The Senate bill’s prospects collapsed last night after two senators — Mike Lee of Utah and Jerry Moran of Kansas — announced they would vote against the motion to proceed to debate on the most recent version of the measure. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) then admitted that the current repeal effort “will not be successful” and said the Senate will soon vote on a version of repeal (with a replacement supposedly to follow at some point) that passed in 2015 but was vetoed by former president Barack Obama. Trump himself endorsed this approach:

But here’s what this really means. Moderate GOP senators — whose concerns had compelled GOP leaders to craft a “softer” version of the health bill that did not repeal Obamacare’s tax hikes on the rich — will now have to vote on a version that does repeal the ACA’s tax hikes on the wealthy, while leading to a substantially larger loss of coverage. In short, moderates will now have to vote on a version that’s even crueler and more regressive than the one that just failed.

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The version that just collapsed had restored the ACA’s 3.8 percent tax on net investment income and its 0.9 percent Medicare surtax, because moderate Republicans had objected to an earlier version that repealed those taxes. That made the latest version somewhat less regressive than the last one, and it might have meant that the coverage loss might have been marginally smaller than the 22 million that would have lost coverage under that earlier version.

But now that this approach has imploded, Republicans are set to embark on a process that will culminate in a vote on a repeal-only bill. As it happens, the Congressional Budget Office scored that bill, and it’s a lot worse, on multiple levels. Nicholas Bagley, a health policy expert at the University of Michigan, explained it this way in an email to me:

After facing intense criticism for a repeal-and-replace bill that would have eliminated coverage for 23 million people, McConnell is apparently reviving a repeal bill that, according to the Congressional Budget Office , would lead 32 million people to lose coverage, including 18 million in 2018 alone. The repeal bill is also more regressive: in contrast to the current Senate bill, it would extend $230 billion in tax relief to the wealthiest Americans. That means senators will have to vote on a bill that’s both crueler and less equitable than the bill that just collapsed, which was plenty cruel and inequitable to begin with.

Recall that the latest version (which just collapsed) came after moderate Republican senators (such as Susan Collins of Maine and Bob Corker of Tennessee) explicitly objected to an earlier version on the grounds that cutting hundreds of billions in health-care spending on poor people to finance a huge tax cut for the rich was morally unacceptable. Other moderate Republicans (such as Dean Heller of Nevada, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, and Rob Portman of Ohio) have objected to rolling back Medicaid for enormous numbers of people on humanitarian grounds. They will now vote on a version that cuts taxes more deeply for rich people, and rolls back coverage for many more millions of poor people, than the one that just collapsed.

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But, should this fail, as seems likely, since moderate GOP senators will probably recoil, this will amount to a form of poetic justice. Republicans spent years calling and voting for repeal-only, secure in the knowledge that Barack Obama would veto it, meaning they would not be forced to grapple with the consequences of it actually happening. Now Trump is demanding that Republicans vote for repeal on the understanding that he would sign it immediately, with no guarantee of any replacement later. Whether he knows it or not, Trump is calling their years-long bluff.

It’s unclear from the reporting why McConnell is pushing this: Perhaps he believes it can actually pass, or perhaps he believes he needs to demonstrate to conservative groups and base voters that straight repeal cannot pass, so that he can move on to negotiations with Democrats over ways to shore up the individual markets without cutting taxes on the rich and dramatically slashing the ACA’s historic coverage expansion. Or perhaps McConnell has some other devious strategy to come back to a repeal vote that we don’t know about.

But whatever his thinking, the upshot of holding this vote, should it fail, will be to reveal that Republicans were never actually willing to repeal the ACA as long as they thought it would never actually happen. The whole thing was a scam all along — Republicans promised to repeal the ACA and replace it with something that did all the good things in it (the coverage expansion; the consumer protections) without the bad (the taxes; the mandates), but they never had any way of doing anything like that.

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This would also be a fitting end because it would unmask Trump’s own long-running scam. Trump sent strong signals during the campaign that he is not ideologically in sync with Paul Ryan’s designs on the safety net; he promised not to cut Medicaid; and he vowed “insurance for everybody.” But then Trump and the White House fully embraced an enormously cruel and regressive Ryanesque rollback of the ACA’s coverage gains. They employed endless lies and distortions to cover up their own bill’s true ideological designs. But now that this failed, Trump is demanding a vote on something even more cruel and regressive — full repeal — solely because he is so eager to triumphantly stomp all over something with Obama’s name on it and call that a “win.” That’s all this was ever about, and that is now confirmed.

Update: It’s now being widely reported that senators Shelley Moore Capito, Susan Collins, and Lisa Murkowski all will oppose the motion to proceed to the vote on full repeal. What happens next is unclear, but this strategy, too, looks dead. Which confirms the points I’ve tried to make above.

* WALL STREET JOURNAL TO TRUMP: TIME FOR FULL TRANSPARENCY: The Wall Street Journal editorial board calls on Trump to show full transparency about everything related to the Russia probe, including releasing his tax returns:

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Release everything to the public ahead of the inevitable leaks … tell every Trump family member, campaign operative and White House aide to disclose every detail that might be relevant to the Russian investigations. That means every meeting with any Russian or any American with Russian business ties. Every phone call or email. And every Trump business relationship with Russians going back years. This should include every relevant part of Mr. Trump’s tax returns … If there really is nothing to the Russia collusion allegations, transparency will prove it.

Yeah, I’m sure Trump will get right on that.

* TRUMP JR. IS VERY FORTHCOMING, HIS LAWYER SAYS. SORT OF: Donald Trump Jr.’s first statement falsely claimed the meeting with the Russian lawyer was primarily about an adoption program. Now the Associated Press reports:

Alan Futerfas, the attorney for the president’s son, said Trump Jr. had been “absolutely prepared” to make a “fulsome statement” about how the meeting was arranged and what discussions took place. He did not respond to questions about why the initial statement about the matter, which was seen by the president, lacked some of those details.

Friendly reminder: The president himself reportedly signed off on this false statement.

* HOUSE GOP BUDGET CUTS MEDICARE, SOCIAL SECURITY: The Post reports that House Republicans have unveiled a new 2018 budget plan that would deeply cut spending. Note this:

Unlike Trump’s budget, the House proposal cuts into Medicare and Social Security — entitlement programs that the president has pledged to preserve … The House blueprint won a strong endorsement from White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, who served on the House Budget Committee before joining the Trump administration.

Wait, but Trump promised he would never … oh, never mind.

* A NEW PUSH TO WIN ON STATE LEVEL: Politico reports that North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, a Democrat, is unveiling a new push to win back the state legislature, one that Democrats hope will become a template for other such efforts elsewhere:

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National Democrats, reeling from losing hundreds of seats in statehouses across the country over the last decade, are hoping other governors pay close attention. Cooper’s initiative is the latest frontier in a state that’s a cauldron of just about every political fight in America — redistricting, voter ID, public education, gender.

And as I’ve noted, winning back this ground, particularly in the 2018 elections, will be crucial for boosting the Democratic Party’s prospects in the next decade.

* LOW TRUST IN TRUMP TO HANDLE NORTH KOREA: A new Post-ABC News poll finds that 74 percent of Americans are concerned that the United States will get involved in a “full scale war with North Korea.” And:

The Post-ABC poll finds lagging confidence in Trump to handle the situation, with 36 percent saying they trust Trump at least “a good amount” to deal with the issue, while 63 percent have “just some” or less confidence. Four in 10 say they do not trust Trump “at all” on the issue, nearly twice the number who express “a great deal” of confidence.

Just imagine what Trump’s Twitter feed would look like if this possibility really loomed, and how much damage that could do.

* TRUMP KEEPS LYING ABOUT NUMBER OF LAWS HE’S SIGNED: Trump keeps claiming he has signed more laws — 42 — than other president. The New York Times does the debunking:

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Mr. Trump is slightly behind the lawmaking pace for the past six presidents, who as a group signed an average of 43 bills during the same period. And an analysis of the bills Mr. Trump signed shows that about half were minor and inconsequential, passed by Congress with little debate. Among recent presidents, both the total number of bills he signed and the legislation’s substance make Mr. Trump about average.

Yes, but laws signed by Trump get to be counted twice, because Trump said so, and his supporters believe him.

* AND TRUMP JUST WANTS A ‘WIN’: As Trumpcare collapses, Politico reports on Trump’s, er, thinking:

To Trump, the Obamacare fight has always been about scoring a win. He doesn’t care nearly as much about the specifics, people close to him say, and hasn’t understood why legislators just won’t make deals and bring something, anything to his desk.