Keith: What is up, everyone? It is Wednesday,January 18.I am Keith Kocinski, and first up, it was one of the biggest campaign promises of Donald Trump — to get rid of the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. But now a new report says millions could be left without any health insurance if Congress votes to say good-bye to Obamacare.
As of today, at least 22 million people who didn't have health insurance before are now covered because of Obamacare.But it hasn't been without controversy; this year, health insurance premiums went up by 25 percent. Republicans have vowed to end Obamacare, with Congress taking the first steps last week.Speaker Paul Ryan says he wants to replace it with a Republican plan.
Representative Paul Ryan: Our goal is a truly patient-centered system.
Keith: But here is the problem. That replacement plan is not ready to go, meaning there is no bill or legislation that has been put forward, and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says getting rid of Obamacare without a replacement could leave
18million Americans without any health insurance within a year.
Over the weekend supporters of keeping Obamacare staged rallies from California to New Jersey, Oregon to Maine. But President-elect Trump said he is nearing a plan to replace it, with the goal of insurance for everyone. That plan, however, has not been released.
The president-elect said he will release his plan once the Senate confirms his choice for secretary of health and human services.
All right, next up today, one of the country's most famous whistle-blowers is getting out of prison early, thanks to a last-minute move from President Obama.
Former Army analyst Chelsea Manning was supposed to be in prison for 35 years. She was convicted of leaking Army documents and other offenses in 2013. But yesterday,President Obama commuted Manning's sentence, meaning she will now get out in May of this year.
In 2010 Manning gave the anti-secrecy website Wikileaksclassified information that revealed U.S. military and diplomatic activities around the world. It was the biggest leak of classified information in U.S. history,which included 750,000pages of documents and videos.
Manning says she did it out of a duty to inform the public about the real truths going on in places like Iraq.She believed that the government was not being truthful with the American people.
Okay, now onto a first for Lady Liberty, who is getting a pretty historic makeover.The U.S. Mint unveiled a commemorative $100 gold coin that features an image of Lady Liberty as an African-American woman. The 2017 American Liberty 225th anniversary gold coin shows the woman's head in profile with a crown of stars.
Jacob Lew: The crown of stars borrows from the statue of Freedom on top of the U.S. Capitol and represents the traditional hopeful ideals of liberty while offering a hint of the possibilities that the future may hold.
Keith: The mint says this is the first in a series that depicts Lady Liberty in a new light. Next up, we could see her as an Asian-American, Hispanic-American and Indian-American.
Okay, after the break, President Obama is packing upand ready to go, but what happens to all of his tweets, vines and snaps after he leaves the White House?
Keith: Okay, it turns out social media has been doing a lot more these past eight years than just documenting the life of your friends and family. It has also been capturing important historical moments, one of them being President Obama's time in the White House. But will his social media tweets and snaps live on? Well, Azia Celestino takes a look at where they will go.
D. J. Mowrey: Kind of the way people express themselves now is through social media.
Natalie Kendrick: That's pretty much the new form of communication that our President has with the populace, and, I mean, that's what they're there to do is to serve the people.
Azia: When President Obama leaves office next week, he is leaving behind a social media legacy.
Professor Amelia Acker: All of those records that the White House is creating and the American public are interacting with is part of our cultural history and the public record.
Azia: Amelia Acker, professor at the University of Texas School of Information, is launching new research into the POTUS, FLOTUS and White House social media archives. In her classroomthey study guidelines for preserving digital information and trends in social media use.
Acker: It actually shows the maturity of all of these platforms and how some of them have plateaued and disappeared.
Azia: With social media platforms changing so quickly, Professor Acker says that it is important to save all of this info.
Acker: Vine just ended, and first lady Obama had a lot of vines, so how are we going to preserve access to that over time, and are those records of a moment that we will want to go back to?
Azia: Back in October the White House asked that same question. The answer? A "digital transition," teaming up with the University of Texas and other organizations to preserve President Obama's posts on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts before they are wiped clean for the Trump administration.The effort even includes all of the GIFs and vines that the White House has created over the past eight years.
Normally, official preservation efforts would seal the president's materials in the National Archives or presidential libraries, but the goal here is to share this internet history with the American people.
The White House blog said, "From the very beginning, our mission has been to reach Americans and people around the world on the channels and platforms where they already spend their time" — plans that weren't in place for previous presidents before social media and the internet were part of everyday life.
Finding the best way to save, organize and access that communication is a vital step in preserving our digital history.
Acker: President Obama's use and President-elect Trump's use just really shows us how important these records are to us right now and how important they will be for scholars and researchers in the future.
Azia: Azia Celestino, Channel One News.
Keith: Thanks,Azia.
All right, when we come back, works from one of the world's most well-known painters will soon be on the big screen.
Keith: Next up, we are talking about 19th-century Post-ImpressionistDutch art, right,Emily?
Emily: Yes,Keith — but guys, don't fall asleep just yet. This is actually really cool. Some creative artists are transforming iconic works of art into a movie like you have never seen before.
One of cinema's most ambitious new films is under production in a small studio in Poland. Here, with the stroke of a brush, a team of painters brings to life the work of Vincent van Gogh, the Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art.
The final result: “Loving Vincent,” the first hand-painted film ever made.
Hugh Welchman: We have definitely, without a doubt, invented the slowest form of filmmaking ever devised in 120 years.
Emily: Hugh Welchman is the film's director. He and his wife,Dorota Kobiela, tell the story of van Gogh's creative genius and sudden death using letters written by van Gogh.
Vincent van Gogh was born in the Netherlands in 1853. Over the course of his career, he painted over 800 canvases, famous themes including sunflowers and wheatfields. At 37, after being released from a mental institution, he took his own life without any explanation.
“Loving Vincent”: How does a man go from being absolutely calm to suicidal in six weeks?
Emily: That pivotal question is explored through fictional interviews with characters and locations depicted in 150 of van Gogh's famous paintings. Like a traditional film, “Loving Vincent” began with a set and characters.
Ivan Mactaggart: We filmed with live actors on green screen. We composited into the backgrounds of those shots van Gogh paintings. We cut it together like a live-action film, but then we projected each frame individually onto canvas.
Emily: As producer Ivan Mactaggart explains, a team of 120 artists recruited from all over the world turned those projections into oil paintings. To be clear, every single frameof “Loving Vincent” is painted by hand — all 64,000 of them, the equivalent of
64,000 canvases.
“Loving Vincent” is a painstaking tribute to van Gogh, a moving exhibit of his work, unlike any before. Emily Reppert, Channel One News.
Keith: And get this — historians say van Gogh didn't start painting until he was in his late 20s, and today his paintings are worth millions.But did he become rich as an artist? Well, the answer is on ChannelOne.com.
Now time for us to say good-bye, but before we go, here is one more thing.
When President Obama leaves the White House, so will his two daughters,Sasha and Malia, who spent the last eight years growing up there. Two people who know exactly what that feels like are Jenna and Barbara Bush, the twin daughters of President George W. and Laura Bush.
This week, they wrote a heartfelt letter to the Obama girls, full of reflections on the past and advice for the future. “You are about to join another rarefied club, one of former first children — a position you didn't seek and one with no guidelines.”
In 2008 the Bush sisters gave Sasha and Malia a tour of the White House. The Bush sisters recently shared photos of them showing the Obama girls around, even how to slide down the stairs.
In their letter Jenna and Barbara also tell Sasha and Malia they will soon be beyond the shadow of their famous parents.“Explore your passions. Learn who you are. Make mistakes — you are allowed to.”
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