Category Archives: Freedom

There were plenty of girls on the floor Saturday who are continuing their basketball careers at the next level.

That didnt stop Freedoms Meckenzie Herman from swiping the spotlight, however.

The senior guard poured in a game-high 16 points to pace the East all-stars to a 56-49 victory over the West in the Via All-Star Basketball Classic at Northampton Community College.

Herman, who will continue her academics at Penn State University, knocked down four 3-pointers, including a buzzer-beater at the end of the second quarter that had her holstering imaginary pistols as she walked back to the bench.

Its an all-star game, the Patriot said. I was just going to play to my talents and what Im good at. I just came out and shot the ball well.

Northamptons Aja Blount knocked down a pair of free throws to bring the West within 47-46 in the fourth quarter.

Eastons Olivia George responded with a 3-pointer, however, for the East. Her classmate, Shelby Stocker, then rattled off six straight points to put the game away.

We all played well together, obviously, Herman said. We came away with the W.

Herman was joined by teammate Kaitlyn Swint at the Via competition. Both Patriots were grateful to get back on the court and create a positive memory, after the heartbreak of losing to Parkland in the District 11 Class 6A quarterfinals.

It was a way better ending to my senior career, said Swint, who will play at East Stroudsburg University. Its good to see where Im at now and I cant wait to see where I am next season.

Despite the untimely ending, Freedom halted two playoff droughts this winter by making districts for the first time since 2010 and leagues for the first time since 2006.

We inspired the juniors, who are hopefully going to carry the team forward next year, Herman said. We were hoping to get a little bit further than we did. That didnt play out the way (we wanted), but were still really happy.

Blount, the Via Girls Basketball Player of the Year, tallied 15 points. Parklands Emily Piston added nine points for the West.

Stocker, another player signing off from organized basketball, finished with 12 points for the East.

Herman had mixed emotions about her last high school hoops competition, but she couldnt have any complaints about her performance.

It was good to go out with a bang in my last game wearing a Freedom uniform, she said. Its very sad Kaitlyn and I, were just such good teammates, being captains at Freedom, it was just nice to play with her one last time.

West 16 12 11 10 49

East 12 19 9 16 56

WEST ALL-STARS (49)

Emily Piston (Parkland) 3 0-0 9, Devon Saul (Northampton) 1 2-2 4, Rachel Medlar (Parkland) 3 0-0 6, Joyce Sullivan (Pleasant Valley) 2 0-0 6, Jackie Garner (Catasauqua) 0 0-0 0, Jade Biviano (Catasauqua) 1 2-2 4, Kalla Borden 0 0-0 0, Brielle Rigo (Northampton) 1 0-0 2, Devyn Anderson (Parkland) 1 1-2 3, Natalia Salmon (Pleasant Valley) 0 0-0 0, Aja Blount (Northampton) 3 7-8 15. Totals: 15 12-14 49.

EAST ALL-STARS (56)

Olivia George (Easton) 1 0-0 3, Meckenzie Herman (Freedom) 5 2-2 16, Kaitlyn Swint (Freedom) 1 0-0 2, Neelam Ferrari (Moravian Academy) 0 0-0 0, Gabby Bloshuk (Easton) 1 0-0 3, Tessa Brugler (Nazareth) 2 1-2 5, Jessica Durnin (Nazareth) 3 0-0 6, Cailee Murphy (Notre Dame) 0 0-0 0, Shelby Stocker (Easton) 5 2-2 12, Cecily Redfern (Moravian Academy) 1 2-4 4, Mackenzie Miers (Easton) 2 1-2 5. Totals: 21 8-12 56.

3-pointers: Piston 3, Sullivan 2, Blount 2; Herman 4, George, Bloshuk.

33

Gallery: 2017 Via All-Star Basketball Classic: Girls games

Kyle Craig may be reached atkcraig@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter@KyleCraigSports. Find Lehigh Valley high school sports on Facebook.

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Herman lights it up in Freedom jersey for last time at Via classic - lehighvalleylive.com

BISMARCK, ND - With RV's out front, guns across the hall, and a floor full of beautiful bikes the Freedom Riders Motorcycle Classic brought together fans of the road from across North Dakota.

This family friendly event brings in thousands of all shapes, sizes, and ages.

"We love our community, we love our veterans, and we're here, we're doing it," said Derick Roller, Bike Show Chairman.

The Freedom Riders 37 Motorcycle Classic is a place for camaraderie and some well-made rides.

"We do this because we love our community. We've been a club now for 40 years, and we try to get together and do stuff for our community every year, and for the last 37 this is one of the biggest things we can do to give back to the community," said Roller.

The Show included 56 bikes from the BisMan community on display.

"The one that we have behind us, The Indian, another beautiful motorcycle. I can't say enough about the iron that we have in the show, and what a great job the community does in getting their bikes up to speed, in shape, and cleaned up for this show. It's just amazing," said Damian Bean, the President of the Freedom Riders.

Proceeds from the show are going towards Disabled American Veterans and other local charities.

"They help veterans with medical things, housing, with scholarships. They help disabled vets get around, get to medical appointments out of the city and in other areas. Every penny that we donate to them, it goes to their cause and they use it," Roller says.

In the last decade the Bike Show has raised more than $350,000 for the organizations that it supports.

For those that missed out today, the bike show will run from 10-2 tomorrow, and will include the award ceremony for the machines.

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Freedom Riders Motorcycle Classic roars into Bismarck - KFYR-TV

Conservative groups that played a major role in destroying the recent Obamacare repeal-and-replace effort fired more shots Friday morning at President Trump and Republican leaders in whats becoming a civil war over health care.

It is absolute suicide for the Republican Party to follow the course theyre embarking on right now, said Brent Bozell, chairman of ForAmerica. Paul Ryan and the leadership in the Senate will own Obamacare after this.

[Trump threatens hard-liners as part of escalating Republican civil war]

In a call with reporters, Bozell and leaders of conservative groups including Heritage Action for America, FreedomWorks and the Family Research Council expressed sharp indignation at Trump, who on Thursday blasted the House Freedom Caucus for refusing to support House Speaker Paul D. Ryans plan to replace some elements of the Affordable Care Act.

The House Freedom Caucus, for the past several weeks, have been the grown-ups in the room, said Michael Needham, chief executive of Heritage Action.

After promising for seven years and through four national elections to repeal the health-care law, Republicans and conservatives now find themselves crippled by seemingly unresolvable conflicts over how much of the law can be repealed and what to replace it with.

After the Houses failure to advance Ryans bill, factions within the Republican Party spent the week finger-pointing. Moderates, who disliked how the bill rolled back Medicaid expansion, and Trump heaped blame on House conservatives for refusing to support the bill. Conservatives contended that the legislation left too much of Obamacare in place.

Needham and other leaders sought to toss the blame back toward GOP leadership, the moderates and Trump. They predicted that Republicans will face lossesin the 2018 election for failing to follow through on a repeal of Obamacare. They said Senate Republicans should be stepping up. And they argued that Trump is severely underestimating how important conservatives are to his future goals.

The House Freedom Caucus is Donald Trumps number one ally in draining the swamp, said FreedomWorks President Adam Brandon.

Said Bozell, Theyll be the ones front and center taking the arrows for him, so its very, very shortsighted to be attacking them.

[The Daily 202: How Trumps threats against the Freedom Caucus may backfire]

Heritages Needham sought to portray conservatives as the ones willing to compromise on the issue, saying they would have stomached policies they dont prefer such as insurance subsidies for low-income Americans and more grants to states if the bill had only ditched the laws big insurance regulations. Many Capitol Hill policymakers believe those elements could not have been included in the budget reconciliation bill being used to repeal the law.

The House Freedom Caucus was willing to ignore all the flaws in this bill if it repealed Obamacare, ripped out the architecture that causes premiums to go up, Needham said.

While some Republicans spoke hopefully this week about resurrecting efforts toward repealing Barack Obamas health-care law, Trump soured things further by tweeting that he would oppose Freedom Caucus members in the next election if they didnt fall in line.

Excerpt from:

Freedom Caucus allies blast GOP leadership, White House - Washington Post

By Ellen Shuck

Decisions, decisions and more decisions. That's the stuff of which life is made. The question is; do you have to approve of everybody's perspective, for their choices to be the right ones?

Parents, particularly, have a hard time agreeing with the decisions their kids make. You can have difficulty understanding why anyone thinks and acts as they do. You may attempt to change them or force them into adopting your point of view.

You're usually afraid they might fail, ruin their lives or the lives of others. If they would only listen to you, you could save them from much heartbreak and missed opportunities in life.

So when they fail to heed your warnings and follow the path you recommend, you're overwrought. Instead of accepting their choices, you toss and turn, worry and lose sleep -- all because you are older and wiser than they. Why don't they heed your warnings?

Jack was a college freshman and doing quite well at the school, a distance away from his parents. He fell in love with a pretty young girl who also attended an academic institution.

Jack's mother, Ella, could accept the fact that Jack claimed to have a girlfriend whom he liked very much. But when Jack dropped the bomb that they planned to marry soon, it was almost more than Ella could tolerate.

She became very upset, and relationships within the home seemed to deteriorate for a while. As Ella wrung her hands and tried to cope with her tangled, frayed nerves, she thought of the negative results if Jack followed through with his plan to marry so young -- at age 19.

She could count the repercussions of such an act. He would lose some of his scholarships and encounter other like consequences if he married.

Nevertheless, in spite of the obstacles, Jack refused to relent.

In talking with Ella, I suggested -- since she couldn't seem to talk him out of what she perceived as making a mistake -- she should step back, declaring she had done all she could, and extend to him the freedom to make a mistake. If it came to that, he would have to sink or swim.

All parents go through the experience of disagreeing with their children's decisions. You think you know best, and you can save them from suffering, if they will only listen to you.

But you eventually have to give them the freedom to succeed, make a mistake or fail. It's unfair to attempt to force them into your way of seeing things. You can talk and wail, but there's only a certain amount you can do.

You would not be who you are now if you had been denied the freedom and opportunity to live your life as you saw fit.

In dealing with children, people often quote the Scripture, "Train a child up in the way he should go, and when he's old he will not depart from it," (Proverbs 22-6).

The passage refers to raising children to follow God, but it can apply to other areas of life, also. You hope by exposing people to the right teachings and guidance, including vocational and moral, the person will learn and follow.

The crux comes when the right to freedom of choice fails to be given when someone reaches the age of reason. If someone is plagued by mental challenges or age-related immaturity, their freedom of choice is necessarily limited.

According to Genesis 2:16 -17, God said to Adam, "You may not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you shall surely die." There were dire consequences when they chose to eat from the forbidden tree.

Don't take away one's freedom to make choices and to discover consequences. You can only offer your advice, and then step back.

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Allowing others the freedom to choose - Southeast Missourian

Participants in the Bethlehem marathon. (photo credit:REUTERS)

Some 5,500 runners from 60 countries descended on Bethlehem on Friday to participate in the fifth annual Right to Movement Palestine Marathon.

The marathon, which starts footsteps away from the Nativity Church, highlights the limits on movement for Palestinians living in the West Bank, as runners are obliged to pass through two loops around Bethlehem. There are no continuous 42.195-kilometer routes in the city because of checkpoints and other barriers.

Martin Steenkamp, a South African runner, won the race for the second year in a row, finishing it in two hours and 51 minutes.

I saw the suffering of the Palestinian people throughout the race, Steenkamp told Wafa, the official PA news site, upon finishing the race.

Steenkamp and other runners passed through two refugee camps and ran along the security barrier.

The IDF limits the movement of Palestinians in the West Bank for security purposes, such as preventing attacks against Israelis.

Jabril Rajoub, the Palestine Olympic Committee chairman, said that the marathon sent a clear message that we [the Palestinians] are here and the world is standing with us.

The marathon is the only one that takes place in the Palestinian territories, as the United Nations canceled the Gaza Marathon in 2013 after Hamas banned women from participating.

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Thousands run for freedom of movement in Bethlehem marathon - Jerusalem Post Israel News

The most telling feature of Melissa Mackenzies post about the decision of House Speaker Ryan and President Trump to reopen negotiations with the 100-Percent-Of-Nothing caucus is the New York Times report to which she refers. The Times claims, House Republican leaders and the White House, under extreme pressure from conservative activists, have restarted negotiations on legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act. This is Orwellian BS.

It isnt the GOP leadership or Trump that have been under extreme pressure. It is, rather, the capricious members of the House Freedom Caucus who have been feeling the heat. The President has been hammering them on Twitter with jabs like this : The Republican House Freedom Caucus was able to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. If you dont believe this kind of pressure is having an effect, I invite you to watch HFC ringleader Mark Meadows squirm when ABCs George Stephanopoulos pressed him on Sunday morning about a similar Trump tweet.

And the President is by no means the only Republican who has condemned Meadows and the HFC. Rep. Ted Poe resigned from the caucus and told CNN, Theres some members of the Freedom Caucus, theyd vote no against the Ten Commandments if it came up for a vote. Other disgruntled members of the HFC, like Rep. Brian Babin, are also thinking about resigning: I worked very hard to get President Trump elected. And listen, we have a president that will sign our legislation now. So we need to support that agenda.

Poe and Babin are not moderate Republicans. They are conservatives in good standing. Members of another conservative caucus, the Republican Study Committee, are also grumbling about the HFC. The Washington Examiner reports that RSC member Rep. Barry Loudermilk implied that the RSC dealt with the President more honestly in their negotiations with the President, We lived up to our word.

Republican Rep. Austin Scott was less diplomatic than Loudermilk when he tweeted, Mark Meadows betrayed Trump and America and supported Pelosi and Dems to protect Obamacare. Another Republican, Rep. Doug Collins was incensed that the HFC let Planned Parenthood off the hook: I am unable to understand how many of my colleagues allowed political myopia to prevent them from supporting the opportunity to defund Americas largest abortion peddler.

The list goes on and on, but the point is this: If the House Freedom Caucus adheres to any core set of actual principles, the President, many of their House colleagues, and even some if the groups own members are unable to detect them. The HFC is, as Andrew Malcolm phrased it, a rump pack of Republicans themselves whove shown a keen interest in policy-strutting but none in the actual teamwork of governing.

Mark Meadows and his pompous accomplices have been hearing this from all sides, and that is why they are back at the table. It has nothing to do with pressure on the President or the GOP leadership. The members of the HFC, like Caesars assassins, expected to be greeted as heroes for their perfidy. Now that they have been disabused of this hubristic fantasy, they are suddenly willing to talk.

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Why the Freedom Caucus Has Reopened Repeal Talks with Ryan and Trump - American Spectator

Councils around New Zealand are becoming increasingly frustrated at the disjointed rules governing freedom campers.

Some want the government to do more to help with the burden on infrastructure.

The latest 1 News poll shows the public agrees.

Tourism Minister Paula Bennett said in some cases freedom camping behaviour was, "just not acceptable and we're always looking at more things we can do".

The Taupo District Council, like many others, is asking residents where they would like freedom campers to park up.

In Taupo, the council want to move freedom campers away from lake front areas and into set locations.

It also wants to impose infringement fines on those who refuse to move.

The government has invested over $17 million in projects such as new toilets and showers, but in the latest 1 NEWS Comar Brunton Poll, a majority of New Zealanders want government to do more to manage freedom campers.

"New Zealanders need to be aware we can start clamping down a lot more, but we'll be clamping down on them as well," Ms Bennett said.

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Councils frustrated at disjointed freedom camping rules, but clamping down could hit New Zealanders as well - TVNZ

New York Times

'We Must Fight Them': Trump Goes After Conservatives of Freedom Caucus New York Times In an early morning Twitter attack, Mr. Trump singled out members of the House Freedom Caucus, which scuttled his health care overhaul last week. The Freedom Caucus will hurt the entire Republican agenda if they don't get on the team, & fast, he wrote. Trump rips the Freedom Caucus: How real is his Twitter threat?Fox News Trump targets individual Freedom Caucus members in Obamacare tweetstormCNBC Trump goes after Freedom Caucus ringleadersPolitico CNN -Reuters -CBS News -Twitter all 1,065 news articles »

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'We Must Fight Them': Trump Goes After Conservatives of Freedom Caucus - New York Times

Since the American Health Care Act crashed and burned last week, the ultraconservative faction in Congress known as the House Freedom Caucus has deservedly received most of the blame from President Donald Trump and other top Republicans. On Thursday Trump even urged his supporters to fight the Freedom Caucus in the 2018 midterm elections, although whether the president will follow through on that threat is anyones guess.

Even though Trumpcare would have eliminated the individual mandate and the Medicaid expansion, causing nearly 25 million to lose their health insurance over the coming decade, this group of about three dozen right-wing congressmen (and they are all men) refused to support the bill because it did not go nearly far enough, in their eyes, toward dismantling Obamacare.

In the end, there was a certain irony in the Freedom Caucus sabotaging the Obamacare replacement plan, which had been promoted by their Republican colleagues as a restoration of personal freedom to the American people. People are going to do what they want to do with their lives, because we believe in individual freedom in this country, said House Speaker Paul Ryan while defending the bill shortly before the Congressional Budget Office projected that itwould lead to many millions fewer Americans havinghealth insurance.You get it if you want it. Thats freedom.

Of course, this wasnt quite enough freedom for members of the Freedom Caucus, who wanted Trumpcare to also eliminate the Affordable Care Acts Title 1 provisions, which prevent insurers from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions, allow children to stay on their parents insurance until they are 26 years old, and bar companies from imposing annual and lifetime coverage limits. Only when insurance companies could once again stop covering cancer patients in the middle of their treatment,or flat out deny someone coverage because of a pre-existing condition, would the Freedom Caucus be satisfied that freedom had truly been restored.

So while Republicans agreed that repealing Obamacare with the result thatmillions would end up being without health insurance was about restoring their idea of freedom, they disagreed about just how far to go. Ultimately, it came down to pragmatism versus dogmatism. In the New Republic, Brian Beutler wrote a scathing critique of this exceptionally callous conception of freedom one week before plans to pass theAHCA fell through,commentingthat Trumpcare would enshrine indenture as a facet of personal liberty and that as a governing philosophy, it is the freedom to work until you die. Of course, this callous conception of freedom is hardly new. Right-wing libertarian philosopher Friedrich A. Hayek, who inspired the Reagan and Thatcher revolutions of the late 1970s and early 80s, articulated it in his influential 1960 bookThe Constitution of Liberty:

Liberty does not mean all good things or the absence of all evils. It is true that to be free may mean freedom to starve, to make costly mistakes, or to run mortal risks. In the sense in which we use the term, the penniless vagabond who lives precariously by constant improvisation is indeed freer than the conscripted soldier with all his security and relative comfort.

Today when conservatives like Paul Ryan and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., present themselves as leading exponents of freedom particularly when it comes to economic freedom they are employing the word in this narrow and negative sense, which reinforces the ideology of free market fundamentalism. This negative interpretation is a far cry from what the word meant to most people throughout the 20th century, when progressives offered a more modern definition, epitomizedby President Franklin D. Roosevelt in his proclamation of a second Bill of Rights and his enumeration of the Four Freedoms crucial to a functioning democracy: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear.

Towards the end of World War II, in his 1944 State of the Union address, FDR declared that the original Bill of Rights had proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness as the country had grown and the industrial economy expanded over the previous century:

We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made. In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race, or creed.

Roosevelt went on to list his economic bill of rights: the right to a useful and remunerative job, the right to adequate medical care, the right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment, the right to a good education, and the right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation.

This was a modern conception of freedom responding to the challenges of the 20th century one that acknowledged Americas transformation over the previous 150 yearsfrom an agrarian nation of small, propertied farmers (that is, small capitalists) into an industrial and increasingly urban country of wage earners. Formost ofthe Founding Fathers,political freedom and economic independence (and security) were considered closely interconnected. Thomas Jeffersons agrarian ideal envisaged a nation of small independent farmers who owned their land andthe fruitsof their labor.

But that ideal quickly grew antiquated with the advent of the Industrial Revolution, as more and more yeoman farmers were torn from theirland and forced into wage labor. By the middle of the 19th century many critics had begun equating wage labor with slavery (i.e., wage slavery), but Abraham Lincoln rejected this view. In his words, there was no such thing as a free man being fixed for life in the condition of a hired laborer. This may have been true in his day, but in the decadesfollowing his death the majority of Americans did indeed become fixed for life as hired employees,and wealth and property became increasingly concentrated at the top.

In other words, the kind of unfettered capitalism espoused by the Freedom Caucus and Paul Ryan today ostensibly aimed at restoring individual freedom led to the labor-market tyranny of a century ago, whereby workers were completely subservient to capital. The progressive and New Deal movements of the 20th century responded to these profound changes with reforms designed to restore economic security and independence to working people, in large part to stave off more radical movements that challenged capitalism itself.

Since Roosevelt gave his second Bill of Rights speech more than 70 years ago, the language of liberty has been co-opted by those on the far right who have propounded their ownnarrow and negativedefinition of freedom one that largely ignores the past 200 years of economic and social development. Essentially, Republicans are advocating a Gilded Age variety of freedom, one that grants freedom to the rich but serfdom for everybody else. If the Freedom Caucus were to put forward its own economic bill of rights today, it might include a corporations freedom to pollute and destroy the environment, pay subsistence wages and to deny someone health care coverage, while poor and working-class Americans would be granted the freedom to starve or the freedom to die fromuntreated illness when they cannot afford medical care.

While the Republican agenda hit a major snag last week with the collapse of the AHCA proposal savingscores of Americans from losing their health insurance (or, as Republicans see it, from reclaiming their freedom) there is no telling what legislative damage Republicans can do when they manage to unite. If and when they do succeed, they will no doubt employ the same high-minded talk of freedom to defend their reactionary agenda. It is up to progressives to put forward their own 21st-century conception of freedom to counter the mythical and destructive variety espoused by right-wing ideologues.

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What the Freedom Caucus means by freedom: We've come a long way downhill since FDR - Salon

Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa. a co-chairman of the Tuesday Group, arrives at the office of Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, R-Wis., at the U.S. Capitol on March 23, 2017.(Photo: Chip Somodevilla, Getty Images)

WASHINGTON Moderate House Republicans haveapparently rejectedhaving group negotiations about a possible compromise on health care withthe conservative House Freedom Caucus the most critical group in sinking the Republican bill to repeal and replace Obamacare.

Rep. Chris Collins, R-N.Y. one of President Trump's closest allies in the House told reporters Thursday that the moderates' caucus, called the Tuesday Group,met and "unequivocally" decided not to meet with the Freedom Caucus.

Its not changing the opinions in our conference. Weve moved on, Collins said. We have to move on to tax reform. My own hope is they will be more pliable for tax reform having the conference suffering this defeat on health care reform. I truly believe health care has moved onand wont be dealt with until 2019, if then.

I am not negotiating with anyone.Ive seen stories that there are discussions about certain negotiations between the Tuesday Group and the Freedom Caucus. Thats not the case, Rep. Charlie Dent, a co-chairman of the Tuesday Group, said Wednesday morning on CNN. Do I talk to other members? Absolutely. Am I negotiating with anyone about the bill that was just put aside? No.

Dent said it was time to bring Democrats to the table and work on a bipartisan solution to fix Obamacare rather than repeal it entirely.

Another co-chairman, New Jersey Republican Rep. Tom MacArthur, said individual members are still talking with each other. But the Tuesday Group ruled out group negotiations because factions within the GOP conference negotiating with each other could result in changes that erode support from others who are not in either faction, he said.

"On the one hand, we do not want to offend our friends in the Freedom Caucus, on the other hand we do not want to enter into negotiations," MacArthur said."When it comes to specifically trying to make changes, I will continue to work with the speaker and the president and other members of Congress and certainly my colleagues in the Tuesday Group. That's the proper way to do this.

When side groups state to negotiate, the risk is upsetting other people who are not part of the process," he said.

The Freedom Caucus is a group of around 30hardline conservatives who threatened en bloc to vote against the legislation because they felt it didnt go far enough. Their demands a couple of which were met in last-minute negotiations but still didnt sway most of them proved a bridge too far for a handful of moderates.

Read more:

Republicans give up on Obamacare repeal bill, move on to other issues

Collapse of Obamacare repeal plan puts Freedom Caucus in complicated spot

With Obamacare repeal dreams dashed, what can GOP accomplish?

With no Democrats backing the bill, Republicans could only lose about 20 votes, soHouse Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Trump decided to pull the bill Friday afternoon instead of see it defeated on the floor.

But this week, leadership and the Freedom Caucus have exhibited a new willingness to reopen negotiations.

On Tuesday, Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows, R-N.C.,told USA TODAY that he was working with MacArthur to set up a meeting between the two groups who had been against the bill.

To actually just talk one-on-one with no leadership, no anybody, other than just members in the room and say OK what are your objections? What gets you to yes from a more moderate side of our spectrum? What gets us to yes from a more conservative side of the spectrum? Meadows said. We feel like if we can get those two then everybody in between will get to a yes. We should have been doing this all along.

House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows leaves a closed-door strategy session with House Speaker Paul Ryan and others on Capitol Hill on March 28, 2017.(Photo: J. Scott Applewhite, AP)

On Thursday, Freedom Caucus memberRep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., said it was incumbent on everyone in the party to go back to the drawing board.

I think every group Freedom Caucus, Tuesday Group, every group has a responsibility to write down their fundamental convictions and say here is a proposal that would get us to yes. We have that responsibility, Franks told reporters at the Capitol.

But theFreedom Caucuslost the support of another key ally this week: the president. The group had gone almost entirely around House leadership and negotiated directly with Trump ahead of the bill being pulled. Meadows was an early supporter of Trumps and campaigned with him during the election.

The caucus and Trump also share a similar base of supporters, but after the failure of the bill Trump seemed to have lost his patience. He tweeted a couple jabs over the weekend and on Monday, and on Thursday hethreatened Freedom Caucus membersin the 2018 election.

Freedom Caucus spokeswoman Alyssa Farah tweeted Thursday that it was not just caucus members who opposed the bill; key Republican moderates also announced their opposition, including Appropriations Chairman Rodney Frelinghuysen, R-N.J.

Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, a founding Freedom Caucus member and board member sought to remind Trump that many of the Freedom Caucus members had remained his staunchest defenders even during the toughest times of the campaign.

Heritage Foundation, a conservative advocacy group that was against the legislation, responded to Collins' comments Thursday.

Conservatives are acting in good faith to deliver on longstanding campaign promises and drive down premiums for Americans struggling under Obamacare," said Dan Holler,Vice President of Heritage Action for America. "The refusal of some within the Republican Conference to reciprocate is stunning and will only help the Democrats presidential nominee in 2020.

Ryan was asked about Trump's tweet at a press conference Thursday.

"Look, I understand the president's frustration," Ryan told reporters. "I share his frustration. About 90% of our conference is for the bill ... and about 10% are not. What I encourage members to do is to keep talking with each other until we get to a consensus."

Ryan said he couldn't say when Republicans might try again to pass legislation to repeal and replace Obamacare.

"I'm not going to commit to when and what the bill is going to look like," he said. "What I'm encouraging our members to do is get to a solution ... This is too big of an issue to not get right. I'm not going to put some artificial deadline on it."

Ryan said that working with Democrats won't do any good because they have opposing goals.

"The Democrats aren't for replacing Obamacare. We are," Ryan said. "Something tells me the Democrats aren't going to help us repeal Obamacare - because they wrote it."

Ryan's comment angered Democrats and at least one Republican, Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker.

Contributing: Erin Kelly

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Republican moderates reject talks with House Freedom Caucus - USA TODAY