United States

When a more modest version of the Senate bill, branded “skinny repeal,” resurfaced at the end of the month, it maintained most of the tax increases that had funded the PPACA, but it allowed states to opt out of pivotal consumer protections such as forbidding insurers from charging higher rates for preexisting conditions. With Democrats in lockstep opposition, the bill failed 51–49 when John McCain returned to the Senate from his battle with brain cancer to join fellow Republican senators Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) in turning thumbs down in a dramatic post-midnight vote. In September McCain—who had come to believe that health care reform required a circumspect bipartisan approach—joined Murkowski, Collins, and Rand Paul in opposing last-ditch repeal legislation offered by Republican Senators Lindsey Graham (South Carolina) and Bill Cassidy (Louisiana). This time McCain’s opposition was less because of objections to the bill’s substance than to the effort to ramrod it through Congress. By February 2018 the Republican congressional leadership had resigned itself to its inability to pass legislation to comprehensively repeal Obamacare, though removal of the “mandate” (the penalty for failing to purchase health insurance) would be part of the sweeping tax reform passed later in the year. Moreover, the Trump administration shifted its attack on the PPACA to support for the lawsuit filed by some 20 states that sought to overturn all provisions of the act on legal grounds.

Neil Gorsuch’s confirmation to the Supreme Court, the air strike on Syria, and threatening Kim Jong-Un with “fire and fury”

Another objective high on the list of Republican priorities during the 2016 election, the selection of a judicial conservative to replace Scalia on the Supreme Court, was accomplished in April with the Senate’s confirmation of Trump’s nominee, Neil Gorsuch. Democrats attempted to employ a filibuster to block Gorsuch’s appointment, but the Republican majority changed the Senate rules to remove the 60-vote minimum required to terminate debate and proceeded to a confirmation vote. In the event, Gorsuch was confirmed by a 54–45 vote that went largely along party lines.

In the meantime, several high-profile foreign policy issues heated up. On April 6, 2017, responding to a chemical weapons attack by the government of Bashar al-Assad that killed some 80 Syrian civilians, Trump ordered an air strike on the Syrian air base at which the chemical attack had originated. Nearly five dozen Tomahawk missiles were launched against the air base from warships in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. The attack increased the already high tensions between the United States and Russia, which supported the Assad government.

Elsewhere, the regime of Kim Jong-Un in North Korea stepped up its aggressive development of missile-launched nuclear weapons. Departing from the Obama administration’s policy of “strategic patience,” which sought to use sanctions and political isolation to make an impact on North Korean behaviour, Trump attempted to persuade China, which was broadly engaged with North Korea, to use its influence to restrain Kim Jong-Un. At the same time, Trump issued sabre-rattling warnings to Kim Jong-Un while U.S. and South Korean forces undertook joint military exercises as a show of strength. A defiant North Korea responded in early July with its first successful launch test of an intercontinental ballistic missile, which was interpreted by experts as having a range capable of reaching Alaska. On August 8 Trump warned North Korea not to make any more threats to the United States, promising that threats would be met with “fire and fury like the world has never seen.”

Violence in Charlottesville, the dismissal of Steve Bannon, the resignation of Michael Flynn, and the investigation of possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign