DEMS TAKE THE HOUSE, TAKE ON DEFENSE OF OBAMACARE | Private Conference At SCOTUS Today | Hot New Book Review
January 4, 2019
ARE YOU READY FOR IT
|In the first hours of the Democrats taking control of the House of Representatives yesterday, Dems filed a motion to intervene in an ongoing lawsuit that threatens to bring down the Affordable Care Act. DONALD VERRILLI, who previously defended the law as OBAMA’S solicitor general, is now on the brief representing the House. Ariane de Vogue and Tami Luhby with CNN report.
LET'S GIVE 'EM SOMETHING TO TALK ABOUT
|Democrats won the House on Obamacare, and now they’re stopping at nothing to defend it. Adam Cancryn and Alice Miranda Ollstein with POLITICO explain how Democrats plan to aggressively save the Affordable Care Act from continued conservative attacks against it. “The House Democrats started their very first day in power with a vote to jump into a court battle defending the Affordable Care Act as part of their broad rules package. To ratchet up pressure on Republicans who campaigned on promises to keep the popular health care protections, they’ll vote again next week on a similar stand-alone measure — authorizing the House’s own general counsel to intervene alongside the Democratic states that Thursday filed an appeal of the ruling that would kill Obamacare.”
ALWAYS BETTER WHEN WE'RE TOGETHER
|Sarah Kliff with Vox also reports on the fight to defend Obamacare, noting 17 attorneys general are appealing the recent federal decision overturning the law. This coalition, led by California’s XAVIER BECERRA, is stepping in because the Trump administration will not. “Not one state that is defending the Affordable Care Act was an original party to this litigation,” Becerra told reporters. “We didn’t believe the federal government would adequately defend the law in court. And I think we’ve been proven right.”
PASSING THE BUCK
|“The U.S. Supreme Court’s ‘Tenth Justice’ isn’t making it easy for the real justices to fill out their docket, contributing to what may turn out to be another low number of cases for a full term.” That’s Kimberly Robinson with Bloomberg Law reporting on today’s private conference and the solicitor general’s recommendation that justices pass on all cases he was asked to weigh in on.
BRING IT ON
|Greg Stohr with Bloomberg also reports on today’s SCOTUS conference and notes that many of the cases before justices today “test PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP’S top priorities, and his administration’s aggressive efforts to get those policies before the high court.”
HOT NEW BOOK REVIEW
|In The Washington Post, Garrett Epps reviews an exciting new book, “JOHN MARSHALL: The Man Who Made The Supreme Court.” Epps starts his review with a big swing and writes, “To call John Marshall the Babe Ruth of American constitutional law is an understatement. He didn’t just master the game, he made it up. In his new biography of Marshall, Richard Brookhiser summarizes the chief justice’s triumph thus: ‘He gave the office what its first occupant, John Jay, had complained it lacked: dignity’ and ‘instilled his dignity into his Court.'”