PG90: GOP Health Plan, Revised Travel Ban, Wikileaks & the CIA

This week, Jay is joined by guest co-host Ken Katkin, a professor of law at Northern Kentucky University, who takes the place of Mike on the left. (But while Mike was off this week, he still couldn’t resist inserting a few remarks at the very beginning of the show.)

Jay and Ken start off with an in-depth policy discussion of the American Health Care Act, the Republican legislation to repeal and replace Obamacare. They drill down into the fundamentals of how health insurance works – or doesn’t work – with Jay expressing far more confidence in a ‘free market’ solution than Ken.

Next, they look at the Trump administration’s ‘new and improved’ travel ban. While both Jay and Ken agree that courts should grant the executive a good amount of deference in this area, Ken feels that there’s no rational basis for the ban, which he believes is a clear attempt to ‘reverse engineer’ an unconstitutional Muslim ban. Jay, though not entirely unsympathetic to these concerns, isn’t exactly convinced.

Finally, they consider the latest release from Wikileaks – a trove of documents concerning CIA hacking techniques. Both Jay and Ken conclude that Wikileaks is more hero than villain. The discussion turns to ties between Russia and the Trump campaign, with Ken arguing that the amount of evidence of involvement is overwhelming. He concludes that President Trump is, in effect, a Russian agent.

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