It’s D-Day For TrumpCare – Here’s The Latest

To vote, or not to vote, that is the only question on the minds of Trump’s White House and House Republicans this morning.  If everything proceeds as planned, the Obamacare vote is currently scheduled for 7pm tonight.  That said, the further we press into today without confirmation that Republicans have narrowed the opposition votes from their own party down to 22 or less (as of last night the estimate was 25-30) the more unlikely the vote is to proceed. 

As we pointed out yesterday, the TrumpCare vote is the first high-stakes political battle of Trump’s Presidency and pits Trump against the more conservative elements of the Republican Party.  For Trump, failure to pass healthcare reform would be a major blow as it was a signature component of his campaign and could signal that he will face an uphill battle against the Freedom Caucus to implement other policy initiatives.  For conservatives, they must choose between supporting their party and a bill that has been dubbed “Obamacare-lite” at the risk of alienating powerful conservative funders, like the Koch Brothers and their various Super PACs, which got them elected in the first place. 

Trump has been billed by some lawmakers as “the closer” to seal the deal on the replacement healthcare plan in a vote but, as of this morning, less than 12 hours from the scheduled vote, passage still looks questionable, at best. 

As of last night, Trump signaled he was willing to meet some of the conservatives’ demands to knock out Obamacare’s insurance regulations — even though there’s no guarantee those changes would comply with the budget rules, and they could just get stripped out in the Senate.  Here are some of the changes currently being contemplated/drafted, per Axios:

  • Top Republicans may be willing to strip out Obamacare’s “essential health benefit” requirements to win the votes of the Freedom Caucus.
  • These are the 10 categories of benefits that have to be covered under the law: outpatient care, emergency services, hospitalization, maternity care, mental health, prescription drugs, rehab, laboratory services, preventive care, and pediatric services.
  • Still up in the air is whether the GOP will also be willing to strip out Obamacare’s other insurance regulations — like requiring insurers to cover pre-existing conditions and preventing them from charging sick people more than others.
  • The Freedom Caucus wants them out because they think those are the reasons individual health insurance became so expensive under Obamacare — but the law’s supporters say those health plans used to be skimpy and will go back to being skimpy if the benefits aren’t required.
  • The change of plans happened after the White House offered to try to get those regulations stripped out in the Senate, if the conservatives would vote for the House bill as is. The conservatives rejected that offer because they don’t trust the Senate.
  • The risk, as Democratic aides warned, is that the Senate could just strip out all the insurance changes.

Trump also announced he’ll be hosting the Freedom Caucus at the White House this morning at 11:30, presumably as a last ditch effort to swing votes after changes to the legislation were drafted overnight.

Trump Ryan

 

As a reminder, here is a recap of some of the key components of the TrumpCare bill per Stone McCarthy Research:

The AHCA would eliminate the penalties for individuals who don’t obtain health insurance and large employers who don’t provide adequate coverage. The legislation would repeal subsidies for individuals receive for the purchase of health insurance and in their place create age-based tax credits.

 

The AHCA would allow insurers to charge higher premiums for older individuals, ease restrictions on what share of benefits insurance plans must cover and require insurers to apply a 30 percent surcharge on premiums for individuals who allow their coverage to lapse.

 

The legislation calls for cuts in Medicaid spending for those made eligible for the program by the ACA. Future growth in spending would also be curtailed through per capita limits on spending or through optional block grants made available to states. States could also impose work requirements on beneficiaries.

 

The AHCA would repeal many of the ACA’s taxes, including the surtax on high-income taxpayers’ net investment income, the increase in the Medicare payroll tax rate for high-income taxpayers and the annual fee on health insurance providers. The bill would delay the implementation of the tax on high-cost plans — the so-called Cadillac tax — until 2026.

If TrumpCare passes the House, the Senate can pass it with a simple majority, meaning Republicans can lose no more than two votes. That said, more than two Republican senators have publicly opposed the AHCA in its current form. The legislation could also be challenged by Democrats for violating reconciliation’s requirement that all provisions have a direct impact on the budget

As Goldman’s Alec Phillips points out, the financial markets will be looking to today’s vote, or lack their of, as an indication of Trump’s ability to execute other key components of his agenda like tax reform and border policies.

Financial markets are focused on the prospects for passage of the House Republican proposal to “repeal and replace” Obamacare because the vote is seen as a referendum on the ability of Congress to enact its broader policy agenda. While this view has some merit, we would note three important nuances.

 

First, the Senate is likely to pose at least as much of a challenge as the House, and reconciling the likely differences between the two chambers will be hard. This week’s vote is the start of a process that could last several more weeks, and may not be the hardest part of the process.

 

Second, passage of the health bill is not what is important for tax reform. Instead, the most important issue for financial markets is for Congress to be finished with this bill one way or another so that it can move forward with tax reform, which is likely to have a greater effect on corporate earnings and the real economy. While the prospects for the health bill are murky, we would be surprised if Congress has not begun debating tax reform by mid-year, even if it means putting the health bill aside to return to it later.

 

Third, while there are lessons for tax reform in the current health debate, there are also differences. The trouble that congressional Republicans face in achieving majority support for the health bill is a reminder of how difficult it might be to reach near-unanimous Republican support for major tax reforms, like border adjustment. However, there is likely to be much broader support for tax cuts than there is for the health legislation. Even if the health bill fails, we would continue to believe the odds of tax legislation passing by early 2018 are high.

Meanwhile, today is a fitting day for the TrumpCare vote as it marks the 7th anniversary of Obamacare becoming the law of the land.

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Initial Jobless Claims Surge Most In 10 Months

This trend does not appear to be your friend. Initial Jobless Claims are unchanged since February 2016 after today’s 18k spike to 258k. The last 3 weeks have seen a 15% surge in claims – the biggest spike since May 2016 (and before that since Dec 2013).

 

One wonders how this is possible in an economy that is set for rate-hikes-a-palooza…

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ISIS Claims London Attacker Was “Soldier Of The Islamic State”

It has become a familiar pattern: days, if not hours, after a terrorist attack takes place somewhere in the world, the Islamic State promptly takes responsibility for said attack, and the London car attack was no different, because moments ago the Islamic State, through its Aaamaq news agency, claimed responsibility for the attack that killed 4, and said that the London attacker was a “soldier of the Islamic State” and adds that the “attacker responded to call to attack countries of the anti-ISIS coalition.”

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Sarah Lawrence College Would Rather People Use Gender Neutral Language Than Follow Grammar Rules

ConfusedA set of guidelines published by Sarah Lawrence College requires staff—and encourages students—to stop using gender-specific pronouns, even when they represent the most obvious and grammatically correct way of expressing an idea.

“In an effort to avoid gendered language in this document, Sarah Lawrence College has chosen to make exception to select grammatical rules (i.e. pronoun agreement),” the guidelines state.

Administrators actually encourage people to copy and paste the above disclaimer into any document where they have violated the rules of the English language in order to comply with college guidance:

“When absolutely unavoidable, use plural non-gendered pronouns (they, them, their) to replace singular gendered pronouns (he, she, him, her). While this is grammatically incorrect, we can acknowledge the exception in the note recommended above.”

Since pronouns are problematic, the guidelines recommend avoiding their use entirely. Sarah Lawrence College proposes philosophical modifications to the English language that would obsolete pronouns, like this: “Avoid conditional sentences introduced by if or when, which often require the use of pronouns.”

If an administrator would like to eliminate ambiguity because singular pronouns offend some people, they should prepare themselves for confusion.

The guidelines also prohibit gendered language—mankind, manpower, middleman, chairman, etc.—even though these words are commonly understood to refer to women as well as men. Fatherhood, motherhood, and brotherhood are verboten as well.

And then there are the suggestions relating to sex and orientation:

Be sensitive about language referring to sexual orientation (not sexual preference).

  • Avoid heterosexual references, and avoid using the word homosexual.

  • Use the more inclusive LGBTQ community as appropriate.

  • When necessary, use lesbian, gay man, bisexual, transgender, queer.

  • Use transgender, not transgendered.

  • Do not use adjectives such as acknowledged, admitted, or avowed.

  • Do not use the term sex to mean gender, or the term opposite sex, which polarizes gender.

Emphasis mine. I surmise that administrators do not wish to see the phrase “avowed homosexual,” which is quite ugly. But there are situations where these adjectives are warranted. For example: The college administrator, an avowed enemy of problematic pronouns, commenced his (gasp!) war on the English language.

Campus Reform asked Sarah Lawrence for additional clarification, but received no response.

The college is well-within its rights to require administrators to tie their tongues in knots. But it’s difficult to abolish commonly use phrases and constructions, especially when they are more elegant or efficient than the clunky remedies suggested by the problem-izers. (Problemators? Problematons? I’m open to suggestions.)

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Disturbing Video Footage Shows Moment Of Deadly London Attack

A video has emerged of Westminster Bridge on Wednesday, March 22 showing the moment a car was driven into pedestrians earlier in the day in the worst attack in London since 2005.

Five people were killed and about 40 injured after a car plowed into pedestrians and a suspected Islamist-inspired attacker stabbed a policeman close to Britain’s parliament. The dead, in what police called a “marauding terrorist attack,” included the assailant and the policeman he stabbed.

The other three victims were among those hit by the car as it sped across Westminster Bridge before crashing into railings just outside parliament. It was the deadliest attack in London since four British Islamists killed 52 commuters and themselves in suicide bombings on the city’s transport system in July 2005, in London’s worst peacetime attack.

Viewer discretion advised

Source: Reuters

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Banks Scramble For Free ECB Money: €233.5 BIllion Allotted To 464 Banks In Final TLTRO Operation

As previewed last night ahead of today’s fourth and final ECB TLTRO-II operation which took place earlier this morning, a big take up was expected with market consensus expecting €115bn, and some forecasts as high as €300BN. The final number came almost in the middle, with the ECB reporting it had allotted €233.5 billion among 474 bidders, more than double the amount expected.

Following the news, European stocks climbed, led by mining and bank shares, as lenders borrowed more than double what was forecast under the European Central Bank’s TLTRO program.

The Stoxx Europe 600 Index advanced 0.3 percent to 375.21 as of 11:31 a.m. London time, set to end three days of losses. European miners extended their gains to 0.9 percent, following metals prices higher, and the banks sector rose 0.6 percent. Lenders were allotted 233.5 billion euros in final round of Targeted Longer-Term Refinancing Operations, the ECB said.

As we further noted last night, from a rates perspective, what matters is whether these funds will trigger flows into the bond or swap markets as banks set up carry trades. As ABN AMRO noted, carry trades have certainly looked attractive and currently there is a possible spread of around 80bp between the rate on the TLTRO and similar maturity peripheral bonds. However, there is little evidence that banks have used TLTRO-II funds for carry trades over the last few months.

While it remains to be seen if this latest TLTRO will spur further risk on trades, the initial reaction to the far greater than expected take up favorable, sending both risk assets, US equity futures and European bond markets higher.

The final TLTRO result can be summarized as follows:

The ECB announced €233 bn of take-up (by 474 banks) in the fourth and final TLTRO-2 auction. TLTRO-2 is a four-year facility, provided on a full allotment and fixed rate (at 0%) basis. The rate can fall to -0.4%, assuming loan growth targets are met. Three points:

  1. The take-up was more than double what Wall Street expected (€115 bn expectation vs. €233 bn actual). It is also almost 4x higher vs. the previous high of €62 bn (December 2016 auction).
  2. Today’s take-up brings total utilisation of the TLTRO-2 facility to €739 bn gross and €329 bn net of TLTRO-1 repayments.
  3. A stronger take-up was expected, owing to multiple factors (pricing, accounting treatment, loan growth and this being the last auction). €233 bn of incremental liquidity in the system is positive from a sector-resilience perspective.

That said, as Goldman writes in response to the TLTRO announcement, the bank “does not see today’s take-up as having scope to meaningfully change market perception of European bank share prices.”

Finally, for those wondering why the dramatic pick up, as Goldman further writes, attractiveness of the facility had improved for four main reasons:

  1. Pricing: fixed-rate pricing is an attractive structure in a world with an upward rate bias.
  2. Accounting treatment: multiple banks started to accrue a negative rate on the facility since inception, given the high probability of beating the benchmark. This improved the attractiveness of the facility.
  3. Loan benchmarks are achievable, as loan growth has shown timid signs of improvement, increasing the probability of surpassing the ECB’s benchmark.
  4. Last auction: an additional incentive was that there is no “next time”.

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BUSTED! Twitter Caught Manipulating Tweets Of Former BlackRock Fund Manager Critical Of CIA and NSA

The war over the free flow of information has escalated…

Ed Dowd (@DowdEdward), former manager of BlackRock’s $15 billion Capital Appreciation Fund has a relatively small but influential Twitter following, ranging from Financial industry all-stars to prominent media personalities. Since leaving BlackRock, Dowd has shifted gears – moving to Hawaii to launch his own equity fund from the luxury of his volcano-adjacent compound, while helping his wife develop a rapidly growing business of her own. He’s also quite the subversive Twitter user – known for spotlighting MSM hypocrisy, roasting progressive politicians, and doling out sharp-witted rebukes of Ivory Tower overlords.

In early February, Dowd began noticing some odd behavior occurring with his Twitter account; throughout the day he would gain followers as he tweeted, while late at night followers were disappearing! He began keeping track, and though it wasn’t happening every night, it penciled out to around half a percent of his followers each time it happened, effectively capping his audience. Ed had questions; why was it almost always the same number of people? Who un-follows someone in the middle of the night? Considering most of Dowd’s followers are in North America, the un-followers were likely asleep when it was happening. The logical conclusion was that Twitter had been actively pruning Ed’s audience to limit his growth on the platform – but keep reading, it gets better.

This isn’t the first time Twitter has throttled, censored, or banned conservatives who speak their mind. Documentarian, author, and noted Trump supporter Mike Cernovich (@cernovich) tweeted about his own fan base evaporating around the same time as Dowd began experiencing the un-follows:

Others have noted the same phenomenon:

In June of 2016, Twitter was accused of the same tactic against conservative pundit Milo Yiannopoulos (@Nero), shortly before he was was banned by the platform following a feud with SNL’s Leslie Jones in which Milo called her “Barely Literate.”

And now it’s Retweets too!

After Ed Dowd noticed Twitter capping his follower count, he started paying closer attention to his tweets. Monday morning, Dowd made a decidedly subversive tweet pointing out that the NSA and CIA are “wiretapping” the entire country via continuously archived data collection – a story which Wired magazine broke in 2006 and gained tremendous clarity through the acts of whistleblower Edward Snowden.

When Dowd checked his twitter feed hours after sending the tweet, he saw that it had accumulated 13 Retweets and 38 Likes. Given the subject matter, he decided to take a screenshot. Lo and behold, upon reloading the tweet five minutes later, Dowd discovered that 11 retweets had mysteriously vanished!

Either eleven people decided to un-retweet Dowd within five minutes of each other, or Twitter decided to censor a tweet critical of the government by limiting it’s visibility. Thousands, possibly even hundreds of thousands of people connected to the eleven un-retweeted people were no longer able to see Dowd’s tweet.

About three hours later the tweet was up to 44 likes, and the retweets had climbed from 2 back to 12. Time for another screenshot…

A little over an hour later, Dowd’s tweet had once again been manipulated – dropping from 12 retweets to 6. Now it’s at 7.

Outrageous!

While Twitter is a public company free to censor their own users, one wonders at what point the platform might be considered a public good, subject to the 1st amendment? After all, Social Media has become increasingly integral to human connectivity – not only serving to enhance casual communication, but also as an incredibly powerful tool which can reveal and disseminate truth on a massive scale.

For example, the sheer volume of the information made available in 2016 by Wikileaks was astounding. There was no table of contents – just raw emails. The symbiosis of investigative efforts between message boards like Reddit and 4chan would have just rattled around in their respective echo chambers were it not for Twitter and Facebook serving as lightning fast conduits for information to jump out of the “hive mind” and into the mainstream knowledgebase – “red pilling” any and all seeking the truth. In short, the free flow of information is why Donald Trump is President – while the technocratic left have been decimated by their own inventions. This is why the MSM is fighting tooth and nail to brand and censor anything outside of the mainstream narrative as “fake news,” alongside Social Media platforms which continue to implement methods limiting the free speech of those who don’t Obey. For now, however, they have lost control.

Until and unless something is done to allow the free flow of information to thrive on platforms like Twitter, all we can do is try and shed light on the problem until it’s reflected in their share price and user base. If nothing changes (or the problem gets worse) – we must either live with types of censorship Ed Dowd, Mike Cernovich, Milo, and countless others have been subject to – or leave for greener yet smaller pastures such as gab.ai in the hopes that as they will continue to remain tolerant of divergent opinions as they grow.

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Frontrunning: March 24

  • Republicans Struggle to Unite on Health Bill (WSJ)
  • Trump Still Negotiating in Bid to Save Healthcare Bill Before Vote (BBG)
  • Trump Tantrum looms on Wall Street if healthcare effort stalls (Reuters)
  • High stakes for Trump in vote on healthcare plan (Reuters)
  • GOP Lawmaker Sparks New Battle Over Trump Spy Claim (WSJ)
  • Lawmaker says U.S. foreign surveillance ‘unmasked’ Trump associates (Reuters)
  • Arrests mount after UK parliament attack (Reuters)
  • Trump Jr. Called a ‘Disgrace’ for Criticizing London Mayor  (BBG)
  • ‘What a mad world’ says minister who tried to save wounded officer in parliament (Reuters)
  • U.S. embassies ordered to identify population groups for tougher visa screening (Reuters)
  • SNB Spent 67.1 Billion Francs on Currency Interventions in 2016 (BBG)
  • 0% Financing Deals Bite Back Retailers as Fed Raises Rates (WSJ)
  • Where De Beers Hid Its $5 Billion Diamond Stash (BBG)
  • Democrats Seize on Disability Ruling in Opposing Gorsuch (WSJ)
  • Inside the Troubled Kushner Tower: Empty Offices and Mounting Debt by Caleb Melby  and David Kocieniewski March (BBG)
  • Inside Alabama’s Auto Jobs Boom: Cheap Wages, Little Training, Crushed Limbs (BBG)
  • Teva to Cut as Many as 6,000 Jobs: Israeli Newspaper (BBG)
  • Stanford’s New Freshman Class Is for Successful Retirees (BBG)
  •  China says U.S. should respect China’s air defense zone (Reuters)
  • Drugmakers Take to Airwaves to Counter Trump’s `Murder’ Charge (BBG)

 

Overnight Media Digest

WSJ

– Elliott Management Corp, one of the biggest activist investors in the U.S., is pushing Dutch paint and chemicals giant Akzo Nobel NV — which traces its roots in part to dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel—to enter into talks with PPG Industries Inc, a Pittsburgh-based rival. http://on.wsj.com/2muLioW

– AT&T Inc and Verizon Communications Inc joined a growing number of companies pulling much of their advertising from Google, expanding a controversy over the internet giant’s ad placements on objectionable content and deepening the financial impact on the company even after it announced measures to assuage concerns. http://on.wsj.com/2muPa9x

– Sears Holdings Corp’s raised doubts in a securities filing about its ability to keep operating after seven years of losses, sending the retailer’s share price tumbling and spooking some of its landlords. http://on.wsj.com/2muElUF

– Nike Inc said a sneaker homage to the cult classic film “Space Jam” was a smash hit, but the retro shoes were a rare highlight in otherwise troubling results for the world’s largest athletic company. http://on.wsj.com/2muLnce

– Nick Denton will leave bankruptcy having weathered a multimillion-dollar judgment from an invasion-of-privacy lawsuit that forced the chapter 11 sale of his Gawker media business. http://on.wsj.com/2muB9bW

– Starbucks Corp plans to hire more U.S. military veterans and their spouses after facing backlash over its promise to hire refugees. Presiding over his last annual shareholders meeting as chief executive, Howard Schultz said Starbucks will hire 15,000 veterans and their spouses by 2025, on top of more than 10,000 hired since a pledge he made four years ago. http://on.wsj.com/2muFDiB

– General Electric Co said it would double its planned cost cuts in industrial operations over two years and more closely tie top executives’ bonuses to profit in its core business. http://on.wsj.com/2muJEUe

– China Petroleum & Chemical Corp said it would acquire controlling stakes in Chevron Corp’s businesses in South Africa and Botswana, in a roughly $900 million deal that underscores the ambition of China’s struggling oil companies to earn more money abroad as profits shrink at home. http://on.wsj.com/2muLfJw

 

FT

One of Britain’s biggest water companies, Thames Water, was handed a record 20 million pound ($25 million) fine on Wednesday for pumping sewage into the River Thames.

Two of UK’s biggest teaching unions, the National Union of Teachers and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, will merge to form the National Education Union with more than 450,000 members.

Britain’s markets watchdog did not wrongfully identify a former JPMorgan executive in the “London Whale” scandal, the Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday in a landmark case that endorses a regulatory policy of speedy corporate settlements.

 

NYT

– Federal prosecutors are investigating North Korea’s possible role in the theft of $81 million from the central bank of Bangladesh in what security officials fear could be a new front in cyberwarfare. http://nyti.ms/2nfjR11

– AT&T and Johnson & Johnson, among the biggest advertisers in the United States, were among several companies to say on Wednesday that they would stop their ads from running on YouTube and other Google properties amid concern that Google is not doing enough to prevent brands from appearing next to offensive material, like hate speech. http://nyti.ms/2nEPwKs

– Akzo Nobel, the Dutch paint and chemicals company that makes Dulux paint, said on Wednesday that it had rejected a second takeover bid from PPG Industries, turning away a $24 billion deal that would have created an industry behemoth. http://nyti.ms/2mSvzeG

– President Trump’s second pick to lead the Labor Department told senators on Wednesday that he would not allow partisan political considerations or conservative ideologues to shape his department, pushing back against accusations by Democrats that he had looked away as subordinates at the Justice Department stacked his office with ideological allies during the George W. Bush administration. http://nyti.ms/2npSNwr

 

Canada

THE GLOBE AND MAIL

** Finance Minister Bill Morneau has put off tax hikes on wealthier Canadians, delivering a budget Wednesday that promises new money for job training, child care and social housing but offers no plan to improve the country’s debt outlook. https://tgam.ca/2neJZJk

** The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank has made Canada a prospective member, welcoming Ottawa into an institution that marks one of China’s leading efforts to take a place of global leadership. https://tgam.ca/2nqU6LQ

** Mounting troubles at U.S. parent Sears Holdings Corp raise questions about the fate of Sears Canada Inc , which has also suffered from declining financial results. https://tgam.ca/2n8nNij

NATIONAL POST

** Vancouver-based streaming company Silver Wheaton Corp is proposing a name change to Wheaton Precious Metals Corp as it seeks a brand that better reflects the increasingly large contribution gold is making to its bottom line. http://bit.ly/2nUIRsF

** Trican Well Service Ltd said it would issue new shares to buy fracking competitor Canyon Services Group Inc for C$637 million ($478 million) Wednesday even though both companies have oilfield service equipment sitting idle. http://bit.ly/2mTNwJF

** Restaurant chain Freshii Inc posted strong sales at locations open for more than a year in its first quarter as a public company as it pursues an aggressive global expansion plan. http://bit.ly/2o7T30q

 

Britain

The Times

Centrica Plc gave its chief executive a 37 per cent pay rise last year, to 4.2 million pounds ($5.24 million), despite freezing its payouts to investors. http://bit.ly/2n95IRq

Geely, the Chinese carmaker, has revealed plans to launch Britain’s first dedicated electric van manufacturing plant in the factory it built in Coventry to assemble battery-driven black cabs. http://bit.ly/2n8YU6n

The Guardian

Several of Heineken N.V.’s brands have been absent from Tesco Plc shelves for six weeks after annual talks over pricing ended in a stalemate. http://bit.ly/2ndKqUc

More than 1,000 jobs are at risk after shoe retailer Brantano collapsed into administration. http://bit.ly/2n93zVD

The Telegraph

First Utility <IPO-FRUT.L> has set its sights on the broadband sector in an attempt to widen its consumer appeal as retail competition heats up. http://bit.ly/2n97HFs

The owner of The Guardian and The Observer newspapers is to make compulsory redundancies for the first time in its history as management attempts to stem years of financial losses. http://bit.ly/2ndYxZC

Sky News

An unarmed police officer who was among four victims of a terror attack in Westminster has been named as PC Keith Palmer. http://bit.ly/2n98zd4

The Independent

Amer Sajed, one of Barclays Plc’s senior-most executives, is retiring to fight for civil liberties in U.S. http://ind.pn/2n91RDG

Thames Water has been fined 20.3 million pounds for polluting the River Thames with 1.4 billion litres of raw sewage. http://ind.pn/2n98HJz

 

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Congress’ Libertarianish Members Might Sink the GOP Obamacare Replacement

On January 13, a week before Donald Trump would take the oath of office and just days after the new session of Congress opened, Republicans in the House passed a budget resolution that was the first step, GOP leaders said, to repealing and replacing Obamacare. The bill passed, 227-198, with just nine Republicans defecting from the party-line effort.

Among those nine “no” votes were the two founding members of the House Freedom Caucus: Reps. Justin Amash (R-Michigan) and Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho). Another “no” came from Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky), who isn’t a member of the Freedom Caucus but shares many of the small-government, libertarian leanings of the group.

“We got a category five hurricane coming when you have to reduce to practice, the differences between Donald Trump’s agenda and Paul Ryan’s agenda,” Massie told Roll Call after the vote. “I think there are going to be some very confusing votes in here.”

How right he was. That January 13 vote was the first sign—a telling one, in retrospect—that the Freedom Caucus and other libertarian-leaning members of Congress (like Massie and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky) would become the biggest stumbling block to passing the House GOP healthcare plan. That bill is scheduled to receive a floor vote Thursday that, if the Republican leadership can cobble together the votes, would approve the American Health Care Act (AHCA) as part of that budget resolution that initially cleared the House on that Friday the 13th.

With the House vote on the AHCA looming on Thursday, Republican leaders can afford to lose 22 votes from their ranks. As of Wednesday evening, vote tallies tracked by various media outlets suggest anywhere from 23 to 29 Republican lawmakers intend to vote against the bill—enough to delay the vote or force significant changes to the bill. A significant number of those “no” votes come from Freedom Caucus members, including Reps. Dave Brat (R-Virginia), Mo Brooks (R-Alabama), Paul Gosar (R-Arizona), Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), and Mark Sanford (R-South Carolina), among others.

Freedom Caucus members have been skeptical of the AHCA almost since the moment it was publicly unveiled. “It’s Obamacare in a different format,” Jordan told The Atlantic on March 6, just shortly after Republican lawmakers got their first look at the proposal.

Amash was on the same page:

Though the Freedom Caucus never took an outright position on the bill, the handful of individual members who promised to vote against the bill have succeeded in at least complicating the Republican effort to get a majority. “I don’t think there is any tinkering that will get us to 218,” Labrador predicted in an interview with CNN.

There’s still time for that to change, however, and House Republican leaders were reportedly considering substantial rewrites to the AHCA on Wednesday night. Depending on what changes, some of those expected “no” votes could swing to “yes” votes before the bill hits the floor.

Massie is less likely to be swung. On Wednesday, he tweeted a picture indicating that his vote had changed from “no” to “hell, no.”

Rep. Mark Meadows (R-North Carolina), chairman of the Freedom Caucus, told CNN on Wednesday that he was still a “no” and other members of the group promised to sink the bill even after meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House. By late Wednesday night, though, Meadows’ resolve seemed to be wavering as conservative Republicans and the Trump White House continued to negotiate.

While obviously not a member of the House Freedom Caucus, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) has been bird-dogging his like-minded colleagues in the lower chamber over the healthcare bill. He led reporters on a search for the bill, crossing from the Senate side of the Capitol to the basement room on the House side of the complex where it supposedly was being drafted. He was turned away at the door by a House GOP staffer.

After finally laying eyes on the bill a few days later, Paul didn’t hold back. “This is Obamacare light. It will not pass. Conservatives are not going to take it,” Paul told Fox & Friends. He said the bill would “do nothing” to bring health care costs down or to restrict the steady rise of premiums and took to Twitter to issue a beat-by-beat takedown of the proposal attacking it for keeping several elements of the Affordable Care Act intact, including subsidies for buying insurance (which would become a refundable tax credit in the House GOP plan) and the so-called “Cadillac Tax” on top notch insurance plans.

Paul will be central to the AHCA’s prospects in the Senate—if it gets there. As of Thursday morning, it’s impossible to say whether it will.

Opposition from conservative and libertarian-leaning Republicans in Congress has been bolstered by criticism from right-leaning and free market think tanks.

Michael Cannon, director of health care policy for the Cato Institute, said the proposal was “worse than Obamacare” when it was first introduced. Even after mild changes in the past week, Cannon on Tuesday was unmoved. “The amendments do not even come close to fixing the problems with this fatally flawed bill,” he wrote. By expanding a provision that would replace Obamacare’s health insurance subsidies with tax credits, Cannon said, “it will make the bill resemble Obamacare even more.”

The Heritage Foundation has opposed the health care bill since it was introduced. Freedom Works, a conservative group with a direct line to the grassroots organizers that helped elect many of the Freedom Caucus members (and plenty of others) sent a letter this week calling for the bill’s defeat. Club For Growth, which funds conservative campaigns, launched a $500,000 advertising effort this week targeting 10 moderate Republicans who have supported the health care bill.

Pushing a major entitlement reform through Congress without support from the liberty-minded crowd is no longer as easy as it once might have been.

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London Attacker Was UK-Born, Previously Investigated By UK Spies Over “Violent Extremism”, May Says

U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May told British lawmakers that one attacker was responsible for the deadly Westminster terror incident in London on Wednesday, and that the attacker had been investigated by security services in the past.  “It’s still believed that this attacker acted alone,” May told lawmakers in the House of Commons.

May said that a British-born man inspired by Islamist ideology, who had been previously investigated by MI-5 is responsible for the attack.

“His identity is known to the police and MI5 and, when operations allow he will be publicly identified. He was British born and some years ago he was investigated by MI5 in relation to concerns about violent extremism,” May said.

She added, however, that he was not part of current invetigations and had been regarded as a “peripheral figure.”

The UK Prime Minister also said that a total of 12 people, inluding 9 foreigners, are victims of the Westminster attack and added that the UK terror level is “severe” as there is no information of a specific threat. May said she will have more security meetings after the London attack.

She said the Lond attack was “an attack on people everywhere. and vowed that terrorists will be defeated. May refered to the Westminster attack as an act trying to silence democracy, adding that “we are not afraid.”

Earlier in the day Police arrested eight people in the investigation into a lone-wolf attacker who killed three people and injured 40 before being shot dead by police near parliament in London, Britain’s most senior counter-terrorism officer said on Thursday.

“We have now made a total of eight arrests as part of the ongoing Counter Terrorism operation,” the police said on Twitter.

The Metropolitan Police said on Thursday that they searched six addresses overnight in Birmingham, London and other parts of the country in connection with the investigation. Mark Rowley, acting deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, confirmed that 29 people were treated in hospital after the attack and seven people remained in critical condition. This was a revision from Wednesday night, when he said that five people had died in the attack, including three members of the public.

Michael Fallon, the defence secretary, told the BBC that the “working assumption” was the attack is “linked to Islamic terrorism in some form”. “So we’re dealing with an enemy, a terrorist enemy that is not making demands or holding people hostage but simply wants to kill as many people as possible. So this is a new element to international terrorism,” he said.

Fallon added: “London has seen this before and is taking this on the chin, and I do want to reassure you that the police and security forces are doing everything possible to make sure that people can go about their daily life as safely as possible.”

The prime minister on Wednesday night described the assault as “sick and depraved” in a statement outside Number 10 after chairing a meeting of Cobra, the government’s high-level emergency committee. May said the nation’s threat level would remain at “severe” and warned terrorists that efforts to undermine Britain’s values were “doomed to failure”.

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