Nearly every U.S. resident would be impacted in some way if the Trump administration gets its way and the entire Affordable Care Act (ACA) is invalidated in court.
Susan Lyon of California, for example, is deeply concerned for her husband and business partner who has Parkinson’s disease. Without the ACA, she suspects her insurance would charge a lot more because of her husband’s pre-existing condition. She purchases health insurance through the ACA’s Small Business Healt...
ThinkProgress
Justice Breyer warns of the ‘greatest judicial power grab since Marbury v. Madison’
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority on Wednesday appeared likely to execute what Justice Stephen Breyer described as the “greatest judicial power grab” since its 1803 decision holding that federal courts have the power to declare laws unconstitutional.
Breyer’s warning referred to Kisor v. Wilkie, a case for which the court heard oral arguments last week. Chief Justice John Roberts suggested in some of his questions during that session that he ...
House Democrats adopt Green New Deal jobs talking point as they reveal new climate bill
Less than 24 hours after the Green New Deal resolution faced a setback in the Senate, House Democrats appeared to have broadly adopted one of the proposal’s leading talking points as they pitched separate climate legislation.
“This is about jobs, about good, paying green jobs,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said Wednesday, introducing the Climate Action Now Act, also known as House Resolution 9.
The new resolution urges the United States to remain in the...
Gillibrand to Republicans: Stop treating climate change ‘like a game’
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) joined a spirited rally supporting the Green New Deal resolution on Tuesday morning, offering a full-throated endorsement of the blueprint for dramatic climate action.
“We need to pass a Green New Deal. This should be our nation’s moonshot,” Gillibrand said. “Why not be the world leader in doing something extraordinary and showing what this country is made of?”
Pointing to recent deadly flooding in the Midwest, the New Yo...
Remember when Republicans vowed to be the party to protect pre-existing condition coverage?
After the president and Republicans repeatedly promised to protect people with pre-existing conditions, the Trump administration on Monday evening said it supports a federal judge’s ruling that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is unconstitutional, adding that it will seek to repeal the sweeping health care law in its entirety.
The Justice Department filed a brief letter in the conservative U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit telling the court that it agrees with Judge Reed O’C...
Republicans push phony attack on Green New Deal’s cost, ignore ‘tens of trillions’ in benefits
Opponents of serious climate action are routinely using a nonsensical $93 trillion dollar cost projection to attack the Green New Deal — an effort to mobilize the U.S. economy to shift away from fossil fuels as fast as technologically possible to preserve the livable climate that has made modern civilization possible — even though the figure has been roundly debunked by fact checkers.
The reality is that the price of what are called “core” clean energy techno...
BREAKING: Bill Barr’s Justice Department just gave the middle finger to the rule of law
Last December, a Republican judge named Reed O’Connor handed down an opinion purporting to strike down the entire Affordable Care Act. The case, Texas v. United States, was brought by several Republican officials who manipulated the process used to assign judges to cases in order to get this case into O’Connor’s courtroom.
O’Connor, a former Republican Capitol Hill staffer, has a history of striking down policies supported by Democrats on highly dubi...
What the Senate vote on the Green New Deal resolution actually means
Senate debate over the hotly contested Green New Deal resolution is expected to come to a head on Tuesday as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) tries to force a divide among Democrats by calling for a vote on the ambitious proposal, even though no legislation has been proposed.
Democrats, meanwhile, are working to gain the upper hand with a display of unity, despite their differing stances on what meaningful climate action should look like. The final vote will serve as an...
The Supreme Court is seizing power from the presidency because Donald Trump is stupid
Justice Antonin Scalia’s greatest gift to the conservative movement was teaching judges that humility is for suckers.
Scalia, of course, is best known for popularizing originalism — the belief that the only legitimate way to interpret the Constitution is to read its words as they were originally understood by the framers’ contemporaries. But Scalia was neither a historian nor a linguist. He lacked the training necessary to effectively probe how people two centuries...
Lindsey Graham says people are only defending McCain to hurt Trump
On the same day Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA) blasted President Donald Trump for “deplorable” attacks on his late colleague, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) also unleashed an attack — on Trump critics who are talking about it.
Days after attacking McCain, who died last August, for not voting for his TrumpCare legislation to take health insurance coverage away from 16 million people, Trump continued to go after him on Wednesday. In an official presidentia...