Top Democrats criticize Elizabeth Warren's Medicare for All plan – live – The Guardian, Theguardian.com

Democratic presidential candidateJulián Castroannounced this morning that his campaign had met its goal to raise $ 800, 000 in the last ten days of October.

Maya Rupert,Castro’s campaign manager, said in a statement: “We set an extremely ambitious goal to keep Secretary Castro’s voice in this race, and our supporters met the challenge and delivered one of the best months of the campaign to date. … We will keep lifting up important issues others choose to ignore, and demonstrating by example why Secretary Castro is the best candidate to take onDonald Trump. ”

Castro’s team said last month that the former San Antonio mayor and cabinet secretary would have to drop out of the race unless the campaign saw a spike in fundraising.

Fellow Democratic presidential candidateCory Bookerpulled the same gimmick a month earlier and also met his fundraising goal.

In her Bloomberg interview,NancyPelosidownplayed the likelihood of a government shutdown as the impeachment inquiry advances to a more public stage.

The House speaker said of theTrump administration: “They don’t care about shutdowns because they don’t believe in government. However I do think that they learned a lesson from the last shutdown, since it didn’t do them very well. ”

Senate minority leaderChuck Schumersuggested earlier this week thatTrumpmight force a shutdown to distract from the impeachment investigation.

The New York Democrat told reporters: “He always likes to create diversions.”

Paula White, the president’s personal pastor who has just joined the administration, is promoting a book in which she details her long friendship withTrump.

In aWashington Examiner interviewabout the book, White claimed that Trump once proposed building a glass cathedral for her ministry. “He wanted to build a house of God,” White said. “He said,‘ Let’s do this, let’s build this before we’re too old. ”

Trump’s relationship with White has previously caused consternation among some of his evangelical supporters, and her new role in the White House will surely only escalate those tensions. The New York Timesreportedyesterday:

********

Ms. ***** White will work in the Office of Public Liaison, the official said, which is the division of the White House overseeing outreach to groups and coalitions organizing key parts of the president’s base. Her role will be to advise the administration’s Faith and Opportunity Initiative, which Mr. Trump established last year by executive order and which aims to give religious groups more of a voice in government programs devoted to issues like defending religious liberty and fighting poverty.
As ***** Trump campaigns for a second term, he cannot afford to lose support from the religious conservatives who voted for him in 2016 in significant numbers. Without their backing, his path to re-election would be significantly narrower. …But ***** White cannot be easily categorized as either a political asset or a liability. She has a large following among Christians who believe in the ‘prosperity gospel,’ which teaches that God blesses people he deems to be of strong faith with wealth, good health and other gifts.

But many other Christians consider these beliefs to be heresy. And Ms. White’s presence in the top tier of Mr. Trump’s coterie of informal religious advisers has long been a source of contention with many evangelical Christians.

For more on White, read Jessica Glenza’s piece on her from earlier this year.

In her Bloomberg News interview,Nancy Pelosipredicted that public hearings in the impeachment inquiry would begin this month.

The House speaker said: “I would assume there would be public hearings in November.”

Pelosi added that impeachment investigators would continue closed-door depositions as long as the interviews are “productive.”

“I don’t know what the timetable will be – the truth will set us free,” the California Democrat said. “We have not made any decisions on if the president will be impeached.” Pelosi noted that any case againstTrumpwould have to be “ironclad.”

Adam Schiff, the Democratic chairman of the House intelligence committee, also told PBS NewsHour yesterday that transcripts from the closed-door depositions may be released as soon as early next week.

Speaking to Bloomberg News,Nancy Pelosiquestioned the wisdom of supporting Medicare for all, arguing that Obamacare was a better option.

The House speaker said in an interview: “I’m not a big fan of Medicare for all.”

Pelosi’s comments come just hours afterElizabeth Warrenreleased her plan to fund Medicare for all by raising taxes on the wealthy and redirecting spending on private insurance.

In a statement criticizingElizabeth Warren‘s plan to fund Medicare for all, a senior adviser toJoe Bidenaccused the Massachusetts senator of proposing an indirect tax on the middle class to pay for the sweeping policy.

Kate Bedingfield,Biden’s deputy campaign manager and communications director, argued that Warren’s proposal to raise $ 8.8 trillion by redirecting most of employers’ spending on healthcare to the federal government amounted to a tax on the middle class.

Bedingfield said: “For months,Elizabeth Warrenhas refused to say if her health care plan would raise taxes on the middle class, and now we know why: because it does. Senator Warren would place a new tax of nearly $ 9 trillion that will fall on American workers. ”

Here’s where the day stands so far:

• Elizabeth Warrenreleased her $ 20 .5 trillion plan to pay for Medicare for all, insisting she could avoid tax hikes on the middle class by increasing taxes for the wealthiest Americans.
• Joe Bidenhas slipped to fourth in Iowa, according to a new poll of the first caucus state. Warren,Bernie SandersandPete Buttigiegare narrowly beating him as the race has become tighter than ever.

(Senior House) Democrats, includingNancy PelosiandAdam Schiff, said they will “ soon ”initiate public hearings and transcript releases in the impeachment inquiry.

The blog will have plenty more coming up, so stay tuned.

The White House has just announced it will host the Washington Nationals, the 2019 World Series champions, on Monday.

The announcement comes less than a week afterTrumpwas booed at Nationals Park, as the team was facing the Houston Astros in Game 5 of the World Series. After booing the president, the crowd broke out in a chant of, “Lock him up!”

Washington is an overwhelmingly Democratic town, and there had been predictions that Trump would not be well received by the Nationals’ fans, but the chant still caused much hand-wringing amongcertain political commentators.

One Republican congressman,Don Youngof Alaska, is pursuing a new strategy for responding to questions about the impeachment inquiry: headbutting the camera.

The longtime lawmaker was being repeatedly asked by activists from the progressive group MoveOn.org whether it was acceptable for a president to pressure a foreign government to interfere in an election, asTrumpis alleged to do.

As one of Young’s staffers tried to direct the activists to his press secretary, the congressman approached the camera and collided with it before saying, “There you go.”

This unusual evasion tactic is not likely to please the president, who has urged Republican lawmakers to attack the “substance” of the impeachment inquiry. Headbutting cameras is probably not what Trump had in mind.

Fiona Hill,Trump’sformer top adviser on Russia, is back on Capitol Hill after testifying in the Impeachment inquiry.

HillReporttold impeachment investigators last month thatRudy Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer , oversaw a shadow foreign policy in Ukraine to benefit Trump.

Joe Bidenappeared to take a swipe at some of his Democratic primary opponents hours afterElizabeth Warrenannounced her plan to fund “Medicare for all.”

The former vice president advertised the beginning of Obamacare’s open enrollment, warning that “many Americans can’t afford to wait for far off promises.”

Warren said she would soon release a plan on how the country can shift from its current healthcare system to a single-payer framework, and it’s unclear whether the transitional period would be shorter or longer than the four years proposed byBernie Sanders.