Outside the Beltway

Seven years of rhetoric on health care reform ended early this morning with a narrow vote on a bill that even Republicans didn’t really support.

With the defection of two more Senators, the latest effort to ‘repeal and replace’ the Affordable Care Act has gone down in flames.

Senate Republicans have introduced their latest version of a plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.

Donald Trump’s first Cabinet Meeting looked like something out of a Maoist propaganda video.

The latest CBO score for the American Health Care Act is bad news for Republicans.

There seems to be no question that the decision to fire James Comey was motivated largely by the President’s frustrations over the fact that his campaign is under investigation.

With a government shutdown looming at the end of the week, the Administration has appeared to back away from a demand that a government funding bill include money allocated for the President’s promised border wall.

Faced with the fact that it has little to show for its first 100 days in office, the Trump Administration is pressuring Congress to come up with a new health care reform bill before the end of next week.

As expected, Senate Republicans invoked the so-called ‘nuclear option’ to move the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch forward to a final vote on Friday.

The failure of the AHCA shows that Donald Trump doesn’t know the slightest thing about leadership or how to be President.

Let the games begin.

Day One of the questioning of Judge Neil Gorsuch went very well, and it suggests that his path to confirmation is basically clear of serious obstacles.

Judge Neil Gorsuch’s confirmation hearings begin Monday morning, but it’s Senate Democrats who are in the hot seat.

Senate Democrats are divided on how to approach the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, making it likely that he’ll be confirmed.

The Congressional Budget Office delivered some bad news yesterday to House Republicans on their replacement for Obamacare.

President Trump has issued a revised ban on travel from six predominantly Muslim nations.

A new head for the DNC at a time when the Democratic Party finds itself reeling and eager to take on Donald Trump.

Judge Gorsuch isn’t much of a fan of Donald Trump’s comments about the judiciary.

There were fireworks on the floor of the Senate last night, but it was really just politics as usual.

With a relatively smooth announcement, Donald Trump has named a solid and qualified conservative who will likely be confirmed to the nation’s highest court.

The Acting Attorney General was fired last night after announcing that she would refuse to defend President Trump’s Executive Order on immigration. As a result she was fired. Contrary to some arguments, this was not improper.

President Trump hinted today that he’s likely to name his Supreme Court choice next week, and the list to appears have narrowed to three men.

The new leader of the Senate’s Democrats says he regrets supporting the filibuster reforms his party passed in 2013.

Secretary of State John Kerry’s speech on Middle East peace was largely correct, but his words are pointless given the fact that neither Israel nor the Palestinians seem serious about peacefully resolving their differences.

The head of the biggest energy company in the world is reportedly Donald Trump’s pick for Secretary of State.

As things stand, Democrats will have a hard time winning back control in the Senate in 2018.

To the surprise of nobody who paid attention, Nancy Pelosi won re-election as leader of the House Democrats.

In what seems like a replay of the primary battle between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, some top Democratic Party leadership positions may be in jeopardy.

With the race for the Democratic nomination over, President Obama is ready to hit the campaign trail for Hillary Clinton.

President Obama has selected his nominee to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court, now the question is whether the Senate will act.

In 1992, Joe Biden said that no action should be taken on any potential Supreme Court nominations until after that year’s Presidential election. Sound familiar?

The Fifth Republican Debate, and the last of 2015, was marked by expected clashes between the candidates, and one that never happened.

With little actual debate and despite Paul Ryan’s promise of a return to ‘regular order,’ the House has passed a hastily drafted bill in response to the largely fear-based response to Syrian refugees in the wake of the Paris attacks.

Not surprisingly, a new poll shows that most Americans are at the very least skeptical about the Administration’s plans regarding Syrian refugees.

Senate Democrats successfully blocked a final vote on the Iran Nuclear Deal, meaning that Congressional debate on the matter is effectively over.

Congress is set to debate the Iran nuclear deal next month, but as far as Europe is concerned the debate is already over.

Another poll shows that a majority of Americans oppose the Iranian nuclear deal, but the effort to defeat it in Congress is still likely to fail.

The Iran nuclear deal will probably survive it’s test in Congress in the end, but Chuck Schumer just made the Administration’s job a little more difficult.

Recent polling has shown the American public to be highly skeptical, at beast, of the Iran Nuclear Deal. That may not be enough to kill it in Congress, though.

In the end, the odds that Congress can actually stop the new deal regarding Iran’s nuclear program are pretty low.

In the wake of the latest Supreme Court decision, the Affordable Care Act seems to have become even more firmly established than it was before last week, and the prospect of repeal has become even less likely.

Democrats like New York Senator Chuck Schumer could end up being the ones that scuttle the Iranian nuclear deal.

After nearly 20 years in office, Harry Reid announced early today that he would not seek reelection in 2016.

Some Congressional Democrats are considering skipping a speech by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to a Joint Session Of Congress.

It might not be pretty.

Politics aside, the challenges to the PPACA’s birth control mandate raise important legal issues.

Some Members of Congress are talking about pushing a bill imposing new sanction on Iran despite the deal reached in Geneva yesterday.