A chat with…

Bernie Sanders! The Guardian’s new column features excerpts from The Bernie Sanders Show (with Sanders’ permission, of course). This week: Sanders discusses North Korea and nuclear weapons with former secretary of defense William J Perry. Take a look.

Bernie Sanders, looking like he’s in a hurry. Photograph: J. Scott Applewhite/AP

The GOP’s double implosion on healthcare



Republicans managed to fail twice in a single week on healthcare, marking another tentative win for activists fighting to keep Obamacare alive.

But Senate Republicans are reportedly planning to vote on a new bill next week –although they don’t know what they’re voting on yet, NBC News reported.

Meanwhile, activists are keeping up the pressure. On Wednesday, Washington DC police arrested more than 155 people at Senate office buildings as activists protested the GOP’s intended reforms.

A woman is led away by police in Washington DC on Wednesday. Photograph: Pacific Press/REX/Shutterstock

The Republican’s Better Care Reconciliation Act collapsed on Monday, when Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell couldn’t pull together the votes to pass it. Then on Tuesday, a last ditch effort by McConnell to repeal the Affordable Care Act without replacing it – a move which would have stripped an additional 32m people of healthcare – also failed to garner enough votes.

Campaign for affordable housing

Donald Trump’s budget, proposed in March, would cut $7.4bn from the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s budget – almost 15% of the department’s total. It would include cuts to rental assistance, which enables more than two-million families to afford housing, PBS reported.

In response, housing activists are launching a National Housing Week of Action on Saturday, as they call for increased federal investment in affordable housing. The National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC), which is behind the action, says there will be more than 40 events held across the country to raise awareness of the plight of low income families in America. They plan to call senators and hold voter registration drives all week.

The NLIHC say there are only 35 affordable homes for every 100 “extremely low income renter households” in the US. That figure varies from state to state though – in Nevada there are just 15 affordable homes for every 100 people in need. California has just 21, while Arizona and Oregon are both on 26.

Las Vegas faces a massive shortage in affordable housing. Photograph: Eleanor Scriven/Robert Hardi/REX

What we’re reading



•Hillary Clinton is less popular than Donald Trump, writes Daniel José Camacho over here at the Guardian. “There is no doubt” that sexism plays a part in her standing, Camacho says, but Clinton’s “Third Way centrist politics” have also contributed to her downfall. “Clinton did not provide a true alternative to the status quo,” Camacho writes. “Democrats should look elsewhere for a blueprint forward and leave her politics far behind.”

•In a sign that that won’t happen any time soon, “early reports suggest” that Democrats are working on an agenda that leaves out many progressive agenda items, according to Mic. “The platform does not, at this time, appear to emphasize increasingly popular progressive policies like single-payer health care,” writes Andrew Joyce. “But then again, who’s to say trying the same thing over and over again won’t work?”



Down in flames

This is what Donald Trump was doing while the healthcare bill was in its death throes. He sure does like trucks.