Good Thursday morning, I'm Anna Palmer and welcome to your Politico Playbook audio briefing, sponsored by the Better Medicare Alliance.

And I'm Jake Sherman. One of the top stories on Politico's site this morning details growing Senate Republican moderate opposition to Medicaid cuts in the health care bill.

This threatens to doom Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's efforts to gut the health care law.

Two key players

have emerged, Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and John Hoven of North Dakota. Both raise

questions about the decision to scale back Medicaid. Republican leaders are set to unveil

the new version of their health care bill today, but there have been no major changes to

sue senators upset over winding down Obamacare's Medicaid expansion.

Right now, things aren't looking very good.

McConnell can't even get enough votes to bring the bill to the floor.

If Republicans fall flat on their face and fail to get the 50 votes needed to start debate,

the hope among GOP leadership is that something starts to come together from the ashes of defeat.

Meanwhile, Democrats are starting to push the new message that voting for the motion to proceed

is a vote to repeal Obamacare.

At the same time, the Donald Trump Jr. scandal continues to dominate headlines.

The New York Times has a piece on how the political is getting personal for the president.

The most interesting nugget in the piece, Jared Kushner, has added more than 100 names

to the list of foreigners he spoke to.

In another twist, Mike Pence's spokesman, Mark Lodder, refused three times to answer

whether Pence had meetings with anyone from Russia.

This raises a lot more questions than it answers.

And don't expect this to die down anytime soon.

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