What You Should Know About Progressives? Ambitious New Medicare for All Bill

(Conyers later resigned over sexual harassment allegations and was replaced in office by Representative Rashida Tlaib, a democratic socialist who supports Medicare for All.)The Conyers bill — which was vaguer than this year’s — likely owed its sudden popularity to the Republican Party’s failed attempts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act with legislation that didn’t protect people with pre-existing conditions. For instance, former Marine Jared Golden flipped Maine’s rural second congressional district from red to blue by running on a platform that included Medicare for All.Here’s a closer look at what the bill entails, and the role it’s likely to play in the ongoing health care debate.The legislation Jayapal introduced this week is more expansive than Sanders’s vision, as Jeff Stein reported for the Washington Post. “Robert Mueller never received a vote and neither did the person who appointed him,” Trump continued, as he attempted to portray Mueller’s team as a group of the “angriest Democrats.”Trump even got meta about his super-long super-scattered speech as it happened, per Daniel Dale:Trump says that the CPAC people are probably thinking they’re getting a lot more than they bargained for today. [He] refers to a good friend of his in New York, a “stone-cold killer,” then says the man is “not even a good friend of mine” because he’d turn on him quickly, but he’s “very rich.” He says the unnamed man asked him what he was going to talk about today, and he said “I dunno.”Trump says his unnamed non-friend “chokes” whenever he has to make a speech to nine or more people, because of a fear of public speaking, even though “he kills people for a living, meaning mentally and financially.”Politico again:At one point, Trump regaled the crowd with a story about a general he said was named “Raisin Caine” (it wasn’t immediately clear who he was referring to). …He also insisted that nobody had left the speech early, but journalists present reported that in fact, some attendees were seen departing before the close of his remarks.And there was a new authoritarian promise for the base, notes the Washington Post:“If they want our dollars, and we give it to them by the billions, they’ve got to allow people like Hayden and many great young people, and old people, to speak,” Trump said, bringing onstage a young conservative, Hayden Williams, who was physically attacked last month while tabling for a conservative organization at the University of California at Berkeley.The executive order, Trump said, would “require colleges to support free speech if they want federal research” money. Spokespeople for the White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.Trump told the CPAC crowd, meeting at National Harbor, Md., that he planned to sign the order “very soon,” but did not provide specifics or say whether a draft has already been prepared.When it came to peacemaking, he was the poseur-in-chiefAn American official later described [Trump’s grand bargain pitch] as “a proposal to go big,” a bet by Mr. Trump that his force of personality, and view of himself as a consummate dealmaker, would succeed where three previous presidents had failed.But Mr. Trump’s offer was essentially the same deal that the United States has pushed — and the North has rejected — for a quarter century. While some in the White House worried Mr. Trump was being played, the president seemed entranced — even declaring “we fell in love.” As Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim parted company, nearly a year of optimism and flattery was left poolside at the Metropole, steps from a meeting room with two empty chairs and flags that had been carefully prepared for a “signing ceremony.”The wall is closing in on emergency-flummoxed GOPOne by one, the Republican senators floated their ideas. On March 8, it will undock and re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere, splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean around 8:45 a.m. ET.NASA has had to hitch rides with Russian space vehicles to get its astronauts to the space station since NASA retired the space shuttle program in 2011, reportedly paying about $82 million a seat.“Today’s successful launch marks a new chapter in American excellence, getting us closer to once again flying American Astronauts on American rockets from American soil,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine wrote Saturday morning.More on why this is such an important flight from Eric Berger at Ars Technica:Although SpaceX has flown a cargo version of the Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station since 2012, the crew variant of the spacecraft is entirely made over—from the exterior solar panels to the interior life support system. Multiple sources said NASA and SpaceX would be quite happy to get the first crew flight off during fall or early winter, and those sources rated the odds of a 2019 crewed launch at 50 percent or less.The U.S. hits its debt ceiling today (about $22 trillion) and the Trump administration has a plan to start pretending to careSaturday marks the beginning of a series of budget challenges for the Trump White House. Administration officials have been meeting for weeks to devise a strategy to dramatically boost defense spending, fulfilling a promise to Trump’s base, while at the same time placing a strong new rhetorical emphasis on deficit concerns in a bid to undermine Democratic demands for more spending on nondefense programs like foreign aid, education and environmental protection.It’s a long-shot plan certain to face accusations of hypocrisy — especially since it’s coming from Trump, who once boasted, “I’ve made a fortune by using debt.” Privately, many White House officials also dismiss the notion that the federal debt is a major problem.Some are questioning the logical consistency of Blue Bottle, after the coffee chain announced it was going cash-lessIt appears Roger Stone doesn’t understand how much trouble he’s inRepublican operative and longtime Trump friend Roger Stone faced fresh legal trouble Friday after a federal judge ordered his attorneys to explain why they failed to tell her before now about the imminent publication of a book that could violate his gag order by potentially criticizing the judge or prosecutors with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.The order by U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the District of Columbia late Friday came barely eight days after Jackson barred Stone from speaking publicly about his case, prompted by a photo posted on Stone’s Instagram account that placed a crosshairs next to a photo of Jackson’s head.Jackson also ordered Stone’s attorneys to explain by Monday why they waited until now in making that request to disclose the “imminent general rel[e]ase” of a book, which Jackson said “was known to the defendant.”Less than four in 10 Americans thought the Cohen testimony was credible, according to a poll by The HillWhile more respondents said they found Cohen’s testimony to be credible than those who said it was not, the overall results suggest the high-profile appearance by President Trump’s former personal attorney is unlikely to be a political game-changer.Republicans were more likely than Democrats to say they were unsure about Cohen. In a sentencing memo filed Friday in Manafort’s case in federal court in Virginia, his lawyers wrote that Mueller had unfairly impugned Manafort’s character.“The Special Counsel’s strategy in bringing charges against Mr. Manafort had nothing to do with the Special Counsel’s core mandate — Russian collusion — but was instead designed to ‘tighten the screws’ in an effort to compel Mr. Manafort to cooperate and provide incriminating information about others,” his lawyers wrote, quoting language Manafort’s judge in Virginia, US District Judge T.S. Ellis III, had previously used to question the special counsel’s office’s motivations.Meanwhile, the Miami Herald intends to unseal court documents related to the original Epstein caseEpstein’s defense lawyer and Trump fan Alan Dershowitz wants to use a page from the president’s playbook and ban press from new hearings related to the caseA court hearing on whether to unseal sensitive documents involving the alleged sex trafficking of underage girls by Palm Beach multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein — and the possible involvement of his influential friends — will play out in a New York City courtroom next week.An attorney for lawyer Alan Dershowitz wrote a letter to the U.S. District Court Second Circuit of Appeals on Tuesday, asking whether the media should be excluded from the proceeding because his oral arguments on behalf of his client could contain sensitive information that has been under seal.Epstein’s deal, brokered by then-Miami U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta, allowed Epstein to plead guilty to two prostitution charges in state court, and in exchange, Epstein and an untold number of others were given federal immunity. An analysis released last summer by the website Localize.city found that Williamsburg had the highest number of crashes involving pedestrians and cyclists in the city; a more recent report found that three of the city’s most dangerous intersections for cyclists were in the vicinity of the Williamsburg Bridge.Could we finally see Trump’s tax returns?The top tax-writing committee in the House is readying a request for years of President Donald Trump’s personal tax returns that is expected to land at the Internal Revenue Service as early as the next few weeks, according to congressional aides involved in the process. HUD’s efforts to tighten federal carbon monoxide protections have been mired in a confusing patchwork of federal inspection standards and a slow-moving effort to reform them, according to an NBC News review of federal protocols and interviews with more than a dozen housing officials, industry groups and public health experts.Oh great, everyone wanted more of thisBernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are tiffing again.Almost three years after their Democratic primary came to an end, it’s clear that tensions are still raw for some in both camps as the Vermont independent senator embarks on his second presidential campaign.The week began with Sanders and Clinton allies hurling invective at each other through the press over a Politico story about the private jets Sanders requested from Clinton’s camp when he stumped for her in the 2016 general election.In the story, a former Clinton aide derided Sanders as “his Royal Majesty King Bernie Sanders” while a former Sanders aide called Clintonworld “some of the biggest a–holes in American politics” — and those were just the on-the-record quotes that sources were willing to put their name to.The week ended Friday with Clinton’s spokesperson firing back at Sanders after he said he has no interest in seeking any advice from Democrats’ most recent presidential nominee.Will anyone vote for the climate candidate?Today, Washington governor Jay Inslee announced that’s jumping into the extremely crowded field of Democrats running in 2020.