From Axios:

Senate Republicans are working to finish their draft health care bill, but have no plans to publicly release it, according to two senior Senate GOP aides. “We aren’t stupid,” said one of the aides.

This is yet another example of the corrosive effect that Donald Trump is having on Washington culture—which, let’s face it, was not exactly a shining beacon to begin with. Last year Trump taught Republicans that you can keep your tax returns secret with no real explanation, and pay no price. After all, it won Trump the presidency, didn’t it? The lesson here is pretty simple: If secrecy is better than exposure, then keep things secret, and don’t let media pressure sway you into backing down or even bothering to explain yourself.

Greg Gianforte is another example. He assaulted a reporter, and later events (like pleading guilty to assaulting a reporter) made it clear that he knew exactly what he’d done. But on the day before his special election, he released a comically belligerent statement not only denying everything, but blaming the reporter for the whole thing. It was pure Trump. It was a flat lie, he knew it was a lie, and he didn’t care. It helped him win the election, and that’s all that matters.

Statement from Gianforte on @bencjacobs: “aggressive behavior from a liberal journalist” pic.twitter.com/yUkQaxg02H

— Holly Bailey (@hollybdc) May 25, 2017

James Comey’s testimony is another. He testified that Trump demanded loyalty and then asked him to drop the FBI investigation into Michael Flynn. But on Fox News or Trump’s Twitter acount, you never heard about this. All you heard is that Comey’s testimony totally vindicated Trump. This produces the spectacle of Newt Gingrich—the former master who is now the pupil sitting at Trump’s feet—claiming that Trump should fire the special prosecutor because Comey’s testimony proved that nothing happened. If you get all your news from Fox or Breitbart or Limbaugh or the Trump Twitter account, that sounds completely reasonable.

Republicans are delusional if they think the special counsel is going to be fair. Look who he is hiring.check fec reports. Time to rethink.

— Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) June 12, 2017

ICYMI: My @facebook Live on why Comey hearing delegitimizes Robert Mueller’s so-called independent investigation https://t.co/efcE98NevO

— Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) June 12, 2017

Or take this from Paul Krugman yesterday about the Republican health bill:

The Senate GOP is working completely in secret, with no hearings, and anything it passes will surely also try to preempt the CBO.

You might think that this in part reflects conservative analyses that reach a different conclusion. But there aren’t any such analyses. Remember, OMB works for Trump; it has offered nothing. Even the Heritage Foundation, which used to be the go-to source for conservative creative accounting, hasn’t produced some implausible account of how the magic of markets will make it all work.

This is new….They used to at least pretend….Now they’re not even bothering to fake it.

Keep things secret. Tell whatever lies you need. Flatly misrepresent reality for folks who don’t follow the news and won’t know any better. Don’t waste time with even laughably preposterous policy analysis. Just do what you want to do and say what you need to say.

The only silver lining is that, so far, this hasn’t actually worked very well. Obviously it got Trump elected, but it hasn’t passed any bills or produced any major policy impacts. But it might. And if it turns out that it does work, Democrats will fall right in line whether they want to or not. Then we’ll have a country that’s literally run like a game show, not an actual place with the fate of actual human beings involved.

This is why everyone who cares about reality needs to make sure it doesn’t work.

Are you still a little confused about the whole Qatar mess, but haven’t gotten around to reading something that explains it? You should check out Jen Kirby’s interview with Kristian Coates Ulrichsen. It’s very good. Well worth a few minutes of your time.

Wut?

This interminable cabinet spray, where everybody pays tribute to Trump, is one of the most exquisitely awkward public events I’ve ever seen.

— Glenn Thrush (@GlennThrush) June 12, 2017

I only left for a few minutes to slurp down some Corn Flakes! What did I miss? This:

Reince Preibus wins the award for most obsequious bootlicking: “On behalf of the entire senior staff around you, Mr. President, we thank you for the opportunity and the blessing that you’ve given us to serve your agenda and the American people.” Click here to see what Chuck Schumer thought of all this.

Jake Tapper wraps things up:

I’ve never seen a Cabinet meeting like this one before.

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) June 12, 2017

Words fail me.

Sarah Kliff:

The possibility that Republicans will repeal Obamacare or drive it into collapse is an increasingly real one. That’s a reality where millions fewer have health insurance coverage and lower-income Americans struggle to afford coverage.

….Behind closed doors, Senate Republicans have worked out a path toward Obamacare repeal. The plans under discussion would end Medicaid expansion, causing millions of low-income Americans to lose health coverage. They may allow health insurance plans to charge higher premiums to people with preexisting conditions, too.

The Republican plan is coming together because moderate senators are beginning to drop some of their initial repeal objections. Sens. Rob Portman (R-OH) and Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), for example, now back a plan to end the Medicaid expansion.

Ah, the fabled moderate Republicans. They hated the old repeal plan, which phased out Medicaid expansion in three years. But they love the new plan, which phases out Medicaid expansion in seven years. It turns out that taking health coverage away from millions of people was never really their problem. They just didn’t want it to happen so quickly that anyone would blame them for it. They’re real profiles in courage.

From the New York Times:

President Trump is considering scrapping or postponing a planned visit to Britain this year amid a billowing backlash over comments he made after the recent terrorist attack in London, two administration officials said. Over the past week, Mr. Trump has expressed increasing skepticism to aides about the trip after coming under intense criticism for a misleading charge that he leveled against London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan.

….He has told his staff that he wants to avoid a marathon overseas trip like his nine-day trek to the Middle East and Europe, which he found exhausting and overly long. One other factor leading to his reluctance, said one of the officials, is his preference for having foreign leaders visit him — not the other way around.

I have two comments. First, how do we get a piece of this action? There have been plenty of backlashes right here in America over various Trump comments, and his popularity is dropping like a stone. How can we translate this into Trump spending less time with us?

Second, seriously? Poor little Donald considers a single nine-day trip on a private jet with every detail taken care of “a marathon”? And he hates having to call on other people because—what? His ego is so damn fragile that he can’t stand not being in charge every moment of every day? What a crybaby.

Donald Trump is whining again:

The #FakeNews MSM doesn’t report the great economic news since Election Day. #DOW up 16%. #NASDAQ up 19.5%. Drilling & energy sector way up. Regulations way down. 600,000+ new jobs added. Unemployment down to 4.3%. Business and economic enthusiasm way up- record levels!

Let’s check this out. The Dow is definitely up, but the rest is a little dicier. First up is “Drilling & energy sector way up.” If Trump is talking about energy stocks, he’s wrong: the S&P 500 Energy Sector has been dropping all year and is well below its Election Day level. The real world looks pretty flat too:

Next up: “Regulations way down.” How do you even measure this? Congress has killed off about a dozen Obama regs that took effect a few months ago, but that’s a drop in the ocean. And I assume that routine rulemaking has continued in the meantime. I think it’s safe to say that federal regulations aren’t “way down,” but beyond that there’s no good way to evaluate this so early in Trump’s term.

Next up: “600,000+ new jobs added.” True enough. But not so impressive compared to Obama’s second term:

Next up: “Unemployment down to 4.3%.” That’s true. But once again, nothing to brag about compared to the trendline Trump inherited:

Next up: “Business and economic enthusiasm way up- record levels!” Consumer sentiment is pretty easy to measure. If we give Trump credit for everything since Election Day, he produced a nice jump in December, but nothing much since then:

As for business sentiment, I’m not sure how to measure it. How about looking at business fixed investment in equipment? That should provide a decent idea of how optimistic businesses are feeling right now. Here it is:

Basically, both the stock market and consumer sentiment got a bit of a kick from Trump’s election but have been pretty flat since then. All the other stuff is either normal or a bit lower than Obama’s record. For the last several years the economy has been good but not great. It still is.

Here’s your Qatar timeline so far:

June 5: Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations blockade air, sea, and land traffic into Qatar.

June 6: Donald Trump praises the blockade. “So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off. They said they would take a hard line on funding extremism, and all reference was pointing to Qatar. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism!”

June 8: Apparently having been told that Qatar is an ally which hosts both CENTCOM and a huge US military base, Trump offers up Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to mediate the dispute.

June 9: As directed, Tillerson steps in. He asks the Gulf nations to “de-escalate the situation” and ease the blockade against Qatar. “There are humanitarian consequences to this blockade. We are seeing shortages of food, families are being forcibly separated and children pulled out of school….The blockade is hindering US military actions in the region and the campaign against ISIS.”

One hour later: Trump escalates the conflict for no apparent reason at a press conference with the president of Romania. “The nation of Qatar, unfortunately, has been a funder of terrorism at a very high level. I’ve decided, along with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, our great generals, and military people, the time has come to call on Qatar to end its funding. They have to end that funding. And its extremist ideology in terms of funding.”

I dunno. Trump is playing good-cop-bad-cop? Trump was pissed off about the rumors that he didn’t realize Qatar hosted CENTCOM? Trump had no idea what Tillerson had said? Here’s the official White House spin:

A senior WH official says Trump and Tillerson are on the “same page” re: Qatar. Says they’re simply emphasizing different parts of that page

— William Gallo (@GalloVOA) June 9, 2017

LOL. Roger that.

The pod next to my computer is normally Hilbert’s territory. Once in a while, though, Hopper curls up in it for a nice nap. When Hilbert gets wind of this, his jealous bone asserts itself and he hops up and starts pushing and nudging to make room for himself. For a few minutes there are two cats wedged into the pod, but eventually Hopper gets tired of the whole thing and heads off somewhere else.

But not this week! Instead, Hilbert walked over and just piled on top of Hopper. I think Donald Trump is having a bad influence on him. Surprisingly, Hopper put up with this for a few minutes, and then tried to shift into a new position. But before long she gave up. As usual, Hilbert had the pod to himself.

Just in case you’re curious about how the public views Obamacare vs. the Republican health care plan, here you go:

Every month, Obamacare gets a little more popular and the Republican plan gets a little less popular. And yet, Republicans persist.

Of course, I continue to think that Obamacare’s regulations about pre-existing conditions and community rating will remain intact because they can’t be repealed under reconciliation rules. But does the Senate parliamentarian agree with me? And even if she does, will Mike Pence have the stones to just overrule her? A few months ago I didn’t think Pence would do it. Today I’m not so sure.

Michael Hiltzik a couple of days ago:

A major shoe dropped in the battle to preserve the Affordable Care Act on Tuesday, as Anthem, the nation’s second-largest health insurer, announced it is withdrawing entirely from the individual market in Ohio….Anthem said in its announcement that the principal causes of its withdrawal are “the shrinking individual market as well as continual changes in federal operations, rules and guidance.”

That’s a reference to the uncertainty surrounding President Trump’s vagueness about whether he will approve subsidies for deductibles and co-pays for the poorest Obamacare enrollees and whether his administration will continue enforcing the ACA’s individual mandate in 2018.

Sarah Kliff today:

Slowly but surely, we are seeing the practical effects of the Trump administration’s efforts to sow uncertainty over the Affordable Care Act’s future. They look like the very early stages of collapse….Approximately 38,000 Obamacare enrollees now live in places where no health plans want to sell Obamacare coverage in 2018. This is a small fraction of Obamacare enrollees — about 0.3 percent — who mostly live in rural, sparsely populated areas

….The Obama administration worked hard to recruit health insurers to sell to these empty areas. The Trump administration, however, seems to want to stand aside and let Obamacare run on autopilot so it can explode or survive on its own….His administration has waffled on whether it will continue funding key Obamacare payments. He has said he expects the marketplaces to “explode” on their own.

Here’s the Vox map:

Even some Republicans have finally had enough:

A powerful House Republican said Thursday that Congress should immediately provide money for subsidy payments to health insurance companies, which have been demanding big rate increases or fleeing from Affordable Care Act markets because of President Trump’s threat to cut off the funds.

The Republican, Kevin Brady of Texas, who is the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, went out of his way to make clear that he now believes that Congress should continue the subsidies, which compensate insurers for reducing deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs for seven million low-income people.

Most likely, Brady is afraid that the public will blame Republicans if Obamacare collapses on their watch. But I’ll take what I can get. Regardless of whether it’s just an act of partisan self-preservation, CSR subsidies need to be put on a firm footing. Killing off CSR seemed like great fun and games when Republicans weren’t in power, but now it’s suddenly become clear to them that this is serious business that will cause enormous pain to millions of registered voters.

It’s sad that this is what it takes to get that through their heads, but it is what it is. Whatever the reason, at least some of them are starting to see sense.