By Bryan Bender and Jacqueline Klimas, July 27

The Defense Department is awaiting guidance from the White House amid fears that thousands of troops could be forced out.

Or was it meant to be ignored, as in "I was just feeding the Bannon/Pence base, they won't actually check if it happens."?

“I’m not Steve Bannon, I’m not trying to suck my own cock,” shouted communications director (ahem) Anthony Scaramucci to journalist Ryan Lizzie. “I’m not trying to build my own brand off the fucking strength of the President. I’m here to serve the country.” 

And more...

“Reince is a fucking paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac,” Scaramucci said. He channelled Priebus as he spoke: “ ‘Oh, Bill Shine is coming in. Let me leak the fucking thing and see if I can cock-block these people the way I cock-blocked Scaramucci for six months.’ ”

Heck of a job, Moochie

By Sarah Kliff @ Vox.com, from Sterling Heights, MI, July 26

Refugees and immigrants signed up for the coverage expansion. Their neighbors voted Trump into office.

The captions for photos by Elaine Cromie for Vox give an idea of the content:

Bushra Rahameed and her 10-year-old daughter Leeandra Sofi are Iraqi refugees who rely on Medicaid expansion for health coverage. “Every day I would pray that my kids don’t get sick,” she said of life before the Affordable Care Act.

Bushra Rahameed, 46, came to the United States as a refugee in 2012. Her family opened seven credit cards to pay their health care bills.

Leeandra Sofi, 10, and her parents, Amri Sofi and Bushra Rahameed, prepare dinner at home. “I don’t want anything from the government,” says Rahameed. “I don’t need the food stamps. Not anything. Just Medicaid.”

ACCESS’s health clinic in Dearborn, Michigan, serves a predominantly Arab-American population. Many of their patients are new immigrants and refugees to the area.

Kaes Almasraf worked as dentist in Iraq before immigrating to the United States, where he now works in Affordable Care Act enrollment.

Sterling Heights is a suburb about 30 minutes north of Detroit with a large Iraqi immigrant community.

May ElHaddad, 55, has undergone breast cancer treatment with her Medicaid coverage.

Sterling Heights is part of Macomb County, an area that supported Trump in the 2016 presidential election

Fadil and Hayfa Fardiha are both covered by Obamacare — but Fadil voted for Trump in the 2016 election. He liked the president’s “tough on terror” stance, and said Obamacare repeal wasn’t a key issue

Refugees, like the Sofi family, had an especially high uninsured rate prior to the Affordable Care Act. One study estimated 49 percent of the population lacked coverage.

By Lulu Yilun Chen & Camilla Russo @ Bloomberg News, July 25

• Dealmakers and financiers find second wind in cryptocurrency
• ‘There’s so much to imagine,’ ex-China Renaissance exec says

Richard Liu gave up a seven-figure salary this month to get into one of the hottest financial instruments around right now: initial coin offerings. The former China Renaissance deal-maker has since backed a clutch of cryptocoin sales that’ve raised millions -- sometimes in seconds -- often without a single product.

From Hong Kong and Beijing to London, accomplished financiers are abandoning lucrative careers to plunge into the murky world of ICOs, a way to amass quick money by selling digital tokens to investors sans banks or regulators. Cut out of the action, a growing cohort of banking professionals are instead applying their talents toward buying or hawking cryptocurrency.

They’re going in with eyes wide open.  For Liu, who put together some of China’s biggest tech deals in his old job, the chance to shape the nascent arena outweighs the dangers of a market crash or crackdown. Loosely akin to IPOs, ICOs have raised millions from investors hoping to get in early on the next bitcoin or ether [....]

By Anne Gearen @ WashingtonPost.com, July 25

President Trump lumped the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah among militants and terrorists he praised the government of Lebanon for fighting, saying during Rose Garden remarks Tuesday that the tiny Mideast nation was “on the front lines” of a shared battle against extremism.

The only problem? Hezbollah is a political partner of the man standing next to Trump, visiting Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri [....]

The Terminator Heads to the Supreme Court

By Edward-Isaac Dovere @ Politico.com, July 25

[....] Schwarzenegger is preparing to throw himself into a public and behind-the-scenes campaign to build momentum around what’s become a defining cause of his post-gubernatorial career. He has a Terminate Gerrymandering Crowdpac that he’s pledged to match dollar-for-dollar. He’ll be appearing at events, meeting with lawyers, having his team jump in to rewrite incomprehensible charts of the “efficiency gap” and other technicalities ahead of Gill v. Whitford, the Wisconsin gerrymandering challenge that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a few hours after he finished speaking, called “the most important” case of the Supreme Court’s next term at an event at Duke Law School. Redistricting reform advocates think Anthony Kennedy, meanwhile, is looking for a way to be with them, though they’re not sure. The National Democratic Redistricting Committee, led by former Attorney General Eric Holder, supports the challenge but isn’t counting on it as central to its own efforts [....]

More on Giuliani's direct admission of guilt over those magical October Surprise days.

Chuck Schumer resurrects a tried-and-true-(and-tired) catchphrase to drive Democrats economic agenda.

Americans are clamoring for bold changes to our politics and our economy. They feel, rightfully, that both systems are rigged against them, and they made that clear in last year’s election. American families deserve a better deal so that this country works for everyone again, not just the elites and special interests. Today, Democrats will start presenting that better deal to the American people.

If you thought grownups like Mattis, McMaster and Tillerson were secretly running the administration, think again.

Op-ed column by Eli Lake @ Bloomberg.com, July 21

(Before Bloomberg: He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.)

[....] In the case of McMaster, administration officials tell me he is perceived not to be a reliable messenger of the president's wishes. What's more, administration figures tell me, principals including Tillerson, Mattis and CIA director Mike Pompeo have a direct line to Trump. They can go around McMaster and make their case on interagency disputes directly to the commander in chief,

For a national security adviser, this dynamic is deadly. Traditionally, this job is supposed to coordinate policy throughout the government to meet the directives of the president. That job is next to impossible if the adviser isn't seen as speaking for the president. While all administrations experience infighting, rarely has a national security adviser been this weak. 

Some of this has made its way into the press [....]