, former Representative Joe Walsh and former Governors Bill Weld and Mark Sanford. The three have little to no chance of nabbing the nomination away from Trump, and the party argues that holding expensive and cumbersome primary elections when there is no real reason to is just good business. It also prevents unnecessary embarrassment for Trump. RNC officials say they didn’t play any role in the decision to cancel the elections, by the way. The Trump administration told Politico that they supported the cancellations but also had nothing to do with them. Still, that hasn’t stopped Trump’s would-be opponents from taking their pleas to the media. On Monday morning, Walsh joined CNN to complain about what he views as a rigged system. “This president seemingly every day attacks our democracy, but we have to be outraged. And I always want to pinch myself and remind myself that this isn’t Russia. I do not live in Russia. I refuse to live in Russia. We can’t just cancel elections in this country,” he said. “That’s what Donald Trump is doing. He’s literally canceling elections, and it’s very easy to be pissed off at Trump, but we’re used to this with Trump. He is a would-be dictator. He'd like this to be Russia. I’ve got to tell you, I’m blown away in my disappointment with the Republican Party who is in cahoots with this president, and again, literally eliminating elections." It is not unprecedented for states to cancel primary elections in years when an incumbent president of their party is sitting in the White House. Arizona didn’t hold a Democratic primary in 2012 when President Barack Obama was running for his second term or in 1996, when President Bill Clinton was. South Carolina didn’t hold primaries in 1984 when President Ronald Reagan was running or in 2004 for George W. Bush’s second run. Nicole Goodkind is a political reporter at Newsweek. You can reach her on Twitter @NicoleGoodkind or by email, N.Goodkind@newsweek.com.

REPUBLICANS GO AFTER OBAMACARE, AGAIN

This weekend, House Republicans held their annual legislative retreat in Baltimore, Maryland, where they outlined their plans for the upcoming year and beyond. High on the agenda: getting rid of the Affordable Care Act for good, something they failed at before losing their majority last year. Americans “want us to focus on lowering costs, giving them more choice and protecting people with preexisting conditions,” Minority Whip Steve Scalise said at a press conference Friday. As the Trump administration continues to hack away at parts of Obamacare via executive orders and pressures the federal courts to rule the health care program unconstitutional, Republicans have yet to come up with a suitable replacement plan for the act. They’ve got the “repeal” part down, though. “That’s what we stand for. That’s what we want to implement when we get the new majority next year, which we will,” continued Scalise. Earlier this year, The Washington Post reported that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy blamed the major Republican House losses on attempting to repeal and replace the ACA with a rushed plan that would end protections people with pre-existing conditions. When speaking privately to donors, McCarthy reportedly blamed the House’s far-right Freedom Caucus for pushing the bill, a group which is now largely powerless. New census data out last week, meanwhile, showed that the rate of Americans living without insurance rose by about 2 million people in 2018. About 8.5 percent of Americans, or 27.5 million people, did not have health coverage last year. That’s up from 7.9 percent in 2017. “This backsliding almost certainly reflects — at least in part — Trump Administration policies to weaken public health coverage,” wrote Center on Budget and Policy Priorities president Robert Greenstein in a statement. “While the uninsured rate remains far below its pre-ACA level, the gains achieved through the ACA will entirely disappear if the Administration ultimately succeeds in its continued efforts to repeal the law through legislation and the courts.” Between 2010 and 2016, the first six years after the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, the rates of those uninsured in the U.S. dropped significantly, but in 2017, as Republicans pushed their full-on assault of the Obama-era legislation, that rate was flat for the first time in seven years. Now the rate of uninsured Americcans is growing. On President Trump’s first day in office, he signed an executive order requiring federal agencies to delay and waive any benefits provided by the Affordable Care Act “to the maximum extent permitted by law.” Later, the president and Congress overturned the program’s individual mandate which requires all Americans to be insured or pay a fine. Most recently, the Trump administration appealed to the courts to strike down the entire bill, which the Urban Institute predicts would leave 20 million more Americans uninsured.

TRUMP SAYS WE’RE “LOCKED & LOADED” ON IRAN, FRIGHTENING LAWMAKERS

Crude oil prices are soaring following this weekend's Houthi drone attack on Saudi Arabian oil infrastructure. As global markets grappled with the turbulence, President Donald Trump issued a belligerent statement accusing Iran of being behind the attack and threatening subsequent action against Tehran. Though tensions between the U.S. and Iran have eased in recent weeks, this attack—plus Trump's initial response—has raised fears that the two countries are sliding back towards conflict. This weekend, U.S. lawmakers warned that Trump should not allow the U.S. to become engaged in a costly war in the Persian Gulf. On Sunday, Trump suggested the U.S. was considering retaliation. "There is reason to believe that we know the culprit, are locked and loaded depending on verification," he tweeted, in reference to Iran. The president added that the U.S. is "waiting to hear from [Saudi Arabia] as to who they believe was the cause of this attack, and under what terms we would proceed!" Democratic Virginia Senator Tim Kaine was among those to condemn Trump's threatening comments. "The US should never go to war to protect Saudi oil," he tweeted. Democratic Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy was equally skeptical, warning that an aggressive U.S. response would likely create more problems than it would solve. "No matter where this latest drone strike was launched from, there is no short or long term upside to the U.S. military getting more deeply involved in the growing regional contest between the Saudis and Iranians," Murphy tweeted. - Read more from Newsweek’s David Brennan

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