IF (NOT MY) pres drumpf / trump and (NOT MY) vice-pres pence are re-elected we can kiss the ACA / Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) good-bye. That means tens of millions of children, women and men, families, will loose their healthcare. Insurance companies will be able to put limits on the total they will pay for a patient's treatment and will be able to refuse coverage for pre-existing conditions. Legalizing the refusal to provide for the healthcare needs of all Americans is not something Jesus would do but that is not an issue for the drumpf / trump-pence administration with the gop / greed over people republican party. They are guided by the right wing "evangelical" gospel of greed, the teachings of an alt-jesus and expect to win the election in November 2020 allowing them to continue their assault on and destruction of the American Social Contract. This on the threat posed by a gop / greed over people controlled Supreme Court from the Washington Post. REMEMBER TO VOTE ON TUESDAY, 3 NOVEMBER 20 the fate of our nation depends on it.....
The Supreme Court just reminded us why this election is an emergency
March 2, 2020 at 12:27 p.m. EST
But the issue goes way beyond health care — and convincing Americans not to pay too much attention to those stakes is essential to Republicans’ election plans.
Ask yourself: How much have you heard about the Supreme Court in particular and the courts in general over the course of the campaign? Only a couple of questions have been asked about the issue in the many debates. For a brief period about a year ago, candidates mulled over whether the size of the Supreme Court should be increased, but they haven’t talked about it much since.
Now think about this: If President Trump wins reelection, it is highly likely that Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg (age 87 in a couple of weeks) and Stephen Breyer (age 81) will retire because of illness or age. At that point there would be a 7-2 conservative majority on the court.
Remember when the mostly conservative Anthony Kennedy was the median justice, with an equal number of votes to his right and left? Now Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., a highly conservative justice who occasionally votes with the court’s liberals not because he’s some kind of moderate but because he’s politically savvy (more on that in a moment), is the median justice.
Imagine if the ideologically median justice was Samuel A. Alito Jr.
Roe v. Wade being overturned would be just the beginning. Workers rights would be eviscerated (a project the court is already making progress on). Environmental laws would be struck down left and right. You could say goodbye to just about any regulation that impinges on the ability of businesses to do whatever they want. And if you think Republican voter suppression efforts are aggressive now, just you wait until they have a Supreme Court that will rubber-stamp their electoral rigging schemes.
You could have a Democratic president and Congress that passed a raft of progressive legislation, only to see the Supreme Court strike every bit of it down. It would be the culmination of decades of right-wing dreams and plans, a nuclear bomb dropped on the ability of government to protect fundamental rights or serve the interests of ordinary people.
But one thing that could stand in the way of that future is if before the election, voters consider what it might mean in their lives. Which is why it’s so revealing that the Supreme Court just decided to hear this ACA lawsuit.
The lawsuit, which was brought by a group of 20 Republican-run state governments and is supported by the Trump administration, asserts that since the 2017 tax-cut bill reduced the penalty for not having health insurance to $0, the ACA’s individual mandate essentially no longer exists, and that means that the entire law should be wiped out.
Even many conservative legal scholars find the argument in the suit to be preposterous, but Republicans managed to get a conservative trial judge to rule in its favor (they filed it in this Texas district to achieve just that outcome). Instead of tossing that decision in the trash, two more Republican-appointed appeals court judges kept the case alive by returning it to the lower court for further consideration.
Now the Supreme Court has said it will hear the case, probably in the next term, which starts in October. This is where we get to Roberts’s shrewd management of Republican political fortunes.
Although these days many Republicans consider Roberts a traitor because he has sided with liberals in a few key cases (including upholding the ACA), the truth is that he does so only when he realizes that the Republican Party needs to be saved from itself, when it has pushed an issue so far that if it prevails in court the political damage would be overwhelming. Few cases illustrate that more than this one.
If the Supreme Court were actually to find in Republicans’ favor, the ACA would be struck down — all of it. Around 20 million Americans would lose their health coverage. The subsidies that help millions afford coverage would disappear. The protections for preexisting conditions that Republicans pretend to care about? Gone.
Just talking about such an outcome is a political nightmare for Republicans. Which is why I can predict that the Supreme Court argument in this case won’t take place in October, right after the new session begins. It’ll be scheduled for November, or maybe December, or maybe later. Just so it doesn’t happen before the election.
Roberts might be a little uncomfortable with Trump, but he is someone who has devoted his entire career to the Republican cause and has deeply conservative beliefs about politics and the law. You can bet he has contemplated that 7-2 conservative majority, too. He’s not going to let the Trump administration and a bunch of fire-breathing state attorneys general screw it up. There’s a time for destroying the American health-care system, and that time is after the election is over.
But if Trump wins, that’s not all that will be destroyed. The durable conservative Supreme Court majority that he installs will be the last word on American law for decades. If that doesn’t convince you that this election is an emergency, nothing will.
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