To Your Health: The Congressional Budget Office says the Senate health care bill would dump 22 million people off health insurance by 2026, a couple of million less that the estimate for the House Healthcare bill. The CBO says that just next year, if the bill goes into effect as it is, 15 million people will lose or leave their insurance.

The report puts the bill in jeopardy. Several Republican senators said they didn’t even want to debate it. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky said, “It’s worse to pass a bad bill than pass no bill.”

Minnesota Democrat Al Franken said, “This is worse than mean — it is cruel.”

The Senate bill attempts a reverse method of encouraging people to have insurance. They would do away with the Obamacare requirement that everyone must have insurance, and impose penalties and re-entry delays on people who let their insurance lapse.

The nonpartisan CBO also says the Senate bill would reduce the deficit by $321 billion over the next 10 years, and that’s a critical figure. The primary aim of Republican healthcare reform is not better healthcare, but lower taxes.

The Supremes: The Court yesterday agreed to let the government proceed with some restrictions on travel and immigration from six Muslim countries while deciding the larger case regarding President Trump’s executive order. The case could set precedent about presidential powers.

The justices said foreigners with ties or relationships in the United States cannot be blocked from entering the country. Those applying for visas who have never been to the US, or have no family, business or other connections, may be prohibited.

“The parts that are allowed to go into effect are actually incredibly narrow,” Becca Heller, executive director of the International Refugee Assistance Project, told the Huffington Post. “Almost anyone coming to the U.S. who has a visa or who has been in the refugee program has some kind of tie to a U.S. person.”

Two of Trump’s immigration orders were blocked in lower courts. The second of them limited travel from six mostly Muslim countries for 90 days and suspended the country’s refugee program for 120 days in order to tighten screening and vetting procedures.

In other business, the Court also agreed to hear a case in which a Colorado baker cited religious objections when he refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.

It’s a battle between the forces of non-discrimination and business people who say they should not have to suspend their religious beliefs to serve customers. The baker has argued that his right to free speech and religion overrides Colorado’s anti-discrimination law.

Now This: The American company that made the exterior cladding that turned a London high-rise into a chimney of fire says it will no longer sell the material for use on tall buildings. Arconic, which used to be Alcoa, sold the flammable cladding for high-rise use overseas when it’s not legal for that in the US. British inspectors have found dozens of other buildings in the country that have the Arconic cladding. Seventy-five of them have failed a fire safety test.

Big Brother: Google says it will stop reading its users’ email in order to target them with ads. Google notifies users of the practice in its terms of use, which no one reads. Google will continue to collect information about its users in other ways. It’s reason for being is to collect information for advertisers.

Real News: Three employees of CNN resigned yesterday after the network was forced to retract and apologize for a website story about a close ally of President Trump. The article linked Anthony Scaramucci, a hedge-fund manager and Trump confidant, to a Russian investment fund supposedly being investigated by the Senate. CNN admits that the story was not properly sourced and supported.

Daddy Dearest: A Spanish judge has ordered the body of surrealist artist Salvador Dalí to be exhumed to determine whether he is the father of a woman who is now a professional tarot card reader.  Maria Pilar Abel Martínez, born in 1956, says she is the product of an affair between Dalí and her mother, who was a maid in the house. Dalí died in 1989 at age 85.

If found to be the artist’s daughter, Martínez could be awarded part of the Dalí estate, which went to the Spanish government.

Couldn’t Martínez just demonstrate that it’s all in the cards?

-30-