“The administration’s position on this has not changed.”

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The New York Times editorial board's call for pot legalization has not changed the president's opposition to the idea, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Monday.

On Saturday, the Times editorial board called for legalized marijuana for American adults over the age of 21 under the headline "Repeal Prohibition, Again."

Earnest said the White House is sticking by the administration view that marijuana should remain illegal but that the drug war as it has been fought should be re-examined.

"The administration's position on this has not changed," Earnest said in response to a question about the Times editorial. "We remain committed to treating drug use as a public health issue, not just a criminal justice problem."

In January, Obama took a softer stance toward marijuana than some of his predecessors, telling the New Yorker pot is not "more dangerous" than alcohol, but calling the use of it "a bad idea, a waste of time, not very healthy."

In August, the Justice Department announced that it would allow recreational drug laws in Colorado and Washington to go ahead without federal interference.

Even as it has made those policy changes, however, the administration has emphasized that marijuana remains illegal and Obama has not called for those laws to change.

She previously said it should be considered. Clinton also said children from Central American countries should be screened to see if they qualify as refugees before making the dangerous trip to the U.S.

Hillary Clinton, who previously said the unaccompanied minors who came from Central American countries should be sent back, clarified her views after Jorge Ramos of Fusion asked her if she had a "Latino problem" because of her stance.

"Some of them should be sent back," Clinton said. "Just because a child gets across the border, what category does that child end up in?"

The 2016 Democratic frontrunner said that the children coming across the border fall into two groups, migrant children who do not have a case for staying and refugee children who would be in danger if they return.

"Within our legal framework we need to on a humanitarian basis provide emergency care for all the children. I don't care who they are or where they come from. They need to be given the basics, the necessities and as much love as we can," she said.

She said the children who should be deported are those who don't have a legitimate claim for asylum or a family connection.

While Clinton said the Obama administration needs resources and a well-funded procedure by Congress to deal with the children, which it is resisting, she did not advocate changing the 2008 human trafficking law signed by President George W. Bush, which has served as a flashpoint for the debate and would need to be altered to allow for quicker deportations of the children.

"No, I don't agree that we should change the law," she said.

But in an interview with NPR before Fusion, she said the law should be looked at.

"I think it should be looked at as part of an overall package," she said. After talking about the two categories of children and needing resources deployed very quickly she added, "We need some flexibility within the laws. Our laws right now are not particularly well-suited for making the kind of determinations that are required, and that we should, as Americans, want to see happen."

In the interview with Ramos she said she agrees with an idea the administration has floated of creating a system in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala to screen children "before they get in the hands of coyotes, or they get on the beast or they're raped. Terrible things happen to them."

These refugee application programs are supported by Republican Sen. John McCain as well.

"That's why I am emphasizing the procedures because I think a lot of people are understandably, as I am, upset about what's happening to these kids, but if we don't have a procedure, it's not going to stop, more kids are going to come."

Conditions have become so bad it has hurt the profits of criminal organizations including MS13, who have begun policing the train.

People wait in Mexico to stow away on the freight train known as "La Bestia" for a trip toward the U.S. border.

Jessie Wardarski/Cronkite News Service / MCT

International efforts to cut off access to "La Bestia" — a network of trains in Mexico — are expected to have little to no impact on the flood of undocumented children and other immigrants that has hit the Texas border, according to internal Obama administration documents obtained by BuzzFeed.

Although the pictures of children huddled atop train shipping cars have become a symbol of the dangerous trip north most immigrants face, Department of Homeland Security documents indicate less than 10% of immigrants end up riding the train, and those that do only ride the train for a few days before disembarking out of fear of being targeted by the violent Zetas cartel or MS13 gang.

Travel on the train is extremely dangerous. Derailments are frequent, including an August 2013 incident that injured scores of people and killed 11. Rapes are common on La Bestia, and immigrants are routinely robbed or extorted during the trip.

The U.S. government has invested heavily in the notion that a flood of immigrants are riding the line: In addition to a multimillion-dollar ad campaign now underway in Central America, the Customs and Border Protection Agency hired a D.C. PR firm to write a corrido migra — a genre of music about immigrants — called "La Bestia." The song warns would-be immigrants that the train is incredibly dangerous — and has become a hit in some Central American countries.

Mexican officials have also begun focusing on La Bestia in recent months, agreeing to arrest immigrants found waiting for the train. The company that is set to take control of the the train, Ferrocarriles Chiapas-Mayab, has announced it plans to spend 2 billion pesos over the next five years to improve the train, including speeding the train up significantly in an effort to discourage riders.

Seven companies operate most of the rail lines in Mexico. While immigrants use lines other than La Bestia, which is currently operated by Ferrocarril del Istmo de Tehuantepecm, it appears rare, according to the DHS documents. For instance, security for Kansas City Southern de Mexico — which operates the main train line moving goods from southern Mexico to the United States — has only removed 4,000 immigrants from its line; the line is considered one of the most secure.

But even La Bestia has relatively low levels of immigrant riders.

According to the DHS documents, only 10% of all immigrants entering the United States in the Rio Grande Valley Sector use La Bestia, with the vast majority relying on cars, trucks, and buses to move through Mexico. With those immigrants making up 76% of all undocumented immigrants entering through the southern border, it appears a fraction of undocumented immigrants ever ride the trains.

That's not to say immigrants don't use La Bestia: According to DHS, between 350 1,500 people ride the trains daily, typically boarding in the towns of Arriaga and Palenque before disembarking at Tierra Blanca in Veracruz. The train ride is a relatively short one; immigrants are wary of taking the train further because of gang and cartel violence in parts of Mexico further north.

Ironically, the Zetas and MS13 have reportedly become concerned about La Bestia's dangerous reputation. Immigrants interviewed by DHS indicated the criminal organizations have begun policing the trains and "removing" rapists and robbers to ensure a steady stream of paying immigrant passengers on the trains.

Juan Gastelum contributed reporting to this story.

BuzzFeed

The Sheraton hotel in Sofia, Bulgaria, is a neoclassical colossus built during the Soviet era. The rear end of the building butts up on a 4th-century church and mossy Roman ruins, and it dwarfs the country’s adjoining presidential palace. Inside the hotel, a dark-eyed woman in a pantsuit invites guests to the erotic nightclub in the hotel basement. Skip the strip club, and there’s a hotel bar with a spacious lounge, where carpeting absorbs sound, and marble pillars reflect the light of the massive crystal chandeliers.

It is here that a short, heavyset, American arms dealer visiting from Fresno, Calif., held his business meetings. Bulgarian weapons dealers said that this man — 53-year-old Ara Dolarian — was likable and garrulous. He was often there on behalf of the U.S. government or its allies, shopping for weapons destined for America’s most difficult and dangerous foreign-policy tangles, such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

From 2006 until last year, Dolarian managed to get contracts affiliated with the U.S. government that ranged from less than $20,000 to $14 million.

One $588,000 Dolarian deal last year was for an operation still shrouded in secrecy. American commandos wanted dozens of Kalashnikov rifles, a handful of the massive, Soviet bloc machine guns nicknamed Dushkas to mount on trucks, some rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition — a standard package for a foreign quick-reaction force that the U.S. could train and deploy, according to special forces veterans who perused the shopping list for BuzzFeed.

It isn’t clear what group the U.S. intended to arm with this contract, parts of which are apparently classified, though the timing fit with secret U.S. training programs for Syrian rebel forces. Intelligence agencies and the military declined to comment.

They also declined to comment on whether they knew certain pertinent facts about Dolarian: When his company landed the subcontract to buy these weapons, he was the subject of a federal criminal grand jury investigation for possibly violating U.S. arms-dealing laws and had been found by a civil court in California to have defrauded investors there.

Dolarian’s tale highlights how the U.S. relies on small but important defense-contracting bottom fish to arm some of the world’s most violent and unstable military forces.

The U.S. is famously the largest arms exporter in the world. Less well-known is that America also purchases massive amounts of foreign-made weapons, most of them manufactured in the former Soviet bloc. In an effort to build up and train friendly security services, the U.S. saturates some the most violent regions of the world with these arms but has little control over who ultimately gets them.

The Pentagon or U.S. intelligence agencies often issue contracts themselves for these weapons. But other times, American tax dollars go through a proxy, such as an Afghan government agency, which issues the contract but which is heavily funded and guided by the U.S. Dolarian was involved in both types of contracts.

While most coverage of the weapons trade tracks the multibillion-dollar deals in fighter jets, strategic missiles, or radar systems, most killing in modern wars is done with cheap rifles, machine guns, mortars, and other small arms.

Over the last decade, the U.S. has sent more than 700,000 weapons — the vast majority foreign-made small arms — to Afghanistan, where President Barack Obama has staked his strategy on training and arming the army and police. Likewise, in Iraq after the 2003 invasion, the U.S. disbanded the security forces only to rebuild and rearm new ones for eight years, sending over a million weapons by some estimates. The majority of these were Russian-designed small arms.

These are the types of arms that Dolarian, a man the state of California banned from selling certain financial securities, was given U.S. tax dollars to purchase.

This line of work has seen its share of scandal. In 2007, the Pentagon awarded a $300 million contract for Warsaw Pact ammunition to a company run by a 21-year-old Miami man, Efraim Diveroli, who had limited experience in the arms trade. The story of Diveroli, later convicted of fraud after his company sent decades-old, flawed ammunition to Afghanistan, is set to be made into Hollywood movie called Arms and the Dudes. Since that fiasco, the government has tried to use well-known, established defense contractors to equip Afghanistan’s forces, and procure this type of weaponry. But as the Dolarian tale shows, it doesn’t always work out that way.

Details about Dolarian’s career as an arms dealer were culled from court records, interviews, and documents. In response to a detailed letter laying out the contents of this article, Dolarian’s lawyer, Myron Smith, wrote, “I do not intend to provide a point by point response. Needless to say, I believe some of the information is inaccurate and some is false.”

Dolarian himself declined repeated requests for an interview. But in one brief phone conversation he made it clear that he sees the weapons business as nothing special: “The arms trade,” he said, “is no different than any commodity.”

Indeed, before he dealt in arms, Dolarian dealt in another commodity: pigs.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Dolarian was a financier based in Fresno, where he arranged investments for a variety of ventures. In 2001, a livestock business he had invested in started to founder. The company was supposed to supply 450 young pigs a week to a Northern California slaughterhouse catering to the Chinese-American community. But the company, run by a farmer who had agreed to provide the pigs, often failed to fulfill the weekly order. Dolarian’s company at the time, Dolarian Business Group, took over the contract, buying and delivering the pigs, according to court records.

“At the start of the contract, the quality of the pigs shipped was good,” a California state appellate judge would write years later, “but quality began to decline. Many of the pigs were overweight and blemished. Some arrived dead; others were condemned upon arrival as unfit for human consumption.”

In 2001 and 2002 in a separate pig-processing effort, according to court records, Dolarian encouraged a dentist named Dennis Shamlian to invest $190,000 in a company he controlled, Golden State Meat Products. Shamlian’s then-73- year-old mother, Roxie Shamlian, pulled $100,000 out of her savings account to invest with Dolarian.

The two didn’t get paid back, and by 2004 the case had worked its way through a California state civil court in Fresno, where a superior court judge ruled that Dolarian had committed “fraud and deceit upon his investors and creditors.”

Reached for a brief interview in July, Smith, Dolarian’s lawyer, said that there was no fraud and that Dolarian did not pocket money in the deal. He said it was just an honest investment that went bad and that borrowers who owed Dolarian money didn’t pay it back.

In his letter to BuzzFeed, Smith noted that the pig deals happened more than 10 years ago and said, “I believe that the purpose of using this old information is to cast my clients in a false light and cause the reader of the article to conclude that my clients are ‘bad’ people.”

In 2005, the state of California ordered Dolarian to “desist and refrain” from selling certain “unqualified” financial securities. The state found that “Dolarian and/or Dolarian Business Group” had not informed investors that Dolarian was the chief financial officer of one of the companies investors had loaned money to. The state also found that investors had not been paid what they were promised.

Dolarian’s lawyer wrote that the state’s order came “two years after Business Group ceased ANY business.”

It was in the mid-2000s, when the U.S. occupation of Iraq was bleeding billions, that Dolarian saw how lucrative government contracting could be, according to a former business associate of his who spoke on condition of anonymity. Under President George W. Bush, the Coalition Provisional Authority, which then oversaw Iraq, was issuing huge contracts.

“They were throwing money at anyone,” said the former associate of Dolarian, who watched his transformation.

The first arms deal Dolarian’s company did directly with the U.S. government came in 2006 with the Air Force, contracting records show. He delivered 30,000 rounds of AK-47 ammunition, plus 100,000 rounds of blank ammunition, presumably for training. The total price was just $18,000.

And then he solicited business around the world. The Dolarian name showed up bidding for a mortar contract in the Philippines, according to The Philippine Star. A 2008 WikiLeaks cable makes a reference to Dolarian pursuing business as part of a trade delegation to South Sudan.

Dolarian quipped recently that he was self-taught in the arms business, joking that there weren’t apprenticeships or vocational schools. “I don't believe those types of programs are available in the industry,” he said, wryly.

The former associate of his said, “He’s a really great talker. If you had one shot to get a deal done, and you could control him, you could send Dolarian. The guy knows how to get it done: when to pause; when not to pause; when to be quiet.”

In early 2010, according to the former Dolarian associate, money was tight. But then, one Thursday morning in March, Dolarian got an email. “Good morning,” said the email. “[Do] you have PKMs available in Bulgaria?” A PKM is a heavy-duty, Russian-style machine gun.

The email was from a major U.S. private security company called SOC, LLC, looking for Soviet bloc arms it could use in Iraq and Afghanistan to arm its guards. Like the more famous company Blackwater, SOC sent highly trained veteran soldiers to protect State Department officials around the world. It had a piece of a giant State Department contract called Worldwide Personal Protective Services. On top of that, two sources say, SOC had contracts in Afghanistan, where it protected CIA officers on undercover assignments, operating as bodyguards for the spies. SOC declined to comment for this story.

"These goods are now ready for dispatch," Dolarian emailed back, "pending licensing from both the United States and the Bulgaria. (sic)"

That email exchange, legal records show, blossomed into a contract with SOC worth $1,063,328 for guns from Bulgaria, to be shipped to Iraq and Afghanistan. SOC’s contracts were with the U.S. government; Dolarian was a subcontractor. Records from a case in U.S. district court in Fresno say he got a deposit of $531,664. The deal included at least a thousand AK-47s and 75 heavy machine guns, and over a million rounds of ammunition. In transactions such as this one, Dolarian, like most weapons dealers, would buy the weapons as inexpensively as possible to maximize his profit.

And these purchases of firepower were laid out on a banal invoice, as if it were the most normal thing in the world for one American company to buy from another American company enough Warsaw Pact weapons to arm an infantry battalion.

Click here for larger view.

Then things got even better for Dolarian’s business, with a far larger deal to ship guns to Afghanistan’s government. In August 2010, documents show, Dolarian Capital became a subcontractor to an arms dealing company called Turi Defense Group, to ship $14 million worth of weapons to the Afghanistan National Directorate of Security, the intelligence service that was heavily mentored and funded by the CIA.

Turi’s contract was with the NDS, but one source with knowledge of the deal said that the funding, as with much of Afghanistan’s budget, came from the U.S. And the U.S. embassy in Bulgaria would end up facilitating the arms purchase. Turi Defense declined to comment, as did the NDS and the CIA.

On this deal, Dolarian’s subcontract called for him to procure weapons including rocket-propelled grenades and launchers, ammunition, pistols, heavy machine guns, and sniper rifles, and it put him at the heart of President Obama’s Afghanistan strategy: a surge that would build up Afghan security forces to fight the Taliban. He had graduated, in just a decade, from selling pigs to selling guns.

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Several months after signing the Afghan deal, Dolarian Capital spent $1.2 million to buy a 3,000-square-foot home for Dolarian and his family, according to corporate records. “It is necessary,” according to a resolution of the board, “for the Corporation to provide to the President of Dolarian Capital Inc. a residence that provides a high level of security to the President and his family.” Dolarian himself signed the resolution to buy the estate.

Dolarian’s lawyer, in his letter to BuzzFeed, objected to an “implication” that “my client improperly took money from the Turi contract and used it personally. Such implication is actionable.”

In any event, to start getting the weapons, Dolarian headed out to Bulgaria.

The tour books call the expansive farmland around the ancient, central Bulgarian town of Kazanlak the Valley of Roses. Locals call it, more accurately, the Valley of Guns and Roses. Roses, because for centuries farmers have cultivated the fragrant pink damask rose here, to press it into rose oil. Guns, because this is where the arms manufacturer called Arsenal 2000 is based. It’s been an institution here since the days when the Russians helped break the back of the Ottoman Empire in the 1870s.

Spread over 4 square miles, Arsenal’s factory grounds are carefully guarded. Inside, the roads are shaded with trees that give it the feeling of a college campus. A 25-foot stone statue of a bearded Friedrich Engels, in the socialist realism style, still towers near the entrance.

Inside a company museum there’s a world map studded with pins to show where Arsenal’s guns have been sold — every continent except Antarctica, dozens of countries.

And in the marble showroom the goods are all on display for buyers who come from around the world to do deals. There are submachine guns called Shipkas, and huge ZU 23 fully automatic anti-aircraft guns that fire shells as big as dildos. Mortars for infantrymen, and thermobaric explosives that can kill anyone hiding in enclosed spaces, just from the blast waves. There are shoulder-mounted, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and even grenade launchers with revolving barrels, that look like some kind of space-age commando weapon.

But what Arsenal is best known for is its production of the ubiquitous Kalashnikov rifle, the legendary AK. It has manufactured 2 million of these assault rifles. And they are some of the most rugged, long-lasting, finely machined AKs ever deployed, arms dealers say. Guns & Ammo magazine this January put one of the newer Arsenal models — built for the U.S. civilian market — on the cover, with the words “The Best AK Around?”

“Bulgaria, after Russia, has the best quality of AK 47,” said one veteran American arms dealer, “but also the most expensive.”

Dolarian was one of Arsenal’s recent customers. For the Afghan intelligence service, he ordered 500 PKMs. Hristo Ibouchev, Arsenal’s executive director, remembered Dolarian well: “Likable guy. He could pass for a very good businessman.”

“He knows how to talk,” another Bulgarian arms dealer, sitting in the Sheraton lounge, said admiringly.

Ibouchev, who attended an elite MBA program in New York, Paris, and London, refers to his guns and ammunition as “goods.” He said Dolarian made a down payment and was supposed to pay the rest. “As soon as we finished manufacturing, we said, ‘Sir, we are ready. Send the rest of your money and you can take your goods!'”

And that’s where things went bad, because, Ibouchev said, Dolarian didn’t send the rest of the money.

John Podesta says Republicans in the House are a “lagging indicator” when it comes to climate change.

John Podesta

Kevin Lamarque / Reuters

WASHINGTON — On Tuesday the White House released its latest case that climate change is a real and ongoing threat rather than just a future problem to be solved down the road.

The shift in focus to current impacts of climate change has worked on some Republicans, top White House advisers said, but not the Republicans in Congress.

Top White House advisers John Podesta and Jason Furman joined a call with reporters Monday to preview Tuesday's White House climate change announcement, an administration study finding that, essentially, climate-change skeptics are already hurting the American economy by running up the tab required to deal with climate change impacts down the road.

Podesta argued the message that the impacts of climate change are upon us have have changed the conversation for some on the Republican side of politics.

"Given the general lack of productivity on Capitol Hill, we haven't noticed any signs that they want to take this up and work constructively with us," Podesta said. But when it comes to "the other side of the aisle" in total, he added, senior Republicans like former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson have now embraced the idea that climate change is an ongoing threat to the economy today.

Podesta pointed to a presidential task force launched earlier this year aimed at developing ways for communities to cope with the effects of climate change as place where Republicans outside Washington have embraced the White House climate change message.

"We are doing our work around resilience, we have very good cooperation from Republican stakeholders including governors, mayors, and others to try and build up more resilient infrastructure," he said. "They're getting the fact that this is affecting their communities right now, whether that's the drought in California, wildfires in the West, sea-level rise and storm surge."

The Capitol remains a place where the White House message is not getting through to Republicans, Podesta said. But that doesn't mean the White House strategy isn't working.

"The Congress in that regard, particularly the Republican-led House is a lagging indicator there," he said. "I do see change across the political spectrum, and of course the public is solidly on board wit the idea that climate change is happening, it's happening now and that it's caused by human activity."

The new administration report says action on climate change now is the only way to protect the economy from suffering under the affects of changing temperatures, rising sea levels, and shifting weather patterns.

"Delaying policy actions by a decade increases total mitigation costs by approximately 40 percent, and failing to take any action would risk substantial economic damage," reads a White House summary of the Council of Economic Advisers study. "These findings emphasize the need for policy action today."

Shifting the conversation about climate change toward making it a today conversation versus a tomorrow conversation has been a highlight of Podesta's tenure in the White House. The longtime Washington veteran is a champion of climate change, and has helped to refocus White House toward climate-based executive actions in the "pen and phone" era. A key component of the new strategy is talking about climate change as a current threat. In May, the White House climate assessment was built around the notion that climate change has a measurable impact on American lives already, pointing to longer, hotter summers, "disruptions to water and agriculture," and seasonal allergies.

At the same time, Republicans in Congress have all but abandoned conversations about climate change. In a political environment where passing a law through Congress is a rare feat, there's no real chance for significant climate change legislation in the near future. Podesta admitted as much on the call Monday.

But Furman, the current head of the Council of Economic advisers, said the White House is changing minds, even if its not changing them in the halls of Congress. He said the views among those in the "economics profession" are starting to coalesce around the notion that climate change is a real thing that needs to be dealt with.

"If you look at my predecessors...from both political parties, you tend to see a concern about climate change as well as understanding of the basic economic concepts in our report: that it's more costly to delay action, that it has an important insurance value," he said. "Certainly the extensive literature on this topic by economists doesn't know any political party. The facts and the data tell a pretty consistent story."

Spoiler: He’s not at the airport.

Scott Brown's new campaign ad titled "Security" features the New Hampshire candidate standing in an airport talking about security procedures at U.S. airports compared to security conditions at the U.S.-Mexico border:

youtube.com

But it appears Brown isn't really in an airport — and instead in front of a green screen with stock video footage of an airport from Shutterstock superimposed during editing:

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Obama also says lethal aid to Kiev is not on the table.

Joshua Roberts / Reuters

WASHINGTON — President Obama announced new sanctions against Russia on Tuesday in retaliation for Moscow's role in arming the separatists in eastern Ukraine who shot down a civilian aircraft earlier this month, killing nearly 300 people.

Obama announced sanctions against major players in Russia's energy, defense, and finance sectors, which, according to a Treasury Department list, include major state-owned banks like Bank of Moscow, the Russia Agricultural Bank, and VTB. The U.S. Export-Import Bank has put on hold all new transactions with Russia, a senior administration official said. The U.S. has also taken action against the United Shipbuilding Corporation, a Russian defense firm. The Commerce Department will also enact export license requirements for energy-related technologies for certain oil-drilling projects, an official said.

"Today is a reminder that the U.S. means what it says," Obama said.

But Obama also said, "It's not a new Cold War," in response to a reporter's question. "It's a very specific issue related to Russia's unwillingness to recognize that Ukraine can chart its own path."

"These are the very powerful sectoral sanctions that you've heard us describe for a number of months now," a senior administration official said. "This is the very significant step that you've heard us describe as the U.S. and Europe moving into sectoral sanctions together."

The punitive measures are being introduced in concert with Europe, which announced its own sanctions Tuesday that are much heavier than what it had previously announced.

"These decisions will limit access to EU capital markets for Russian State-owned financial institutions, impose an embargo on trade in arms, establish an export ban for dual use goods for military end users, and curtail Russian access to sensitive technologies particularly in the field of the oil sector," read an EU release about its sanctions on Tuesday.

"The EU steps are strong, they are significant, they represent a new step for Europe and one that we and the Europeans have taken together," a senior administration official said.

On a call with reporters, an official said that the U.S. has now targeted five of the six largest state-owned banks in Russia.

However, the U.S. is still not planning lethal aid to the embattled Ukrainian military, officials said.

"The issue at this point is not the Ukrainian capacity to outfight the separatists, they are better armed than the separatists," Obama said.

A U.S. official said that non-lethal support to the Ukrainian military had been "ramped up."

A total of 202 marriage licenses had been granted to same-sex couples.

WASHINGTON — After Boulder County Clerk Hillary Hall had been issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples for more than a month, the Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered her to stop doing so for the time being.

Hall's office reported Tuesday that it granted 202 licenses to same-sex couples since starting doing so last month.

"I am disappointed by the Colorado Supreme Court's stay, but I will comply with the order," Hall said in a statement. "Given the avalanche of recent cases determining that same-sex marriage bans are unconstitutional, I am hopeful the stay will be short-lived and that we will be able to resume issuing licenses soon."

Hall began issuing licenses on June 25, when the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down Utah's ban on same-sex couples' marriages as being unconstitutional. Hall, after consulting her county attorney, began issuing licenses that day.

When other clerks, including Denver's clerk, began issuing marriage licenses, the Colorado Supreme Court eventually issued a stay as to Adams and Denver counties, and Pueblo County stopped soon thereafter.

Colorado Attorney General John Suthers had been unsuccessful, however, either in getting Hall to stop on her own or in getting lower state courts to issue an order stopping her from doing so.

(h/t Denver 7 and Adam Steinbaugh)

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The agent allegedly stashed money in a bank as part of a plan to turn drug money clean.

In this Wednesday, July 23, 2014 photo, a U.S. Border Patrol agent keeps watch in Roma, Texas, across the Rio Grande River from Ciudad Miguel Aleman, Tamaulipas, Mexico. (AP Photo/Austin American-Statesman, Jay Janner)

AP Photo/Austin American-Statesman, Jay Janner

When Border Patrol Agent Raimundo Borjas pulled into the Wilcox border check point along Arizona's deserted Highway 80 at 11:45 p.m., March 21, 2013, he likely assumed his colleagues would quickly wave him through.

Instead, the Customs and Border Protection Agents at the check point took the 10-year CBP into custody.

Forty-five minutes later, Borjas was in the custody of the Federal Bureau of Investigation as part of an investigation into an alleged money-laundering scheme originating in the Mexican city of Agua Prieta, which is essentially controlled by the Sinaloa drug cartel.

Now, Borjas, who has been on indefinite leave from the CBP since his arrest, is facing federal money-laundering charges, and is expected to be in a Tucson court Friday to enter a plea.

Department of Homeland Security sources and court documents indicate that while Borjas was formally charged in May with laundering $61,600 dollars for an unnamed person or organization in Agua Prieta, that total represents only a small part of an alleged scheme that spanned several years, all while Borjas worked for CBP.

Borjas' attorney did not return requests for comment, and a spokeswoman for the Department of Justice declined to comment. Victor Brabble, a spokesman for CBP declined to comment specifically on the ongoing litigation, but did tell BuzzFeed, "CBP leadership has placed great emphasis on integrity, and does not tolerate actions that would tarnish the reputation of our agency. CBP will fully cooperate with any investigations of alleged unlawful conduct on or off duty, by any of its employees."

According to a DHS source familiar with the case, earlier in the day Borjas was arrested, FBI agents had contacted CBP officials requesting that they detain a suspect in a bank-fraud case they expected to drive through the check point that night.

And initially, that's what Borjas was charged with. But in a revised indictment filed in federal court on May 7, prosecutors upped the charges, detailing how Borjas and an unidentified co-conspirator had repeatedly sought to avoid deposit-disclosure laws as part of a money-laundering operation.

Borjas kept the deposits, which occurred between Aug. 13, 2012 and Oct. 5, 2012, under $10,000 in order to avoid triggering deposit-notification laws. The nine deposits listed in the indictment range from $900 to $9,900 dollars.

Prosecutors also allege that Borjas knowingly participated in the scheme despite the fact that the deposits were part of an "intent to distribute cocaine."

Since 2004, at least six other CBP agents have been arrested in connection with money-laundering charges nationwide, according to an analysis by the Center for Investigative Reporting.

Borjas' court date comes a week after arguments ended in an unrelated 2010 shooting of an undocumented Mexican immigrant outside of Nogales, Arizona. In that case, the immigrant, Jesus Castro Romo, charges that former border patrol agent Abel Canales — who has pled guilty to working for drug cartels while with CBP — shot him in the back while chasing him through the desert.

Borjas' court appearance also comes on the heels of a lawsuit filed against CBP agents over the cross-border shooting death of 16 year old Mexican national Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez. Elena was shot in the back by border agents while walking down the street in Nogales, Mexico, in 2012.

The group of six activists say they won’t leave the offices of the Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus on Capitol Hill until it issues a statement urging President Obama to include LGBT people in potential action on immigration. Update: Activists have ended the sit-in, saying they have reached an agreement with the Equality Caucus.

Activists during the sit-in.

Courtesy SONG

A group of at least six LGBT activists said Wednesday they won't leave the office of the Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus on Capitol Hill until the caucus agrees to issue a statement urging President Obama to ensure LGBT inclusion in potential executive action on immigration.

"We're asking for the caucus to release a statement today," said Hermelinda Cortes of Southerners on New Ground, a regional LGBT rights group. "We will be sitting in until that demand is met or we are arrested." They've set up a live broadcast of the demonstration.

Equality Caucus Executive Director Brad Jacklin told BuzzFeed just after noon Wednesday the organization will meet with the activists to address the issue and their demands.

The sit-in action comes on the heels of a letter issued to the caucus last Friday by the activists and 24 local and national LGBT and immigrant's rights groups, including SONG, Familia: Trans Queer Liberation Movement, Transgender Law Center, and the National Center for Lesbian Rights.

"As the groups listed below we know that the White House is in motion to act on immigration and we are calling on the Equality Caucus to use its influence to advocate for the needs of LGBTQ immigrants," the organizations stated in the letter, obtained by BuzzFeed. "LGBTQ immigrants will be deeply affected by whatever President Obama decides."

Specifically, the activists have asked the Equality Caucus to urge Obama to include four LGBT-specific recommendations in "administrative relief" on immigration, such as expanding Deferred Action (DACA) to the extent of the law and ending all collaboration among ICE and law enforcement agencies.

The activists also demand eliminating the use of solitary confinement for LGBT people held in immigration detention, saying in the letter that the practice constitutes torture and is an unacceptable form of housing LGBT immigrants. "Solitary Confinement is regularly used to supposedly 'protect' Trans and LGB people while in detention," they said. "If ICE cannot guarantee LGBTQ people's safety, they should not be detaining them."

With that, they've also asked for expanded protections for LGBT people in police or ICE custody and in detention centers because many may need special access to medical care or other considerations.

"President Obama is feeling a lot of political pressure to act on the issue of immigration since Congress has failed to do it," Cortes said. "These communities cannot wait for a piece of administrative relief that doesn't include all LGBTQ folks."

Congressional Equality Caucus Letter 2014
To: Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus
RE: LGBTQ specific needs in Obama's upcoming Executive Order on Immigration

Dear Congressional Equality Caucus Co-Chairs:

Over 50 other LGBTQ organizations have been mobilizing our groups this year for LGBTQ specific immigration policy needs. As the groups listed below we know that the White House is in motion to act on immigration and we are calling on the Equality Caucus to use its influence to advocate for the needs of LGBTQ immigrants. LGBTQ immigrants will be deeply affected by whatever President Obama decides. We are proud that our country has a congressional Equality Caucus and as LGBTQ people we understand its role is to represent our whole community. Ending deportations and other key issues outlined below are of equal importance to the LGBTQ community as issues such as employment and marriage.

We know President Obama has the legal authority to deliver Administrative Relief on immigration and to change current enforcement policies and practices by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The President can support the safety and equal treatment under the law for ALL our LGBTQ communities by expanding Deferred Action and other relief from deportation, ending the torture of solitary confinement (including against transgender and gender nonconforming immigrants), curtailing the caging of our communities through immigration detention, and stopping the use of ICE holds which encourage local police to even further target LGBTQ people of color for arrest and deportation.

As organizations who are made up of, and represent, immigrant LGBTQ people we understand that the best advocates on these issues are the people most directly affected by these policies and practices. We urge and call on you, and other Co-Chairs and members of the Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus, to advocate for our communities' by issuing a statement calling on President Obama to include these LGBTQ specific recommendations in regard to immigration:

Expand Deferred Action (DACA) to the fullest extent of the law
According to the Williams Institute, there are more than 267,000 undocumented LGBTQ people living in the US. They all need relief regardless of age, criminal record, race, country of origin or parental status.

End all programs involving law enforcement and ICE collaboration
When law enforcement and ICE collaborate, racial, gender and sexuality-based profiling regularly ensues. The way to end this kind of discrimination and not undermine the safety of local communities is to keep these entities separate.

Eliminate the use of Solitary Confinement
Solitary Confinement is regularly used to supposedly "protect" Trans and LGB people while in detention. If ICE cannot guarantee LGBTQ people's safety, they should not be detaining them. A practice that the UN classifies as torture is not acceptable for housing LGBTQ immigrants.

Expand protections to LGBTQ and other vulnerable populations under police and ICE custody, in detention centers
People who are HIV positive, pregnant and/or LGBTQ require critical health needs that cannot be met while in detention. These vulnerable populations deserve access to medical care and other special considerations immediately.

Given the timing of the White House's motion on this issue, we are asking for a response to this letter by Tuesday, July 29, 2014. Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Southerners On New Ground (SONG)
Familia: Trans Queer Liberation Movement (TQLM)
Transgender Law Center (TLC), National
National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR)
National Queer Asian Pacific Islander Alliance (NQAPIA), Washington, D.C.
GetEqual, National
Gay Straight Alliance (GSA) Network
Queer Detainee Empowerment Project (QDEP)
The Queer Network
Lavender Youth Recreation and Information Center (LYRIC)
Gay Straight Alliance for Safe Schools (GSAFE), Wisconsin
Providence Youth Student Movement (PrYSM), Providence, RI
CAUSA
Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA), Washington, D.C.
Visibility Project, San Francisco, CA
Equality New Mexico
Chinese for Affirmative Action, San Francisco, CA
American Friends Service Committee
Equality Louisiana
Louisiana Trans Advocates
Trans Latin@ Coalition
Transgender Intersex Justice Project
El/La Para Trans Latinas
Freedom Inc., Madison, WI
1Love Movement, National

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FYI?

Magone/Magone

President Obama is apparently "not confident enough" for lavender iced tea.

During a Wednesday stop in Kansas City, Missouri, at Parkville Coffee, the president bought patrons beverages and ordered an iced tea, but then declined one with lavender. According to the White House pool report:

The president offered to pay for all of the patrons' drinks, and eventually they took him up on it -- five refills and a chai tea -- after much pressing:

"It's not that often the president buys you a cup of coffee," Mr. Obama said.

When the president ordered an iced tea, an employee offered him one with lavender.

"I'm not confident enough to order that," Mr. Obama said.

He tested coffee and tea from small cups and talked to one employee about roasting, then about the handful of employees' educational and job backgrounds as the pool was ushered out at about 12:27 p.m.

“If you’re embarrassed that your political views are on public display, then maybe you should rethink your political views,” one Houston LGBT advocate says.

A new website has made available all of the names and addresses of those who signed petitions calling for the repeal of a new Houston nondiscrimination measure.

Via heropetition.com

WASHINGTON — Since the Houston City Council passed an ordinance banning discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation, opponents have been gathering signatures to reverse the measure.

Now, a new, anonymous campaign is publishing the names and addresses of those opponents, posting the petitions online that were submitted to the city earlier this month asking City Council to repeal the ban, which was passed in May and is called the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO).

If the opponents, No Unequal Rights, have gathered enough signatures, the City Council has the option of either repealing the ordinance — which it is not expected to do — or placing it on the ballot for a referendum vote. The Houston city attorney is still reviewing the signatures to see if the petition met the required number of signatures, with a final ruling expected in the coming week.

The online posting of the petition has set off a new debate, beyond the one over the ordinance itself, about just who is behind the online effort and with what motives. Although the website, HEROpetition.com, states that the aim of making the petition easily available to all is "to allow for independent verification of its validity," one of the first people to note the site's existence after a Gay Star News report was South Texas College of Law professor Josh Blackman, who wrote that a person had told him that he hadn't signed the petition because he "feared what would happen to him if his name and contact information were released."

One of the people who has strongly supported the HERO measure, Houston GLBT Political Caucus treasurer Noel Freeman, told BuzzFeed that he was the person who made a public records request for the petitions — and that he did so on the day they were submitted.

"If somebody feels that they're being publicly shamed by these petitions being online, I think that says more about them than it does about the people who are putting the petitions online," Freeman said on Wednesday. "If you're embarrassed that your political views are on public display, then maybe you should rethink your political views."

Although Freeman said he isn't behind the website, he said that he knows who is behind the site and noted that he "shared them [the petitions] with a number of people. They got into the public domain pretty quickly."

Some of the petitions posted online by HEROpetition.com, showing versions in English and Spanish.

Via scribd.com

Blackman noted a 1990 Texas Attorney General's opinion stating that petitions are public records subject to disclosure. Moreover, when such disclosure was challenged by those wishing to keep referendum petition signatures private in Washington state, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 2009 case, Doe v. Reed, that "disclosure of referendum petitions" ... "does not as a general matter violate the First Amendment."

In a twist, the people behind the website, HEROpetition.com, are themselves remaining anonymous. A person responding to an inquiry made to the email address provided on the website, HEROpetition.com, told BuzzFeed Tuesday night that they "aren't identifying people associated with the website to protect our personal safety."

The domain name was registered on July 3 through Domains By Proxy, a service whose purpose is to mask the identity of a person purchasing a web domain. The person or people making the petitions available to all defended their anonymity.

"The personal safety risks to the people who run this site are far greater than the risk to any one individual among tens of thousand who signed the petition," the person responding to inquires made at the website's email address wrote to BuzzFeed. "[S]ome people claim they will be the victims of harassment because of this site, but some of them have no problem coming after the folks on this side. People who have spoken out publicly in favor of HERO are already facing threats against their jobs."

Freeman also defended the petition posters' anonymity.

"We know who runs the website, and the people who run the website have requested to remain confidential. And we totally respect that," he said. "I'm very much a public face of 'the movement,' and my own personal experience has given some people in the community pause. I've had people come after my job, I've had people do open records requests on my email because I'm a public employee. I've got video cameras on my house for a reason."

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“We did not seek an impeachment of President Bush, because as an executive, he had his authority.”

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Texas Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee argued Wednesday the Republican effort to sue President Obama is nothing but a veiled attempt to impeach him — something Democrats never did to President George W. Bush:

I ask my colleagues to oppose this resolution for it is in fact a veiled attempt at impeachment and it undermines the law that allows a president to do his job. A historical fact: President Bush pushed this nation into a war that had little to do with apprehending terrorists. We did not seek an impeachment of President Bush, because as an executive, he had his authority. President Obama has the authority.

Except former Rep. Dennis Kucinich did actually introduce a bill to impeach Bush in 2008 — and Jackson Lee actually was a co-sponsor to the legislation.

Here's the bill summary from the Library of Congress.

The main focus of the bill, the legislation reads, is "Deceiving Congress With Fabricated Threats of Iraq WMDs To Fraudulently Obtain Support for an Authorization of the Use of Military Force Against Iraq."

House authorizes lawsuit over the employer mandate.

Joshua Roberts / Reuters

House Republicans voted Wednesday evening to move forward with their lawsuit against President Obama.

The resolution, which passed 225-201, authorizes a lawsuit against the president over the administration's decision to delay the employer mandate in the Affordable Care Act.

The idea of impeaching Obama, rather than suing him, has been floated by a few Republicans, and ruled out by Boehner and Rep. Paul Ryan.

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The case against a border patrol agent gets dismissed after his lawyer claims multi-agency corruption task force entrapped his client.

U.S. Border Patrol agent in Roma, Texas.

AP Photo/Austin American-Statesman, Jay Janner

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration abandoned a corruption case against an Arizona border patrol agent after his attorney accused federal agents of entrapping his client, and spending federal dollars on strippers, plane tickets, and tickets to a Manny Pacquiao fight as part of their investigation.

A federal judge dismissed money-laundering and corruption charges against Customs and Border Protection agent Lauro Tobias Tuesday in response to dismissal motions from both the Department of Justice and Tobias' attorney, which were filed within hours of each other July 25.

Tobias, a 10-year veteran of the CBP who also served in the Air Force for two decades, was arrested in March 2013 after he took a trip from Phoenix to Las Vegas for a drug deal — six kilograms of cocaine were exchanged with unnamed persons for $100,000. Tobias was paid $4,000 for working as security during the deal, based on court documents.

Tobias has maintained he did not know the trip was for a drug deal, and that he was assured the exchange was legal.

But, based on court documents, the drug deal wasn't real: Everyone involved, aside from Tobias, appears to have been a part of a federal task force that has been attempting, with little success, to root out corruption within the Border Patrol along the Arizona-Mexico border.

It's unclear why the Justice Department abruptly asked for the dismissal the same day as Tobias' attorney filed his motion.

Justice Department spokesman Cosme Lopez declined to comment on the case, which was the culmination of a multi-year investigation of the Lukeville Port of Entry border crossing by the Southern Arizona Corruption Task Force. The task force is made up of agents from Border Patrol, FBI, Justice Department, IRS, and other federal agencies. The dismissal of the case raises questions about the money and time invested in the task force, which has pursued rooting out systemic corruption on the border since 2010.

According to documents filed with the court, Tobias claimed the federal task force put the fake drug deal into play, as well as supplying the money, drugs, and agents for the various parts in the alleged conspiracy.

Both the defense and prosecutors asked for a dismissal, which U.S. District Court Judge Cindy Jorgenson granted Monday with prejudice, just over 14 months after the FBI announced Tobias' arrest.

Tobias' attorney, Steven West, argued in an interview with BuzzFeed that federal agents tried to turn Tobias bad in order to use him as mole in the border station. "They couldn't get close to the so-called 'suspect corrupt people,'" he said. "I think they took a 90-degree turn."

"I suspect there were some meetings around that time," West said, explaining that during pre-trial hearings when he began making his entrapment claims the judge "seemed predisposed" to allow him to make the case.

West also said prosecutors appeared uncomfortable with the possibility of key information about the task force becoming public.

"My sense is that we had a case. They didn't want the line of witnesses I was going to call to testify [speaking in public] … they would have had to answer a lot of questions," West said Wednesday.

The Justice Department had made clear it was unwilling to provide even basic details of the investigation to the defense during pre-trial hearings.

For instance, according to a court motion filed by Tobias' attorney, department officials would not release certain information about the investigation during discovery, including "an accounting of how much money was spent on this operation by the government … on hotel rooms, air fare, frequenting adult entertainment establishments, rental car costs, restaurant bills, and any other 'perks' that were used to implement the operation, such as the Pacquiao fight at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas." In another example, prosecutors were unwilling to even tell West — the defendant's attorney — the code name of the investigation.

An FBI source referred requests for comment on the case to the Justice Department.

Oyez Oyez. Inspired by and adapted from this .

August recess starts very, very soon.

Tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants, many of the unaccompanied children, have crossed the border in recent months.

AP Photo/Eric Gay, Pool

Basically no one knows what to do about this.

AP Photo/Eric Gay, Pool

A lot of the negotiating over what exactly to do has centered around a 2008 law that determines how many unaccompanied minors are handled by the government.

That law, which applies to unaccompanied minors from countries outside Mexico and Canada, requires those minors to be detained by the Department of Health and Human Services and given asylum hearings (rather than deported).

The White House originally wanted changes to the 2008 anti-trafficking law so it would be easier to deport the undocumented immigrants, and Republicans have backed changes to that law. Congressional Democrats have opposed sharply, because, they argue, many of the children should be considered refugees fleeing violence.

AP Photo/Nogales International, Jonathan Clark

The White House asked for $3.7 billion in additional funds to deal with the border situation.

Joshua Roberts / Reuters

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“Since SEIU is not part of the AFL, we won’t be participating in that process.”

Alex Wong / Getty Images

WASHINGTON — In the lead up to the 2008 Democratic primary, the country's largest unions couldn't decide who to endorse, splitting largely between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and ruining the potential for a united, dynamic endorsement.

This time around, the AFL-CIO wants to avoid that disaster. But a rift between labor groups is already forming.

Thursday, the AFL-CIO released a streamlined process for the labor federation to endorse (or not endorse) a 2016 presidential candidate. Although Clinton seems probable to run again, another viable Democratic candidate or two could fan the flames of another dogfight between union groups.

Based on an interview BuzzFeed had with AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka in June, the plan released today seems smaller in scope than what the union wanted.

Trumka said in June he hoped all the unions — those aligned with the AFL-CIO and those that are not — would "adopt a policy that says none of us will endorse until all of us decide to endorse."

"Hopefully we'll have all the unions, not just those that are affiliated," Trumka added in June, referring to the several unions that split with the AFL-CIO to create a new labor group called Change to Win.

The process announced Thursday, however, refers specifically to "affiliates" — meaning the process leaves out some of the country's largest unions that are part of the breakaway labor group Change to Win.

At least one of Change to Win's unions — the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) — has said it won't play ball with the AFL-CIO's new process.

"Since SEIU is not part of the AFL, we won't be participating in that process," SEIU spokesman Tyler Prell told BuzzFeed in an email.

A spokesman noted that Change to Win does not endorse candidates as a federation, so its unions are free to endorse who they want, when they want.

A spokeswoman for the AFL-CIO confirmed via email that only AFL-CIO affiliates would be a part of the process, and did not immediately respond to follow up questions on what happened.

The process will begin as early as November, when AFL-CIO affiliated unions will finalize a questionnaire for candidates to fill out by year's end.

In-person interviews will begin as early as January of next year. Candidates will be invited for private sessions with union leaders to "discuss issues and campaign viability."

A final decision is slated to be made by July 2015.

"The Political Committee will make a recommendation for endorsement of a particular candidate, or a recommendation of no endorsement, in time for the Executive Council summer meeting," the guidance says.

It’s all here — everything from how the crisis could affect global poverty to why a New York hedge fund manager seized a three-mast sailing ship.

Marcos Brindicci / Reuters

On Wednesday, Argentina made international news by defaulting on its debt. The nation of 41 million people failed to make a $539 million payment to bondholders before a deadline, triggering a ratings downgrade, a slump in Argentine stocks, and not a little bit of panic and confusion.

Argentina has defaulted on its debt on more than a half-dozen occasions over its history. But this time it's different, because nobody knows exactly what to do or how to resolve the situation, and lots of people are concerned that this could harm not only Argentina but the whole world economy.

How did Argentina get to this place?

A century ago, Argentina was one of the wealthiest nations on the planet, and considered a serious rival to the U.S. for economic dominance of the new world. The country had a fast-growing economy, agricultural abundance, and lots of natural resources. That didn't work out too well, however. Lots of reasons for it, but the end result is that while Argentina's GDP per capita in 1990 approached that of the U.S., by 2000 it was less than a third as much.

In the 1990s, Argentina borrowed heavily, issuing tens of billions of dollars in international bonds. By 2001, amid a recession, it became clear that the country couldn't keep up with payments and, in December of that year, the government defaulted on north of $80 billion in debt. It was — and still is — history's largest default by a national government.

This had many political and economic implications, but the main one is that the country was largely cut off from international capital markets, meaning it couldn't borrow any more money — or, if it did, it had to pay very high interest rates.

Globe Turner, LLC/Globe Turner, LLC

Argentina's president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, was elected in 2007 and is currently serving her second and final term in office. Her husband, Nestor Kirchner, was her predecessor in the office, and he soon realized that it would be very helpful to all sorts of things if the country could have credit again. So in 2005, his government offered holders of the defaulted bonds a deal: If they'd agree to exchange their defaulted bonds for new ones worth significantly less — like as little as a 30% in some cases — Argentina would promise to pay this time. It might sound like a crappy deal, but something is better than nothing.

In 2010, President Fernández returned to the negotiating table and make a similar offer to bondholders who didn't accept the original offer. Nine years into not getting paid proved enough for a lot of them. By the time the bargaining was done, more than 92% of all the original bondholders had agreed to the exchange. And since then, Argentina has faithfully been making interest payments on the debt.

The other 8%, known as holdouts, have received nothing. And the Argentine legislature passed a "lock law" making it illegal for the country to make subsequent offers to other bondholders. Basically, the 8% who didn't take the offer were frozen out.

Jorge Silva / Reuters

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A poll found 53% of Americans now have an unfavorable opinion of the Affordable Care Act — the largest percentage in the survey’s four-year history.

AFP PHOTO/Nicholas KAMM

A new poll has found that 53% of Americans have an unfavorable opinion of Obamacare.

The poll was done by the Kaiser Family Foundation and reveals that unfavorable opinions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) were more widespread in July than at any time since April 2010. The poll also discovered that only 37% of the public actually has a favorable opinion of the law.

kff.org

A solid majority of Democrats still like Obamacare, according to the poll.

As has been typical for the entire history of the ACA, Democrats continued in July to have more favorable opinions than Republicans, with 62% approving. However, even among those who lean left, Obamacare lost support in July. Perhaps even more troubling for the White House, the data shows a general, if slight, trend among Democrats toward less favorable attitudes about the law.

kff.org

The vast majority of Republicans still don't like Obamacare.

Among Republicans, 82% had an unfavorable opinion of the ACA in July. The last time that many Republicans had an unfavorable opinion of Obamacare was in November, the poll reveals. A mere 12% of Republicans had a favorable opinion of the law last month.

kff.org

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