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The Graham-Cassidy health care bill is dead:

Senate Republicans, emerging from their weekly policy lunch Tuesday, said they would not move ahead with a vote on the most recent repeal legislation, sponsored by Republican Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

….Graham, however, insisted the effort would be revived later. “We’re coming back at this after taxes,” he said, referring to the tax-cut effort that Republican leaders have pledged to push forward this fall. “We’ll get there,” he added. “We’re going to fulfill our promise.”

Graham is referring to the possibility of writing reconciliation instructions into the FY18 budget that include both tax cuts and health care. With these guys I’d never say never, but it’s hard to believe that Mitch McConnell wants yet another futile fight over Obamacare heading into the midterm elections. His preference is probably to work on passing a base-friendly tax cut and leaving it at that.

Ironically, then, it’s turned out that the biggest threat to Obamacare has never been repeal. It’s been the simple election of a Republican president who’s determined to sabotage it. Donald Trump has dithered over CSR subsidies; cut back the enrollment period; slashed the advertising and outreach budget; and—yes, really—declared that the website will be shut down every Sunday for 12 hours for “maintenance.”

What else can he do? Shutting down the website weekly never would have occurred to me, so I think I just have to admit that Republicans are way better at creative ratfuckery than I am and leave it at that. I have no idea what they’ll come up with next. But I’m sure they’re working hard on it.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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