July 10, 2017


News and Views


TO CLASSIFY, OR NOT TO CLASSIFY? THE THIRD PARAGRAPH FROM THE BOTTOM SAYS THAT IT SHOULD NOT BE CLASSIFIED, AND THE NEXT ONE SAYS THAT IT SHOULD BE CLASSIFIED. WHATEVER. I’M PASSING ON TO ANOTHER ARTICLE.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-claims-that-comey-leaked-classified-information-to-media/
By REBECCA SHABAD CBS NEWS July 10, 2017, 8:09 AM
Trump claims that Comey leaked classified information to media

President Trump on Monday accused former FBI Director James Comey of leaking classified information to the public, suggesting that he committed a crime.

Mr. Trump made the statement on Twitter.

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Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
James Comey leaked CLASSIFIED INFORMATION to the media. That is so illegal!
6:40 AM - 10 Jul 2017
19,023 19,023 Retweets 66,100 66,100 likes

Before he posted that tweet, Mr. trump retweeted a segment from Fox News' "Fox and Friends" that discusses a report in The Hill newspaper that says that more than half of Comey's memos detailing his conversations with the president contain classified information, according to officials familiar with the documents.

In his testimony before Congress last month, Comey revealed that he leaked his own memos to his friend, Daniel Richman, a professor at Columbia University's law school. Richman then provided the contents of the memo to a reporter at The New York Times who wrote about it. The former FBI chief said he hoped the leaking of the memo would prompt the selection of a special prosecutor to oversee the FBI's investigation into Russian interference. Comey said he had a right to leak the memos because they were his own recollections.

A source with knowledge of the investigation confirms to CBS News' Nancy Cordes that some of the memos have been retroactively classified. They know that Comey made clear before Congress that he was careful to write the memo describing his conversations with POTUS about Flynn in a such a way that it would be classified.

"You have to be careful how you handled it for good reason. If I write it such a way that doesn't include anything of a classification, that would make it easier for to us discuss within the FBI and the government, and to hold onto it in a way that makes it accessible to us," Comey told lawmakers.

The confirmation hearing for Comey's replacement, Christopher Wray, will take place on Wednesday in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

CBS News' Nancy Cordes contributed to this report.




TRUMP JR AND THE USA, JULY 10 – TWO ARTICLES

QUESTION: DID H CLINTON ACTUALLY TAKE MONEY FROM THE RUSSIANS? IF SO, SOMEBODY OUGHT TO PROVE IT RATHER THAN JUST DROPPING THIS VAGUELY STATED (TO SAVE HIMSELF FROM LEGAL ACTION, MAYBE) SUSPICION. THIS LOOKS LIKE THE SEED OF A NEW RUSSIAN DISINFORMATION STORY.

AS FOR TRUMP, JR.’S SECOND UNREPORTED CONNECTION WITH SOMEONE WHO WAS RUSSIAN, IT CERTAINLY SHOULD CAUSE HIM TO BE QUESTIONED ON THE MATTER, ESPECIALLY SINCE HALF A DOZEN OR SO OTHERS ON HIS CAMPAIGN AND PRESENT STAFF HAD RUSSIAN CONNECTIONS. WHY IS RUSSIA THE LINK IN ALL THESE? THEY MUST BE REALLY GREAT BUSINESS PARTNERS. COULD IT HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH MONEY LAUNDERING?

I BELIEVE WE NEED A NEW SPECIFIC REQUIREMENT THAT ANY MEMBER OF THE ELECTION TEAM OR STAFF OF ANY POLITICAL CANDIDATE SHOULD BE SANCTIONED IF HE MAKES ANY CONTACT WITH A CITIZEN OF A FOREIGN NATION, AND ESPECIALLY AN ENEMY NATION. THAT SOUNDS RIGID, BUT IT WOULD MAKE IT TOTALLY CLEAR THAT ALL THESE SUSPICIOUS RELATIONSHIPS WOULD CAUSE LEGAL ACTION TO BE TAKEN ON THE CANDIDATE. FIRST, I DO NOT BELIEVE FOR A MINUTE THAT TRUMP KNEW NOTHING ABOUT IT, BUT IN MANY SITUATIONS THE HIGHEST LEVEL PARTY IN AN ORGANIZATION HAS TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY AT LEAST PARTIALLY. I THINK THAT SHOULD APPLY HERE. THERE ARE TOO MANY QUESTIONABLE THINGS THAT ARE INVOLVED IN POLITICAL ACTIVITIES. PAINFULLY, IT IS NOT IMPOSSIBLE, EITHER, THAT HILLARY CLINTON DID TAKE RUSSIAN MONEY. THERE ARE CERTAINLY HONEST POLITICIANS, BUT SO MANY OF THEM AREN’T THAT IS NAUSEATING. THE NUMBER OF POLITICIANS WHO COME INTO OFFICE VIRTUALLY PENNILESS AND WALK AWAY MILLIONAIRES SHOULD MAKE PEOPLE SUSPICIOUS.

I THINK A GENERAL CLEANUP OF WHAT IS ALLOWED TO HAPPEN IN AND AROUND ELECTIONS WOULD BE THE RIGHT THING TO DO. WHEN THE SPUNKY BLACK LADY NAMED ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, WHO WAS ELECTED THE HOUSE REPRESENTATIVE OF WASHINGTON DC SOME YEARS BACK, SHE MADE NEWS BY BRINGING A BROOM TO HER CAMPAIGN SPEECH (AT LEAST ONCE), SAYING THAT SHE WAS GOING TO “CLEAN HOUSE.” THE CITIZENS UNITED DECISION SHOULD BE OVERTURNED FIRST, AND THAT WOULD TAKE CARE OF MAYBE 50 % OF THE PROBLEM, WHICH WOULD HELP SOME, I THINK. FOR THE REST, IT WOULD TAKE A SHOVEL, THOUGH, RATHER THAN A BROOM.

I DO WONDER WHETHER A LARGER NUMBER OF AMERICAN ELECTED OR APPOINTED OFFICIALS HAVE TIES WITH RUSSIA ALSO? AND THEN THERE IS WHAT LOOKS LIKE A GAME OF POKER INVOLVING DIPLOMATIC WRANGLING EVEN BEFORE THE DNC HACKING OCCURRED, AND THEN AFTER THAT, TRUMP’S TWO APPARENT ATTEMPTS TO REMOVE THE LATEST OBAMA RESTRICTION ON THE RUSSIANS. MAYBE FOREIGNERS SHOULD NOT BE ABLE TO OWN LAND AND BUILDINGS ON US SOIL – LEASE, YES, BUT NOT OWN. THAT COMPOUND HAD A LARGE AMOUNT, AS I REMEMBER, OF ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE AND COMMUNICATION EQUIPMENT IN IT, WHICH MAKES IT DOUBLY SUSPICIOUS. IF A DRIVER CAN HAVE HIS CAR CONFISCATED BECAUSE THERE IS ONE MARIJUANA CIGARETTE FOUND IN IT, THEY SHOULDN’T BE ABLE TO GET AWAY WITH THAT.

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/senate-intel-committee-wants-talk-donald-trump-jr-source-says-n781381
POLITICS JUL 10 2017, 6:34 PM ET
Senate Intel Committee Wants to Talk to Donald Trump Jr., Source Says
by KEN DILANIAN, FRANK THORP V and ADAM EDELMAN

WASHINGTON — The Senate Intelligence Committee is interested in talking to Donald Trump Jr., the eldest son of the president, about his meeting with a Russian lawyer last June, a well-placed committee source tells NBC News.

Trump Jr.'s meeting raises a host of questions, the source said, including why the president's son would sit down with a Russian lawyer he says he didn’t know on the pretext of learning damaging information about Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Committee members on both sides of the aisle also expressed a desire to meet with Trump Jr. in light of his acknowledgment Sunday that he met with a woman who turned out to be a Kremlin-connected lawyer during the 2016 presidential election — after being told she allegedly had information that could help his father's presidential campaign.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who serves on the committee, told reporters Monday that she would like to see her panel speak to him, while Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the committee vice chairman, said he "absolutely" wanted to interview Trump Jr. and ask him "serious questions."

Potentially incriminating activity in Trump Jr. meeting Play Facebook Twitter Embed
Potentially incriminating activity in Trump Jr. meeting 4:38

Trump Jr. tweeted Monday that he would be "happy to work with the committee to pass on what I know," though a spokeswoman for the Senate committee’s chairman, Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., would not comment on whether the committee plans to invite him before the panel.

According to a Trump Organization spokesman, Trump Jr. has hired a lawyer, Alan Futerfas, to represent him in connection with the Russia probes.

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Donald Trump Jr. ✔ @DonaldJTrumpJr
Happy to work with the committee to pass on what I know. https://twitter.com/thehill/status/884461987937300480 …
2:37 PM - 10 Jul 2017
2,549 2,549 Retweets 8,357 8,357 likes

The White House said Monday President Donald Trump only became aware of the meeting between his son, son-in-law, campaign manager and a Russian lawyer in the "last couple of days."

White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters off-camera Monday that the president's son "certainly" did not collude with Russians to influence the election.

The Senate panel is scheduled to begin its first interviews with Trump campaign officials later this week as the panel continues probing alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election, another source familiar with the committee's work told NBC News.

The source did not have names of the officials to be interviewed, or the times of those interviews.

The committee's likely interest in the president's son stems from the revelation that Donald Trump Jr. met with the Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, during the campaign, which was first reported by The New York Times Saturday. Trump Jr. responded with a statement confirming that the meeting occurred.

He said he attended "a short introductory meeting" with Veselnitskaya, where the topic of conversation was primarily about adoption. He added that the topic was not a campaign issue at the time and that there was no follow-up conversation.

“I was asked to attend the meeting by an acquaintance, but was not told the name of the person I would be meeting beforehand," he added in Saturday's statement. According to Donald Trump Jr., the meeting occurred in June 2016, and Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law, and Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort also attended.

Then on Sunday, The Times reported that Donald Trump Jr. attended the meeting after having been told that the person there had information that would be damaging to Hillary Clinton's campaign. The Times article, which was based on conversations with three anonymous White House advisers, said news of the meeting represented the first public indication that members of the 2016 Trump campaign were willing to accept Russian help.

Donald Trump Jr. then released a more detailed statement after the report Sunday.

"I was asked to have a meeting by an acquaintance I knew from the 2013 Miss Universe pageant with an individual who I was told might have information helpful to the campaign," Trump Jr. said in Sunday's statement. "I was not told her name prior to the meeting."

He added that he asked Kushner and Manafort to attend but that they knew "nothing of the substance."

"After pleasantries were exchanged, the woman stated that she had information that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Ms. Clinton," he said. "Her statements were vague, ambiguous and made no sense."

Donald Trump Jr. said that Veselnitskaya did not provide any details or information that related to Clinton and that the topic of conversation turned to U.S. adoption of Russian children.

He claimed that the conversation continued to revolve around adoption and the Magnitsky Act, a 2012 law that barred Russian human rights abusers from entering the country. In response, the Russian government stopped U.S. families from adopting Russian children.

"It became clear to me that this was the true agenda all along and that the claims of potentially helpful information were a pretext for the meeting," Donald Trump Jr. said in Sunday's statement. "I interrupted and advised her that my father was not an elected official, but rather a private citizen, and that her comments and concerns were better addressed if and when he held public office."

The meeting lasted about 20 to 30 minutes, he added.

Pres. Trump Says U.S. Must Move Beyond Election Controversy
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Pres. Trump Says U.S. Must Move Beyond Election Controversy 2:56

On Monday, the Kremlin said that it was unaware of the meeting and did not who the lawyer is, according to the Associated Press.

It added that Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters that the Kremlin "cannot keep track" of every Russian lawyer and their meetings in Russia or abroad.

The Times had previously identified the lawyer as Veselnitskaya, a Russian national known to push the Kremlin's agenda and its continued battle against the Magnitsky Act.

"Obviously, I'm the first person on a campaign to ever take a meeting to hear info about an opponent... went nowhere but had to listen," Trump Jr. tweeted.

Music publicist Rob Goldstone confirmed to NBC News later Monday he was the person to “help facilitate” the meeting.

"I was asked by my client in Moscow — Emin Agalarov — to help facilitate a meeting between a Russian attorney (Natalia Veselnitzkaya) and Donald Trump Jr. The lawyer had apparently stated she had some information regarding illegal campaign contributions to the DNC which she believed Mr. Trump Jr. might find important,” Goldstone said in a statement.

“I reached out to Donald Trump Jr. and he agreed to squeeze us into a very tight meeting schedule,” he added. “At the meeting, the Russian attorney presented a few very general remarks regarding campaign funding and then quickly turned the topic to that of the Magnitsky Act and the banned U.S. adoption of Russian children — at which point the meeting was halted by Don Jr. and we left. Nothing came of that meeting and there was no follow up between the parties.”

Donald Trump Jr. has said his father did not know about the meeting.

Kushner did not initially include the meeting on his national security questionnaire, which his lawyer, Jamie Gorelick, said was filed prematurely.

Manafort and Kushner did not respond to NBC News' requests for comment, though Kushner's attorney confirmed on Saturday that the meeting did occur.

The U.S. intelligence community has concluded that Russia was the mastermind behind a series of hacks and propaganda campaigns to interfere with the 2016 election. NBC News has reported that senior intelligence officials believe — with a "high degree of confidence" — that Putin was personally involved.

Special counsel Robert Mueller is leading a team of investigators that is looking into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with the Russian government's campaign. The House and Senate intelligence committees are also looking into Russian interference in the election.

Ken Dilanian and Frank Thorp V reported from Washington. Adam Edelman reported from New York.

Ken Dilanian KEN DILANIAN TWITTEREMAIL
Frank Thorp V FRANK THORP V EMAIL
ADAM EDELMAN EMAIL
CONTRIBUTORS PHIL MCCAUSLAND, THOMAS ROBERTS and ALI VITALI



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-jr-russian-lawyer-meeting-michael-morell/
By LAUREN MELTZER CBS NEWS July 10, 2017, 11:55 AM
Trump Jr.'s meeting with Russia lawyer "highly inappropriate," Michael Morell says

For months, President Trump and his representatives denied that there was any link between Russia and the Trump campaign. But now, Donald Trump Jr. confirms he and other officials met with a Russian lawyer who said she had information that could damage Hillary Clinton.

Trump Jr., his brother-in-law, Jared Kushner, and campaign chairman Paul Manafort met with attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya -- who is said to have ties with Russia's government -- at Trump Tower last June. Trump Jr. says he was told he was meeting with an individual who "might have information helpful to the campaign."

On Monday, CBS News senior national security contributor Michael Morell, who was deputy and acting director of the CIA, said "the meeting should never have happened" during a discussion on "CBS This Morning."

"I think it is highly inappropriate for an American campaign to meet with a foreign official, whether that foreign official is connected to a government or not, because it allows a foreign national to potentially influence the outcome of an election," Morell said.

From a national security perspective, Morell says there are several issues that come to light in regards to the meeting, including the fact that Kushner has made a habit of not reporting "a meeting with a foreign official on his form to get his security clearance."

Trump says he "pressed" Putin on meddling in 2016 election
Play VIDEO
Trump says he "pressed" Putin on meddling in 2016 election

While there may have been no collusion that took place during the conference, Morell says "the fact that they were willing to do the meeting" suggests "a willingness to collude."

"I'm not a lawyer," he added. "I don't think it's illegal, but it certainly shows a willingness to collude."

During their discussion, "CBS This Morning" co-host Gayle King noted that Sen. John McCain told "Face The Nation" that while he thinks it is time to move forward, there still has to be a price to pay, otherwise Putin will be "encouraged to do so again."

When asked what that price might be, Morell said, "My biggest concern in the Trump-Putin meeting was a willingness to move forward without any accounting for what the Russians did. It's very important that Putin pay a price for what he did so that it will deter him going forward."

"I think the price is what the U.S. Senate has now passed overwhelmingly, which is additional sanctions on Russia," he continued. "The Trump White House opposes those additional sanctions, but I think that's what's required to get Putin's attention."

During the campaign, Morell supported Hillary Clinton for president.



THE GOP REPRESENTATIVES AND SENATORS AREN’T GOING TO LET TRUMP DO SOMETHING THIS FOOLISH WITHOUT PUTTING UP A FIGHT, AND APPARENTLY SOMEBODY SAT DOWN WITH HIM AND TOLD HIM THE OLD COUNTRY PARABLE OF THE FOX AND THE HEN HOUSE. MANY PEOPLE SPEAK BEFORE THEY THINK A MATTER THROUGH, BUT THE PRESIDENT NEEDS TO TRY TO STOP DOING THAT, AND BETTER YET, SPEAK WITH AN ADVISER ON EACH IDEA THAT HE THINKS OF TO PUT INTO THE FORM OF A LAW OR REGULATION. THAT’S WHAT ADVISERS ARE FOR. HE NEEDS A PRESS AGENT, ALSO.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-seems-back-off-working-with-russia-cybersecurity-unit/
CBS/AP July 10, 2017, 4:28 AM
Trump backs off idea of "cyber security unit" with Russia


WASHINGTON -- President Trump appears to be backing away from the idea of working with Russia to create a "cyber security unit" to guard against election hacking.

Mr. Trump tweeted Sunday morning about discussing such a unit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Yet, it's Russia that U.S. intelligence officials blame for meddling in last year's election.

Widespread ridicule greeted Mr. Trump's tweet. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina called it "pretty close" to the dumbest idea he's ever heard.

A Democratic congressman, Adam Schiff of California, says expecting Russia to be a credible partner in any cybersecurity initiative "would be dangerously naive." Schiff is the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. "If that's our best election defense, we might as well just mail our ballot boxes to Moscow," he said.

By Sunday evening, Mr. Trump was tweeting a different tune. He wrote that just because he and Putin discussed the idea "doesn't mean I think it can happen. It can't."

Follow
Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
The fact that President Putin and I discussed a Cyber Security unit doesn't mean I think it can happen. It can't-but a ceasefire can, & did!
8:45 PM - 9 Jul 2017
16,309 16,309 Retweets 71,413 71,413 likes

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Another Senate Republican, Marco Rubio of Florida, said on Twitter that "partnering with Putin on a 'Cyber Security Unit' is akin to partnering with Assad on a 'Chemical Weapons Unit."' Rubio was referring to Syrian President Bashar Assad and his regime's use of chemical weapons against its own citizens."

Senator John McCain, R-Arizona, said Sunday on the CBS New broadcast "Face the Nation" that Putin "got away with" trying to change the result of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and that there's been "no penalty" for those attempts.

"We know that Russia tried to change the outcome of our election last November. And they did not succeed," McCain said. "But there was [sic] really sophisticated attempts to do so. So far they have not paid a single price for that."

"If you were Vladimir Putin, who [sic] I've gotten to know over the years, you're sitting there and you got away with literally trying to change the outcome not just of our election. French election. Tried to overthrow the government of Montenegro, a beautiful little country," McCain said.

"And there has been no penalty whatsoever," he added.

Former Defense Secretary Ash Carter said the president's initial tweet on the joint cybersecurity unit was "like the guy who robbed your house proposing a working group on burglary."

U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, however, defended the move, arguing that working with Russia on cybersecurity "doesn't mean we ever trust Russia. We can't trust Russia and we won't ever trust Russia. But you keep those that you don't trust closer so that you can always keep an eye on 'em and keep them in check."

Mr. Trump said, "It is time to move forward in working constructively with Russia" after his lengthy meeting with Putin. But he is still avoiding the question of whether he accepts Putin's denial that Russia was responsible for meddling in the 2016 election.

Speaking in a series of tweets Sunday, the morning after returning from a world leaders' summit in Germany, Mr. Trump said he "strongly pressed" Putin twice over Russian meddling during their meeting Friday.

Mr. Trump said Putin "vehemently denied" the conclusions of American intelligence agencies that Russian hackers and propagandists tried to sway the election in Mr. Trump's favor. But Mr. Trump wouldn't say whether he believed Putin, tweeting only that he's "already given my opinion."

Mr. Trump has said he thinks Russia probably hacked the emails of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton staffers, but that "other people and/or countries" were likely involved as well. He said ahead of the meeting that, "Nobody knows for sure."

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov first told reporters in Germany on Friday that Mr. Trump had accepted Putin's assurances that Russia hadn't meddled - an assertion Putin repeated Saturday after the Group of 20 summit. Putin said he left the meeting thinking that Mr. Trump had believed his in-person denials.

"He asked questions, I replied. It seemed to me that he was satisfied with the answers," Putin said.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson didn't answer directly when asked Sunday if Mr. Trump had accepted Putin's denial, but told reporters in Ukraine that Mr. Trump's conversation with Putin on election interference went "about the way we expected." Tillerson was the only other American official in the room.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin also declined to say whether Mr. Trump accepted Putin's denial. "Why would President Trump broadcast exactly what he said in the meeting? Strategically that makes no sense," Mnuchin said. "He's made it very clear how he feels. He's made it very clear that he addressed it straight on."

But White House chief of staff Reince Priebus took issue with Putin's characterization.

"The president absolutely didn't believe the denial of President Putin," Priebus said. He said Mr. Trump had spent a "large part of the meeting on the subject," but wanted to move onto other subjects.

He and other administration officials said Mr. Trump didn't want Russian interference in last year's election to prevent him from working with Putin's government on other issues, including the civil war in Syria.

"You know, the past, I don't know if we will ever come to an agreement, obviously with our Russian counterparts on that. I think the important thing is how do we assure that this doesn't happen again," Tillerson said.

Tillerson said, "In all candidness, we did not expect an answer other than the one we received" from Russia.

"Everybody knows that Russia meddled in our elections," Haley said. "This is Russia trying to save face."

But in a show of U.S.-Russian cooperation, officials announced during the trip that the two sides had brokered a cease-fire in southern Syria that went into effect Sunday. Mr. Trump tweeted that the deal "will save lives."

Mr. Trump also tweeted Sunday that sanctions against Russia were not discussed at his meeting with Putin, seemingly contradicting comments made by Tillerson in Germany. Tillerson told reporters that the president had taken "note of actions that have been discussed by the Congress" in the meeting. Congress has been pushing to increase sanctions on Russia and make them harder for Mr. Trump to lift.

Haley and Schiff spoke on CNN's "State of the Union," Mnuchin on ABC's "The Week," Priebus on "Fox News Sunday," and Graham on NBC's "Meet the Press."



IT IS INTERESTING THAT THE STATE OFFICIALS ARE BEING MORE “LIBERAL” THAN THE NATIONAL REPUBLICANS. SEVERAL HAVE CALLED THE MURDER OF OBAMACARE IMPRACTICAL (WHICH IT CERTAINLY IS!), BUT THEY HAVE VOICED CONCERN ABOUT THE PEOPLE IN THE STATE ALSO. MAYBE THOSE WHO DEAL WITH ISSUES LIKE POVERTY AND OTHER HUMAN NEED CAN SEE AND UNDERSTAND IT BECAUSE THEY ARE CLOSER UP. I DO THINK THAT POLITICIANS OF ALL KINDS, AFTER THEY HAVE TAKEN A CERTAIN NUMBER OF BRIBES ESPECIALLY, BECOME TOTALLY DEAF TO THE NEEDS OF THE MANY.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/gop-governors-to-partys-senators-do-no-harm-to-health-care/
AP July 9, 2017, 2:57 PM
GOP governors to party’s senators: Do no harm to health care

The pressure is on Republican senators — from congressional leaders, conservative groups and impatient GOP voters — to fulfill a seven-year-old promise to scrap much of Democrat Barack Obama's health care law. But back home, Republican governors who have experienced some of the upside of the law are warning their GOP senators to first, do no harm.

For these governors, the issue is less about delivering a triumph to President Donald Trump and more about not blowing a hole in state budgets and maintaining health care coverage for constituents. In the critical next few weeks, some governors are uniquely positioned to press home-state Republican senators who could deny Majority Leader Mitch McConnell the votes he needs to pass a Republican health care bill.

"We are the voice of reality," Nevada GOP Gov. Brian Sandoval told The Associated Press.

Sandoval said he has been in regular contact with Nevada Republican Sen. Dean Heller to discuss the ramifications of the evolving GOP plan. Heller, who faces a tough re-election next year, has joined Sandoval in opposing the current measure.

For wary Republicans, the main concerns about the GOP plan are rolling back premium subsidies that help people buy private insurance policies and phasing out the expansion of Medicaid, the federal-state insurance program for the poor, disabled and many nursing home patients. In Nevada, more than 220,000 residents have gained coverage through Medicaid expansion, 13,000 of them children.

"They set policy, but we're the ones who have to develop the budgets, develop the care, develop the plans, work directly with the people," Sandoval said. He said if money is reduced, governors will be left to decide among unpopular choices: "Raise a tax or limit coverage or change eligibility requirements" for coverage.

Heller is listening.

"I cannot support a piece of legislation that takes insurance away from tens of millions of Americans and tens of thousands of Nevadans," he said recently.

Ohio's John Kasich has been one of the most outspoken GOP governors in criticizing GOP proposals. That has increased pressure on Ohio GOP Sen. Rob Portman, who announced his opposition to the bill after McConnell abruptly postponed a vote.

"My concern all along has been, could low-income Ohioans get access to the health care they need and more specifically, the treatment for the opioid epidemic?" he told reporters this past week.

Portman said he has discussed with Kasich various financing options that would ease any changes to Medicaid while not gutting drug treatment programs. One McConnell proposal would be to provide an additional $45 billion over a decade for states' drug abuse programs.

In Arizona, GOP Gov. Doug Ducey has called Obama's law "a disaster" and stopped short of outright opposition to McConnell's version. But he has urged Republican Sens. Jeff Flake and John McCain to shield states from extensive Medicaid cuts. The program covers 1.9 million Arizonans, nearly 28 percent of all residents. The expansion alone covers 400,000.

Both senators have yet to indicate how they'd vote on a GOP bill.

Alaska's Bill Walker, an independent who identifies as a conservative, has had regular contacts with the state's two Republican senators — Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan — over what the Republican health care overhaul will mean for his state. Alaska has some of the highest health care costs and greatest medical needs in the country.

Traditional Medicaid covers about a quarter of Alaska's 740,000 residents, while the expansion benefits 34,000 more.

Murkowski has said she doesn't have enough information to vote for the GOP plan. She has opposed the elimination of federal money for Planned Parenthood, a provision of the bill.

McConnell has little wiggle room. With 52 Republican senators, just three defections leave him short of a majority. Democrats are unified in opposition.

The Republican leader has said he plans to introduce yet another version of the bill after Congress returns on Monday. But McConnell also said that if he is unable to get 50 votes for the GOP plan, he would try to shore up insurance markets, a legislative step that would involve Democrats.

In Nevada, Sandoval and Heller have a public service record that has overlapped since 1994, when Sandoval won a seat in the Nevada Legislature and then-Assemblyman Heller was elected to the secretary of state's office. Sharing a moderate approach in their conservativism, they have a relationship going back decades.

"He trusts me to give him information," the governor said, "and he trusts me" for speaking up for people who have benefited from the Medicaid expansion.

When scandal forced out Republican Sen. John Ensign in 2011, Sandoval tapped then-Rep. Dean Heller to fill the Senate seat.

Asked whether he would consider endorsing one of Heller's challengers if the senator eventually voted to roll back Medicaid, Sandoval laughed.

"No," he said. "Absolutely not."



I REALLY DO LIKE BILL NYE. HE’S SMART, PERSONABLE AND VERY FUNNY. A SHOW LIKE HIS REALLY DOES STEER YOUNG PEOPLE TOWARD SCIENCE. THE MAN FOR THAT WHEN I WAS YOUNG WAS DON HERBERT, ALSO A SCIENTIST, ON THE SHOW CALLED “WATCH MR. WIZARD.” NOW, SO MUCH OF WHAT I SEE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE, AS WELL AS FOR THOSE WITH A SUFFICIENTLY CURIOUS MIND THAT THEY WANT TO TRY OUT NEW INFORMATION -- IS INSTEAD SOME FORM OF PURE JUNK. REALITY SHOWS, MINDLESS CARTOONS, BIZARRE NEW AGE SPORTING EVENTS, ETC. CLUTTER UP THE AIRWAYS.

HOW CAN WE GET OUR YOUNG PEOPLE TO BE AT THE TOP OF THE NATIONAL COMPARISON LISTS WHICH ARE FEATURED IN THE NEWS, RATHER THAN AT THE BOTTOM BENEATH AN EMBARRASSINGLY LARGE NUMBER OF WHAT WE CONSIDER TO BE “THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES?” HOW IS IT THAT THEY CAN FIGURE OUT HOW TO EDUCATE THEIR KIDS AND WE CAN’T?

GOTO: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Herbert.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/bill-nye-the-science-guy-other-countries-more-curious-about-science-than-u-s/
By DAVID MORGAN CBS NEWS July 10, 2017, 10:40 AM
Bill Nye: Other countries more curious about science than U.S.

Bill Nye left engineering to bring his blend of education comedy to a Seattle TV show where he regularly conducted wacky experiments. He later hosted the popular PBS series, "Bill Nye the Science Guy." He covered everything from atoms to the atmosphere, and won 19 Emmys along the way.

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RODALE
He's been an outspoken advocate for science and the urgent need to tackle climate change. His new book is "Everything All at Once: How to Unleash Your Inner Nerd, Tap Into Radical Curiosity and Solve Any Problem."

On "CBS This Morning," Nye said a curiosity about science is important because mankind has the ability to shape and improve the Earth, just as mankind has the ability to make things much worse.

"It's important to keep in mind, right now, humankind moves more soil and rock than nature does," Nye said. "Our influence on the Earth is extraordinary, and so along with that comes a responsibility. The reason the climate is changing is because of humans. So we want to take responsibility of that and make the world better for everybody."

When asked if other countries are more curious about science than the United States of America, Nye replied, "Right now, yeah." He acknowledged, though, that the best of the best still want to come to the U.S. because of the research being done here at a high level.

"Could we lose that?" asked co-anchor Charlie Rose.

"Well, sure. If you like to worry about things, you're living in a great time."

In "Everything All at Once," Nye writes:

"[Changing the world] requires rigorous honesty about the nature of our problems. It requires creative irreverence in the search for solutions. The process of science and natural laws don't care about our politics or preconceptions. They merely set the boundaries of what is possible, defining the outer limits of what we can achieve -- or not, should we shy away from the challenge.

"Fortunately, there is a large and growing clan of people who think that way, who love nothing better than using the tools of reason to solve the most unsolvable-looking puzzles. We call them 'nerds'…"

Co-anchor Gayle King asked, "What is it about the nerd brain, that you think is something we should all try to strive for?"

"Just in solving problems, by thinking rationally about problems, enables you to get better answers than just relying on your instincts," Nye said.

He alluded to the current health care debate in Washington, which has focused much less on the actual potential of reducing health care costs than on the political gamesmanship of the fight over coverage and tax cuts.

"One of the things I talk about in the book is the upside-down pyramid of design," Nye said. "What happens at the beginning changes everything. So [in] the health care debate I would say, as a citizen, we are looking at two different views: One is, let's provide health care to as many people as we can afford; the other is, let's provide health care to everyone. It's almost the same, but not quite the same. So if you start with those two different ideas, you're going have a lot of trouble.

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Bill Nye the Science Guy. CBS NEWS
"So, yeah, the technology to reduce health care costs is available. And by the way, you [also] have to protect electronic information if we're going to rely on it in this extraordinary way the way we do today. And that is also a solvable problem."

"What you're talking about, it seems to me, is not so much science per se, but the creativity of problem-solving," said Rose.

"And also believing that you can solve the problem. The premise in science, everybody, is that we can know nature, that we can understand things. If you go into it, We can't figure this out, we can't possibly …, then you won't!"

Regarding climate change denial, Rose asked, "Why do you think there are so many people who are reluctant to accept what others believe science tells them?"

"It's closing your eyes to a situation you don't wish to acknowledge," Nye said, adding, "There's been an extraordinary effort by the fossil fuel industry to suppress the facts of climate change.

"But our claim on the engineering side is, there is enough energy in sunlight, wind, and a little bit of geothermal, a little bit of tidal energy to run the whole place right now renewably, if we just decided to do it."

And change can be brought in a short time span, Nye said.

"My grandfather went into World War I on a horse," he said. "He rode a horse. I guess he was not the world's greatest horseman but he did it, he lived through it, rode around at night around trenches in the dark. But nobody rides a horse now for a living. People don't get around on New York City on horses. Everything changed in two decades. So let's change everything. We can do this, people!"

BILL NYE ON INCREASING CURIOSITY AND THINKING MORE RATIONALLY.
"Everything All at Once: How to Unleash Your Inner Nerd, Tap into Radical Curiosity and Solve Any Problem" by Bill Nye (Rodale); Also available in eBook, Digital Audio Download and Audio CD formats
Bill Nye the Science Guy (Official site)



A CLOSE PERSONAL FRIEND OF MINE WHEN I LIVED IN WASHINGTON, DC WAS AN EXCELLENT ARTIST AND A DELICIOUSLY LIVELY PERSON. IN HER EARLY 40S SHE WAS FOUND TO HAVE THE FAMILY ILLNESS – HUNTINGTON’S DISEASE. IT IS DEVASTATING TO THE PATIENT’S ABILITY TO DO ANYTHING FOR HERSELF, AND DOES CAUSE DISINTEGRATION OF THE THOUGHT PROCESSES, ALSO. SHE SOLDIERED ON BRAVELY FOR ABOUT TWO YEARS WHEN IT BECAME TOO MUCH FOR HER. SHE LOOKED UP IN THE CLOSET WHERE HER HUSBAND HAD HIDDEN HIS GUN, AND ENDED HER LIFE. I DON’T KNOW WHAT I WOULD DO, BUT I MIGHT DO THE SAME THING. I DON’T BELIEVE ANYONE IN MY FAMILY HAS HUNTINGTON’S OR ALZHEIMER’S, BUT MY FIRST COUSIN DIED NOT LONG AGO OF A SIMILAR DISEASE. I DO HOPE MEDICAL SCIENCE CAN COME UP WITH A REAL CURE FOR THIS. THERE IS SUCH A THING AS DEATH IN LIFE.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-alzheimers-disease-medellin-colombia-lesley-stahl-2/
Can Alzheimer’s be prevented? A family may hold the key
Jul 09, 2017
CORRESPONDENT
Lesley Stahl
An extended family in Colombia with a genetic mutation causing Alzheimer’s may help scientists prevent the disease someday

Nobel-prize-winning Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez once wrote of a mythical town in the middle of the jungle whose residents suffer from a mysterious affliction that erases their memories. Today in a region of Colombia called Antioquia, reality appears to be imitating fiction -- in a way that may answer questions for all of us.

As we first reported last fall, Antioquia is home to the largest concentration in the world of people who carry a rare genetic mutation that makes them 100 percent certain to develop Alzheimer's disease. And as devastating as Alzheimer's is anywhere, this is a particularly cruel version -- it strikes when people are in their mid-40s and leads to death about a decade later. It is a tragic situation, but a perfect scientific laboratory. And it's now the center of a multimillion dollar, NIH-backed study trying to find out for the first time whether Alzheimer's disease may be preventable.

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These are the Andes Mountains and lush countryside of Antioquia, Colombia, whose capital city, Medellin was once famous for murder and the drug cartel of Pablo Escobar. Today Medellin -- or "Medejin" as it's pronounced here -- is peaceful. But for some families here, there's still a battle going on, a battle against an insidious disease. This family, mother Cecilia, her seven children, and grandchildren, lost its patriarch, Alonso.

Freddie: For me, my father was number one.

Freddie, the oldest, remembers his dad always eager to join in and play with him and his friends.

Drug trials to prevent Alzheimer's 60 MINUTES OVERTIME
Drug trials to prevent Alzheimer's
Cecilia: He was a very joyful person. He loved to dance. He was a really nice person, a very good father, before the disease.

Lesley Stahl: When it first started, what were you noticing that made you think he's-- he's different?

Cecilia: He started asking, "What is the date today? Do I have to go to work?" And we got concerned.

Alonso at the time was in his mid-40s, so the memory loss and confusion made no sense. His doctor suggested exercise and vitamins, but Alonso just got worse -- forgetting the names of his children, getting lost and disoriented. His son Victor had to help him get dressed.

Victor: I gave him his shirt, I told him "Dad, come, I'll help you put your shirt on" and the first thing he did was to grab it and put it on through his feet.

Lesley Stahl: Did he understand what was happening to him?

Victor: There were moments of lucidity where he would ask me and say, "Son, what's happening to me? Why don't I remember? I don't remember my children, or my wife. I don't know who I am."

His son Julio took him back to see the doctor:

Julio: When I asked the doctor I told him "Doctor, I am not leaving here--" Sorry. "Until you tell me what is wrong with my father."

The doctor sent them to Francisco Lopera, a neurologist at the University of Antioquia who knew exactly what was wrong with Alonso, because he'd become the local authority on a rash of early-onset Alzheimer's cases in and around Medellin.

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Dr. Francisco Lopera CBS NEWS
Francisco Lopera: They were getting disease very early in the life.

It all began many years earlier, back in the 1980s when Lopera was a young medical resident. He had read about small numbers of people scattered around the world who'd developed Alzheimer's in their 40s. So when a 47-year-old man came into his Medellin clinic with Alzheimer's-like symptoms, he was intrigued and decided to investigate.

Lesley Stahl: You met this one man and you decided to go to where he was from?

Francisco Lopera: I decided to go to the town where he was living.

Lopera learned that the man's father and grandfather had also lost their memories in their 40s. Then, a few years later, another similar patient came into the clinic, this time a 42-year-old woman from a town 40 miles away. Dr. Lopera's then-nurse, Lucia Madrigal, asked if any of her relatives also started losing their memories when they were young.

Lucia: They told us yes, that the father, the uncles, the grandfather, the great grandfather, so I started making a little family tree, on one page, and I showed it to Dr. Lopera and I told him "Look what we have here. What is this? So many with the same disease…"

And so began a detective hunt that lasted more than a decade. Lopera and Madrigal traveled all over the region, finding more and more people afflicted with early-onset Alzheimer's and compiling family trees.

They thought it might be genetic, so Madrigal spent days at parish churches, poring over heavy ledgers where priests for generations had recorded village births, marriages, and deaths. Thanks to these meticulous records, she was able to trace the disease back hundreds of years, and to make an important discovery -- the different families were actually one huge extended family, connected generations back by common ancestors who had died young, with an unusual cause of death written down by the priest: "softening of the brain."

This is what "softening of the brain" looks like in real life. Fernando is 46 years old, a descendant of that second patient years ago. He started forgetting things when he was in his late 30s, and now can no longer speak, feed himself, or do just about anything on his own. His aunt takes care of him round the clock just as she did with his mother when she got the disease at the same age.

Norelly is at an even later stage of the disease. Despite her appearance, she is just 58 years old. Patients were going from mild symptoms to complete dementia and then death within about a decade -- as Dr. Lopera showed us in these cognitive test results.

Francisco Lopera: You can see, at 38…

Even at age 38, this man struggled -- as many older Alzheimer's patients do -- to copy a complex drawing accurately.

Francisco Lopera: At 45.

And things got worse from there.

Francisco Lopera: He lost more. At 50.

Lesley Stahl: Ah! Oh!

Francisco Lopera: At 51.

Lesley Stahl: Oh!

Dr. Lopera was convinced that what he and Madrigal were discovering was scientifically important, but even as they found more patients and more related families, he couldn't get anyone outside Colombia to take notice. Until 1993, when a Harvard professor came to give a talk about Alzheimer's in Bogota, several hours away.

Ken Kosik: There was a person in the audience, Francisco Lopera, who came up after the talk and said, "You know, there's-- I have a family here that w-- has-- early-onset Alzheimer's."

Ken Kosik, now at UC Santa Barbara, was that professor.

Lesley Stahl: A family. Could've been four people.

Ken Kosik: It could've been just four people. But he started to tell me how many it was. And as I listened to him, I became just so absorbed and taken with what he was telling me that I changed all my plans, went with him to Medellín. And, we began a collaboration that goes on to this day.

They showed Kosik what Lucia Madrigal showed us -- the family tree they had compiled based on all that searching through church records, for just one of the affected families, going back all the way to the 1800s.

Lesley Stahl: This is one family?

Lucia: Una sola! (Only one!)

It just kept unfolding and unfolding. Covering these pages are small squares representing men, circles for women. The colored-in squares and circles mean the person got sick with Alzheimer's at an early age.

Lesley Stahl: Look, she had these sons and a daughter. And then it just kept going down-- through the generations—

Lucia: Si.

Ken Kosik: When we looked at the family trees, about 50 percent of the offspring were getting the disease. That's a clear signature of a gene.

But what gene? Kosik connected Dr. Lopera with leading geneticists in the U.S., and they started collecting blood samples and searching. Within a year, a major breakthrough. They found a specific mutation in a gene on chromosome 14 – one tiny flaw in the DNA responsible for all this family's suffering. The discovery was published in 1997 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Lopera had identified the largest concentration of early onset Alzheimer's cases in the world.

Lesley Stahl: If a person has that mutation, do they get Alzheimer's?

Ken Kosik: Yes, they do.

Lesley Stahl: If they have it, they definitely get the disease.

Ken Kosik: Right. There are some mutations where you don't definitely get it. But this is a bad one. And if you have this mutation, you get it.

For families like Alonso's, discovering the mutation was a blessing – a crucial first step toward finding a way to fight the disease. But it was also a curse, because it meant that anyone whose parent had the mutation has a 50/50 chance of having inherited it too.

Lesley Stahl: Do any of you know if you have that mutation? Do you know?

Victor: No.

Freddie: Nobody knows.

Lesley Stahl: Nobody knows.

Well, somebody knows. Dr. Lopera and his team have been testing for the mutation and compiling a database, but their policy is not to tell family members if they have the mutation or not -- and not even to reveal the results to Dr. Lopera -- since at this point there is nothing that can be done to help.

Cecilia: Sometimes I ask, which one will get it? But I throw that thought away, because I don't want to think about that. I pray a lot to God that none of them gets it. I don't want to see my children with that disease.

Lesley Stahl: Each one of you knows, because of your father, that you have a 50/50 chance. So what kind of a weight does that put on you, day in and day out?

Julio: I've even prayed to God that if there's one person who has to have the disease, I say to God, "Let it be me."

Sara: I thank God that I'm a nurse and that I would be able to take care of them, but I tell myself, "First I had to go through it with my dad, the experience of the disease, and I may have to go through it with one of my siblings, or with several, we don't know."

Sara told us she would love to have children of her own, but given her risk of developing the disease, she's decided against it.

Sara: So that my children don't have to go through my same experience.

Lesley Stahl: You've been working on this 30 years. How do you cope with all this pain?

Francisco Lopera: [breaks down]

It was not the response we had expected.

Lesley Stahl: It's that hard? It's that hard.

But Dr. Lopera knew that even in the midst of all this tragedy, there might just be a glimmer of hope. Because what he had discovered in these families -- hundreds of people destined to develop Alzheimer's, and easily identifiable with a simple genetic test -- presented a unique scientific opportunity to test whether it's possible to step in and stop early-onset, and maybe all, Alzheimer's disease before it starts. That part of the story, when we come back.

Alzheimer's disease is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States. More than 5 million Americans have Alzheimer's right now, and given the aging baby boomer population, that number is projected to nearly triple by mid-century. Yet unlike many other leading killers, there is no effective treatment. An Alzheimer's diagnosis is essentially a prescription for a slow descent into oblivion -- an inexorable loss of the memories, spatial skills, and ability to think that make us who we are.

Early-onset Alzheimer's patients like the hundreds of family members in Colombia are a tiny fraction of the whole, but to scientists, they could be everything. Because they are offering researchers something they have never had before -- a way to test whether intervening years before people start having symptoms, might halt the disease in its tracks. Answers are still years away, but with more than a thousand Americans developing Alzheimer's every day, a way to prevent it can not come soon enough.

The scene we witnessed in Dr. Pierre Tariot's exam room at the Banner Alzheimer's Institute in Phoenix is one that plays out in neurologist's offices every day.

Dr. Tariot: So if I asked you what city we're in right now, what would you say?

Norm: Uh, you know, right, I don't know at this moment.

Norm, age 72, has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's -- the typical, late-in-life form so many of us fear. It begins with mild memory and thinking problems and spirals into full-on dementia.

Dr. Tariot: Who is that young lady over there?

Norm: Betsy.

Dr. Tariot: Betsy. And is she a friend?

Norm: Yes.

Dr. Tariot: How do you know Betsy?

Norm: Because I've been loving her for a long time.

Dr. Tariot: OK. Is she your sister?

Norm: A little bit of both.

Dr. Tariot: Uh-huh. Is she your wife?

Norm: I don't think so. I think you're-- somebody. I wish I was, but…

They've been married 51 years. Unlike early-onset Alzheimer's, there's been no single gene identified that causes this. No way to know who among us is destined to get it.

Lesley Stahl: What percentage of all people are going to be get Alzheimer's?

Pierre Tariot: One percent of us 60 or older will have a dementia like Alzheimer's disease. But by the time you hit 85—

Lesley Stahl: What percent?

Pierre Tariot: --that-- that percentage is approaching 40ish percent.

Norm: That's a Dogan and these are Gogans.

Pierre Tariot: Alzheimer's disease has been called out by the World Health Organization as the coming pandemic of the West. We have to do something to put it behind us.

Claudia to female patient: Can you draw the numbers for a clock?

But Dr. Claudia Kawas, a leading Alzheimer's researcher and clinician at the University of California Irvine, says she's frustrated that she can't offer her patients any hope.

Claudia Kawas: I have to say I've been doing this now for a third of a century. And when I started, I just never would have believed we would still not be closer than we are now to making a real difference. It has been a little disappointing.

It hasn't been for lack of trying. Kawas gave us a quick primer on the tell-tale signs of Alzheimer's in the brain after autopsy.

Claudia Kawas: Every place you see a brown spot, that is a senile amyloid plaque. In contrast, you see these black things that tend to be triangular shape. Those are what we call neurofibrillary tangles.

The relationship between plaques and tangles isn't completely understood, but because it's been shown that amyloid plaques build up in the brain before tangles -- and years before patients develop symptoms -- pharmaceutical companies have spent hundreds of millions of dollars since the early 2000s developing drugs to remove amyloid from the brain, and hundreds of millions more to test those drugs in patients like Norm.

Lesley Stahl: Of all the trials that have been done, what percent have succeeded?

Pierre Tariot: About one percent.

In other words, a resounding failure.

Lesley Stahl: So what does that say, do you think?

Claudia Kawas: Well, it says either amyloid is not the right thing to go after. Or it says we need to remove it earlier on in the process before it's made all the other things cascade after it. You know, if you give a polio vaccine once somebody has polio, you can understand why it doesn't work.

Lesley Stahl: You're saying that maybe those drugs haven't worked because the person already had Alzheimer's?

Claudia Kawas: Exactly. And maybe if we give 'em early enough, it might work.

But how can you test drugs on people before they develop the disease, when you don't know who among us is going to get it? Dr. Tariot and the executive director at the Banner Alzheimer's Institute, Dr. Eric Reiman, realized there was a place where you could know who was going to get Alzheimer's --- Antioquia.

Ken Kosik: And that's when my phone began to ring.

By then, Ken Kosik had been studying the Colombian extended family for 15 years.

Ken Kosik: Received a call from the people at Banner. And they said, you know, "You have this family. We know when they're gonna get it. We know who's gonna get it. Can we start treating before the disease strikes?"

Kosik connected Tariot and Teiman with Dr. Lopera, who by that time had identified hundreds of people who carried the gene mutation, guaranteeing they would be struck with Alzheimer's in the prime of their lives. Reiman and Tariot traveled to Medellin and met with both healthy and sick members of the extended family.

Lesley Stahl: Is this particular family, in the world-- extraordinary?

Pierre Tariot: There's nothing else like it. The idea that there's this concentration within roughly 100 miles of each other is-- just an extraordinary phenomenon.

And a perfect scientific laboratory. To lay the groundwork for a large clinical trial, Banner flew a group of extended family members from Medellin to Phoenix for PET scans. One goal: to compare the brains of those with and without the mutation years before any memory loss began, when they were in their 30s. Dr. Reiman showed us the results.

Eric Reiman: This is somebody who doesn't have the gene. They have no plaques in the brain.

But in members of the family with the mutation, it was a different story.

Eric Reiman: Extensive amyloid deposition in the brain.

Lesley Stahl: That's the red.

Eric Reiman: Red is more amyloid. But yellow is also amyloid.

This brain had even more. The images showed that amyloid plaques build up in the brain more than a decade before memory loss begins.

So if a drug could remove that red and yellow, maybe the disease could be prevented. Banner developed a plan for a multimillion dollar drug trial and convened a meeting with leading scientists, pharmaceutical companies, and representatives of the NIH.

Pierre Tariot: The end of the meeting, each scientist was allowed to say one closing thought. And Francisco had the last word.

Lesley Stahl: Lopera?

Pierre Tariot: And he paused a long time. And you could hear a pin drop in the room.

Francisco Lopera: I said to them-- "We w-- the families are waiting for you."

Lesley Stahl: They're waiting for you.

Pierre Tariot: That's the point when, you know, the goose bumps came, and we said, "We really have to make this work. We really do."

And they did. With a commitment of $15 million from NIH, another $15 million from philanthropists, and the rest from drug company Genentech, the trial -- on an immunotherapy drug to remove amyloid plaque -- enrolled its first patient three years ago, and they've been enrolling more people ever since.

Freddie: They told me about the study and I said yes. I'll go right away, and anything that you need it, I am here.

Freddie and all his siblings signed up. The plan is to enroll a total of 300 members of the extended family who are healthy and have no memory loss yet -- 200 who have the mutation and another 100 who don't. That way, no one will learn their genetic status just by being accepted into the study. Of the 200 with the mutation, half will get injections of the drug; the other half will be injected with a harmless placebo.

The study is double-blind: neither patients nor investigators will know who's getting what. They have to come in every two weeks, for at least five years -- long enough to see whether the group taking the drug does better than the group taking placebo. Final results aren't expected until 2022.

Lesley Stahl: Is this the first time in all these years of seeing these patients that you can actually offer them hope?

Dr. Lopera: Yes, this is the first time. Because in the past we only offer them education-- better quality of life but no hope to have a solution. And now they have hope, a big hope.

Lesley Stahl: What would be the best outcome?

Pierre Tariot: Nobody who receives the immunotherapy experiences any worsening of their thinking or memory ability. Doesn't change at all. Doesn't decline. That would be fabulous. That's a stretch goal.

And that would be just the beginning.

Claudia Kawas: If it makes a difference for them, I think there's a reasonable chance it could make a difference for all the rest of the people who get Alzheimer's disease.

And that of course is the ultimate goal: to help prevent the late in life form of Alzheimer's that we're all susceptible to. The hope is that one day every one of us could be screened and when necessary, treated before problems begin.

Claudia Kawas: It might be the case that just like when you go to your doctor to get your cholesterol checked in your blood to see if you need drugs to lower your cholesterol, you would go, and get an amyloid PET scan, and-- it would be part of—

Lesley Stahl: Routine.

Claudia Kawas: --routine prevention.

Lesley Stahl: What if the drug removes the amyloid, and they still get the disease?

Claudia Kawas: I think that'll mean that there are other things we need to be targeting besides amyloid.

Lesley Stahl: But will you say that the drug test was successful?

Claudia Kawas: Hard as this is to say, yes. I think that we need to know the answer.

The answer to whether the field's focus on amyloid plaque removal for the last 15 years has been a failure. If this test doesn't work, they will at least know they need to go in a different direction.

Lesley Stahl: You know, Victor, all the other drug trials that have gone on for years have all failed.

Victor: Yes.

Lesley Stahl: You know that.

Victor: But this is going to be the exception. This is the exception.

Lesley Stahl: If it does work, this saves this community.

Ken Kosik: Wouldn't that be amazing?

Lesley Stahl: That would be amazing.

Ken Kosik: To me, I am always impressed that these families that come from such a remote area of the world-- have the potential for informing all of us, globally, about a path forward for conquering Alzheimer's.

The study has now enrolled all its participants, and the NIH recently awarded as much as $14.8 million in additional funding over the next five years. It's too late, though, for Fernando, the early-onset Alzheimer's patient being cared for by his aunt. He passed away this spring at the age of 47 from pneumonia.

Produced by Shari Finkelstein. Nieves Zuberbuhler, associate producer.



HERE’S SOMETHING HAPPY. IF YOU DON’T THINK THIS IS HAPPY, THEN I BELIEVE YOU MUST HAVE A TOTALLY DIFFERENT VIEW ON LIFE FROM MINE.

http://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/obama-sightings-post-presidency/
27 Photographs of Obama Sightings post-presidency