BY PRIYANKA ARIBINDI, BRIAN BEUTLER

& CROOKED MEDIA

Monday, December 17, 2018

—James Comey to a Fox reporter

JUDGE DREADFUL

Late on Friday a George W. Bush-appointed federal judge in Texas ruled that the entire Affordable Care Act must be thrown out, leading to widespread criticism from liberals and conservatives alike.  

The judge, Reed O’Connor, issued his decision just one day before the end of this year’s open-enrollment period, raising concerns that he timed the opinion to reduce enrollment by misleading people into thinking Obamacare had been eliminated.

In truth the law remains in place and will remain in place indefinitely. Even the White House and President Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services issued statements making clear that the decision had no bearing on open enrollment.

The ruling itself is a joke. In 2012, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of ACA’s individual mandate as an exercise of Congress’s power to levy taxes. O’Connor claims that because the corporate tax cut bill set the mandate tax penalty at $0.00, the mandate is now no longer a tax, and thus unconstitutional. He further insists that because the law was written without specific language telling courts that the individual pieces of the law stand on their own, that every word of the ACA should be tossed in the garbage.

The good news is that many conservative legal experts and opinion makers have refused to play along with this case—even ones who supported prior efforts to use the courts to destroy Obamacare. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, an ultra-reliable GOP weathervane, has decried the ruling. In other words, the right isn’t lining up to encourage conservative judges to uphold this ruling on appeal.

More good news: The revived legal threat to Obamacare, spearheaded and cheered on by Republican governors and members of Congress, has created a big political opportunity for Democrats, and they have pounced.

The bad news is that nothing is certain. It’s possible that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals will vacate this ruling and the case will go no further. But it could reach the Supreme Court. If it gets there, our best hope is that the Supreme Court composition hasn’t changed further, and that Chief Justice John Roberts hasn’t changed his mind about the ACA. But that could be years from now, and if Trump has been given the opportunity to replace a liberal justice with a conservative one by then, we’ll have a 6-3 court, and the law will be in grave jeopardy.

From Brian: The ruling is another reminder that the conservative movement’s threat to democracy predates Trump and will be with us (on the courts and elsewhere) after he’s gone. O’Connor isn’t a Trump-appointed judge, but Trump and the GOP are loading up the courts and other institutions with carbon copies of him. They will continue issuing rulings like this as long as they have power, in the hope that Trump and future Republican presidents will reward them with promotions to higher courts and better jobs. Liberals need to put some thought into how to change Republican incentives because these ones are eroding the basic foundations of the republic.

Two of Michael Flynn’s former associates have been charged with conspiracy to act as agents of a foreign government for trying to influence U.S. politicians to extradite Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish cleric and dissident living in the U.S. Flynn has cooperated with this investigation in addition to the special counsel’s investigation.

The deadline to avert a government shutdown is Friday, and House Republicans aren’t sure if their members will even show up to vote. Meanwhile, Paul Ryan is rolling out a series of videos about how awesome of a House speaker he thinks he was. (Not Too Marvelous Mr. Ryan, am I right? My Crazy-Bad Ex-Speaker, am I right?)  

The father of Jakelin Maquin, the seven-year-old Guatemalan girl who died December 8 in Border Patrol custody, is disputing claims that she hadn’t been eating or drinking, saying that she was perfectly healthy until she was taken into custody on December 6. Ghoulish Trump adviser Stephen Miller and his spray-on hair lost their shit on CBS this weekend, blaming her death on “left-wing” court rulings.  

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) will not seek re-election in 2020. Alexander reportedly made the decision in August, against Trump’s wishes, and only announced his intentions publicly today.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke resigned over the weekend, amid over a dozen federal corruption investigations and looming congressional investigations. The White House had reportedly given him until the end of the year to resign or be fired.

Google has ended Project Dragonfly—the company’s quiet effort to launch a censored search engine in China—after members of its privacy team complained that they had been kept in the dark about the project improperly. The plan generated tremendous backlash when it leaked earlier this year.

According to a draft of a report prepared for the Senate, Russia exploited every major social media platform to get Trump elected, and ramped up its efforts to support him after he took office. From Joe America: Or perhaps real problem is both parties are same, and we stay home, yes? No voting, show you love USA by no more voting.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) wants to legalize recreational marijuana in New York by early 2019. H/t Cynthia Nixon. H/t edibles.

A woman who had an eight-year relationship with filmmaker and alleged child abuser Woody Allen, which began when she was 16-years-old, has shared her story publicly for the first time.

Ousted CBS executive and serial sexual predator Les Moonves officially won't get a dime of the $120 million severance package his contract included.

The NYPD made a “wellness check” on comedian Pete Davidson on Saturday after he posted “I really don’t want to be on this earth anymore” on Instagram. Davidson has long been open about his mental health challenges, and has since deleted his account.

Pod Save America’s first three tour dates of 2019 are LIVE, get your tickets now → crooked.com/events

Two-hundred countries including the U.S. reached an agreement at the COP24 summit to keep the Paris climate agreement in effect, despite President Trump’s desire to back out of it. The deal requires all countries to follow the same standards for measuring their emissions and tracking their policy initiatives on climate, and requires wealthier nations to be more explicit about how they will help poorer countries create more clean energy and protect themselves against natural disasters. Though Trump has publicly opposed the Paris Agreement, the U.S. cannot formally withdraw until the end of 2020, at which point he will hopefully be gone.

• On Thursday, the House and Senate unanimously approved the Preventing Maternal Deaths Act to help states investigate the deaths of new and expectant mothers more effectively, a response to mounting evidence that the U.S. does not have enough reliable data to understand what kills American mothers. Maternal mortality has increased here in recent years, while the rates in other wealthy countries continue to decline, and the problem affects black women in the U.S. at three to four times the rate of white women.
  

• Democrats in New Jersey have nixed a plan to write partisan gerrymandering into the state’s Constitution amid backlash from Republicans and progressives alike, including Gov. Phil Murphy (D-NJ). The proposed changes to the the bipartisan redistricting commission would’ve effectively defined D +20 districts as “competitive.”

Airbnb has delayed its boycott of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, after executives met secretly with Israel’s minister of tourism. Last month, Airbnb took 200 homes and apartments in the West Bank off of its platform. On Monday it issued a statement saying the policy would not be implemented, then followed up with an assurance that the policy would only be delayed, not undone. More like AirBnBotchjob apparently.

“Two years after Donald Trump won the presidency, nearly every organization he has led in the past decade is under investigation.” Trump and Rudy Giuliani are handling it as you might’ve guessed.

Care to review the whopping 17 known probes going on in/around Trump World? Wired has a guide for you →

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