The decision by the Trump administration to fight a law it is supposed to be supporting, the Affordable Care Act, is so extreme that a senior Justice Department official has resigned over it. Joel McElvain had been with the department for 20 years and was expected to become director of the Justice Department's federal programs branch, the division that defends the laws passed by Congress in the courts. That's an indication of just how egregiously bad this reversal of executive branch norms is.
That's by far from the only fall-out, though. Remarkably, this one is so bad that Trump's greatest champion and enabler, Mitch McConnell has been forced to break with him. "Everybody I know in the Senate—everybody—is in favor of maintaining coverage for pre-existing conditions," he told reporters. "There is no difference in opinion about that whatsoever." McConnell's protestations are purely political, of course, because he has no problem at all with the breakdown of government. Just look at how he's destroyed the Senate.
Sen. Lamar Alexanders (R-TN) chimed in: "The Justice Department argument in the Texas case is as far-fetched as any I’ve ever heard. Congress specifically repealed the individual mandate penalty, but I didn’t hear a single senator say that they also thought they were repealing protections for people with pre-existing conditions." Of course they didn't say that, they just included provisions in their so-called replacement bills that were sneaky, back-door attempts that would undermine just those protections.
Which Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) was quick to point out: "If it's true that every Republican now supports protecting pre-existing conditions, that's news to very sick patients across the country who fought back again and again as Republicans tried to go back to the days when a pre-existing condition meant you might not be eligible for insurance, or could be priced out completely—especially since many Republicans continue to want to pass harmful bills to do exactly that."
That's how all the activists who fought Trumpcare, and succeeded, last year remember it, too. And that's how voters will see it in November.
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