WASHINGTON—“Nobody knew that healthcare could be so complicated.”

President Donald Trump famously made that statement in February as House Republicans struggled to coalesce around legislation to repeal and replace Obamacare.

Now, Senate Republicans are grappling with the same complicated reality.

Last week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., released the text of the Senate’s Better Care Reconciliation Act. Hours later, the most conservative senators said the bill didn’t go far enough to uproot Obamacare and moderates began announcing they couldn’t support it either.

With both sides of the ideological spectrum unhappy, McConnell had no choice but to cancel plans to vote on the legislation this week.

Senate Republicans now have some serious deal-making ahead of them to reconcile their differences. Congress leaves town for an extended July 4 recess on Friday, and party leaders hope to depart with a finalized plan. McConnell wants to send the Congressional Budget Office a new bill by the end of the week so lawmakers can return with a new score and vote as soon as July 10.

But at this point, that timetable appears to be wishful thinking.

“I’d rather do it right than do it fast because we’re going to have to live with these consequences,” Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., told me. “We’re not going to come back and do it again.”

Healthcare accounts for one-sixth of the U.S. economy and impacts millions of Americans. The possibility of creating another failed overhaul scares lawmakers to death. And although Republicans control the White House and both chambers of Congress, they still have their hands tied in some respects.

Party leaders are using the budget reconciliation process to approve healthcare reform with only 51 votes, bypassing a Democratic filibuster. But that limits the legislation to provisions that directly impact federal revenues. In other words, Republicans can’t build a new healthcare system from scratch—they can only move money around.

Those constraints worry pro-life groups in particular. They have two main priorities for the healthcare legislation: redirect Planned Parenthood funds to community health centers that don’t perform abortions and ensure people can’t use the bill’s tax credits to purchase insurance plans that include abortion.

It’s up to the Senate parliamentarian—Elizabeth MacDonough—to determine whether these provisions, included in the proposed bill, will fly under reconciliation rules.

Susan B. Anthony List president Marjorie Dannenfelser and Family Research Council president Tony Perkins outlined their fears in a joint statement: “[W]e remain very concerned that either of these priorities could be removed from the bill for procedural or political reasons. We are working closely with our pro-life allies in the Senate to prevent this from happening as it could result in our opposition.”

At least two Senate Republicans—Susan Collins of Maine, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska—don’t support defunding Planned Parenthood. Both have been strong critics of McConnell’s bill.

But that’s only one piece of a large bill no one seems thrilled about.

If conservatives like Sens. Rand Paul, R-Ky., Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, were the only holdouts, McConnell could possibly strike a deal, but opposition cuts through the ideological spectrum, creating an improbable calculus with only two votes to spare.

“Tinkering around the edges is not going to be sufficient to win my support,” Collins told reporters this week. She later added it may be impossible for a healthcare bill to satisfy both her wishes and requests from conservatives like Paul and Lee: “I never underestimate the creativity of Mitch McConnell, but I can’t see it.”

The Senate bill lacks a core constituency—a problem the House healthcare plan faced when leaders first released it.

The problem for conservatives is that Republicans aren’t actually proposing an Obamacare repeal.

“Only in Washington does repeal mean restore. Because that’s exactly what the Senate GOP healthcare bill does: it restores Obamacare,” said David McIntosh, president of Club for Growth.

After McConnell delayed this week’s vote, he found out the bill was more unpopular than previously thought. Sens. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.V., announced their opposition in a joint statement. Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., tweeted he didn’t support the bill. And Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., previously silent on the bill, told The Omaha World-Herald he doesn’t like it either.

Ultimately, Republicans are not going to repeal and replace Obamacare completely. But they are feeling the pressure to pass something since they claim the healthcare status quo is unsustainable.

Only one person seems confident Republicans will soon cross the finish line.

“We have given ourselves a little bit more time to make it perfect,” President Trump said of the healthcare battle. “We’re going to have a great, great surprise.”

A China-sized problem

Xia Chongyu, 20, hasn’t seen his father in nearly 1,000 days.

On Nov. 8, 2014, Chinese security officials arrested Xia Lin, a prominent human rights lawyer, with no warning and no explanation. Xia defended activists and others in politically sensitive cases, often for free, to fight injustices of the Communist Party and the Chinese state. Officials seized him as he prepared to provide legal counsel to Guo Yushan, who advocated for political and economic liberalization in China.

They’ve held him for almost two years, torturing him to obtain a confession to crimes he says he didn’t commit. Last September, The Beijing No 2. Intermediates People’s Court convicted Xia of “fraud” and sentenced him to 12 years in prison—without allowing him to submit a statement or have witnesses appear on his behalf.

On Wednesday, Xia Chongyu testified before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) to tell his father’s story—one example in China’s ongoing pursuit to suffocate internal dissent.

“My father dedicated himself to be a voice for the voiceless,” Xia Chongyu said. “China’s deteriorating human rights record is unacceptable.”

After the government took his father, Xia Chongyu and his mother feared for their own safety. His family helped him flee to the United States, where he enrolled at Liberty University.

Xia Chongyu told me he only believed in science when he first arrived at Liberty, but after a year he accepted Christ. Xia Chongyu lives in Lynchburg, Va., year round and has limited communication with his mother since China monitors phone calls and social media.

But his new community at Liberty helped him start an online petition seeking his father’s freedom. He shared his story during a Liberty Convocation in April and more than 2,500 students added their signatures. Xia Chongyu’s support grew, and he traveled to the Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C., on April 21 with 14,000 signatures in hand to demand a fair trial for his father.

“They wouldn’t even open the door,” he told me.

His petition now has more than 94,000 signatures, and he asked U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday to help intervene.

Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., the committee’s co-chairman, said he went to the Chinese embassy personally and also was denied access: “It was an appalling lack of diplomatic civility.”

Human rights in China have been dwindling for years. On July 9, 2015, Chinese police began a campaign of mass arrests and interrogations against human rights lawyers. Many spent time in jail on charges of “subversion of state power” or “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.”

Smith and committee co-chairman Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said the United States can do more to counter China’s human rights abuses and will explore avenues to free wrongly imprisoned lawyers, such as Xia.

“We’re blessed to live in this republic where often times the worst thing that happens is somebody said something really mean about us on Twitter,” Rubio said. “But in many parts of the world, including the most populated nation on earth, the consequences of speaking out in dissent are significantly higher.” —E.W.

America’s new foreign policy

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley told Congress on Wednesday the Trump administration’s foreign policy is saving lives.

On Monday, the White House announced it had reason to believe Syria was getting ready to launch another chemical attack. U.S. officials warned Syria it better think twice or it would “pay a heavy price.” That warning saved the lives of many innocent women and children, Haley told the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

“I can tell you due to the president’s actions, we did not see an incident,” she said.

Haley also explained her approach thus far in representing the Trump administration on the world stage. She said keeping foreign governments on their toes is a powerful tool for the United States.

“I deal with 192 [countries], and the overwhelming feeling is that we are unpredictable; they don’t know exactly what we are going to do,” Haley said. “It has kept them more on alert, of wanting to be there with us, not wanting to get on the wrong side of us.” —E.W.