Wiretap: The GOP plan to avoid shutdown is simple — use CHIP program as a bargaining chip

The Republican plan for averting a government shutdown this Friday is to dare Democrats to vote against long-term funding of the Children’s Health Insurance Program. In other words, yes, they’re ready to use CHIP as a bargaining chip. Via The New York Times.

Lindsey Graham explains to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen how a Dreamer compromise would work and says that if Trump is interested, he has his number. Via Real Clear Politics.

Dana Milbank: You can see just how much trouble a possible Dreamer compromise is in when the principals can’t even agree that Norway is largely populated by white people. Via The Washington Post.

From The National Review, Jim Gerhaghty writes that we shouldn’t blame Secretary Nielsen for Trump’s foul-mouthed comments. We should blame Trump.

The Pentagon is suggesting to the Trump administration a new reason to go nuclear — in response to a devastating cyber-security attack. Via The New York Times.

It was 50 years ago that Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, and the election of Donald Trump was the culmination of all those years of backlash against everything that King stood for. Via The Atlantic.

Come to Colorado, writes David Roberts in Vox, if you want a glimpse of renewable energy’s insanely cheap future. The costs of renewable energy are falling faster than anyone could have imagined.

The results from Donald Trump’s physical are in, and his doctor says he is perfectly healthy, which is more, writes Alan Burdick for The New Yorker, than you can say about the sorry state of the body politic.

It turns out that Margaret “Am I a Bad Feminist?” Atwood is a blood-drinking monster. Or something like that. Via the Toronto Globe and Mail.

Photo by Christopher Chappelear, via Flickr: Creative Commons