Gun control, independence votes wreak havoc, someone else resigns from the White House, and more in this week’s politics roundup.
Tom Price resigns
Tom Price, the former Health and Human Services Secretary, has resigned. Why did he leave his post as one of the highest political authorities on health in the United States? For one, he apparently enjoyed airplanes a little too much. Price racked up around $400,000 in chartered flights during his tenure. His offer to partially reimburse the government for these costs did little to appease his boss and save his job.
He was also plagued by ethics concerns and his inability to help produce a successful ACA repeal. Price, a leading critic of the ACA, could not use his influence to help move one of three different ACA repeal bills through Congress. He was also accused of making large cuts to Medicaid and even sabotaging Obamacare enrollments during his brief tenure.
Price’s resignation is the latest in a series of White House departures that, while they are perhaps not as dramatic as some believe, are still more frequent than in previous administrations.
Proposed tax plan cuts benefit a very particular segment of Americans
Being president is by no means an easy task. You must balance the needs of many different communities and agencies throughout the country. It’s easy to make a misstep that, however slight it may seem at the time, could have serious consequences for years to come.
Or, you know, you could propose tax cuts that are, in your words, “rocket fuel” for the U.S. economy. Said “rocket fuel” might be available only to a privileged few and may, in some cases, cause damage to vulnerable communities of Americans. Still, you got to say “rocket fuel” in a speech and some people cheered. That’s cool. Oh, and so are those same cuts that would conveniently save you up to $1 billion in taxes.
CHIP program faces lack of funding
The Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) is facing some dire financial straits. Funding for the program lapsed on Sept. 30. Just before that date, Congress was preoccupied with the latest in a series of failed ACA repeal bills. So, it’s perhaps understandable that they allowed the funding to lapse. However, that’s cold comfort for the approximately 9 million children and 370,000 pregnant people covered by CHIP.
CHIP is designed to fill in the gap for people who make too much to qualify for Medicaid, but who still need assistance meeting their family’s health care costs. It’s typically paid for through some state funding, but federal money makes up a far bigger chunk of the backing.
Though Congress looks like it will finally make a move, some states are still in an awkward position. Some, like California and Arizona, only have enough money to last until the end of the year. Minnesota, meanwhile, has already spent its CHIP money. Though the state will receive $3.6 million from other funds, that only covers its CHIP program through October. And while most kids would continue to get coverage under Medicaid, those who are pregnant would not necessarily be so lucky.
Cuban diplomats kicked out of Washington
That détente between Cuba and the United States was nice enough while it lasted. Then, U.S. workers at the American embassy in Havana were apparently targeted by sonic attacks that forced them and other diplomats to leave the country. Most recently, the president has expelled 15 Cuban diplomats from the United States.
The move was apparently meant to put the Cuban embassy here on the same sort of “emergency status” faced by the U.S. embassy in Havana after its own diplomats were forced to leave. Cuba has called the move “hasty, inappropriate and unthinking”. This is the latest in a series of moves that are apparently meant to walk back to the historically tense relationship between the U.S. and Cuba.
Independence votes cause major protests
Independence voting is sometimes fairly staid, as in the case of Scotland’s 2014 independence referendum. From the American perspective, we got a fun John Oliver segment out of that and not much else in the way of political drama.
Not so for other independence movements, however. In Spain, the autonomous region of Catalonia voted for independence in a not-so-sanctioned referendum. The central government in Madrid declared the vote unconstitutional and sent in riot police. Catalans themselves packed the streets in an attempt to vote anyway. Clashes between the two sides led to violence and a disrupted and currently unclear voting process. This has proven to be a hard test for the country’s young democracy, which only emerged after the end of the Franco dictatorship in the 1970s.
Kurdish people in Iraq, meanwhile, must contend with independence woes of their own. On Monday, Kurds voted in favor of independence. The Iraqi government, however, had different plans. After all, the Kurdish region gets nearly $8 billion annually from oil revenue, making the region hard to let go. The Iraqi government moved to close borders and requested that Turkey close a major oil pipeline leading to and from the region.
Both Turkey and Iran have expressed their opposition to the nascent Kurdish state. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said that “we will not accept changing borders in the region” at a news conference with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “Our determination in this regard is clear,” said Erdogan, “… as far as we are concerned, this referendum is illegitimate”.
Las Vegas prompts more debate on gun control
By now, you’ve surely heard of the tragedy in Las Vegas, wherein a shooter killed 58 people and injured hundreds more at a country music festival. It’s being called one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history.
The killer used a large stockpile of guns. Many had significant and quasi-legal modifications to make them even more deadly. The Las Vegas shootings have therefore led back to an ongoing debate about gun control in the United States.
Just how much a catastrophe of this scope will affect things remains to be seen. Massacres such as those at Columbine High School and Sandy Hook Elementary garnered horrified reactions and plenty of “thoughts and prayers”, but little legislative change. Funny, that, or at least in a dark, non-humorous way, when you consider how much money your representative may have received from the National Rifle Association.
Mass shootings have happened elsewhere, but it seems as if America in particular is plagued by recurrences of this violence. After a 1996 massacre in Tasmania, Australia passed substantial gun-control laws that have apparently prevented another gun-related tragedy of such scope. Around the same time, Scotland passed laws in response to its own mass shooting, with similar positive effects.
As James Fallows writes in The Atlantic, “No other society allows the massacres to keep happening”.
And, finally, your palate cleanser
At least somewhere, there are people who do good things and are recognized for it. You may see it in your community or you might even glimpse it on the international stage. Take, for example, the accomplishments of the scientists awarded the Nobel Prizes this week.
Rainer Weiss (MIT), along with Kip Thorne and Barry Barish (both of Caltech) were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for their part in the observation of gravitational waves. In February 2016, a group of scientists announced the observation of these waves. Gravitational waves predicted (but not observed) by Albert Einstein over 100 years ago. Weiss, Throne and Barish won thanks to their leadership in LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory. LIGO observed and recorded gravitational waves. The LIGO Scientific Collaboration analyzed the data.
The 2017 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro (Never Let Me Go, The Remains of the Day) won the literature prize.
Next: Trump-free Friday politics roundup: Sept. 29
The chemistry prize was awarded to Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank, and Richard Henderson for their work in improving microscopy techniques when imaging biomolecules. Biochemistry also played a role in the medicine prize, where Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W. Young won for their work studying the role of molecular mechanisms controlling circadian rhythm.