Speaking on a panel at the SXSW festival in Austin, Arizona Rep. Ruben Gallego pulled no punches while discussing the Republican push to repeal Obamacare led by House Speaker Paul Ryan. After mentioning the impending disaster of repealing the Affordable Care Act, he credited Paul Ryan for his ability to go on national television and straight-up lie about the consequences of the repeal. He said Ryan is “one of the best liars I have ever seen in the world.” 

Here’s Rep. Gallego delivering the cold, hard truth about Paul Ryan:

Rep. Gallego was referring to Paul Ryan’s mockable “health care” presentation (complete with PowerPoint slides!). Despite Ryan’s reassurances, industry experts say his plan would be a disaster:

House Speaker Paul Ryan says that "CBO report confirms it → American Health Care Act will lower premiums & improve access to quality, affordable care." But Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price disagrees:

Huh. He also he hasn't been able to read it yet, so maybe if he actually reads it, he'll like it. He also says that it's "virtually impossible" that the Congressional Budget Office is right in predicting that 14 million people will lose health coverage in the very first year of Trumpcare. So now Trump and team hate CBO. Which is pretty new.

One gets the impression that this is what Paul Ryan would have tweeted about the Congressional Budget Office's score of Trumpcare, no matter what it said.

But what the CBO says is really bad. Premiums will increase by 15 to 20 percent. And by 2026, 24 million people will not have insurance. And this is how he tries to spin it in his statement:

I recognize and appreciate concerns about making sure people have access to coverage. Under Obamacare, we have seen how government-mandated coverage does not equal access to care, and now the law is collapsing. Our plan is not about forcing people to buy expensive, one-size-fits-all coverage. It is about giving people more choices and better access to a plan they want and can afford. When people have more choices, costs go down.

And when people get far less assistance to pay for those choices, you bloviating sociopath, they don't get insurance. They might have "access" to it, but if they can't afford to pay for it, they're not going to get the care that comes with it. And they'll die before their time. And theirs will be completely avoidable deaths.

Republicans only narrowly control the Senate, and with constituent pressure we can deal TrumpCare a humiliating defeat. Call the Capitol Hill switchboard at (202) 224-3121, ask for your Senators’ office and urge them to reject TrumpCare.

The Congressional Budget Office's score of Trumpcare is complete, and while the Freedom Caucus isn't going to hate it as much as everyone else because it saves a bit of money—$337 billion over 10 years—it's a big, big blow to everyone who has said people will keep their insurance. Like popular vote loser Donald Trump. Because on the number of insured front, it's very bad. It's worse than before the Affordable Care Act, when we were in a massive healthcare crisis. In fact, the CBO estimates there will be six million more uninsured people in 2026 than there were in 2009.

CBO and JCT estimate that, in 2018, 14 million more people would be uninsured under the legislation than under current law. Most of that increase would stem from repealing the penalties associated with the individual mandate. Some of those people would choose not to have insurance because they chose to be covered by insurance under current law only to avoid paying the penalties, and some people would forgo insurance in response to higher premiums.

Later, following additional changes to subsidies for insurance purchased in the nongroup market and to the Medicaid program, the increase in the number of uninsured people relative to the number under current law would rise to 21 million in 2020 and then to 24 million in 2026. The reductions in insurance coverage between 2018 and 2026 would stem in large part from changes in Medicaid enrollment—because some states would discontinue their expansion of eligibility, some states that would have expanded eligibility in the future would choose not to do so, and per-enrollee spending in the program would be capped. In 2026, an estimated 52 million people would be uninsured, compared with 28 million who would lack insurance that year under current law.

Most estimates from think tanks put the increase in the number of uninsured at 10 to 15 million in ten years’ time. The CBO says that happens next year—meaning 2018. That's 14 million who would not be uninsured if Obamacare stands, but will lose insurance under Trumpcare, if it passes. That's devastating.

The CBO score for Trumpcare is in. Bottom line: it will save $337 billion over the next 10 years, but reduce the insured population by 24 million by 2026. That’s a lot of people.

Perhaps in preparation for this moment, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has emerged from his shell.

Sorry, Mitch, but that "additional legislation" just isn't going to cut it, because all the stuff that is in item No. 1—the AHCA bill the House is going to pass—is the stuff that has resulted this bad CBO score. You can't come up with anything in bill No. 2 that can fix it.

Republicans only narrowly control the Senate, and with constituent pressure we can blow TrumpCare a humiliating defeat. Call the Capitol Hill switchboard at (202) 224-3121, ask for your Senators’ office and urge them to reject TrumpCare.

Donald Trump is following through with his vow to dramatically increase deportations of undocumented residents. Toward this end, he's demanding Immigration and Customs Enforcement expand their ranks by a whopping 10,000 officers. This is a massive staffing challenge for an agency currently made up of 20,000 employees total, and many observers are worried it will be met in the usual Trump fashion: Not properly vetting the people they're hiring.

John Roth, the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general, told a Senate committee in February that the agency would “face a number of challenges” in executing Mr. Trump’s executive orders because it had “inadequate systems to track and process applicants.”

Mr. Roth said his office was conducting an audit of previous hiring surges to help the agency avoid practices that may have led to corruption and misconduct by staff members.

That "corruption and misconduct" is not hypothetical; the department has been rocked with scandals. And the pressure to rapidly meet Trump's xenophobic campaign promises doesn't bode well for an agency that has already been under fire for insufficient vetting of would-be immigration enforcers.

Leaked documents outlining plans to beef up a sister agency, the Border Patrol, first reported in Foreign Policy magazine, show that Customs and Border Protection officials are considering waiving polygraph tests for some applicants and applying less stringent background checks to speed the hiring of 5,000 agents.

In the recent past, ICE agents have been arrested for stealing from detainees, demanding sex from them, taking bribes, falsifying evidence, assault, and drug running. Now the agency is going to increase their size by 10,000 officers—under the guidance of an administration that couldn't properly vet its own national security adviser. Given the incompetence with which team Trump has met every other staffing challenge, it's hard to imagine this as anything but the prelude to yet another scandal.

That simple fact is that Rep. Steve King has been terrible for years. The only difference between then and now is that the Iowa Congressman has finally found allies in the White House who share his deplorable views.

While Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, and Stephen Miller have officially been trying to make America white again for only a few weeks now, King has been attacking Dreamers and comparing immigrants to dogs since the days when Trump’s main gig was still peddling Trump Steaks and firing Dennis Rodman from Celebrity Apprentice. Here’s a recap of some choice selections from King’s Hall of Shame.

Like that time in 2012 when King compared immigrants to selecting a dog—and then claimed he totally meant it as a compliment:

Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, compared immigrants to dogs at a town hall meeting yesterday, telling constituents that the U.S. should pick only the best immigrants the way one chooses the “pick of the litter.”

King told the crowd in Pocahontas, Iowa, that he’s owned lots of bird dogs over the years and advised, “You want a good bird dog? You want one that’s going to be aggressive? Pick the one that’s the friskiest … not the one that’s over there sleeping in the corner.”

King suggested lazy immigrants should be avoided as well. “You get the pick of the litter and you got yourself a pretty good bird dog. Well, we’ve got the pick of every donor civilization on the planet,” King said. “We’ve got the vigor from the planet to come to America.”

Or that time in 2013 when King said that Dreamers have “calves the size of cantaloupes” because they’re hauling pot across the border:

How much of a potential disaster is Trumpcare? Here's how much.

In extreme cases, the amount a consumer might owe for a plan could exceed that person’s annual income. In Nebraska’s Chase County, a 62-year-old currently earning about $18,000 a year could pay nearly $20,000 annually to get health-insurance coverage under the House GOP plan—compared with about $760 a year that person would owe toward premiums under the ACA, an analysis by Oliver Wyman showed.

The consulting firm, a unit of Marsh & McLennan Cos. is the first to project what consumers could actually have to pay to get health plans under the House’s blueprint. The analysis looked at the cost of a benchmark insurance plan at the “silver” level under both setups.

That’s about 28.5 iPhones, if you pay full price. Versus one.

For context, that report is in the Wall Street Journal. Every credible analysis of the law so far makes it clear: older people are going to be hit hardest, and older rural people will be hit hardest of all. That's because the bill allows insurers to charge older people as much as five times more. We also know that rural areas tend to have the most expensive health insurance costs, and the bill—unlike Obamacare—doesn't adjust tax credits according to geography. Rural populations are often older and poorer, and so they'll be affected the most.

Incidentally, they're the Republican base. It’s going to get harder by the day to get this through the Senate.

Senate Democrats have a message for Senate Republicans who may be considering including billions of dollars for Donald Trump’s monument to hate in next month’s government funding bill: Don’t even think about it. Led by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), top Democrats are threatening a potential shutdown if Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) tries to include funds for the wall that even he’s admitted Mexico isn’t paying for in the must-pass bill. Bring it on:

The warning from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and others came in a letter Monday to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. The letter also warns against adding other "poison pills" such as provisions to roll back environmental or consumer protections and urges additional money for domestic programs to match the administration's planned Pentagon increases.

"We believe it would be inappropriate to insist on the inclusion of (wall) funding in a must-pass appropriations bill that is needed for the Republican majority in control of the Congress to avert a government shutdown so early in President Trump's administration," said the letter, which was provided to The Associated Press. Trump's proposal for the wall was a centerpiece of his presidential campaign and he claimed he could persuade Mexico to pay for it.

The letter from Democrats implicitly threatens a filibuster showdown — and potential government shutdown — if Republicans try to attach controversial Trump agenda items to the must-do legislation.

Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL), Patty Murray (D-WA), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), and Patrick Leahy (D-VT) joined in the letter, which also states that Trump “has not detailed where he thinks the wall should be built, how his plan will be constructive and how Mexico will pay for it despite Trump's insistence that Mexico will fund the border wall,” according to POLITICO. It’s almost like Trump made a catchy campaign promise to stir up his base at rallies with absolutely no idea how to follow through.

The Sunday shows saw the continuation of Republican efforts to delegitimize both 1.) all non-conservative political opponents and 2.) facts themselves. Team Trump's budget director took to the airwaves to claim the Obama administration was faking the nation's unemployment rate.

"What you should really look at is the number of jobs created," Mulvaney said on "State of the Union." "We've thought for a long time, I did, that the Obama administration was manipulating the numbers, in terms of the number of people in the workforce, to make the unemployment rate -- that percentage rate -- look smaller than it actually was."

We seem to be long past the point where blandly accusing parts of or the entirety of American government to be conspiring to make Republicans look bad is considered either unusual or deranged, but let's at least note that this claim by Mulvaney is a recitation of his conspiracy-addled boss' identical claims. Trump asserted during the campaign that the "real" unemployment rate was more than 40 percent of the population, a number he arrived at because Some Guy Said So, and a number that includes school-age children as "unemployed" because why the hell aren't they out working the coal mines like good little boys and girls?

And then Trump sat down in the Oval Office and declared that the precise same unemployment statistics he declared to be a horrible fraud the previous quarter were, despite barely changing at all, now True because he said so. So yes, the man is pathological. More to the point, he has surrounded himself only with people willing to parrot his own conspiracy theories, which is why Mick Mulvaney is now on your television opining on things as a budget director as opposed opining on things as Republican House member, or trying to cheat you out of your spare change by feigning incompetence from behind the register of a local fast food joint.

Indeed, he made the rounds on Sunday to lie about plenty of other things as well.

Rep. Steve King’s white nationalist call for racial purity has been condemned by basically anyone with a shred of decency—minus Speaker Paul Ryan. Guess P90X doesn’t work on backbone.

“Republican Congressman Steve King’s vile racism has no place in decent society, much less the U.S. Congress,” said Drew Hammill, spokesperson for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, in a statement earlier today. “But once again, disgusting hatred has been met with deafening silence from Speaker Ryan.”

“It’s no accident that communities across America have been threatened by emboldened racists,” the statement continued. “The GOP Leadership must stop accommodating this garbage, and condemn Congressman Steve King’s statements in the strongest and most unequivocal terms. Speaker Ryan and House Republican Leadership must decide whether white supremacy is welcome in the GOP ranks.”

King’s racist call for a White America even earned the support of former KKK Imperial Wizard David Duke—“Steve King 2024,” he enthusiastically tweeted—but apparently not even that was enough to distract Ryan from talking about the “antiquated tax code” earlier today to address the white nationalism festering in his caucus.