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Hawaii sues over the travel ban, Planned Parenthood declines a White House deal, and a Jersey Shore congressman battles the Obamacare repeal

    by Aubrey Whelan, Staff writer
    Published 

A daily roundup of news about President Trump and his policies, from Philadelphia and around the country.

  1. Hawaii is the first state to sue over President Trump's revised travel ban — and its lawsuit cited a TV interview commentators had predicted would come back to haunt the administration: that time Trump adviser Stephen Miller assured Fox News that the revised ban would have "the same basic policy outcome."


    But NBC News reports that the new, narrower ban will be harder to challenge in court.

  2. The AP reported Wednesday that China had approved 38 Trump trademarks "at a pace that some experts view as unusually quick." Democrats say it's an example of how the president's businesses could pose conflicts of interest with a major world power. China says they followed the law.

  3. The GOP's Affordable Care Act replacement aims to pull federal funding from Planned Parenthood — and the New York Times reports the White House offered to let the group keep the money provided it stopped providing abortions. Planned Parenthood noted that it does not use federal funding for abortions, and refused the informal offer.

  1. Meanwhile, the ACA replacement has already made it through one House of Representatives committee on the path to a floor vote. In the other House committee considering the bill, congressman Frank Pallone, a Democrat from the Jersey Shore, made it his business yesterday to be "an all-around pest" as the committee considered the bill — typifying the all-out war Democrats plan over the bill, the Inquirer's Jonathan Tamari reports.

  2. Onetime presidential candidate, former Utah governor and (very) occasional Trump critic Jon Hunstman Jr. is reportedly the president's pick for ambassador to Russia — "the most awkward ambassadorship in the Trump administration," as New York Magazine puts it.

  3. President Trump is considering cutting $6 billion from the Department of Housing and Urban Development's budget, the Washington Post reports. Funding for city and state housing authorities would be "among the hardest hit" under the budget proposal obtained by the Post, and federal community development funds would be gutted entirely. But the Post cautions the proposal they obtained "appears to be part of a back-and-forth with federal budget officials," and HUD officials say their budget is still a "work in progress."

    AW
    Aubrey Whelan, Staff writer