1/ House Republicans narrowly passed the controversial health care bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. The vote passed 217-213 six weeks after House leaders failed to get the votes needed to pass an earlier version of their bill. The bill included last-minute amendments designed to draw votes from the most conservative House Republicans in the House Freedom Caucus as well as from their more moderate counterparts. The vote occurred before the Congressional Budget Office had released a new analysis of the revised bill with its cost and impact. The measure moves to the Senate, where its fate is far from certain. Democrats are confident that some provisions of the House bill will not comply with special budget rules that Republicans must follow in order to skirt a Senate filibuster. (Washington Post / NPR / New York Times)

  • What’s actually in the GOP health care bill. (Politico)

  • Obstacles await the Republican health care bill in the Senate. Here’s what the Senate might do to change it. (Vox)

  • How every member voted on the House health care bill. (New York Times)

  • The Obamacare replacement bill would protect just 5% of people with pre-existing conditions. The Republican bill would potentially allow insurers to charge sick people higher premiums. To offset those costs, the bill also allocates funding for financial aid for sicker people. High-risk pools in states before Obamacare tended not to cover enough people. (CNBC)

  • Democrats troll House Republicans and sang “nah nah nah nah, hey hey hey, goodbye” to their GOP colleagues after the American Health Care Act passed. (Washington Post)

  • House Republicans plan health care vote today with few votes to spare and no assessment of how much it will cost. Republicans insist they’ve secured the 216 votes needed to pass their bill. About 15 Republicans are still on record rejecting the proposal and several others are undecided. House leaders can afford only 22 defections, since Democrats will vote en masse against the proposal. The measure to repeal Obamacare is still opposed by health care providers, patient advocates, and retirees. (Politico / New York Times / Associated Press / Reuters)

  • Watch the House session. The House took up the Republican replacement bill for the Affordable Care Act. (CSPAN)

  • What to know about today’s House health care vote. The House will vote on this version of the Affordable Care Act replacement without a Congressional Budget Office estimate, and therefore no idea what it costs, how many people it might help, or how many it might hurt. (Axios)

2/ A last-minute amendment to the health care bill will allow states to waive 10 essential benefits and potentially impact everyone not insured by Medicare or small-business plans. People who obtain health insurance through their employers could be at risk of losing protections that limit out-of-pocket costs for catastrophic illnesses, maternity care, prescription drugs, mental health treatment, and hospitalization. (Wall Street Journal)

  • Sexual assault could be considered a pre-existing condition under the new MacArthur-Meadows amendment, which allows states to discriminate based on medical history. In addition to rape, postpartum depression, cesarean sections, and surviving domestic violence are all considered preexisting conditions. Companies can also deny coverage for gynecological services and mammograms. (New York Magazine)
  • The GOP health bill will cut special education funding by 25%. The $880 billion in cuts over the next 10 years would effectively “convert Medicaid from an entitlement designed to cover any costs incurred to a more limited program.” Republicans say the cuts are necessary due to skyrocketing health care costs. (New York Times)

3/ Several Senate Republicans said they will set aside the House health-care bill and write their own version instead. Without changes, the House bill arrives in the Senate well short of the 50 votes it needs to pass (including a tie-breaking vote by Mike Pence). Republicans have hold a 52-48 majority in the Senate, which means they can only afford to lose two votes. The bill is expected to undergo major changes that might leave it unrecognizable, including stripping away the provisions that earned the support of hard-right House members to secure its passage. Senate Republicans have opted to use a maneuver known as reconciliation to try to pass the bill with a simple majority, instead of having to clear the 60-vote threshold that is required for most legislation. (Bloomberg / New York Times / Washington Post)

4/ ~~Health care bill will exempt members of Congress and their staffs from losing popular Obamacare provisions. The amendment would ensure that staffers continue to have access to Obamacare programs, like a ban on discriminating based on preexisting conditions, while other enrollees could lose those policies if their state applied for a waiver. A Republican legislator has vowed to close the loophole in separate legislation. (The Hill / Vox)~~ [Editor’s note: This was amended by H.R. 2192, which eliminated the non-application of certain State waiver provisions to Members of Congress and congressional staff.]

5/ Tillerson is asking State Department employees to weigh in on the agency’s budget cuts. The Trump administration wants to cut State Department budget by 26% for “efficiency improvements.” (CNN / CBS News)

  • Tillerson said that the US had been too accommodating to emerging nations and longtime allies and that “things have gotten out of balance.” Fulfilling Trump’s promise to put “America first” will right those imbalances. (New York Times)

6/ Sean Spicer debates the press over the definition of a wall. Spicer got into a heated back-and-forth with a Breitbart correspondent after he asked whether the Trump administration had lied to the public when he promised to build a concrete wall along the southern border, only to downgrade his proposal to a series of fence-like boundaries. The issue is over the definition of whether a “levee wall” or a “bollard wall” is more of a fence than a wall. (The Guardian)

7/ Trump called out Susan Rice for refusing to testify before a Senate committee investigating both Russian meddling in the 2016 election and allegations of Obama-era spying on Team Trump. Rice’s lawyer said she was declining to appear because the ranking Democratic member on the subcommittee did not agree Rice should testify, thereby making the request “a significant departure from the bipartisan invitations extended to other witnesses.” (Fox News)

  • Susan Rice declined to testify before Senate subcommittee on Russian hacking. Republicans have raised concerns that Rice may have acted improperly, but GOP and Democratic lawmakers so far have found no evidence of wrongdoing. (CNN / Politico)

8/ Border agents are wrongly telling asylum-seekers that the US won’t take them. Customs and Border Protection said its policies haven’t changed and it’s adhering to the law, but more than 100 individuals and families seeking safety were turned away by border agents from November to April. (HuffPost)

9/ Trump signed an order aimed at allowing churches to engage in more political activity. The executive order would provide “regulatory relief” from the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that health insurance cover birth control and other family planning services. The signing took place on the National Day of Prayer. (Politico / Washington Post)

10/ Trump attacks “fake news media” while congratulating Fox News for its high ratings. It’s not clear what provoked Trump’s criticism of the media on Twitter this morning. (Politico)

11/ The Senate passed the $1 trillion spending deal to avert a government shutdown. The spending bill funds the federal government through September. (Politico)