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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

WV Pastor Plans Hunger Strike Against Health-Care Repeal

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Tuesday, July 18, 2017   

CHARLESTON, W.Va. – The West Virginia minister famous for telling a senator how the Affordable Care Act saved her daughter's life now says she plans a hunger strike to oppose the ACA's repeal.

Reverend Janice Hill of Parkersburg met with Sen. Shelley Moore Capito to testify against the Senate health-care legislation last month. Video of their meeting drew nationwide attention after Hill credited Obamacare with saving her daughter's life by making sure she got cancer treatment.

Hill now says if and when she knows the repeal bill is to be up for a vote, she'll start a water-only fast.

"When I know it's going to go for a vote, then I will make my stand," he says. "And this isn't a stunt for me. These are people's lives, including my daughters."

The Senate vote has been delayed. Capito has not clearly said if she will vote for or against the bill. If she votes no, most observers expect the repeal to fail.

The Senate bill's supporters argue the Affordable Care Act offered too much - that it created unsustainable, generous government health-care promises. But many of the act's insurance rules have been very popular.

Hill says her daughter has a rare form of cancer that is very expensive to treat. She says before Obamacare, her daughter's insurance company would likely have cut off her coverage because she hit an annual cost cap or because she had a pre-existing condition.

"So the fact that there wasn't a cap and the fact that there's not pre-existing conditions really and truly is what's keeping her alive," she explains.

Hill says Capito should vote no, and negotiate with Democrats like Sen. Joe Manchin who want to fix the parts of Obamacare that aren't working and keep what is.

"Cross that stupid aisle - to be a leader, to be working with Sen. Manchin, and be one West Virginia," adds Hill.

Hill and other clergy were to deliver letters and petitions to Capito's Charleston office Tuesday.


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