'Unfathomable Cruelty': Trump Admin Asks Supreme Court to Invalidate Affordable Care Act

In a move that seems particularly cruel in the midst of the growing coronavirus pandemic, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to invalidate the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, on Thursday, as CNN reported.
If the move is successful, it would wipe out the landmark legislation that provided health insurance for 23 million Americans that would be otherwise unable to afford it, according to The New York Times.
The Trump administration snuck in the request literally at the eleventh hour, filing an 82-page brief with the court just one hour before the midnight deadline. The brief sides with Republican officials in Texas and 17 other states who claim that the 2017 move by a Republican-controlled Congress to zero out the tax penalty for not having insurance has made the law unconstitutional, as The New York Times reported.
The filing made no mention of the coronavirus pandemic. It also came on the same day the government reported that close to half a million people who lost their health insurance amid the economic shutdown to slow the spread of COVID-19 have gotten coverage through HealthCare.gov, as The Associated Press reported.
According to the Thursday report from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, 487,000 Americans took advantage of the special enrollment period on HealthCare.gov after losing their healthcare plans. The numbers mark a 46 percent increase from enrollments in April and May 2019, as The Washington Post reported.
If the health insurance requirement is invalidated, "then it necessarily follows that the rest of the ACA must also fall," Solicitor General Noel Francisco wrote Thursday, according to The Associated Press.
The administration has taken various stances on which parts of the ACA might be kept, replaced or discarded. However, The Associated Press noted that it has been always determined to overturn provisions that stop insurance companies from discriminating against people because of preexisting conditions.
Presidential candidate Joe Biden, who would like to see an expansion of the Affordable Care Act, pointed out that some COVID-19 survivors could lose their comprehensive healthcare coverage if the act was overturned.
"Those survivors, having struggled and won the fight of their lives, would have their peace of mind stolen away at the moment they need it most," Biden said, as The Washington Post reported. "They would live their lives caught in a vise between Donald Trump's twin legacies: his failure to protect the American people from the coronavirus, and his heartless crusade to take health-care protections away from American families."
The justices will not hear the case until next term, though it is unclear if they will hear them prior to the November election. It will be the third time the court has heard a significant challenge to the law. The case places a group of Democratic attorneys general led by California and the House of Representatives, which are defending the law, against the Trump administration and a group of red-state attorneys general led by Texas, as CNN reported.
"Now is not the time to rip away our best tool to address very real and very deadly health disparities in our communities," Attorney General Xavier Becerra of California said in a statement on Thursday, as The New York Times reported. "This fight comes at the most crucial time. The death toll from the coronavirus today is greater than the death toll of the Vietnam War."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi criticized the administration after the late-night filing.
"President Trump and the Republicans' campaign to rip away the protections and benefits of the Affordable Care Act in the middle of the coronavirus crisis is an act of unfathomable cruelty," she said in a statement Thursday, as CNN reported.
"If President Trump gets his way," she added, "130 million Americans with pre-existing conditions will lose the A.C.A.'s lifesaving protections and 23 million Americans will lose their health coverage entirely."
Around 250 healthcare justice activists and supporters rallied with speeches on the U.S. Capitol grounds to protest the impending Senate vote to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act on July 27, 2017 in Washington, DC. The ACA repeal would fail by a vote of 49-51. Republicans John McCain, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski joined with all of the Senate Democrats to defeat the measure, preserving Obamacare. Stephen Melkisethian / Flickr
- Trump Dismantles Environmental Protections Under Cover of ... ›
- 'This Will Be the Biggest Loss of Clean Water Protection the Country ... ›
- Trump Administration Buys up Nearly All the World's Supply of Coronavirus Drug Remdesivir - EcoWatch ›
- Millions of Americans Have Lost Health Insurance During COVID-19 - EcoWatch ›
- Redwoods are the world's tallest trees.
- Now scientists have discovered they are even bigger than we thought.
- Using laser technology they map the 80-meter giants.
- Trees are a key plank in the fight against climate change.
They are among the largest trees in the world, descendants of forests where dinosaurs roamed.
Pixabay / Simi Luft
<p><span>Until recently, measuring these trees meant scaling their 80 meter high trunks with a tape measure. Now, a team of scientists from University College London and the University of Maryland uses advanced laser scanning, to create 3D maps and calculate the total mass.</span></p><p>The results are striking: suggesting the trees <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">may be as much as 30% larger than earlier measurements suggested.</a> Part of that could be due to the additional trunks the Redwoods can grow as they age, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">a process known as reiteration</a>.</p>New 3D measurements of large redwood trees for biomass and structure. Nature / UCL
<p>Measuring the trees more accurately is important because carbon capture will probably play a key role in the battle against climate change. Forest <a href="https://www.wri.org/blog/2020/09/carbon-sequestration-natural-forest-regrowth" target="_blank">growth could absorb billions of tons</a> of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year.</p><p>"The importance of big trees is widely-recognised in terms of carbon storage, demographics and impact on their surrounding ecosystems," the authors wrote<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank"> in the journal Nature</a>. "Unfortunately the importance of big trees is in direct proportion to the difficulty of measuring them."</p><p>Redwoods are so long lived because of their ability to <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">cope with climate change, resist disease and even survive fire damage</a>, the scientists say. Almost a fifth of their volume may be bark, which helps protect them.</p>Carbon Capture Champions
<p><span>Earlier research by scientists at Humboldt University and the University of Washington found that </span><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378112716302584" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Redwood forests store almost 2,600 tonnes of carbon per hectare</a><span>, their bark alone containing more carbon than any other neighboring species.</span></p><p>While the importance of trees in fighting climate change is widely accepted, not all species enjoy the same protection as California's coastal Redwoods. In 2019 the world lost the equivalent of <a href="https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/deforestation-and-forest-degradation" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">30 soccer fields of forest cover every minute</a>, due to agricultural expansion, logging and fires, according to The Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF).</p>Pixabay
<p>Although <a href="https://c402277.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/publications/1420/files/original/Deforestation_fronts_-_drivers_and_responses_in_a_changing_world_-_full_report_%281%29.pdf?1610810475" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the rate of loss is reported to have slowed in recent years</a>, reforesting the world to help stem climate change is a massive task.</p><p><span>That's why the World Economic Forum launched the Trillion Trees Challenge (</span><a href="https://www.1t.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">1t.org</a><span>) and is engaging organizations and individuals across the globe through its </span><a href="https://uplink.weforum.org/uplink/s/uplink-issue/a002o00000vOf09AAC/trillion-trees" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Uplink innovation crowdsourcing platform</a><span> to support the project.</span></p><p>That's backed up by research led by ETH Zurich/Crowther Lab showing there's potential to restore tree coverage across 2.2 billion acres of degraded land.</p><p>"Forests are critical to the health of the planet," according to <a href="https://www.1t.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">1t.org</a>. "They sequester carbon, regulate global temperatures and freshwater flows, recharge groundwater, anchor fertile soil and act as flood barriers."</p><p><em data-redactor-tag="em" data-verified="redactor">Reposted with permission from the </em><span><em data-redactor-tag="em" data-verified="redactor"><a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/03/redwoods-store-more-co2-and-are-more-enormous-than-we-thought/" target="_blank">World Economic Forum</a>.</em></span></p>EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
- Offshore Wind Power Is Ready to Boom. Here's What That Means for ... ›
- American Skyscrapers Kill an Estimated 600 Million Migratory Birds ... ›
Trending
Kentucky is coping with historic flooding after a weekend of record-breaking rainfall, enduring water rescues, evacuations and emergency declarations.
<div id="0f31c" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="4290ab3e7ec4e142f8bce774bab39f03"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1366307788155219969" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">Just got back from my office... downtown Beattyville Kentucky is not a pretty sight. @KySportsRadio… https://t.co/6nXwyMKtRb</div> — Tom Jones (@Tom Jones)<a href="https://twitter.com/8atticus/statuses/1366307788155219969">1614588136.0</a></blockquote></div>
<div class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="b41a2da6bf23cc19a5f38c2dc6c5f9fc"><div class="fb-post" data-href="https://www.facebook.com/dekalbtnfire/photos/a.924258171004562/3713119618785056/"></div></div>
Spring is coming. And soon, tree swallows will start building nests. But as the climate changes, the birds are nesting earlier in the spring.
- Spring Is Arriving Earlier Across the U.S. - EcoWatch ›
- Climate Change Leading to Fatal Bird Conflicts - EcoWatch ›
- The Unsettling Reason Why We're Seeing More Snowy Owls ... ›
Citigroup will strive to reach net-zero greenhouse gas pollution across its lending portfolio by 2050 and in its own operations by 2030, the investment group announced Monday.
- 20 Attorneys General Launch Climate Fraud Investigation of Exxon ... ›
- Exxon Plans to Increase Its Climate Pollution - EcoWatch ›
- Exxon to Slash 14,000 Jobs Worldwide as Oil Demand Drops ... ›