can you help me up? [ snow intensifies ] [ sleighbells ring in the distance ] aleve. all day pain relief with just 2 pills. get back to being you. time now for conversation nation. joining us tonight, msnbc contributor victoria francesca soto, joe madison, and thank you all for being here. we start with the big news today. president obama s historic cuba announcement.
party s last vice president of corrupt motivations in his foreign policy, that might not be shocking if you followed senator paul, for the bush veterans and neocons, it s unacceptable. the washington free beacon is liz cheney says it s not surprising since senator paul often seems to get his foreign policy talking points from rachel maddow. he brings several things to the right party table. he could push the gop into a very different set of debates in the coming years if the party doesn t drive him off the stage for making things so uncomfortable. let s talk to our panel about all of that. joining us is michelle goldberg, author of the means of reproduction as well as msnbc contributor, victoria francesca
uninsured fell 1.5 points. gallup measures in points but let s look in terms of people. that s 3.5 million people getting health care. back in washington, you may remember president obama just announced that more than seven million americans signed up for health care before the aca s march 31st deadline. that took a while and included plenty of mistakes, but the ultimate number surpassed the obama administration s goal and that s just the new private markets. another 3 million more gained insurance coverage fru mthrough medicaid and 3 million more than that have coverage through their parents coverage. the health benefits and peace of mind is obviously the most important thing. but when it comes to people fighting about whether anyone is gaining coverage, to the obama politics that define this era, well, what we have here is a loss for republicans in their argument against obamacare. it didn t have to be this way for them, but republicans didn t just stake their endless obam
expect, the zero option, which would mean leaving zero u.s. troops in afghanistan. joining me now to success victoria di francesca soto, and nbc news white house correspondent kristen welker. thanks to you both for joining me. thanks, karen. kristen, i know we don t know a lot what the president s speech on the economy will be. i assume this will be to economy, domestic issues, jobs, particularly as we lead into what may be an ugly budget showdown. absolutely i anticipate he will map out his budget priorities, as you point out, karen. we are heading into what will likely be an ugly budget showdown. the president, the white house wants to pivot away from all of this discussion and debate about health care as well. so this sort of helps him do that. and remember, the president has always said the economy is his first priority. if you look at the polls from americans, they are saying this is what they want to be talking about. and remember, karen, just earlier this week he was talki
0 conference in the next half hour from the ntsb. and we ll bring that to you live when that happens. nbc s kristen dahlgren is at the scene of the crash. kristen, what s the latest there? reporter: well, like you said, we re waiting for the ntsb to brief us so we can get the latest update on numbers, and also, really, their investigation is well under way now. they ve been on scene for several hours. they re looking at a few things. they re trying to come up with the train s black box so they can get some of the data that was recorded by that. they have been throughout the day, investigators here in new york talking with the passengers who were on board that train. also with the conductor and the engineer. we also heard from the governor of new york earlier, and he said that it appears at this point like it was either speed or operator error. this is an area of the tracks that the train goes around a pretty severe curve. usually trains would slow down from 70 miles per hour to 30 mi