In a dramatic break from a long-standing norm of defending federal laws, Attorney General Jeff Session has announced that the Department of Justice will not defend the Affordable Care Act in a lawsuit filed in Texas by 20 Republican-governed states. The lawsuit seeks to declare all of ACA [aka “Obamacare”] unconstitutional and, therefore, invalid. In other words, the Trump administration is attempting to do in the courts what Republicans in Congress failed to do in 2017.

The decision was approved by [if not ordered by] Donald Trump, said Sessions, in the opening paragraphs of a three-page letter he sent to the court. [For what it’s worth—meaning not much—Trump is on the record as promising to protect coverage for pre-existing health conditions—one of the most popular aspects of the ACA. If the court invalidates the ACA, with Trump’s support, those protections would be gone. An estimated 130 million adults under the age of 65 in the U.S. have a pre-existing health condition.]

The Washington Post calls the lawsuit and the Department of Justice’s position in favor of it…

…a bold swipe at the ACA, a Republican whipping post since its 2010 passage…[the lawsuit] does not immediately affect any of its provision. But it puts the law on far more wobbly legal footing in the case, which is being heard by a GOP-appointed judge who has in other recent cases ruled against more minor aspects

In a telling twist, three career DOJ lawyers quit shortly before Sessions submitted his brief. According to AP, they were replaced with political appointees.

Defense of the law now falls to Attorneys General from 16 other states. In a press release issued yesterday upon the filing of the states’ brief in opposition, Attorney General Xavier Becerra of California said of the lawsuit,

The lawsuit initiated by Texas is dangerous and reckless and would destroy the ACA as we know it. It would leave millions of Americans without access to affordable, quality healthcare. It is irresponsible and puts politics ahead of working families. We won’t sit back as Texas and others try yet again to dismantle our healthcare system. Our coalition of states and partners across the country will fight any effort to strip families of their health insurance.”

It’s anyone’s guess as to whether this latest assault will be approved by a judge. Some legal scholars have called the arguments “ludicrous.” [Also ludicrous would be any attempt by me—a non-lawyer—to explain why they describe it that way. For an actual explanation, please check out this link. ]

So, the fight to preserve a good idea—ACA—that is very popular and has benefited millions of Americans—is not over. In their vindictive battle against all things Obama, Republicans are using every ploy they can conceive of to take away access to health care from the 11.2 million people who have enrolled for 2018.  [That  figure was slightly lower than in 2017, but it was seen by ACA advocates as “robust,” because so many people signed up, despite the Trump administration doing everything it could depress enrollment by making it more difficult.]

Unfortunately, this assault is too easily buried under the daily deluge of shiny- object distractions flashed by the Trump Administration, and by the tsunami of revelations about corruption that dominate the daily news cycle. We need to stay vigilant.

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When you think of James Comey and dinner, his January 27 solo soiree with Donald Trump is what probably comes to mind. And we know that he came away from it feeling uncomfortable, being alone with Donald Trump. When you think about it, who wouldn’t?

One of the things that I like about Comey, and something that gives him considerable credibility, is that that he seems to be a very good “creep detector.”

Fast forward to Comey’s personal life. He is the father of five children. Now, imagine him asking one of his children to invite his or her new significant other to the house for dinner. If you’re that significant other, you might think that it would be really scary to meet with the former director of the F.B.I. That’s the down side of it.

But if you’re one of Comey’s kids, it has to be a terrific reality check. Because one thing that we’ve learned from Comey with his recent testimony before Congressional committees is that he is an incredible judge of character. So, if you bring your friend to dinner at the Comey’s and afterwards you ask dad what he thinks of the friend, you’ll probably get an answer that is worth listening to.

All of this is to say that Comey is a true foil to Donald Trump and many of those in his administration. The pathology of Trump is well documented. Sometimes we get inured to it. But it’s not just him. It’s so many of his associates – Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, Betsy DeVos, Rick Perry, and Corey Lewandowski. But near the top of this list has to be Jeff Sessions.

Sessions is not just the prototypical politician from the old Confederacy who is morally challenged with issues of race, human rights and economic rights. He seems to have fundamental problems with logic and clear thinking, as witnessed by his confirmation testimony under questioning from Al Franken.

If you’re Comey and you’re in the middle of a world with Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions, you have to rely on yourself and those who you know and trust to try to make sense out of what is weird and bizarre. His testimony clearly reveals that was his modus operandi.

Our nation is very fortunate to have had the likes of James Comey and Sally Yates as holdovers from the Obama Administration. Where would we be now if they had not been in office to put the brakes on this fast and furious and unguided administration.

We can talk about legalisms until the cows come home. But the bottom line is that the first requisite for someone in public office may be to have a solid connection with reality. We can be thankful for the one hundred nine days of Comey in the Trump Administration as well as the ten days of Sally Yates. It’s a badge of honor to be fired by Trump.

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For starters, Sessions has a troubling history of racial insensitivity—a history that prevented him from being confirmed for a federal judgeship in 1986.

Specifically, according to Reuters:

The Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony during hearings, in March and May 1986, that Sessions had made racist remarks and called the NAACP and ACLU “un-American.” [Read the Washington Post’s fact-check of these allegations here.]

Thomas Figures, a black assistant US attorney who worked for Sessions, testified that Sessions called him “boy” on multiple occasions and joked about the Ku Klux Klan, saying that he thought Klan members were “OK, until he learned that they smoked marijuana.”

More recently, writing on behalf of 200 campaign groups, the Leadership Conference on Human Rights said, with regard to Sessions’ nomination for Attorney General in the Trump administration:

 Senator Sessions has a 30-year record of racial insensitivity, bias against immigrants, disregard for the rule of law and hostility to the protection of civil rights that makes him unfit to serve as the attorney general of the United States.

In addition, the Southern Poverty Law Center recently issued this statement:

We cannot support his nomination to be the country’s next attorney general. Senator Sessions not only has been a leading opponent of sensible, comprehensive immigration reform, he has associated with anti-immigrant groups we consider to be deeply racist, including the Federation for American Immigration Reform and the Center for Security Policy. If our country is to move forward, we must put all forms of racism behind us.

And if all of that history isn’t reason enough for Rice to at least abstain from speaking out for Sessions, consider this:

Condoleeza Rice was 8 years old when, in her hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, an infamous church bombing killed four young girls, one of whom was a friend of hers. In an article published in 2013, Rice recalled that the bombing was life-changing for her, destroying her sense of safety and security.

One outcome of the bombing was the deaths of four young girls at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan members “garnered national support for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”

The Civil Rights Act of 1964, in turn, led to passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. And Senator Sessions has a very poor record with regard to voting rights.

According to Huffington Post,

Sessions has called the Voting Rights Act “a piece of intrusive legislation” and applauded the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision to gut the law’s key Section 5. As the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Alabama in the 1980s, he led a failed prosecution of three civil rights activists who conducted a voter registration drive.

The Voting Rights Act is “one of the country’s most critical pieces of civil and voting rights legislation,” said Common Cause President Karen Hobert Flynn, yet Sessions would put it on the “chopping block.”

“His past statements and actions indicate that if confirmed as attorney general he would fail to fully uphold the Voting Rights Act as it stands today,”

And that’s why I’m shocked. Apparently, Condoleezza Rice has decided that it’s more important to be a loyal, fall-in-line Republican and support Sessions than it is to stand up for what’s right, or be true to her own history.

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