President Obama wants a public option, though it’s a little late in the game for that, and he might have to settle for egging Joe Lieberman’s house after he’s out of office. Countless Washingtonians wiled away their work hours hunting defenseless creatures, behavior heretofore only witnessed during GOP weekend fundraising retreats. And anti-abortion activists will fly a giant fetus banner over the Republican National Convention, a development that could really kill the mood for countless attendees on their same-sex Casual Counter hookups. This is HUFFPOST HILL for Monday, July 11th, 2016:
OBAMA OPENS HATCH ON TROJAN HORSE ‘AFFORDABLE CARE ACT’ - And of course government-run healthcare was waiting to get out. Jeffrey Young: “President Barack Obama has revived his endorsement of a government-run ‘public option’ health insurance program that would compete with private plans on the Affordable Care Act’s exchange marketplaces. The public option was the brass ring progressives couldn’t quite snatch when Democrats in Congress passed the landmark health care law six years ago. Now, after implementing the law and extending health coverage to 20 million people, Obama believes a public option is needed to drive down insurance costs and promote greater choice, he writes in an article published by the Journal of the American Medical Association Monday. Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton reaffirmed her support for the policy Saturday.” [HuffPost]
REPUBLICAN PLATFORM MEETING EVERYTHING YOU’D THINK IT’D BE - They also voted to teach the Bible in public schools. Igor Bobic: GOP officials voted to reaffirm the party’s opposition to gay adoption, same-sex marriage, abortion and transgender individuals using public restrooms ― issues that generally have seen great progress in recent years...Delegates added to the pile of hot-button topics by unanimously adopting an amendment that called pornography ‘a public health crisis’ and “public menace” that is destroying lives. The measure went further than the 2012 GOP platform, which mainly focused on problems with child pornography.” [HuffPost]
TRUMP ANOINTS SELF ‘LAW AND ORDER CANDIDATE,’ ALSO FAVORS ‘COMPASSION’ - Christina Wilkie: “Donald Trump declared himself the “law and order candidate” at a campaign event Monday in Virginia Beach, Virginia. ‘We must maintain law and order at the highest level, or we will cease to have a country, 100 percent,’ the presumptive Republican presidential nominee told the invite-only crowd. ‘Or we will cease to have a country.’ Monday’s event was originally billed as a speech on veterans affairs, but it was given a new focus on law enforcement and crime following the shooting deaths last week of five Dallas police officers. The gunman said he was angry about the police killings of black men ― such as Alton Sterling, who was shot last week in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Philando Castile, who died in suburban St. Paul, Minnesota. ‘Not only am I the law and order candidate, but I’m also the candidate of compassion, believe it,’ Trump said, ‘The candidate of compassion. But you can’t have true compassion without providing safety for the citizens of our country.’ [HuffPost]
Retired sports coaches and fetus banners: “Anti-abortion activists are concerned that the GOP is not committed enough to defunding the family planning provider, so they are flying a giant photo of an aborted fetus over downtown Cleveland each day leading up to and during the Republican National Convention to get the party’s attention. The 50-foot-by-100-foot aerial banner, sponsored by the anti-abortion group Created Equal, will be towed by a plane over downtown Cleveland for three hours each day from July 13 to 21.” [HuffPost’s Laura Bassett]
Haircuts: Amanda Terkel, Sam Stein, Dana Liebelson, Mike Allen (h/t speculation).
BILL CLINTON UNSEEMLY - Evan Halper: “When former presidents and other dignitaries traveled to California to wax nostalgic on the speaking circuit, they may have been demanding, but none insisted on being flown from San Francisco by private jet to a venue just 70 miles down the freeway. That was before Bill Clinton came along…. There is the nearly $1,400 bill for a day’s worth of phone calls from San Francisco’s Fairmont Hotel and the $700 dinner for two.” [LATimes]
DELANEY DOWNER - Philadelphia announced Friday that it will conduct new tests for lead in the city’s water, apparently in response to activists’ cries that the city wasn’t doing enough to assure residents their taps are safe. The city’s water department said it will collect samples this summer from at least 50 homes classified as having the highest water lead risks. Previously, the city had not planned to do any lead testing this year. Like many big water systems with a history of meeting federal standards, Philadelphia only has to look for lead every three years. Though the department said it’s making the changes because it received updated guidance from the state, the announcement seems designed to ease activist pressure. This summer, for instance, a small band of Philadelphians calling themselves the Philly Unleaded Project plan to independently verify the city’s assurances. “It came to our attention because of all the stuff that was happening in Flint,” Philly Unleaded’s Tony Spagnoli told HuffPost. “That was a really big wake-up call.” [HuffPost]
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EVAN BAYH HAS MONEY NOW, WANTS TO BE IMPORTANT AGAIN - Evan Bayh is running for his old seat in Indiana despite having lost Ezra Klein. Ryan Grim and Paul Blumenthal: “Evan Bayh went out the first time with a widely read column in The New York Times condemning the Senate’s dysfunction and promising he’d be returning to Indiana to teach. ‘I want to be engaged in an honorable line of work,’ he said in an interview at the time. He quickly thought better of it, and instead signed on with McGuireWoods, where he joined the lobbying campaign to repeal the medical device tax, which plays a role in financing the Affordable Care Act. A deficit scold while in the Senate, Bayh as a lobbyist was involved in two marquee efforts to jack up the deficit. (Bayh did not officially register as a lobbyist, as many at his high level decline to do.)...Given Bayh’s family legacy and his own popularity, he has a reasonable shot at retaking the seat now, which would mean Democrats would control both Senate seats from Indiana despite the state typically trending Republican.” [HuffPost]
REPUBLICAN FLIP FLOPS ON JUDICIAL VACANCIES - Jen Bendery: “Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) won’t help to advance President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee. He’s been pretty blunt about wanting Donald Trump to be the next president, and about letting him appoint someone more conservative to the court. ‘Trust me. We will not allow the Supreme Court to flip,’ Johnson said in March. But before the Supreme Court seat opened up this year, the senator considered filling federal vacancies to be more urgent. In June 2015, when the Senate was debating the National Defense Authorization Act, Johnson offered an amendment underscoring that Obama should have to fill federal posts within 210 days of a vacancy opening up.” [HuffPost]
TRUMP REALLY, REALLY INTO 20TH CENTURY DICTATORS - Michael McAuliff: “Donald Trump got panned recently for praising Saddam Hussein for being good at killing terrorists, but he’s been even more effusive about the slain Iraqi strongman in the past, as well as the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. In an April speech in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, shortly before the primary there, Trump said not only were the pair of tyrants great at killing people, but they also had something else going for them: They were not politically correct. ‘You know, Saddam Hussein was a bad guy, right? If you look at Gaddafi, he was a bad guy,’ Trump told the crowd at the Pennsylvania Farm Show and Expo Center. ‘They had one thing in common, and one thing that they were really, really good at. Number one, they were not politically correct. Do we all agree?’ Trump said, before getting back to the killing. ‘They were great at killing terrorists. They were great.’” [HuffPost]
REPUBLICANS WANT MORE MONEY FOR AFGHANISTAN TROOPS - Karoun Demirjian: “Republican leaders in Congress are demanding President Obama seek additional funding to pay for new troops heading to Iraq and those staying in Afghanistan, potentially setting up a bitter political fight just as lawmakers are negotiating a final defense policy bill. The chairmen of the House and Senate Armed Services committees on Monday both offered qualified support for the Obama administration’s plan to send 560 more troops to Iraq as part of preparations to seize the city of Mosul from the Islamic State. They warned, however, that the president could not expect to conduct such operations without asking Congress to cut a new check...But budgeting more for defense alone, even to support an expanding campaign against the Islamic State and other extremist groups, is a recipe for discord in Congress. Democrats insist military spending cannot increase without boosting funding for domestic programs by an equal amount. Republicans defense hawks contend the current budget does not provide enough spending to keep the military strong.” [WaPo]
So it’s come to this: @RepJudyChu: Anyone else on #PokemonGO? I’ve found a #Squirtle & a #Pikachu in DC, but I’m still looking for a Republican willing to vote on #NoFlyNoBuy
OPEN CARRY LAWS COMPLICATING MASS SHOOTINGS - Nick Wing: “In the wake of a mass shooting that killed five Dallas police officers last week, the city’s mayor and top law enforcement officer are criticizing the state’s permissive gun laws for contributing to the chaos surrounding the incident...Gun activists around the state have made a habit of toting their weapons in public, and the demonstration held in downtown Dallas on Thursday was no exception. Authorities estimate that between 20 and 30 of the protesters marched with AR-15s and other military-style rifles slung behind their backs. But what may have been intended as an innocuous assertion of their rights in Texas became much more problematic when a gunman opened fire on police officers, leaving law enforcement scrambling to figure out how to respond. “When you have gunfire going on, you usually go with the person that’s got a gun,” Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings (D) said Sunday in an interview with “Face the Nation” on CBS. “And so our police grabbed some of those individuals, took them to police headquarters, and worked it out and figured out they were not the shooters.” [HuffPost]
IT’S ALMOST LIKE CORRINE BROWN DOESN’T THINK THINGS THROUGH - The real tragedy of Brown’s situation was that she probably could have accomplished most of her misdeeds legally ― stay frosty with your leadership PACs, people. “Brown, 69, of Jacksonville, and her chief of staff, Elias “Ronnie” Simmons, 50, were charged last week with participating in a conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, multiple counts of mail and wire fraud, concealing material facts on required financial disclosure forms, theft of government property, obstruction of the due administration of internal revenue laws and filing false tax returns, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office...Brown likened her situation to the recent police shooting deaths of two black men in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and St. Paul, Minnesota, and the deaths of five Dallas police officers during a protest march Thursday night. ‘Last week was very rough,’ Brown wrote. ‘Two black men were needlessly gunned down by police; five Dallas police officers were slain by a demented man; and on Friday I had to appear in federal court.’ Calling the indictment ‘very scary,’ Brown said her ‘spirit remains unbroken.’” [WFTV]
POLITICO NAMES NEW EDITOR - And does so with bizarrely intense language. Michael Calderone: “Politico has named Carrie Budoff Brown the publication’s next editor, succeeding Susan Glasser, who had previously announced plans to move to Israel after the 2016 election. John Harris, who co-founded Politico in 2007 and currently serves as publisher and editor-in-chief, described Budoff Brown in a staff memo as having the politics and policy outlet ‘in her blood, and her passion and protectiveness is like that of a parent for a child.’ Budoff Brown is one of Politico’s longest-serving employees, having joined the newsroom on the day it launched in January 2007. She’s lived through Politico’s transformation from scrappy website and Hill-centric newspaper to a politics and policy powerhouse boasting over 250 staffers in Washington, along with outposts in New York and Europe.” [HuffPost]
Also Playbook re-launched this morning with Jake Sherman, Anna Palmer and Daniel Lippman playing the role of Mikey.
BECAUSE YOU’VE READ THIS FAR - Here’s a dog playing the piano.
SHOOTING ROCKS DNC - Peter Hermann: “The man who was fatally shot early Sunday in Northwest Washington’s Bloomingdale neighborhood was killed about a block from his home and had worked for the Democratic National Committee on Capitol Hill. Seth Conrad Rich, 27, was shot several times, according to D.C. police, and struck at least once in the back. The attack occurred about 4:20 a.m. on a quiet residential street across from a closed convenience store at Flagler Place and W Street NW. Rich died at an area hospital at 5:57 a.m...Rich had worked for the past two years as a voter expansion data director for the Democratic National Committee. The DNC chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, said in a statement that “our hearts are broken with the loss of one our DNC family members.’” [WaPo]
COMFORT FOOD
- David Cameron hummed a little tune into a hot mic after resigning the prime ministership.
- Girl in Barbie car spoofing Matthew McConaughey’s Lincoln ads.
- Adorable Portuguese fan comforts French fan after yesterday’s Eurocup.
TWITTERAMA
@zachdcarter: The media sure is Bayh curious today.
@SimonMaloy: Evan Bayh has taken stock of the Democratic electorate and determined that conditions are ripe for a centrist hedge fund lobbyist
@ZekeJMiller: Prayer at RNC Platform Committee: “We know that it only you who can truly make America Great Again”
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