On Wednesday, in a discussion of the latest Republican health care bill, Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley told the truth. “You know, I could maybe give you 10 reasons why this bill shouldn’t be considered,” he said on a conference call with reporters. “But Republicans campaigned on this so often that you have a responsibility to carry out what you said in the campaign. That’s pretty much as much of a reason as the substance of the bill.” More blunt was Kansas Sen.

There’s a popular saying in Kurdistan that the Kurds’ only friends are the mountains, meaning that when they need to fight back against occupiers or invaders, the only support they can count on is their forbidding terrain. This isn’t quite fair: the United States has been a pretty good friend to the Kurds of Iraq for the past 25 years.

B. Frank Earnest chokes up twice during our afternoon together at Richmond’s Hollywood Cemetery. The first time, he’s describing his ritual of placing a fresh Confederate flag on the grave of his ancestor, Capt. Eusebius Fowlkes. The stone is only a marker. Fowlkes’ remains were never recovered from the field where he rode alongside Col. J.E.B. Stuart, the “Knight of the Golden Spurs,” before being killed in the Battle of Seven Pines on May 31, 1862.

If Graham-Cassidy is signed into law, it just might represent the death knell of today’s GOP. Needless to say, that is not the message we’re hearing from the Republican senators who back the legislation, who insist it instead represents the last, best chance for the party to fulfill its promise to repeal and replace Obamacare. If you’ve promised voters something for long enough, they will surely punish you for failing to follow through, or so the theory goes.

On Tuesday, as world leaders addressed the United Nations General Assembly, diplomats were lectured by an authoritarian, a torture apologist, a pillage enthusiast, a race-baiter, and a sectarian demagogue. At the U.N., that’s an ordinary day. But this time, the despot, the demagogue, and the war-crimes advocate had something unusual in common. This time, they were all the president of the United States. Most Americans, in both parties, like to think of our country as the good guy.

In a thought-provoking new essay in New York magazine titled “America Wasn’t Built for Humans,” Andrew Sullivan takes account of our tribal moment, seeking to explain how the country became divided into two, warning of the grave dangers division represents, and offering a solution for reuniting us.

Since Donald Trump took office in January, his presidency has been dogged by concerns about how he may be profiting off the executive office. Now, thanks to receipts obtained by the transparency group Property of the People via the Freedom of Information Act, there’s evidence that the White House’s National Security Council paid more than $1,000 for a two-night stay at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, on March 3 and 4 of this year.

It’s a hot July evening in downtown Manhattan, and Von, a dimly lit cocktail bar, is packed. Three executives from Uber drink gin and tonics at the bar. A volunteer checks people in after a day spent working at a New York publishing house. Downstairs, the basement is a sea of Brooklyn hipsters, national political operatives, and crusty old labor leftists. Also, Sex and the City star Cynthia Nixon is here.

Donald Trump is feeling desperate. The president is at long last reckoning with the fact that he is profoundly unpopular, which has proven a tough pill to swallow for a man with a yearning desire to win the approval of the hosts of various cable news programs.

On Wednesday, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders introduced the Medicare For All Act of 2017, his long-awaited single-payer health care proposal that (as of this writing) has earned 16 Democratic co-sponsors. That’s a 16-senator improvement on the last single-payer bill he introduced in the Senate. It’s not just fellow lefties, like Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, supporting the Sanders plan.