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BY BRIAN BEUTLER, PRIYANKA ARIBINDI & CROOKED MEDIA Tuesday, March 26, 2019 |
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| —Meghan McCain, heiress to senator/Shakespeare |
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| (YOUR HEALTH CARE IS) GOING AWAY PARTY |
| President Trump’s Department of Justice has asked the courts to throw out the entire Affordable Care Act, another Hail Mary effort to toss millions of people off of their health insurance plans, because sometimes you gotta play the hits. It’s a stunning abdication of the administration’s obligation to defend the laws of the United States when they can credibly be defended, and a dry run for the conservative legal strategy of stacking the courts with right-wing judges and relying on them to throw out laws Republicans don’t agree with.
The development represents an escalation for the Trump administration, which until this week argued that courts should strike down the ACA’s pre-existing conditions protections, but stopped short of insisting that the entire law should fall.
It’s also a potent reminder of the deep rot of bad faith running through the Trump administration, and the Republican Party. Last year, as his administration sought the destruction of pre-existing conditions protections in court, Trump orchestrated a Republican midterm campaign in which he and embattled congressional candidates who also supported the lawsuit repeatedly lied about the party’s pre-existing conditions position.
“Republicans will totally protect people with Pre-Existing Conditions, Democrats will not!” Trump tweeted in October. “Vote Republican.”
The administration’s new position stems from its decision last year to support the latest frivolous lawsuit contrived by Republican lawyers in red states to destroy Obamacare. These lawyers argue that when Congress eliminated the ACA's individual mandate penalty in Trump’s corporate tax cut law, it made the individual mandate itself unconstitutional. In 2012, the Supreme Court upheld the mandate under Congress’s power to tax. DOJ and these Republican states claim that because the mandate “tax” is zero dollars, the mandate is no longer an exercise of the taxing power, and thus unconstitutional.
The argument is so frivolous that career lawyers at DOJ refused to defend it. But a notoriously partisan Republican-appointed federal judge in Texas not only bought the argument, but ruled that all of Obamacare should be tossed out. Before that decision, Trump’s Justice Department had asked the courts to junk the mandate and the related pre-existing conditions protections. Now, DOJ says it agrees with the judge’s decision and wants the entire ACA wiped off the books. Schoolhouse Rock should have warned us about fuckery like this.
By coincidence, the Trump administration ramped up its war on health care just as Democrats in Congress unveiled new proposals to expand the ACA’s benefits. The contrast has allowed Democrats, amid an avalanche of news about Trump’s Russia investigation victory lap, to remind the public why they won back the House in a landslide. Trump responded by claiming, “The Republican Party will become ‘The Party of Healthcare!’” Surely a man this honest and his complicit attorney general would never mischaracterize the findings of the Mueller report. |
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Prosecutors in Chicago have dropped all charges against Jussie Smollett, the actor they accused of filing a false report that he’d been the victim of a violent hate crime. Smollett has claimed vindication, and continues to insist that supporters of President Trump assaulted him, and draped a noose around his neck. But Chicago police and Mayor Rahm Emanuel insist the case against Smollett was airtight. At a press conference, Emanuel called the decision a “whitewash of justice,” and the prosecutors themselves pulled a Mueller insist they did not exonerate Smollett, and merely decided that trying him wouldn’t enhance public safety. |
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| President Trump’s fake national emergency at the southern border will remain in effect after the House fell short of the two-thirds majority needed to overturn his veto of a resolution terminating the declaration. Only 14 Republicans voted to defend Congress’s prerogatives and uphold the rule of law.
Four Senate Democrats voted against the Green New Deal resolution, which Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell introduced to divide Democrats. The overwhelming majority of the Democratic caucus voted “present” to express frustration with McConnell for pulling a stunt, but the four defections do underscore Democrats will have a very hard time passing significant climate change legislation in 2021, even if they control Congress and the White House.
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) has introduced a plan to increase teacher salaries an average of $13,500 by increasing the estate tax. Her plan also proposes establishing a base salary for teachers and investing in teacher recruiting and training, with special emphasis on institutions that serve people of color. This is outrageous because public school teachers have had it far too good for far too long!
Attendees of the AIPAC summit apparently had a lot more to say about Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), who criticized the organization, than they did about the white nationalist who massacred Jews at a Pittsburgh synagogue less than six months ago. Maybe it’s time they AIPAC it up? (LOL JK this is just a funny joke… please don’t come after us AIPAC you’re very very powerful and we are scared of you.)
The prime minister of Romania stayed at Trump’s obscene hotel in downtown Washington, DC, while she was in town for AIPAC’s annual summit, a reminder that he is plainly corrupt in ways that have nothing to do with the Russia investigation, and constantly in violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause, which prohibits him from lining his pockets with money and gifts from foreign governments. Also willing to bet Trump’s hotel still probably uses bar soap in the shower. Truly disturbing stuff from the entire Trump org.
The Trump administration wants to zero out funding for the Special Olympics, in case you’ve been hibernating for several years and were wondering what kind of people we’re dealing with here.
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| House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, the number three Democrat in the House, declared Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation a “closed chapter,” to be followed by the “new chapter of health care.” In fairness, not all Democrats act as though they have to choose between one and the other. The House Judiciary Committee passed a resolution, with GOP support, directing the Justice Department to hand over Mueller’s investigative materials, and Democratic chairmen have set a deadline for Attorney General WIlliam Barr to hand over the Mueller report. But come on! Barr says he intends to redact the report and doesn’t plan to transmit it to Congress for “weeks”—weeks during which President Trump and all of his loyalists will continue to spread disinformation about what’s in it. Subpoena it yesterday! Subpoena Mueller! Demand to know what Trump and Barr are hiding! It’s not that hard, and it’s vitally important. |
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| Gov. Ralph Northam (D-VA) has amended the state’s budget to eliminate the practice of enforcing unpaid court debts by suspending driver’s licenses and to reinstate licenses to over 600,000 people who have been affected by the practice. Northam should resign, but as long as he refuses to do so, it’s good that he’s responded to outrage over the revelation that he once dressed in blackface by reversing racist policies. |
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| Former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams has created a new nonprofit designed to ensure that people are counted accurately in the 2020 U.S. Census, focusing specifically on minorities, non-English speakers, renters, and others who are more likely to be overlooked. The Census helps determine how the government allocates resources and how states draw district lines, which is part of why an accurate count is of vital importance. It’s also why the Trump administration is desperate to engineer an undercount by adding a citizenship question to the survey, which would likely scare immigrants and their family members out of responding. |
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| #THREAD |
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