Democratic attorneys general are considering using the many threats popular vote loser Donald Trump has about sabotaging the Affordable Care Act to take him to court, if he ends up acting on those threats. Most recently, Trump said he'd allow the law to "explode" by refusing to make critical cost-sharing payments to insurers as a way to force Democrats to work with him. Telegraphing that kind of strategy is stupid politically, but has also proven problematic for Trump in the courts already, and Democrats are preparing to use that precedent.
Public statements like that led to judges blocking Trump's proposed travel bans earlier this year, and could prove to be one line of attack in legal attempts to protect the healthcare bill, according to a handful of liberal US lawyers and state attorneys general. They said they are waiting to see what action the administration ultimately takes on the healthcare law before they will officially respond.
Democratic attorneys general took a lead role to successfully block Trump's executive orders restricting travel from some Muslim-majority countries, and are also resisting efforts to roll back environmental regulations. […]
Noting that several federal judges cited Trump's comments on Muslims to support the idea that his executive orders unconstitutionally targeted a religious group, Massachusetts Attorney General [Maura] Healey said Trump is legally bound to enforce the ACA. But his words make it clear he is willing to sabotage it, in her view.
"He is intent on setting the dynamite and blowing this up," Healey told Reuters.
She said it is too early to speculate about specific legal action but said Trump's remarks about the law "suggest he is out there not just hoping that it fails but working to see it fail."
In addition to Healey, Democratic attorneys general for California, Connecticut, and the District of Columbia told Reuters they are closely monitoring the administration for any signs it is undermining the ACA.
The president is actually, constitutionally, supposed to faithfully execute federal law. There's even a clause in Article Two, the one that lays out what he's supposed to do as president, that says he has to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed." One lawyer Deepak Gupta, a Washington lawyer who often works on public interest cases, is considering a suit on this basis. "That the president is operating in good faith … is pretty critical to how the law works. That good faith is legitimately in question," he said.
California state insurance commissioner Dave Jones, who is also running for state attorney general is laying the groundwork already. He wrote to the Trump administration, essentially putting it on notice to "stop taking administrative actions which undermine the Affordable Care Act and destabilize health insurance markets across the country."