A new movement is aiming to mail at least 1 million postcards to President Donald Trump on Wednesday, March 15—historically dubbed “the Ides of March” and known as the day Julius Caesar was assassinated—to show “the man, the media, and the politicians how vast our numbers are…to make it irrefutable that the president’s claim of wide support is a farce.”

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“He may draw a big crowd with empty promises, but the crowd of those that oppose his agenda is exponentially larger. And we will show up to protest, to vote, and to be heard. Again and again and again,” the group, which calls itself the Ides of Trump, explained on its website and Facebook page.

The group outlines five steps to participate:

1. Write one postcard. Write a dozen! Create your own cards, buy them, share them, it doesn’t matter as long as you write #TheIdes or #TheIdesOfTrump on them somewhere.
2.  Take a picture of your cards and post them on social media (tagged with #TheIdesOfTrump or #TheIdes, please). This will help us verify our numbers.
3. Spread the word! Everyone on Earth can let Washington know their opinion of the President. They can’t build a wall high enough to stop the mail.
5. Get ready for the NEXT postcard campaign, and the next, and the next—because we’re not going away. We will make ourselves heard by joining together. And together, we will wield the kind of political clout that can’t be ignored.

As Leslie Evans, an artist and printmaker who produced about 900 postcards for the event last week in Watertown, Massachusetts, told the Boston Globe on Monday, “Obviously, numbers matter a lot to [Trump.]” Her postcards feature slogans that paraphrase chants commonly heard at anti-Trump protests, such as “Compassion, not fear, immigrants are welcome here,” and “Hear our voice, you are not the majority choice.”

House Republicans pulled their healthcare bill, the American Health Care Act (AHCA), just before the vote was to take place.

Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee of California described the bill’s failure as “a victory for the resistance,” while the New York Times writes that it’s “a humiliating defeat for President Trump on the first legislative showdown of his presidency.”

The decision to pull the bill followed a meeting at the White House between House Speaker Paul Ryan (Wis.) and Trump, in which Ryan told the president that there weren’t enough votes for the measure to pass. Ryan said at a press conference Friday that he told the president that the bill should be pulled and that Trump agreed.

As for his party’s failure to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare, he said, “Big things are hard to do.”

According to American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) national political director Faiz Shakir, the outcome showed that “[d]emocracy triumphed.”

“The people have spoken and they said ‘no’ to this dangerous agenda. They said ‘no’ to blocking access to Planned Parenthood, ‘no’ to more restrictions on abortion coverage, ‘no’ to slashing Medicaid and forcing people with disabilities into institutions, and ‘no’ to gutting essential health benefits like maternity and mental healthcare,” Shakir said in a press statement.

“It’s clear that millions of Americans have embraced progress and do not want to go back. It’s time for Congress and the Trump administration to move on and focus on ideas that actually improve our lives—not those that target vulnerable communities and roll back essential rights for millions of Americans,” he continued.

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Advocacy groups and Democratic lawmakers celebrated the development on Twitter:

Still, Democrats shouldn’t be too quick to pull out the champagne, says the National Nurses United (NNU).

“Instead of enacting a genuine transformation of our flawed healthcare system when Democrats had the White House and bigger majorities in Congress than the Republicans have now, they failed to enact a national system, like an improved Medicare-for-all, that would guarantee healthcare for all Americans, with real patient choice, and effective cost controls,” said NNU Executive Director RoseAnn DeMoro

“Why the Ryan bill ultimately failed is its premise that throwing more people to the wolves of the healthcare market would undeniably exacerbate the crisis for the people left behind by the gaps in the ACA. And they had to confront a massive rebellion by people in every corner, in every Congressional district across the nation,” she continued.

“What policy makers should do now is learn the lesson that most of the rest of the world has discovered, implement a system based on care, not profits, not corporate insurance. As the town halls and massive protests have made clear, the people are ready for real reform and a change in national priorities that puts our health first, not last,” DeMoro concluded.

As resistance efforts urge constituents to call their representatives to #killthebill, the death of the Republicans’ American Health Care Act (AHCA) appears early Friday afternoon to be near certain.

Does President Donald Trump assume his administration can just launch a surprise, unilateral military attack against Syria?

“I’m not saying I’m doing anything one way or another, but I’m certainly not going to be telling you.” —President Donald TrumpThe clear impression he left during a Wednesday afternoon press conference at the White House, as he stood alongside Jordan’s King Abdullah II, is that he can—and that he just might—but that he won’t tell “you” about it.

Just hours after the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations appeared to threaten unilateral action against Syria, Trump said he considers the alleged use of chemical weapons on Tuesday “beyond a red line” that “would not be tolerated” but refused to offer any clarity on what actions his administration would take in response.

Though he cited no evidence, Trump put the blame for Tuesday’s chemical attack squarely at the feet of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad and said his previous attitude toward the Syrian government—presented essentially as a hands-off approach—has “changed very much” in the last 24 hours.

“I will tell you, that attack on children yesterday had a big impact on me,” Trump said. “Big impact.”

In response to Trump’s afternoon remarks, Phyllis Bennis, director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, told Common Dreams the president showed a “total lack of any strategic coherence in his foreign policy.”

Trump is repeating a familiar mistake, said Bennis, by publicly blaming “the Syrian regime for the horrific chemical attack in Idlib without any certainty of who is actually responsible – something common to virtually all recent presidents.” Notably, she added, it was Trump who “urged President Obama not to attack Syria after the chemical bombing of 2013, tweeting in all caps “DO NOT ATTACK SYRIA — IF YOU DO MANY VERY BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN.”

Now, said Bennis, it’s clear that Trump is considering a military response himself, even as the investigatory process has only just begun. As Bennis notes, the deadly attack in 2013 “was also by carried out by uncertain perpetrators, and again saw the U.S. government blaming the Syrian regime despite the lack of clear proof.” 

Once again, the finger-pointing in the wake of a vicious massacre will have serious regional and global implications.

During a tense meeting of the UN Security Council earlier in the day, members demanded a thorough and credible investigation into what happened on Tuesday. While the U.S. and its western allies pointed the finger at Assad for the attack, Russia’s ambassador insisted that blame should not be assigned until an official probe, including expert and impartial analysis of the area where the massacre took place, could be conducted. Unfortunately, said Russia’s deputy UN envoy Vladimir Safronkov, the U.S. and its European allies have “a well-defined ideological slant” when it comes to chemical weapons and questioned the direction the council was headed.

President Donald Trump on Monday congratulated Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on the controversial referendum over the weekend that granted him sweeping new powers amid accusations of human rights violations.

Trump called Erdoğan on Monday to discuss the outcome of the vote, which gives the Turkish president the power to rule by decree and authorizes the abolition of the prime minister’s office, and which opponents have slammed as a possible death knell for Turkey’s democratic institutions.

That makes Trump the first, and thus far only, Western leader to congratulate Erdoğan on the power grab.

“If there’s a compelling defense for this, it’s hiding well,” wrote Steve Benen at MSNBC.

The laudatory conversation seemed to reflect Trump’s authoritarian similarities with the Turkish president. In addition to discussing Erdoğan’s win, the two leaders spoke about the recent U.S. strike against a Syrian air base, which Trump thanked Erdoğan for supporting, and the continuing fight against the Islamic State (ISIS). A White House readout of the phone call did not mention whether Trump raised concerns over accusations of voter intimidation, unfair campaigning, and ballot irregularities.

Observers criticized the call. “Even after everything, this is astounding. Formally and publicly congratulating an act of authoritarianization. Astounding,” tweeted New York Times reporter Max Fisher.

With just days for Republicans in the U.S. Senate to pass their Trumpcare bill before a congressional recess that begins at the end of this week, an updated version of an iconic ad is back on Monday featuring an elderly woman being foisted from her wheelchair over the edge of a cliff.

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Taking direct aim at the hypocrisy of President Donald Trump’s support for the bill—which he characterizes as “mean” but also enthusiastically supports—the new ad pairs earlier footage of candidate Trump castigating Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan for his previous attempts to gut healthcare protections for the nation’s sick and elderly with clips of the president celebrating Ryan last month when the House pushed through their version of Trumpcare that did exactly that.

Watch the ad:

“Bringing back our massively impactful ‘Granny Off the Cliff’ ad, which Paul Ryan himself credited for sinking his 2011 budget proposal targeting Medicare, this new video rips apart their health care plan and makes brutally clear just how damaging Medicaid cuts will be for America’s seniors,” said the Agenda Project Action Fund, which co-produced the ad, in a statement.

Seizing upon the now record high support for a Medicare-for-all bill, advocates for such a system are pushing House Minority Leader Nancy Peolosi (D-Calif.) to throw her weight behind the legislation.

The Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act, HR676, reintroduced in January by Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) this week claimed for the first time support from more than half of the Democratic caucus, reaching 104 co-sponsors in Congress.

Pelosi is not among them.

Instead, she appears on a list of 89 House Democrats not supporting Conyers’ legislation. Justice Democrats, an advocacy group calling for an overhaul of the Democratic Party, put out on social media this week an infographic highlighting their names:

But the time to act on the legislation is now, said Donna Smith, executive director of Progressive Democrats of America (PDA). In fact, it is “long overdue,” she stated Friday.

“Because of my family’s harrowing experiences with failures of the American healthcare system, I dedicated myself to fight for healthcare as a human right,” added Smith, who was featured in Michael Moore’s 2007 documentary Sicko. “Conyers’ legislation is the best hope for Americans, like my own family, who are facing bankruptcy or death if we or a loved one suffers even just one serious accident or illness.”

Top House Democrats on Friday raised concerns that Attorney General Jeff Sessions violated the law and lied under oath to Congress if he directly participated in President Donald Trump’s decision to fire FBI director James Comey.

Sessions reportedly recommended earlier this week that Trump fire Comey amid the investigation into alleged Russian election interference. On Thursday, Trump told NBC‘s Lester Holt that he had planned to do it “regardless,” although he credited the recommendation to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. His statement raised numerous questions, chief among which was whether Sessions inserted himself into the probe despite pledging in March to recuse himself after he was found to have lied during his confirmation hearings in January.

Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Ga.), the ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) on Friday sent a letter (pdf) to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein raising “grave concerns” over the news.

“If the facts now being reported are accurate, it appears that the attorney general’s actions in recommending that President Trump fire director Comey may have contradicted his sworn testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee at his confirmation hearing, breached the public recusal he made before the American people, and violated the law enacted by Congress to prevent conflicts of interest at the Department of Justice,” Cummings and Conyers wrote.

Cummings and Conyers said Sessions may have violated Section 528 of title 28 of the United States Code, which require the DOJ to establish rules that disqualify “any officer or employee of the Department of Justice…from participation in a particular investigation or prosecution if such participation may result in a personal, financial, or political conflict of interest, or the appearance thereof.”

The penalty for violating that law could be removal from office.

“Since the attorney general previously recused himself from these matters—and since he may not sit in judgment on his own failure to comply with the law—we request that you, as the acting attorney general in this matter, report to us on the steps that must now be followed to address this apparent abuse,” the lawmakers wrote.