Senate Republicans Are Getting Closer to Passing Their Awful Tax Bill 

Here’s all the shit we couldn’t cover today:

• My fellow Americans, the forecast is… not excellent for those of us who are interested in avoiding a Republican tax overhaul. The Senate Budget Committee voted to send the bill for a vote on the Senate floor later this week, and it’s looking like a possibility that this incredibly unpopular corporate welfare bill might actually pass the Senate, because dangit, they’ve gotta do something, even if that something is incredibly stupid. Of course, there’s a lot of daylight between the House and Senate bills (one is terrible, while the other is slightly more terrible), and they’d have to work out their significant differences before it could get to Trump’s desk. But they seem pretty motivated, don’t they? “Time is not our friend here. It will only get worse,” Sen. Kennedy (R-Louisiana) told a reporter, gesturing to protestors, several of whom were taken into custody by Capitol Police. [Washington Post, HuffPost]
• North Korea test-launched an ICBM today, so, yes, hm. That’s… going on. Everything’s fine. [Politico]
• “Chuck and Nancy,” as the president refers to them, backed out of a government funding meeting with Mr. Big Boy Dealmaker today after he said prior to the meeting, on Twitter, that “I don’t see a deal!” [Politico]
• Meanwhile, Senator Richard Burr appears to have hit himself in the face with a crowbar. [Twitter]
• Rex Tillerson has declared that the Trump administration’s plan to slash the State Department’s budget is totally fine, because it lines up with his plan to solve all the world’s problems so freakin’ good that we won’t really need a State Department anymore. What? “Part of this bringing the budget numbers back down is reflective of an expectation that we’re going to have success in some of these conflict areas, getting these conflicts resolved and moving to a different place in terms of the kind of support we have to give,” he said, just about at the same time that North Korea launched an intercontinental ballistic missile. Again: What? [The Guardian]

Here are some tweets the president was allowed to publish:

This has been Barf Bag.