#TakeTheKnee takes over Sunday, GOP's health care bill takes more hits, and President Obama

• Donald Trump’s decision that his latest repeated target would be widely admired athletes who were merely exercising their Constitutional right to freedom of speech definitely had an impact — though surely not the one he thought of in his angry little mind.Instead of curtailing protests against racial injustice, his attacks only helped galvanize them, and #TakeTheKnee was the story of the day Sunday, from coast to coast:
  

  Kneeling/locking arms at Bills-Broncos game pic.twitter.com/pQHLwooBex

  — Amanda Terkel (@aterkel) September 24, 2017

  Some of the patriots sideline #TakeaKnee pic.twitter.com/cwLa1tqJmi

  — Jeremy (@DSky3) September 24, 2017

  10 Saints sat- Bush, Vaccaro, Banjo, Okafor, Rankins, Jordan, Peterson, Kamara, Ingram, Coleman. Fleener, Morstead, Robertson stood beside. pic.twitter.com/GJnHqOsNgy

  — The MMQB (@theMMQB) September 24, 2017

  Here are eight members of the Detroit Lions kneeling. Many broadcasts apparently didn’t show much of the protests. #TakeAKnee pic.twitter.com/mAZobqaKl7

  — Adam Best (@adamcbest) September 24, 2017

  Not a single player from the Titans or the Seahawks participated in the National Anthem just now. pic.twitter.com/yskxkpFYL0

  — Shaun King (@ShaunKing) September 24, 2017

  Falcons-Lions national anthem singer Rico Lavelle took a knee and raised his fist at the end of his performance: pic.twitter.com/JwrTP94ySD

  — SB Nation (@SBNation) September 24, 2017

• The protests even reached across the Atlantic, to the game in London between the Jacksonville Jaguars and Baltimore Ravens, where Jaguars coach Shad Khan — who had donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee — linked arms with his players.

• Perhaps Trump was hoping his appalling remarks would serve to distract people from the nightmare GOP health care repeal bill he and his cronies in Congress are still trying to force on the nation. Shareblue Media’s Executive Editor, Jess McIntosh, warned about exactly that on MSNBC Sunday:https://vimeo.com/252554755
  

  It’s remarkable that he’s able to stand there and say that this isn’t about race, when he has been systematically calling for black employees who disagree with him to be fired. Not only is that un-American and undemocratic, it’s racist. But I think that — he does this thing where he starts something really incendiary just when he wants to distract from a major agenda piece that America isn’t going to like, or from tightening in the Russia investigation. We saw this on the campaign, and we’re seeing that play out at the Trump White House, too. So while I think that the protests are important and I’m glad that there is a national conversation around this right now, I also want to make sure that people don’t take their eye off the health care ball. Because it’s really — like, this is a particularly radical bill, and the more America pays attention to it and tunes in, the more they reject it. We’ve seen that happen twice now, and I worry on the third one, we’re going to miss the ball.

• The latest version of the Graham-Cassidy bill is indeed still a nightmare. As the senior vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation put it in an important thread to read, the bill is “in effect federal deregulation of the insurance market.” Oh, and contrary to the persistent lie that Trump, his administration, and other Republicans keep clinging to like barnacles on a sinking ship:
  

  If there was any question about Graham-Cassidy’s removal of federal protections for pre-existing conditions, this new draft is quite clear.

  — Larry Levitt (@larry_levitt) September 25, 2017

• The bill may be foundering — particularly after Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz stated his opposition to it — but it is not dead yet, and vehement, vocal protests against it are still absolutely crucial. We saw a lot of it this weekend:
  

  @IndivisibleTeam Indivisibles from across the state showed up today to #KillTheBill pic.twitter.com/TTSdjp6FAU

  — Indivisible BRLA (@BRindivisible) September 24, 2017

  Die-In on the Bar Harbor Village Green – save our lives @SenatorCollins! #killthebill @IndivisibleTeam @bangordailynews @womensmarch pic.twitter.com/EUrBCFYfDK

  — Indivisible_MDI (@Indivisible_MDI) September 24, 2017

  This TrumpCare protest in Texas is ??? pic.twitter.com/LrTRRbaMaK

  — Ezra Levin (@ezralevin) September 24, 2017

  @SenJohnMcCains PHX office today to oppose Trumpcare. We ended up giving a BIG THUMBS UP instead! THANK YOU!! #JohnMcCain #KillTheBill pic.twitter.com/TGmDLjxUkS

  — Wendy Garcia (@mamabearinaz) September 23, 2017

  . @CardboardCoryCO on the march! #ProtectOurCare #COpolitics pic.twitter.com/kejF90eoNU

  — Indivisible Denver (@indivisibleden) September 22, 2017

• Like Jess said: don’t take your eye off that ball. There’s plenty you can do. Indivisible is calling for a national day of action on Monday, Sept. 25, to #KillTheBill. Use this super-easy map to find an event near you.
  

  Trump and the Senate Republicans have been put on a tight deadline if they have any hope of passing TrumpCare, and we’re going to do everything we can to stop them. RSVP to an event, show your constituent power, and spread the word.

• Another garbage zombie shuffling around this administration is the odious Muslim travel ban, which Trump just expanded to include even more countries than the original version:
  

  The current policy, which denies visas to citizens of six majority Muslim countries, will be replaced by a new set of travel limits on eight countries, including all but one of those on the previous list. The nations facing indefinite travel restrictions under the new policy are Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen, officials said Sunday …

  While the new proclamation restricts some travel from two non-Muslim countries — North Korea and Venezuela — those limits seem largely symbolic.

  Only about 110 North Koreans got visas to travel to the U.S. in the last fiscal year. The new restrictions on Venezuela apply only to government officials, not to the broader population, and could have been imposed without including them in the new travel ban proclamation.

  If that sounds like strange window-dressing meant to cover up the blatantly racist nature of the ban, that’s because it is, despite an anonymous administration official protesting to the contrary: “The restrictions, whether previously or now, were never ever, ever based on race, religion or creed,” the official said.

  Nice try, but no one’s buying that. “The Administration may hope that the addition of North Korea and Venezuela to the list of nations with restricted travel will mollify the courts,” said California Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, “but no amount of repackaging can disguise the fact that the intent behind the ban was and remains a noxious attempt to ban people based on their faith.”

• All together now: BUT THEIR EEEEEMAILS!!
  

  Presidential son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner has corresponded with other administration officials about White House matters through a private email account set up during the transition last December, part of a larger pattern of Trump administration aides using personal email accounts for government business …

  Aides who have exchanged emails with Kushner on his private account since President Donald Trump took office in January include former chief of staff Reince Priebus, former chief strategist Steve Bannon, National Economic Council director Gary Cohn, and spokesman Josh Raffel, according to emails described to or shown to POLITICO. In some cases, those White House officials have emailed Kushner’s account first, said people familiar with the messages. At times, Bannon and Priebus have also used private email accounts to correspond with Kushner and others.

  Oh.

  

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