On Politics A.M.: Elizabeth Warren and ‘Medicare for All’

2019年11月18日星期一

November 18, 2019

Good Monday morning. Here are some of the stories making news in Washington and politics today.

Health care had not been a driving issue for Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. But the expansive $20.5 trillion package — which would redefine health care access and upend the tax system to pay for it — is perhaps the riskiest political bet of her campaign.
The Democratic Attorneys General Association will become the first national party committee that will refuse to endorse any candidate who does not support reproductive rights and expanding access to abortion services.

Ahead of a potential presidential run, former New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg reversed his longstanding support of the aggressive “stop and frisk” policing strategy he pursued for a decade, and which led to the disproportionate profiling of black and Latino people in the city.
Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., continues to surge in Iowa, leapfrogging Ms. Warren and former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to hold a commanding lead among likely Democratic caucusgoers, according to a poll from The Des Moines Register and CNN.

John Bel Edwards of Louisiana, a rare Democratic governor in the South, was re-elected for a second term on Saturday, beating back a challenger heavily supported by President Trump.
In Louisiana and Kentucky, Mr. Trump’s political pleas appeared to energize Democrats and moderates as much as his own base, sending turnout in cities and suburbs soaring and making his efforts to endorse Republican candidates backfire.

House Republicans, bracing for another week of impeachment hearings, tried on Sunday to shift their emphasis in how they defend the president, arguing that he had done nothing wrong because his plans for Ukraine to investigate his political rivals never came to fruition.

A coalition of conservative groups is harnessing the outrage and money of its grass-roots networks to defend Mr. Trump against a fast-moving impeachment inquiry, showing what an unofficial war room for the president looks like in the age of social media.

In the 2017 fiscal year, FedEx owed more than $1.5 billion in taxes. The next year, it owed zero. What changed was the Trump administration’s tax cut — for which the company had lobbied hard.

Today’s On Politics briefing was compiled by Isabella Grullón Paz in New York.

Is there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com.