Jonathan Cohn

Um, last question.

This is another Bulwark question, which is, um, our Jonathan Cohn, uh, who is our reporter who covers, among other issues, all things elections and candidates in Michigan, but he also really focuses on healthcare, um, and other science-y things.

Uh, he shared a tweet showing Mike Rogers' wife, so Mike Rogers is the Senate candidate in, in Michigan.

His wife was handing out $10 gas cards at a gas station in Michigan.

... diverted.

Jonathan Cohn and I had a discussion about this earlier about some of the money that's, like, going out from, to ACA enrollees, marketplace enrollees, may be illegally diverted from another pot of money.

Some of this stuff may never happen.

In the case of the Treasury general account, this is supposed to be, like, the, the pot of money from which Treasury pays its bills.

Welcome back to A Republic of Youth and Keep It.

Our guest today is Jonathan Cohn, an accomplished journalist, author, political commentator who has spent decades covering American politics, public policy, and the intersection of government and everyday life.

Jonathan has held senior editorial and reporting positions at the New Republic, the American Prospect, and the Huffington Post.

His work has also appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, and numerous other publications.

Jonathan has also been a frequent guest on MSNBC, NPR, and other national programs.

And perhaps most importantly for our purposes, he's a fellow Michigander living in Ann Arbor.

Please welcome Jonathan Cohn.

Jonathan, thank you for joining us here.

But the reality is a lot more complicated.

Joining us, senior national correspondent at The Bulwark, Jonathan Cohn, and MS Now political analyst and former executive director of the New York State Democratic Party, Basil Smikle.

So Jonathan, this $500, where is it coming from?

Yeah, so look, when they created the Affordable Care Act, you know, they knew they were creating these new insurance market.

... diverted.

Jonathan Cohn and I had a discussion about this earlier, about some of the money that's, like, going out from, to ACA enrollees, marketplace enrollees, may be illegally diverted from another pot of money.

Some of this stuff may never happen.

In the case of the Treasury general account, this is supposed to be, like, the, the pot of money from which Treasury pays its bills.

Hey, everyone.

I'm Catherine Rampell, economics editor here at The Bulwark, joined by my colleague and friend and a journalist I much admire, Jonathan Cohn.

He is the best healthcare reporter in the country.

Uh, and so whenever I have questions about what the heck is going on in the news about anything related to healthcare or health policy, I am very lucky that I can just ping him, and, uh, like basically at all hours of the day, for some reason, he will respond and, uh, share his wisdom.

Today, [lips smack] Jonathan Cohn and I are gonna be talking about a thing that you wouldn't expect him to have insight on necessarily, which is the Trump checks.

So as we have all heard and been widely mocking, Donald Trump has been promising to bribe voters with checks, uh, either right before or right after the midterm elections.

And one reason we've been mocking this, of course, is that he would require Congress's help in sending out these $5,000 checks that have been promised, or so we thought.

It turns out that in just, what, the last week, the president has announced that he would actually be sending out checks unilaterally to some Americans through the healthcare system.