• 
  
• Trump fires Comey.
• FBI Director James B. Comey has been fired by the White House — with the official justification being Comey’s handling of the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails. A statement from the White House press secretary reads, “President Trump acted based on the clear recommendations of both Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.” [New York Times / Michael D. Shear, Matt Apuzzo]
• In a letter from Trump to Comey, also made public, Trump insisted that the firing is by no means, definitely not, in no way related to an investigation into his associates’ ties to Russia. “While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the bureau,” he wrote. [Vox / German Lopez]

In his letter firing FBI Director James Comey, President Donald Trump managed to make the termination a little personal.

Check out the second paragraph (emphasis mine):

Dear Director Comey:

I have received the attached letters from the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General of the United States recommending your dismissal as the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I have accepted their recommendation and you are hereby terminated and removed from office, effective immediately.

While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the Bureau.

It is essential that we find new leadership for the FBI that restores public trust and confidence in its vital law enforcement mission.

I wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors.

Donald J. Trump

It seems like Trump knew what the main criticism of Comey’s termination would be: The FBI has been investigating the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, so it sure seems convenient for Trump that he’s managing to get rid of the director of that agency. In this letter, Trump is trying to not so subtly tell people the Russia investigation has nothing to do with the termination — because, hey, the FBI told Trump that it’s really not investigating him personally.

So what reason has the Trump administration given for firing Comey? Emails!

Al Drago/The New York Times

• Comey’s handling of the email investigation is an old story ... but the fallout has continued. On Monday, reports emerged that Comey had given inaccurate testimony to Congress last week. Comey said Clinton aide Huma Abedin forwarded “hundreds of thousands” of emails to her husband, Anthony Weiner, for him to print for her, some of which contained classified information. In reality, Abedin forwarded a few Clinton emails (it’s unclear whether these were classified or unclassified), and the rest ended up on Weiner’s laptop via backups of Abedin’s BlackBerry. [ProPublica / Peter Elkind]
• Apparently the FBI has been deliberating how to handle the incorrect statement Comey made since, and how to correct the record. This afternoon, the FBI sent a letter to Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley supplementing the Comey testimony, explaining how the emails actually got on Weiner’s computer. [Vox / Andrew Prokop]

 CreditGabriella Demczuk for The New York Times

• The full rationale for Comey’s firing — at least, the official version — comes from a memo written by Deputy AG Rosenstein. Rosenstein argued that the FBI’s credibility “suffered substantial damage,” writing, “I cannot defend the director’s handling of the conclusion of the investigation of Secretary Clinton’s emails, and I do not understand his refusal to accept the nearly universal judgment that he was mistaken.” [Washington Post / Devlin Barret]
• The immediate effect of all of this, at the very least, is that the FBI will need a new director. Which, Vox’s German Lopez writes, “also lets Trump put someone new in place who will oversee the ongoing investigation into his presidential campaign’s ties to Russia.” [Vox / German Lopez]
• But for an administration that fired their national security adviser long after they ostensibly should have, the Trump administration took the advice to fire Comey extremely promptly. And reports are already surfacing that Sessions was directed to come up with reasons to fire Comey last week — the emails are just a pretext. [NYT / Michael S. Schmidt]
• If true, that’s worrisome — not least because it would mean that Sessions, after recusing himself from the Trump/Russia investigation in March, then stepped in to fire one of the officials leading the investigation. That connection has led many Democrats — and a few Republicans — to call for a special prosecutor to look into Trump’s Russia ties, to make sure the Sessions-led Justice Department (and whoever leads the FBI next) doesn’t cover up what suddenly seems like a bigger scandal than it previously did. [CNBC / Christine Wang]
• Here is an explainer about Watergate. No, no reason. Why do you ask? [Vox / Dylan Matthews​]

Updates and Reactions to F.B.I. Director Comey’s Firing.

By THE NEW YORK TIMESUPDATED

Comey heard the news while giving a speech.

Mr. Comey was addressing a group of F.B.I. employees in Los Angeles when a television in the background flashed the news that he had been fired.

Continue reading the main story

In response, Mr. Comey laughed, saying he thought it was a fairly funny prank.

Then his staff started scurrying around in the background and told Mr. Comey that he should step into a nearby office.....Shortly thereafter, a letter from Mr. Trump was delivered to the F.B.I.’s headquarters, just seven blocks from the White House.

Among those calling  for a Select Commission, Sen. John McCain. CreditGabriella Demczuk for The New York Times

Calls mount for a special counsel.

Mr. Comey’s firing immediately fueled calls for an independent investigator or commission to look into Russia’s efforts to disrupt the election and any connections between Mr. Trump’s associates and the Russian government....Mr. Comey’s firing upended the politics of the investigation, and even Republicans were joining the call for independent inquiries.

Subpoenas are issued in Flynn case.

In a sign of the F.B.I.’s intense interest in Mr. Trump’s advisers, a grand jury in Virginia recently issued subpoenas for records related to the former White House national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn,...  it was not clear whether the subpoenas,...were related to Mr. Comey’s firing.

Trump to meet Russian foreign minister.

In an instance of bizarre timing and optics, the White House announced late Tuesday night that Mr. Trump will meet in the Oval Office with Sergey V. Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, on Wednesday morning.

Andrew G. McCabe at a press conference in 2015. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

McCabe is acting director.

... deputy director Andrew McCabe assumed the position of acting director of the F.B.I. 

The firing raised the specter of political interference by a sitting president in an existing investigation by the nation’s leading law enforcement agency, and it immediately ignited Democratic calls for an independent prosecutor to lead the Russia inquiry.

■ Mr. Trump’s decision drew instant comparisons to President Richard M. Nixon’s firing of the special prosecutor looking into the Watergate burglary that would eventually bring him down.

■ A memo recommending the dismissal, written by Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, focused on the continuing fallout from Mr. Comey’s handling of an F.B.I. inquiry into Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state. Here are some excerpts from the memo, with comments by The New York Times.

A

Deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein

dd caption

Deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein

WASHINGTON POST:

Just last week, Trump publicly accused Comey of giving Clinton “a free pass for many bad deeds’’ when he decided not to recommend criminal charges in the case.

Officials released a Tuesday memo from the deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, laying out the rationale behind Comey’s dismissal and attributing it all to his handling of the Clinton case. Officials said Rosenstein began examining Comey’s conduct shortly after being sworn into office two weeks ago.

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Several current and former officials said the relationship between the White House and the FBI had been strained for months, in part because administration officials were pressuring Comey to more aggressively pursue leak investigations over disclosures that embarrassed the White House and raised questions about ties with Russia...Although the FBI is investigating disclosures of classified information, the bureau has resisted calls to prioritize leak investigations over the Russia matter, or probe matters that did not involve leaks of classified or otherwise sensitive information, the officials said.

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The Justice Department inspector general has been investigating how Comey and his top deputy handled the Clinton probe, though that investigation is expected to continue for months.

-- Eric Trump allegedly told a reporter in 2014 that the funding stream for his family’s golf courses comes from Russia.

The Hill’s Paulina Firozi reports: In an interview with Boston’s WBUR Friday, golf reporter James Dodson recalled meeting Donald Trump in in 2014 and being invited to play golf at his property in Charlotte. When Dodson asked Donald Trump how he was paying for the courses, he says Trump “sort of tossed off that he had access to $100 million.” He then questioned Eric Trump, who was along for the day: "I said, 'Eric, who’s funding? I know no banks — because of the recession … have touched a golf course. It’s dead in the water the last four or five years,'” he recalled. "And this is what he said. He said, 'Well, we don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.' I said, 'Really?' And he said, 'Oh, yeah. We’ve got some guys that really, really love golf, and they’re really invested in our programs. We just go there all the time.’"

The percentage of children ages 5 to 17 who are hospitalized for suicidal thoughts or actions has more than doubled from 2008 to 2015,

Dylan Minnette as Clay Jensen and Katherine Langford as Hannah Baker in Netflix’s “13 Reasons Why.” (Beth Dubber/Netflix)

1.  According to an alarming new report, presented at the 2017 Pediatric Academic Societies Meeting in San Francisco. children between the ages of 15 to 17 accounted for slightly more than half of the incidences, and researchers noted a slight increase in hospitalizations coinciding with the beginning and the ending of the school year. (Travis M. Andrews). 

Macron Decisively Defeats Le Pen in French Presidential Race

-- Emmanuel Macron overwhelmingly defeated anti-E.U. firebrand Marine Le Pen in France’s presidential election Sunday, bringing Europe’s populist tide to a crashing halt as voters selected the centrist political neophyte by a nearly 2-1 margin. At just 39, Macron will be France's youngest head of state since Napoleon Bonaparte. Griff Witte, James McAuley and Isaac Stanley-Becker report: “The result brought to a close a tumultuous and polarized campaign that defied prediction at nearly every turn, although not at the end. Pre-election polls had forecast a sizable Macron victory, and he delivered — winning some 66 percent of the vote."

 

Emmanuel Macron 

66.1%20,703,694 votes

Centrist, supports the E.U.

Marine Le Pen

10,637,120 votes33.9%

Far-right nationalist, anti‑E.U.

 

100% of communes reporting

“In a pointed endorsement of European unity, Macron strode to the stage at his raucous [victory party] to the strains of Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’ theme, the European Union’s anthem. Alluding to the deep divisions laid bare by the campaign, he said Le Pen backers had ‘expressed an anger, a dismay, and I respect that. I will do everything possible in the five years to come so that they have no reason to vote for the extremes.' At her own gathering at a Paris restaurant and events center, a downcast Le Pen conceded defeat, telling her demoralized supporters that the country had ‘chosen continuity’ and that the election had drawn clear lines between ‘the patriots and the globalists.' The repudiation of Le Pen by French voters will soothe Europe’s anxious political establishment. But the outcome instantly puts pressure on Macron to deliver on promises made to an unhappy French electorate, including reform of two institutions notoriously resistant to change: the E.U. and the French bureaucracy."

Emmanuel Macron holds hands with his wife Brigitte  (AP/Thibault Camus)

Trump, who declined to formally endorse but clearly favored Le Pen, tweeted his congratulations to Macron: “I look very much forward to working with him!” he posted.

-- Macron's unlikely path to the presidency --> "His story is of a highly improbable ascent in a system that typically rewards entrenched political dynasties," James McAuley writes. “Macron, who has never held elected office, has now been elected to one of the most powerful executive positions in the Western world and will be the leader of Europe’s second-largest economy. He did it, analysts say, through a combination of luck and a campaign message attuned to a new political moment. In France, 2017 proved an ideal year to run as an independent candidate. A rare political vacuum emerged, and Macron — a former Socialist economy minister who stepped down from his post in July — was able to take full advantage. Macron perceived that the ‘new divide’ among French voters was not between left and right but rather between an open and closed society [and] defending an open, multicultural society was a central component of En Marche, the movement Macron launched in 2016. 'Globalization can be a great opportunity,' he said at one point on the campaign trail. 'There is no such thing as French culture,' he said at another. 'There is culture in France, and it is diverse.'"

Macron supporters celebrate in front of the Louvre. (Patrick Kovarik/Getty)

France’s new president will face a considerable challenge as he attempts to form a government: "Given that he has no party structure behind him, he will be deeply affected by the results of the parliamentary elections, scheduled for June."

The Man to Blame for Our Culture of Fame.

JON MEACHAM, NY TIMES

Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images)

GOP HEALTH BILL ADVANCES:

"The latest bill’s changes allow states to opt out of many of the ACA’s key provisions, such as its protection of people with preexisting conditions," our colleagues write. "And to regain moderates’ support it lost with that change, an additional $8 billion was allocated to helping sick people afford their premiums — a figure even the conservative American Enterprise Institute says is not nearly enough." (Check out a full list of how each lawmaker voted.)
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Now, the measure will head to the Senate to face a whole new set of obstacles. On Thursday, Republican leaders there sent an unmistakable message: When it comes to health care, we’re going to do our own thing. “I think there will be essentially a Senate bill,” Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), the fourth-ranking Senate Republican, told our colleagues. HuffPost’s Michael McAuliff reports that at least a half-dozen GOP senators have already expressed opposition to the tack the House was taking. It remains unclear how closely the Senate measure will resemble the one narrowly passed in the House, or whether Republican senators will resolve their own stark differences. 

-- Trump expressed confidence that it will pass the Senate – calling Obamacare “essentially dead.” "This is a great plan. I actually think it will get even better. This is a repeal and replace of Obamacare. Make no mistake about it," Trump told reporters.

-- Despite the new set of obstacles ahead, Trump and the House GOP had reason to celebrate.

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“Rather than embrace policy cobbled together to replace the 2010 Affordable Care Act, many Republicans simply decided the best move was to approve a flawed bill — and ram it through a flawed process — so that the Senate would get a chance to fix the House’s mistakes, setting up a major negotiation later," Paul Kane writes in his column. "House Republicans did so knowing that their votes will be portrayed by their Democratic opponents as ruthlessly denying millions of people health insurance … Inside the leadership team of [Ryan], there was a gripping fear of what failure would mean for its future overseeing a chamber seemingly incapable of moving important legislation. Ryan had already pulled his American Health Care Act from the floor once … [and] the initial game plan was to simply give up on repealing Obamacare and move on to a broad rewriting of the tax code. But inside the White House, [Trump’s] advisers became increasingly concerned about how little they had to show in terms of early victories. They helped nudge the hard-line House Freedom Caucus and some members of the moderate Tuesday Group back to the bargaining table. The consequence of failure — for a second time in six weeks, after the humiliating first retreat — became a compelling reason to vote ‘yes.’ The question is whether this short-term victory was worth the long-term squeeze.”

"Like y’all, I’m still waiting to see if it’s a boy or a girl," Sen. Lindsey Graham said of the House's health care bill. | Getty

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• Now the wildly unpopular bill heads to the Senate, where it is certain to face many obstacles before it has a chance at passing even on a totally partisan basis — which will take 51 votes. But the way the bill is written might make portions of it (in particular the insurance regulation changes) filibusterable, meaning that Republicans would need 60 votes, including eight Democrats, to include them. [Vox / Sarah Kliff]
• Republicans in the Senate seem utterly unimpressed by the House’s bill. Many have come out against both its substantive provisions and the reckless speed with which it was passed. [Politico / Burgess Everett, Jennifer Haberkorn]
• All eyes are on the Senate’s 13-member working group that is drafting their own bill. It’s a group composed entirely of Republican men, unsurprisingly. But it is also a group that includes hardliners such as Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz but also more mainstream senators like Lamar Alexander and Rob Portman, so it will be interesting to see if what they craft is nearly as extreme as the House’s bill. [Vox / Sarah Kliff]
• Meanwhile, the uncertainty that this whole process is creating for insurers was evident even before the bill passed. On Wednesday, Iowa’s largest remaining Affordable Care Act insurer threatened to leave the state marketplace. The same day, Aetna said it plans to leave Virginia’s individual marketplace. [Washington Post / Carolyn Y. Johnson]
• And Kentucky is already trying to roll back portions of its Medicaid expansion, even before Congress acts. [Reuters / Yasmeen Abutaleb, Robin Respaut​]

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WHAT ELSE IS IN THE BOX:

• Planned Parenthood will be defunded for one year: “The women’s health provider stands to lose about 30 percent of its funding under a provision [in the bill] to block it from getting Medicaid reimbursements for one year, unless its hundreds of clinics stop offering abortions.” (Paige Winfield Cunningham)
• Those who obtain health insurance through their employers — about half the country — could be at risk of losing protections that limit out-of-pocket costs for catastrophic illnesses: “The provision … lets states obtain waivers from certain [ACA] insurance regulations. Insurers in states that obtain the waivers could be freed from a regulation mandating that they cover 10 particular types of health services, among them maternity care, prescription drugs, mental health treatment and hospitalization. … Under the House bill, large employers could choose the benefit requirements from any state—including those that are allowed to lower their benchmarks under a waiver, health analysts said. By choosing a waiver state, employers looking to lower their costs could impose lifetime limits and eliminate the out-of-pocket cost cap from their plans under the GOP legislation.” (Wall Street Journal)

• Democrats warn that the bill could increase costs for up to seven million veterans who are eligible to receive health care from the VA system: “An estimated 7 million veterans who qualify for such care do not receive it for a range of reasons: They may live too far away from a VA center, their incomes may be too high for them to be placed in a high-priority group for VA access, or they may have health issues unrelated to their service … By taking away the credits that Obamacare offered for those seeking insurance on their own, the GOP proposal effectively means a tax hike.” (HuffPost)

TEARS OF PAIN: OBAMACARE REPEALED IN THE HOUSE.

Alex Wong/Getty Images

After seven years of empty promises and meaningless floor votes, today the House passed a bill designed to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. [Vox / Sarah Kliff]  The vote was extremely close; Republicans needed 216 yes votes to pass it — and got 217. In what is not even a little bit of an exaggeration, the New York Times called the vote “a remarkable act of political resuscitation, six weeks after House leaders failed to muster the votes to pass an earlier version of their bill” (…which kind of sounds like a review blurb for a really boring horror movie). [New York Times / Thomas Kaplan, Robert Pear]  Last-minute negotiations and phone calls from President Donald Trump himself won over undecided conservatives. But apparently, many Republican representatives don’t necessarily like the result (i.e., the bill they voted for). Some have already come out stating that they expect the bill to change if and when it goes to the Senate. And Trump, for his part, is reportedly concerned that if it passes and people lose health care, he will be blamed. [Politico / Josh Dawsey]  Congressman Greg Walden, Speaker Paul Ryan and Congressman Fred Upton  Bill Clark / Getty Images Part of the problem is that the Congressional Budget Office hasn’t yet scored the bill, which means it’s unclear how many people would lose health care and how much it could cost. Making matters murkier, some representatives have admitted that they didn’t actually read it before voting. [Washington Post / David Weigel]  The eleventh-hour negotiations to cobble together an alliance of enough conservatives, Trump loyalists, and moderates to get to 217 ultimately involved making compromises that render an already-under thought bill nearly incoherent. For example: the Upton amendment. It throws an extra $8 billion into a finite pool of money intended to offset the costs of people with preexisting conditions. But that money will make it easier for people who don’t maintain health coverage to sign up once they’ve developed a problem — exactly what the GOP has been trying to avoid by creating a penalty for people who lose insurance and then buy it again. [Vox / Dylan Scott]  But the much bigger population is the people who’d have a harder time affording health care to begin with under the AHCA. That list includes: pregnant women and new mothers; Planned Parenthood patients; families with chronic conditions that can cause health care costs to sky rocket; children in special education programs; low-income workers who gained Medicaid under Obamacare; low-income Americans who are not on Medicaid and relied on Obamacare tax credits to bring down the cost of insurance; anyone who qualified for Medicaid before Obamacare, like seniors and the disabled; seniors who buy insurance on the exchanges; and residents of states who choose to “block grant” Medicaid. Odds are you personally know more than a few people this bill would hurt. [Vox / Dylan Matthews:These are all the people the Republican health care bill will hurt.] Terminally ill patient Jim Staloch caresses a dove on October 7, 2009, while at the Hospice of Saint John in Lakewood, Colorado.  John Moore/Getty Images Democrats were united against the bill — and 20 Republicans joined them in voting no. Interestingly, of 23 districts represented by a Republican that went to Clinton in the presidential election, only nine voted against this bill. [New York Times / Gregor Aisch, et al]  House Republicans decamped to the White House after the vote to celebrate with Trump, who gave a victory speech that, incredibly, included mocking Paul Ryan’s leadership capacities. [Reuters / Yasmeen Abutaleb, David Morgan]  U.S. President Donald Trump (C) gathers with Congressional Republicans in the Rose Garden of the White House after the House of Representatives approved the American Healthcare Act, to repeal major parts of Obamacare and replace it with the Republican healthcare plan, in Washington, U.S., May 4, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria It was a weird celebration, and it likely won’t last long. Medical groups have come out strongly against the bill. But the most rain on the parade seems to be coming from the Senate — whose members appear to have no intention of taking up the House bill rather than writing their own. Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee literally said, “We’re writing a Senate bill and not passing the House bill.” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) characterized its problems succinctly: “Any bill that has been posted less than 24 hours, going to be debated three or four hours, not scored? Needs to be viewed with suspicion.” [Politico / Burgess Evertt, Jennifer Haberkorn]