In Brief | Nation & World | 4-12-14

A new face for Obamacare — but same problems persist of making it work

WASHINGTON — Abruptly on the spot as the new face of “Obamacare,” Sylvia Mathews Burwell faces steep challenges, both logistical and political.

Burwell, until now White House budget director, was named by President Barack Obama on Friday to replace Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who oversaw the messy rollout of the health care overhaul. Now the new secretary must keep the complex program running smoothly and somehow help restore a cooperative dialogue with Republicans who are hoping to use the law’s problems to regain control of the Senate in November.

At an upbeat Rose Garden event, Obama showered praise on Sebelius, a hero for his party’s liberal base, whose impending retirement had been a tightly guarded secret.

The president ignored calls for Sebelius to resign last fall, after the website for consumers to enroll in new coverage experienced weeks of crippling technical problems. Last month, as it started to look like sign-ups would beat expectations, Sebelius approached the White House about stepping aside, officials said.

“Under Kathleen’s leadership, her team at HHS turned the corner, got it fixed, got the job done,” Obama said. “And the final score speaks for itself.” About 7.5 million people have signed up for subsidized private health insurance through the new law, exceeding an original target of 7 million widely thought to be unattainable because of the website problems.

At Al Sharpton summit, Obama warns right to vote in US faces biggest threat in half a century

NEW YORK — In an unsparing critique of Republicans, President Barack Obama on Friday said the GOP is threatening voting rights in America more than at any point since the passage of the historic 1965 law expanding rights at the ballot box to millions of black Americans and other minorities.

“The stark, simple truth is this: The right to vote is threatened today in a way that it has not been since the Voting Rights Act became law nearly five decades ago,” Obama said in a fiery speech at civil rights activist and television talk host Al Sharpton’s National Action Network conference.

The election-year warning comes as Obama seeks to mobilize Democratic voters to fight back against state voting requirements and early balloting restrictions that many in his party fear will curb turnout in November. The president vowed that he would not let the attacks on voting rights go unchallenged, but he offered no new announcements of specific actions his administration planned to take.

The president pinned efforts to curb access to the ballot box directly on the GOP, declaring that the effort “has not been led by both parties. It’s been led by the Republican Party.” Mocking the Republicans, he said, “What kind of political platform is that? Why would you make that a part of your agenda, preventing people from voting?”

Donetsk Republic: One-building autonomy in eastern Ukraine highlights tensions

DONETSK, Ukraine — To reach the People’s Republic of Donetsk, you need to pass a few club-wielding young men in masks, wind through a narrow corridor of sand-filled sacks and enter a gray office tower standing in the heart of this eastern Ukrainian city.

The self-styled autonomous territory — really just an 11-story government building and its surroundings — insists it is the true voice of the 4.3 million people living in the Donetsk region. It has become the latest focus of protest in the largely Russian-speaking east since Kremlin-friendly President Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown in February.

The patch of Donetsk real estate where pro-Russia activists have been squatting for nearly a week is a hotbed of resentment against the perceived chauvinist Ukrainian nationalism taking hold among the nation’s leadership.

In its current form, the Donetsk Republic poses little real threat to the central government’s authority, and rallies demanding autonomy have drawn at most a few thousand people.

By wire sources