WASHINGTON (AP) — In a gamble with monumental political stakes, Republicans set course for a climactic House vote on their health care overhaul after President Donald Trump claimed he was finished negotiating with GOP holdouts and determined to pursue the rest of his agenda, win or lose. 
 
 House Speaker Paul Ryan set the showdown for Friday, following a nighttime Capitol meeting at which top White House officials told GOP lawmakers that Trump had decided the time for talk was over. 
 
 "We have been promising the American people that we will repeal and replace this broken law because it's collapsing and it's failing families. And tomorrow we're proceeding," Ryan tersely told reporters after scheduling what loomed as the most momentous vote to date for Trump and for the Wisconsin Republican's own speakership. 
 
 In an embarrassing and stinging setback hours earlier, leaders abruptly postponed the vote because a rebellion by conservatives and moderates would have doomed the measure. They'd hoped for a roll call Thursday, which marked the seventh anniversary of President Barack Obama's enactment of his landmark health care statute that Republicans have vowed ever since to annul. 
 
 There was no evidence that leaders had nailed down sufficient support to prevail, nor that their decision to charge ahead was a feint and that they'd delay again if necessary. But they seemed to be calculating that at crunch time, enough dissidents would decide against sabotaging the bill, Trump's young presidency and the House GOP leadership's ability to set the agenda, with a single, crushing defeat. 
 
 "The president has said he wants the vote tomorrow," White House budget chief Mick Mulvaney told the lawmakers, according to Rep. Chris Collins, R-N.Y., a Trump ally. "If for any reason it goes down, we're just going to move forward with additional parts of his agenda. This is our moment in time." 
 
 Even if they prevail, Republicans face an uphill climb in the Senate, where conservatives and moderates are also threatening to sink it. 
 
 The GOP bill eliminates the Obama statute's unpopular fines on those who do not obtain coverage and the often generous subsidies for those who purchase insurance. 
 
 Instead, consumers would face a 30 percent premium penalty if they let coverage lapse. Republican tax credits would be based on age, not income. The bill would also end Obama's Medicaid expansion and trim future federal financing for the federal-state program and let states impose work requirements on some of its 70 million beneficiaries. 
 
 In a bid to coax support from conservatives, House leaders proposed a fresh amendment — to be voted on Friday — repealing Obama's requirement that insurers cover 10 specified services like maternity and mental health care. Conservatives have demanded the removal of those and other conditions the law imposes on insurers, arguing they drive premiums skyward. 
 
 Many moderates are opposed because they say the GOP bill would leave many voters uninsured. Medical associations, consumer groups and hospitals are opposed or voicing misgivings, and some Republican governors say the bill cuts Medicaid too deeply and would leave many low-income people uncovered. 
 
 Republicans can lose only 22 votes in the face of united Democratic opposition. A tally by The Associated Press found at least 32 "no" votes, but the figure was subject to fluctuation amid frantic GOP lobbying. 
 
 Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., head of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, said he remained a "no" but didn't answer when asked whether the group still had enough votes to kill the legislation. He'd long said caucus opposition alone would defeat it without changes. 
 
 One member of that group, Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., responded indirectly when asked if his opposition had changed. 
 
 "Everybody asked us to take a moment and reflect. Well, we'll reflect," he said. 
 
 Other foes said they'd not flipped. These included moderate Reps. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania, Dan Donovan of New York and Leonard Lance of New Jersey, plus conservative Walter Jones of North Carolina, who had his own words of warning. 
 
 "He's there for three-and-a-half more years," Jones said of Trump. "He better be careful. He's got a lot of issues coming." 
 
 The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said changes Republican leaders had proposed before Thursday to win votes had cut the legislation's deficit reduction by more than half, to $150 billion over the next decade. But it would still result in 24 million more uninsured people in a decade. 
 
 Obama's law increased coverage through subsidized private insurance for people who don't have access to workplace plans, and a state option to expand Medicaid for low-income residents. More than 20 million people gained coverage since the law was passed in 2010. 
 
 Many who purchase individual health insurance and make too much to qualify for the law's tax credits have seen their premiums jump and their choices diminished. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Associated Press writers Matt Daly, Kevin Freking, Mary Clare Jalonick, Richard Lardner, Stephen Ohlemacher, Vivian Salama, Ken Thomas and Erica Werner contributed to this report. ||||| WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump warned House Republican lawmakers that he will leave Obamacare in place and move on to tax reform if they do not get behind new healthcare legislation and support it in a vote on Friday. 
 
 It was not clear late on Thursday evening that Trump and the Republican leaders who crafted the bill had enough support to pass it, meaning they now risk defeat in their first attempt at major legislation and may fail to deliver on a key campaign pledge. 
 
 “We have been promising the American people that we will repeal and replace this broken law because it’s collapsing and it’s failing families, and tomorrow we’re proceeding,” House Speaker Paul Ryan told reporters after an evening all-hands meeting. He ignored reporters who asked if he had secured the votes to pass the bill. 
 
 Ryan and leaders in the House of Representatives were forced to postpone a vote on their healthcare bill, formally called the American Health Care Act, earlier on Thursday, dealing Trump an embarrassing setback. 
 
 The vote had been symbolically planned for the anniversary of former Democratic President Barack Obama signing his namesake healthcare law, the Affordable Care Act, in 2010. It was supposed to have been Trump’s first legislative victory. 
 
 Trump and his fellow Republicans had pledged to replace Obamacare, which they view as too intrusive and too expensive. 
 
 But, after a week of calling Republican lawmakers and bringing them into the Oval Office for meetings, Trump failed to close the deal with two different factions within his party on time for the planned Thursday vote. 
 
 Conservatives felt the bill did not go far enough to repeal Obamacare and moderates felt the plan could hurt their constituents. House Republican leaders had signaled they were ready to work through the weekend to figure out a way to reconcile their differences. 
 
 As the healthcare drama unfolded on Capitol Hill, Trump played it cool, taking a break from negotiations to hang out with some truckers, climbing into the cab of a long-haul transport truck parked on the back driveway of the White House, and blowing the horn a few times. 
 
 He told reporters the vote would be close but he remained optimistic. “I think we’re doing well. We’ll find out in about three hours,” he said, just as reports began to surface that the vote had been postponed. 
 
 By evening, Trump sent his top lieutenants to a dramatic meeting on Capitol Hill on Thursday night with an ultimatum: he was done talking. According to Representative Chris Collins of New York, a top Trump ally, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney told House Republicans that Trump wanted a vote. 
 
 “The president has said he wants a vote tomorrow, up or down,” Collins said. 
 
 “If for any reason it is down, we are just going to move forward with additional parts of his agenda” such as tax reform, Collins told reporters after leaving the meeting. 
 
 However, the vote has been seen by financial markets as a crucial test of Trump’s ability to work with Congress to deliver on his other priorities, such as tax cuts and infrastructure spending. 
 
 Even if their replacement plan does eventually get approval from the House, the legislation faces a potentially tough fight in the Republican-controlled Senate. 
 
 The House and Senate had hoped to deliver a new healthcare bill to Trump by April 8, when Congress is scheduled to begin a two-week spring break. 
 
 GETTING TO YES? 
 
 The Republicans have a majority in the House but, because of united Democratic opposition, can afford to lose only 21 Republican votes. By Thursday morning, NBC News said that 30 Republicans had planned to vote “no” or were leaning that way. 
 
 North Carolina Congressman Mark Meadows, the chairman of the pivotal conservative bloc known as the Freedom Caucus, said he and others were struggling to support the plan. 
 
 “I am desperately trying to get to ‘yes’ and I think the president knows that. I told him that personally,” Meadows said. However, after Thursday night’s meeting, he was still a ‘no’. 
 
 Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney arrive for a meeting about the American Health Care Act on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S. March 23, 2017. REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein 
 
 Obamacare aimed to boost the number of Americans with health insurance through mandates on individuals and employers, and income-based subsidies. Some 20 million Americans gained insurance coverage through the law. 
 
 The House replacement plan would rescind the taxes created by Obamacare, repeal a penalty against people who do not buy coverage, slash funding for the Medicaid program for the poor and disabled, and modify tax subsidies that help individuals buy plans. 
 
 House leaders agreed to four pages of last-minute amendments to the bill, including allowing states to choose which “essential benefits” are required in healthcare insurance plans, and keeping a 0.9 percent surcharge on Medicare for high-income Americans for six years. It was unclear whether that was enough. 
 
 Representative Trent Franks, a Freedom Caucus member who had been “undeclared” on his position on the bill, said he liked the changes. “It’s going in the right direction,” Franks said outside the House. 
 
 The amendments will give states more money for maternal health and mental health, said Representative Jeff Fortenberry, a Nebraska moderate who still has not said how he will vote. 
 
 MARKETS WATCHING CLOSELY 
 
 Uncertainty over the healthcare bill rattled financial markets this week. The delay in the house vote is likely to extend the ups and downs in the stocks of some hospital groups and health insurers. 
 
 U.S. stock markets rose steadily in recent months on optimism over a pro-business Trump agenda but fell back sharply on Tuesday as investors worried that failure to push through the healthcare bill could postpone other business-friendly Trump priorities. 
 
 “Delay on healthcare equates to delay on tax cuts. That is why the market turned red when the news flow suggested they didn’t have a deal,” said David Kotok, chairman and chief investment officer at Cumberland Advisors, a money management firm. 
 
 Others said it was too soon to panic. 
 
 “If this thing gets materially delayed or if we get a ‘no’ vote, we’re going to see a horrific market reaction. But if they vote in the morning and it passes, we’ll have a hell of a rally,” said Jake Dollarhide, chief executive officer of Longbow Asset Management in Tulsa, Oklahoma. 
 
 Slideshow (16 Images) 
 
 Graphic on Obamacare and Republican healthcare bill (tmsnrt.rs/2n0ZMKf) 
 
 Graphic on shifting positions in the U.S. Senate on Republican healthcare bill (tmsnrt.rs/2mUE4Xf) 
 
 Graphic on poll on Americans' views of the Republican healthcare bill ( tmsnrt.rs/2n7f3e4) ||||| Donald Trump crowed for months he would strike a "terrific" deal on health care. His ambitions ended in a brief phone call Friday afternoon, in which Speaker Paul Ryan told him the truth: He was nowhere close. 
 
 The businessman president, who sold himself to tens of millions of disillusioned voters last year as the only outsider who could tame a broken capital, ended his first confrontation with lawmakers overmatched, outmaneuvered and ultimately empty-handed. 
 
 Story Continued Below 
 
 “We learned a lot about some very arcane rules,” Trump said in the Oval Office soon after the defeat of his effort to undo President Obama’s health care law. 
 
 It was actually the most basic fact of Congress that set Trump back: the majority rules. And despite a 22-seat margin for error in the House, Trump had proved unable to corral support for a plan to repeal the law, one of Trump’s key campaign pledges. 
 
 His failure to advance legislation through a single chamber of Congress controlled by members of his own party — despite it being a cornerstone of the Republican agenda for more than half-decade — casts doubt both on Trump’s much-bragged-about dealmaking skills and the GOP’s path forward. 
 
 “It's a black eye for the speaker and the president,” said Scott Reed, the top strategist of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which supported the measure. 
 
 The setback, described in interviews with multiple senior administration and congressional officials, was especially humiliating because Trump was sunk not by Democrats but by his inability to ride herd over the same rebellious element of the Republican conference that previously bucked Speaker Paul Ryan’s predecessor John Boehner out of his job. Most House Republicans have never served in the majority under a Republican president and it’s unclear how in the future they will cobble together a governing coalition. 
 
 “The Republican Party is still operating as an opposition party,” said Josh Holmes, a former chief of staff to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who added, “If they can't break the fever…it says an enormous amount about the prospects of tax reform, infrastructure and some sort of immigration proposal.” 
 
 Trump himself seemed almost relieved to move on from the health care fight, even as other White House officials were fretting about the long-term implications of what one senior White House official called a "clear embarrassment for us." 
 
 The president himself wasn’t nearly as upset about the health care defeat as he was about the size of his inauguration crowds, Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ decision to recuse himself from the investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election or the repeated legal setbacks on his travel-ban executive order, which has been blocked by multiple courts. “No bullshit, I think he's actually pretty comfortable with the outcome. He wants to move ahead and do taxes,” another senior White House official said. 
 
 But tax reform — which no president or Congress has been able to tackle successfully for more than three decades — is no easy task, especially as Republicans had banked on deficit-cutting from any health package to give them a financial cushion in that endeavor. “Yes,” Ryan conceded Friday, “this does make tax reform more difficult.” 
 
 For weeks Trump had seemed disinterested and disengaged from the specifics of the health care fight, both behind closed doors with his aides and at public rallies. Trump “just wanted to get something he could sign,” said one adviser who talks to him frequently. “He was over it.” He would often interrupt conversations on the law to talk about other issues, advisers and aides said. 
 
 In one phone call with Ryan earlier this month, Trump told the House speaker that he had a problem with the bill. It wasn’t over Medicaid expansion, maternity coverage, deductibles or insurance premiums. Rather, it was that he didn’t like the word “buckets”—which Ryan had been using to describe the parts of their plan. 
 
 “I don't like that word buckets. You throw trash in buckets. I don't like that word,” Trump said, according to two people familiar with the call. Trump preferred “phases.” Ryan agreed and adopted the term. 
 
 It was the kind of messaging detail Trump focused on during the campaign, when he described his plan as “repeal and replace — with something terrific.” But by February, Trump confided to a group of the nation’s governors visiting Washington D.C. that undoing Obamacare would be more involved. “Nobody knew healthcare could be so complicated,” he said. 
 
 In the closing days of negotiations, Trump found himself stuck in the middle of an ideological tug-of-war between the two factions at the extremes of a deeply fissured House Republican conference — with every concession offered to the hardline House Freedom Caucus driving away votes from the moderate Tuesday Group, and vice versa. 
 
 The arguments for the legislation from the White House were political. “This is your chance,” press secretary Sean Spicer urged lawmakers on Friday hours before the bill died. The arguments against it were based in policy, where Trump was less comfortable. 
 
 When Trump trekked to Capitol Hill to make his case in person on Tuesday, lawmakers were mostly nonplussed. “Not a whole lot about health care, except to vote for it,” Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., said afterward. He remained opposed. 
 
 Other lawmakers said Trump wasn’t at all conversant in the specifics and mainly wanted to talk about his popularity in their districts – or how voting against the proposed bill could hurt them politically. But the proposed law ended up polling below 20 percent – and the president's approval rating dropped below 40 percent. 
 
 Short the votes, Trump trotted out one of his favorite deal-making tactics late Thursday to seal the deal: the ultimatum. All House Republicans were told by Trump’s top lieutenants that the bill was take-it-or-leave-it proposition, and their only chance to get rid of Obamacare. 
 
 In the days and hours leading up to a vote that looked bleak, the White House did little to tamp down expectations. “He is the closer,” Spicer labeled Trump. 
 
 Trump pushed hard for a floor vote up until the final minute. Senior administration officials maintained deep into Friday afternoon that they wanted the roll call "to make them vote against the president on live TV,” in the words of a third senior White House official. 
 
 “We are voting,” this person said, 45 minutes before it was called off. 
 
 It was straight out of Trump’s The Art of the Deal playbook, where he wrote simultaneously about boldness and maintaining a willingness to retreat. “I never get too attached to one deal or one approach,” Trump wrote. “For starters, I keep a lot of balls in the air because most deals fall out.” 
 
 That might work in the real estate business, where there’s always another property to develop, or another contractor to hire. But it backfired in Congress, where time and political capital are not unlimited, where the last deal impacts the next and where there is no alternative set of lawmakers to whom Trump can pitch his next demands. 
 
 The setback could also shake up the internal dynamics of a White House, where infighting among rival factions has become the norm. Some pointedly noted that Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, spent the run-up to the vote in Aspen. Some pinned blame on chief of staff Reince Priebus, who is close to Ryan and had been expected to help Trump navigate the complexities of Capitol Hill. Others faulted chief strategist Steve Bannon for failing to mobilize his former company, Breitbart News, on behalf of the bill, or to corral hardliners on the Hill. 
 
 Breaking News Alerts Get breaking news when it happens — in your inbox. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. 
 
 Indeed, the blame game began even before the vote was called off. “This is 100 percent a Ryan failure,” said the third White House official. While Trump wasn’t upset with Ryan, multiple senior officials said, a number of his advisers and aides were trashing the speaker before the vote – and Ryan told others he expected to get the brunt of the blame. 
 
 By midday Friday, the health care bill was hemorrhaging support, as the powerful chairman of the House Appropriations Committee came out against the bill. Ryan came to the White House to brief Trump on the bleak outlook. 
 
 But even as Trump and his top advisers wanted to forge ahead, they were showing sign of worry. Spicer no longer embraced the term “the closer.” GOP leadership pushed to drop what was now seen as a kamikaze mission. And a little after 3 p.m., Trump talked to Ryan again — the two had a 45-minute conversation late Thursday night about the law. 
 
 “He talked to Paul Ryan for a few minutes, who said he was at least 10 and 15 votes short,” one of the senior White House officials said. Ryan said he planned to pull the vote unless Trump objected, and Trump said he was OK with that. 
 
 Ryan explained soon after what it meant to a national television audience: “We’re going to be living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future.” 
 
 Trump got off the phone, scribbled down some notes and dialed up reporters to give his side before the full White House staff was even briefed. The president was most focused on the news coverage and how it reflected on him, as he had been throughout, telling advisers how much the criticism of the law on TV bothered him. 
 
 In the Capitol basement after the vote was cancelled, Republican lawmakers were gathered to hear what came next. The Rolling Stones refrain Trump often played at his rallies was playing in the background: “You can’t always get what you want.” 
 
 Tara Palmeri and Jake Sherman contributed reporting. ||||| Donald Trump suffered a major legislative reversal on Friday as Republicans were forced to pull their repeal of the Affordable Care Act from the House floor. 
 
 After weeks of contentious negotiations over the American Health Care Act (AHCA), Republicans had to admit defeat as they could not gain sufficient support from their own side for the plan to overhaul US health insurance. 
 
 Why the Republican healthcare bill was doomed: a failed political balancing act Read more 
 
 Speaking afterward in the Oval Office, Trump blamed Democrats for the failure of a bill to repeal the signature achievement of Barack Obama. “If [Democrats] got together with us, and got us a real healthcare bill, I’d be totally OK with that. The losers are Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, because they own Obamacare. They 100% own it,” he said. 
 
 Trump refused to bash the House speaker, Paul Ryan, but declined to answer a question about policy changes he would like to see in health reform. Instead, he said he was ready to move on to tax reform, saying: “We’re probably going to start going very strongly on big tax cuts. Tax reform that will be next.” 
 
 He added: “We all learned a lot. We learned a lot about loyalty.” 
 
 
 
 Earlier on Friday, as it became clear that Republican resistance to the bill was hardening, Ryan went to the White House to tell Trump in person that he did not have the votes to pass the bill. 
 
 The White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, had insisted the vote would go ahead at 3.30pm ET. “Has the team put everything out there, have we left everything on the field? Absolutely,” he told reporters at his daily briefing. “But at the end of the day this isn’t a dictatorship and we’ve got to expect members to ultimately vote how they will according to what they think.” 
 
 However, Spicer’s imagined 3.30pm deadline slid by, ignored by Republicans on Capitol Hill, and the first reports emerged that Trump had asked for the vote to be pulled. Minutes later House Republicans, short of votes, had withdrawn the health bill. 
 
 At a press conference soon afterward, Ryan admitted: “Moving from an opposition party to a governing party comes with growing pains and, well, we’re feeling those growing pains today. I will not sugarcoat this: this is a disappointing day for us.” 
 
 He said “doing big things is hard” and conceded that after almost a decade of saying no to everything in opposition, the Republicans had failed to come together and agree on something they have opposed for seven years. “We are going to be living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future,” he said. 
 
 Ryan said he had recommended the bill be pulled when he realized the votes were lacking. But he praised Trump’s role in the negotiations, adding: “The president gave his all in this effort; he’s really been fantastic. Still, we’ve got to do better and we will.” 
 
 Asked how Republican members could now go back to their constituents having failed to keep their promise, Ryan replied: “That’s a really good question. I wish I had a better answer for you.” 
 
 
 
 Trump tried to burn down Obamacare. He set his hair on fire instead | Ross Barkan Read more 
 
 Separately, a Washington Post reporter described a call with Trump in which he said the bill would not return any time soon. 
 
 
 
 Ryan also conceded that Republicans would now move on to other priorities – securing the border, rebuilding the military and tax reform. “Now we’re going on to move on with the rest of our agenda because we have big, ambitious plans to improve people’s lives in this country.” 
 
 Although speculation had grown on Friday afternoon that the bill would be pulled, the announcement came as a surprise to Republican members. 
 
 
 
 An emergency meeting of the House Republican Caucus was called shortly before the scheduled vote. As it was announced, the House went to recess, with Democrats shouting in a taunting manner, “Vote, vote, vote”, daring Republicans to bring the bill up. They did not. 
 
 In a short meeting, Ryan announced that the bill was being pulled from the floor in a terse statement to members. 
 
 Many moderates in swing districts were wary of supporting the legislation, which included major cuts to Medicaid and was estimated by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office to lead to 24 million fewer Americans having health insurance over the next 10 years. 
 
 Conservatives also objected to the legislation for keeping too much of the architecture of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), frequently referred to as Obamacare. Although the Republican leadership made a major concession to them on Thursday by removing the federal mandate that health insurance plans cover “essential health benefits” such as maternity care and mental healthcare, this was not enough to win them over. 
 
 As the Nevada Republican Mark Amodei put it, the GOP caucus “didn’t spend a lot talking about a unified Republican vision for what we should do with healthcare in the House”. Paul Gosar, a member of the hard-right Freedom Caucus, which was instrumental in this setback, pointed a finger at White House staff. 
 
 The result is a major political blow to Paul Ryan, a healthcare policy specialist who led the effort in pushing the AHCA. It also leaves Trump in a vulnerable position. The president ran on a platform of repealing the “disaster” of Obamacare and replacing it with “something terrific”. However, Trump, co-author of The Art of the Deal, failed to accomplish that goal in his first major attempt to negotiate on Capitol Hill. 
 
 Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, called Friday “a great day for our country”, adding: “What happened on the floor was a victory for the American people.” 
 
 
 
 The Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, said in a statement: “Ultimately, the Trumpcare bill failed because of two traits that have plagued the Trump presidency since he took office: incompetence and broken promises. In my life, I have never seen an administration as incompetent as the one occupying the White House today. 
 
 “They can’t write policy that actually makes sense, they can’t implement the policies they do manage to write, they can’t get their stories straight, and today we’ve learned that they can’t close a deal, and they can’t count votes. 
 
 “So much for The Art of the Deal.” 
 
 Members of the Republican caucus took different lessons from the failure to even bring the AHCA to the vote. 
 
 Louie Gohmert of Texas, an arch-conservative who was opposed to the bill, pointed fingers at House leadership, which he implied had left both rank and file and Trump boxed in with no alternative. 
 
 “The president didn’t really get involved until after they created this bill and he was fighting for it,” Gohmert said. 
 
 Bradley Byrne, a loyal Republican from southern Alabama, expressed his readiness to still vote for the AHCA after it was pulled. He mourned the fact that House Republicans fell just short, in his opinion. “There were 200 plus ... ready to do whatever it takes and ... with that group of people we can do a lot,” said Byrne. He didn’t blame anyone for the setback, praising both Ryan and Trump, who he described as doing a “great job”. 
 
 Republicans wondered whether this doomed any hope of healthcare reform. Gohmert seemed to sympathize with Trump’s desire to move on to tax reform, adding: “If I were president, I wouldn’t deal with healthcare any more, but as a legislator it is a problem and we should pick it back up and do it right.” 
 
 Speaking before the bill was pulled, the North Carolina congressman Mark Walker, chair of the Republican Study Committee, told reporters: “I can’t pretend that this is a win for us. I’m sure our friends on the left, this is a good moment for them. In fact, probably that champagne that wasn’t popped back in November may be utilized this evening.” ||||| The move by President Donald Trump and Speaker Paul Ryan is an enormous gamble, setting up a real cliffhanger when the legislation hits the floor on Friday. | Getty Trump demands Friday health care vote The moment of truth arrives for the Republican Party’s years-long drive to repeal the health care law. 
 
 President Donald Trump is demanding a vote Friday in the House on the Republican plan to repeal and replace Obamacare, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney told GOP lawmakers. If the bill fails, Trump is prepared to move on and leave Obamacare in place, Mulvaney warned. 
 
 The surprise announcement by the top White House official — made with the full support of Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and other House GOP leaders — came during a closed-door meeting of Republicans Thursday evening in the basement of the Capitol. 
 
 Story Continued Below 
 
 Mulvaney, a member of the House until a few weeks ago who now heads the Office of Management and Budget, said Trump was done negotiating and wanted an up-or-down vote now. 
 
 The move by Trump and Ryan is an enormous gamble, setting up a real cliffhanger when the legislation hits the floor on Friday. 
 
 All day Thursday, the White House and GOP leaders lacked the votes to pass the American Health Care Act. A loss on the House floor would be a glaring embarrassment for the new president and House speaker — one that could undermine other parts of the GOP legislative agenda, including tax reform. 
 
 A victory, on the other hand, would provide not just a shot of badly-needed momentum for both men, but undermine the House Freedom Caucus, the group of conservative hard-liners who've fought the GOP health care plan because it doesn't go far enough. 
 
 The group's opposition was seen as a public rebuke to both the White House and House GOP leadership. If the the Freedom Caucus loses to Trump and Ryan, its power will be curtailed. If it wins, the group will once again be able to dictate terms to party leaders. 
 
 Yet this is the showdown that many mainstream GOP rank-and-file members have sought. They want a fight out in the open with the Freedom Caucus — either the group votes against Trump, or it gives in. 
 
 Negotiations between Trump and the Freedom Caucus hit an impasse earlier Thursday its members were told recent concessions from the White House and GOP leadership represented a final offer. The group rejected that, wanting more. 
 
 The setbacks triggered another series of meetings later Thursday — between Trump and the moderate Tuesday Group, and separately between the Freedom Caucus and Ryan. That was followed by a full GOP Conference meeting where Trump played his trump card. 
 
 Trump and Ryan had found themselves playing see-saw with moderates and hard-liners: Lean too much toward one faction and they lose votes from the other. So far, they've been unable to find a sweet spot. 
 
 Ryan can afford to lose only 22 votes on the floor. The Freedom Caucus has three dozen members, many of whom have vowed to block the bill unless they get what they want. More than a dozen centrist Republicans have also come out against the bill, further endangering its prospects. 
 
 But the Trump-Ryan gambit may pay off. Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) said the move by Trump and Ryan “certainly does” put enormous pressure on the Freedom Caucus to get behind the bill. And already a handful sounded like their positions were softer than they had been before. 
 
 Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), who said he remains undecided, added that efforts by the Freedom Caucus had “improved the bill.” Rep. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) said members will feel more pressure to vote "yes" with the bill on the floor, even if they may have felt comfortable opposing it before. Sanford said he was undecided. 
 
 Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.) was a "no" but is now undecided. 
 
 "I've got to decide whether this is best for my district and best for the president and best for my country. And I'm not convinced it will bend the cost curve down... but it may be as good as it gets on this one," DesJarlais said. 
 
 “We get elected to make votes, and this is a big vote,” added Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), a Freedom Caucus member who supports the bill and called it “the right thing to do.” 
 
 “I think it passes," he added. 
 
 Thursday vote on health care bill canceled House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy announces that they will not be voting on the health care bill on Thursday. poster="https://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201703/3137/1155968404_5370237544001_5370228444001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404" true 
 
 GOP Rep. Tom Reed (R-N.Y.) said Mulvaney "put it completely in focus. The moment is now. Do we advance the cause so we can move forward and move on and accomplish what we said we would and repeal and replace Obamacare ... and also tax reform? It's a major test, and we're gonna pass that test tomorrow." 
 
 "If we vote it down, we will neuter Donald Trump's presidency ... We are not going to undermine the president's ability to get things done,” Rep. Dana Rohrabacher told reporters after the meeting. 
 
 A senior administration official in the room for the Freedom Caucus meeting at the White House said most members left the meeting as "no's" but suggested some flipped to "yes." While Trump did not go around the room and ask people how they would vote, it became immediately clear GOP leaders did not appear to win over enough members to put the measure over the top. 
 
 "We're down right now," the official said. 
 
 Freedom Caucus chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) told reporters in the Capitol Thursday afternoon that "we have not gotten enough of our members to get to yes at this point. … However, I would say progress is being made." He called Trump's engagement in the negotiations perhaps "unparalleled in the history of our country." 
 
 There were daunting obstacles to a deal heading into the White House meeting Thursday morning. A number of Freedom Caucus members had suggested Trump’s latest concession — repealing Obamacare's mandate that insurance plans provide a minimum level of "essential" benefits — wasn't enough. The group wants a complete repeal of all Affordable Care Act regulations — including popular provisions Trump promised he would maintain. 
 
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 The conservatives' target list encompasses a prohibition against discriminating against people with pre-existing conditions and a requirement that adults up to age 26 can remain on their parents’ health insurance. 
 
 “Repealing [essential health benefits], w/out making other substantial changes, would make the bill worse, not better,” tweeted Freedom Caucus member Justin Amash (R-Mich.). “It would hurt the sickest people on exchanges.” 
 
 The Freedom Caucus has been a constant thorn in the side of House GOP leadership, sinking bills its members believe were too accommodating to Democrats. The group was expected to fall in line behind Trump after he won, but it has refused to do so on the health care bill. 
 
 Now, Freedom Caucus members are threatening to trip up not John Boehner or Ryan, but a Republican commander-in-chief who remains highly popular in their districts. 
 
 Many House Republicans are furious with the Freedom Caucus, saying the group keeps moving the goal posts and that it really wants to sink the health care bill altogether. 
 
 “The president is good at negotiating, but he has to have someone who wants to get to yes,” Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.), an ardent Trump supporter, told POLITICO. “I was never able to sell a car or a truck to someone who didn’t want a car or a truck. It just doesn’t work. And that’s where we are right now. I don’t think they’re really interested in getting to an ‘end.’” 
 
 Kelly then added: “Maybe the ‘end’ is: making sure it doesn’t pass.” 
 
 Jake Sherman and John Bresnahan contributed to this report. ||||| A week of high drama in Washington reached a stunning climax on Friday: President Trump Donald John TrumpTrump advisers urging tougher action toward Russia: report Eric Holder says he'll decide on a 2020 run by early next year Trump wrote back to 8-year-old seeking kidney for dad MORE and Speaker Paul Ryan Paul Davis RyanThe time for radical centrism has come House conservatives to air grievances in new 'Swamp' docu-series Trump 'Putingate' pardons could be criminal and would be impeachable MORE (R-Wis.) decided to pull the Republican bill that had sought to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act rather than watch it go down to certain defeat. 
 
 There will be no second attempt anytime soon. Ryan said at a Capitol Hill news conference on Friday afternoon that the nation will “be living with ObamaCare for the foreseeable future.” 
 
 ADVERTISEMENT 
 
 It’s an astonishing conclusion to one of the main fights that Republicans — including Trump — have sought for years. 
 
 As the dust settles, who are the biggest winners and losers? 
 
 LOSERS 
 
 President Trump 
 
 Make no mistake, this was a humiliating defeat for a president who campaigned as the ultimate dealmaker who could shake up a moribund Washington and get things done. 
 
 His big legislative push has fallen at the first hurdle. Trump himself was deeply engaged in trying to win over reluctant Republican lawmakers — and it didn’t work. 
 
 There are many unknowns: How will this affect other items on Trump’s agenda? How much frustration among grassroots Republican voters will be focused on him rather than Ryan or the GOP lawmakers who refused to get on board? 
 
 In remarks on Friday afternoon, Trump sought to put a brave face on the situation, avoiding lashing out at any Republicans and arguing that the Democrats would continue to “own” ObamaCare, to their political detriment. 
 
 But when Trump said, “There’s not much you can do about it,” referring to ObamaCare, it seemed an oddly impotent remark for a sitting president with majorities in both houses of Congress. 
 
 This is a very big setback for Trump. Just how big will become clear only after more time has passed. 
 
 Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) 
 
 Friday’s developments were at least as damaging for Ryan as they were for the president. 
 
 Whether the American Health Care Act would ultimately have been signed into law or not, the fact that Ryan could not get it through the House is deeply embarrassing for the Speaker. 
 
 Ryan’s fingerprints were all over the legislation, which faced immediate and fierce pushback from conservative members of his own conference as well as several important interest groups. 
 
 Some Trump loyalists contend that Ryan erred by focusing on healthcare rather than tax reform out of the gate. And conservative media commentators are openly questioning his leadership. 
 
 Trump publicly insists that he retains confidence in Ryan. But the Speaker went down to a big defeat that revealed an inability to muscle his members into line. 
 
 Vice President Pence, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price and Office of Management And Budget Director Mick Mulvaney 
 
 Pence, Price and Mulvaney were all once House members — in the case of the latter two, right up until they joined the Trump administration. 
 
 As such, the White House had suggested they would be especially effective in winning over members of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus and other lawmakers. Mulvaney was a founding member of the group. 
 
 When all’s said and done, the trio failed to round up the required votes. That’s a political black eye for all three men. 
 
 MIXED 
 
 The House Freedom Caucus 
 
 The conservative group won the battle — but the outcome of the broader war has yet to be decided. 
 
 The caucus, led by Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), held the line in opposition to the bill, despite the urging of Trump himself. More than any other Republican group, they were responsible for the failure of the legislation. 
 
 The whole episode showed the power of the Freedom Caucus, but its members will have to deal with the consequences too. 
 
 They defied a president of their own party who — for all his broader struggles with popularity — is fervently supported by many grassroots Republicans. 
 
 They sank an effort to replace a law that many of those grassroots voters detest. 
 
 And the realpolitik argument for their position — that they could force Trump and the House leadership to come back to the table with a proposal that was more attentive to their concerns, appears to have proven untrue. 
 
 WINNERS 
 
 Former President Barack Obama Barack Hussein ObamaUnderstanding the underdog factor, from Loyola to Obama Judge dismisses Exxon’s ‘implausible’ attempt to stop climate investigations Judge rejects Saudi Arabia's bid to dismiss 9/11 lawsuits MORE 
 
 The bottom line is simple: Obama’s signature domestic achievement has survived — and at a moment when the White House, the Senate and the House are all controlled by people who have repeatedly pledged to destroy it. 
 
 Trump, speaking from the White House on Friday afternoon, insisted that the Affordable Care Act would explode under its own weight. But the current president did not make any pledge to renew his efforts to undo it, instead suggesting he would be open to some more incremental repairs in tandem with congressional Democrats. 
 
 Obama’s big law dodged a bullet here. And that strengthens his legacy as a president of considerable historical significance. 
 
 House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) 
 
 Pelosi displayed the kind of grip on her party colleagues that Ryan so signally failed to exhibit. 
 
 Not a single Democrat broke ranks to support the Republican proposal. The position may not have been that surprising. But it did ensure that Republicans faced the steepest possible gradient. 
 
 Pelosi, who loves the hand-to-hand political combat of Capitol Hill, clearly took some pleasure in the Republicans’ disarray. 
 
 When the vote was first postponed on Thursday, she told reporters, “Rookie’s error, Donald Trump.” 
 
 Jared Kushner 
 
 Trump’s son-in-law, among his most trusted advisers, was reportedly against the decision to move on healthcare from the get-go. But he was also out of Washington for much of the week, on a ski trip with his family in Aspen. 
 
 CNN reported that the president was displeased that Kushner was out of town. 
 
 But as someone who was physically and politically distant from the week’s messy horse-trading, he emerges relatively unscathed from the debacle. 
 
 Governors 
 
 Several GOP governors were critical of the replacement plan put forward by their colleagues in the House. 
 
 Ohio’s John Kasich, Nevada’s Brian Sandoval, Arkansas’s Asa Hutchinson and Michigan’s Rick Snyder wrote an open letter last week to Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Addison (Mitch) Mitchell McConnellThe omnibus is just the latest fiscal bomb to throw us off balance Trump 'Putingate' pardons could be criminal and would be impeachable Dems face difficult choices on resources in battle for Senate MORE (R-Ky.) stating that they could not support the legislation. 
 
 Their argument, in essence, was that the bill would have hit Medicaid too hard. 
 
 They gave political cover to lawmakers from their states who were also leaning against the legislation. 
 
 The AARP 
 
 The organization for older Americans lobbied vigorously against the law. 
 
 It attacked one proposed change as “an age tax,” emphasized that 24 million fewer people were projected to have health insurance after a decade and declared the issue to be an “accountability vote” — in other words, one where it would use its muscle against lawmakers who voted against its wishes. 
 
 The association’s efforts were a reminder that it is not to be underestimated. 
 
 The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage, primarily focused on Donald Trump’s presidency. ||||| The demise of the American Health Care Act played out in a tense 24 hours that White House and congressional officials said proved a political education for Mr. Trump and his top advisers on the promise and peril of governing, even with unified Republican control. This account is based on government officials who were present during the last-minute negotiations and who spoke on the condition of anonymity. 
 
 “We all learned a lot,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Friday afternoon. “We learned a lot about loyalty, and we learned a lot about the vote-getting process.” 
 
 “Certainly for me, it was a very interesting experience,” he added. 
 
 Mr. Trump, who initially had little involvement in crafting the health care bill, became more deeply engaged in recent weeks, promoting it at rallies outside Washington and holding meetings in the West Wing with conservative and moderate coalitions whose support was crucial to its passage. 
 
 But he made little secret of his ambivalence about addressing the issue — “I would have loved to have put it first, I’ll be honest,” Mr. Trump said of tax reform in Nashville last week — yet he told aides he believed the measure could not pass without a push from him. 
 
 By Thursday afternoon, just hours before a scheduled vote, it had become clear that his efforts — along with those of Vice President Mike Pence and other senior White House officials — had fallen short. At a meeting in Mr. Ryan’s office in the Capitol with members of the recalcitrant Freedom Caucus, top White House officials laid out the changes they had made at the group’s behest, including stripping it of federal standards for benefits that must be provided in health insurance policies, including maternity and wellness care. 
 
 Caucus members began outlining still more changes they needed to see before they could support the bill, angering Mr. Ryan and Mr. Trump’s aides. Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s chief strategist, and Mick Mulvaney, his budget director, told the group that the White House was finished negotiating and that the president wanted to know its position on the bill — yes or no. 
 
 Called on in turn to state their positions, several members refused. As tensions rose, Representative Mark Meadows of North Carolina said that he spoke for the group and that they were not ready to commit. That meant the votes would not be there. ||||| poster="http://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201703/1681/1155968404_5371823017001_5371796654001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404" true Congress Republicans yank Obamacare repeal bill It's a staggering setback for President Donald Trump and Speaker Paul Ryan. 
 
 Facing a growing rebellion within his own ranks, Speaker Paul Ryan pulled the Republican Obamacare replacement plan from the House floor on Friday just before a scheduled vote. 
 
 The decision is a staggering defeat for Ryan and President Donald Trump in their first attempt to partner on major legislation and fulfill a seven-year Republican promise to repeal Obamacare. And it comes a day after Trump issued an ultimatum to House Republicans to vote for the bill or live with Obamacare. 
 
 Story Continued Below 
 
 GOP lawmakers decided they can, in fact, live with Obamacare, at least for now. 
 
 A Republican leadership aide said Trump and Ryan spoke by phone at 3 p.m. and that the president asked the speaker to pull the bill. Ryan told reporters that his advice to Trump was to cancel the vote. 
 
 But the reality is that Ryan and his leadership team had been bleeding votes all day and were not close to passing the American Health Care Act. The speaker went to the White House and told Trump as much just an hour earlier. 
 
 Republicans were begging Ryan and party leaders to pull the bill to save them from having to vote on an unpopular measure. But Trump badly wanted to move ahead so he would "know who my friends are," he said, according to a Republican lawmaker who met with him. Democrats were unwavering in their opposition, and conservative outside groups despised the bill from the start. 
 
 And while GOP leaders had called Trump "the ulimate closer," he wasn't able to move many votes, especially among hard-line conservatives in the House Freedom Caucus. Trump admitted after the bill was pulled that he was "10 to 15 votes" shy of victory, a stunning margin considering how much effort he and Ryan had put into their lobbying campaign during the last week. 
 
 Ryan also knew, though, that if the bill had come up for a vote, it would have failed by a much larger margin than the whip counts. Once rank-and-file members knew it would fail, they'd reverse course and vote "no" in order to protect themselves politically, which their leaders would bless. That much larger margin of defeat would be an even bigger setback for Trump. In a sense, Ryan protected Trump from his own combative instincts, said GOP insiders. 
 
 "I will not sugarcoat this, this is a disappointing day for us," Ryan said at a press conference following the stunning announcement. "This is a setback, no two ways about it." 
 
 Ryan admitted that the Affordable Care Act, enacted seven years earlier almost to the day, "remains the law of the land... We're going to be living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future." 
 
 Ryan insisted Trump was not at fault for the failure. 
 
 "The president gave his all in this effort," Ryan added. "He's been fantastic." 
 
 The Freedom Caucus — the group that took down Speaker John Boehner — remained unwilling to compromise with Trump and Ryan, believing that their bill didn't do nearly enough to unwind Obamacare. 
 
 "Some of the members of that caucus were voting with us, but not enough were," Ryan said. "I met with their chairman today, and he made it clear that the votes weren't going to be there from their team. And that was sufficient to provide the balance of votes to have this not pass." 
 
 Democrats, for their part, were doing cartwheels in the Capitol. They've bloodied Trump, bashed Ryan, and showed that even in a GOP-run Washington, they still matter big time. 
 
 “Today is a great day for our country," said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). "It's a victory. What happened on the floor is a victory for the American people — for our seniors, for people with disabilities, for our children, for our veterans." 
 
 On the other side of the aisle, the internal GOP finger-pointing has already begun, showing the long-term damage inside the Republican Conference from this fight. 
 
 Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas), who helped craft the Republican health care legislation, was livid after the decision to pull the bill. 
 
 "The architects of Obamacare, they own this damn thing," the Texas Republican said. "There were people who were not interested in solving the problem. They win today." 
 
 Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), a member of the Freedom Caucus, said the bill's demise was a "good day for America." 
 
 Despite Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows' central role in defeating the bill and thus leaving Obamacare as the law of the land, the North Carolina Republican insisted he still wanted to repeal the Democratic health care law. 
 
 "I remain wholeheartedly committed to following through on this promise," Meadows said in a statement. "President Trump is committed to repealing Obamacare and replacing it with a system that works for American families, and I look forward to working with him to do just that." 
 
 Trump has staked his early presidency on repealing and replacing Obamacare, embracing his image as a dealmaker and closer throughout the process. House leaders were happy to oblige as well, referring to Trump as “the ultimate closer” as he met with reluctant House members. 
 
 “He’s left everything on the field when it comes to this bill,” White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Friday afternoon, describing Trump as working tirelessly to get the bill across the finish line. He added, “You can’t force someone to vote a certain way.” 
 
 Breaking News Alerts Get breaking news when it happens — in your inbox. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. 
 
 As Ryan and his allies scrambled to convince wary colleagues to back their health care plan, they watched as conservative and moderates in their caucus began to declare their opposition. As defections mounted, Ryan traveled to the White House to reveal to Trump his faltering whip count – and to discuss whether to pull the bill. But the administration seemed intent on proceeding as planned. 
 
 “We want the vote," a senior administration official said as Ryan made his way up Pennsylvania Avenue. "If they want to go against the president, they should do it on live TV." 
 
 Ultimately, though, Ryan prevailed. Moderate Republicans such as Virginia Rep. Barbara Comstock and Ohio Rep. David Joyce disclosed their opposition even as Ryan was meeting with Trump. It became clear early Friday afternoon that the bill was poised for defeat, as members on the fence broke against it. 
 
 The bill met sharp resistance from both ends of the Republican caucus, as hard-line conservatives in the House Freedom Caucus contended it failed to do away with Obamacare’s core components and moderates argued that its curbs on Medicaid could harm vulnerable constituents. Ultimately, those competing pressures proved irreconcilable. 
 
 Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.), a moderate who came out against the bill two days ago, insisted that Friday's debacle was actually not a big deal and said it’s time to “move on." 
 
 "There are a lot of people in this building who talk and say everything is catastrophic and cataclysmic, well we know that’s not the case," Dent said. "If you want to do health care reform, do it on a bipartisan basis…. We have to sit down and regroup.” 
 
 Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.) warned it wasn’t the end of Republican efforts to repeal Obamacare. 
 
 “The game is not over, so it’s not a win or loss," he said. ”We’re gonna get back together after we get a weekend’s rest, we’re going to assess where we are. The votes were razor thin, from what I understand, so we’re close to where we need to be."
– It was a stinging defeat by any measure: The ObamaCare "repeal and replace" bill that President Trump championed was declared DOA Friday after a House vote was canceled at the last minute. Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan had been unable to persuade enough House Republicans to change their minds on the American Health Care Act. The AP reports that the demise of the American Health Care Act, and the damage to Trump's presidency, had Democrats "literally jumping for joy," with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi doing a victory leap outside the Capitol. A roundup of coverage: The White House has been blaming Democrats and Ryan for the defeat, but the buck stops with Trump, who promised during his campaign that his skill as a dealmaker would change Washington, but then played chicken with House Republicans and blinked at the last minute, writes Chris Cillizza at the Washington Post. "Trump wanted this deal, pushed for this deal, called his own party's bluff on this deal and then walked away when it appeared as though the deal wouldn't come together," he writes. Politico looks back at mistakes made on the road to the failure of the AHCA, including Trump's lukewarm attitude to the legislation after it was first introduced. The New York Times reports that Trump was furious at lunchtime Friday when Ryan arrived at the White House to tell him the AHCA could not pass. Trump demanded the vote go ahead, broadcast live on TV, but Ryan argued that broadcasting the bill's defeat would damage Republicans who supported the bill as well as opponents. By midafternoon, Trump agreed to pull the bill, insiders say—and though he remained furious at the House Freedom Caucus, he did not criticize them publicly. The Hill lists winners and losers from the AHCA battle, with Trump and Ryan topping the list of losers. The winners include Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama, while the verdict is mixed for the House Freedom Caucus: The hardline conservatives demonstrated their power, but they also defied a Republican president popular with grassroots voters, and preserved a law those voters hate. Politico describes Trump as "overmatched, outmaneuvered, and empty-handed" after his first confrontation with rebellious lawmakers. His ability to work with congressional Republicans to implement other parts of his agenda is now in doubt. The GOP "is still operating as an opposition party," says Josh Holmes, a former chief of staff to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. "If they can't break the fever ... it says an enormous amount about the prospects of tax reform, infrastructure and some sort of immigration proposal," he says. The Guardian looks at the GOP's failure to build a consensus on healthcare after conservatives decided the AHCA didn't go far enough and moderates were alarmed by predictions that 24 million people would lose coverage. The House GOP didn't spend much time "talking about a unified Republican vision for what we should do with healthcare in the House," admits Rep. Mark Amodei. Plenty of other presidents have gotten off to rocky starts, though analysts say Trump is being hurt by an apparent lack of understanding of exactly how government works, the AP reports. "You can't just come in and steamroll everybody," says Bruce Miroff, a politics professor at the State University of New York at Albany. "Most people have a modest understanding of how complicated the presidency is. They think leadership is giving orders and being bold. But the federal government is much more complicated, above all because the Constitution set it up that way."