⚠️⚠️⚠️ HERE WE GO AGAIN: The fate of the #ACA & healthcare coverage for 30 million people (and healthcare protections for everyone else) could be decided...THIS MORNING: acasignups.net/21/05/31/here-…
NOTE: I plan on live-tweeting this morning's SCOTUS announcements (well, technically I'll be parroting @SCOTUSblog's live-tweets) which start at 10am, but I have to leave for an appointment at around 10:30am, so if they end up issuing more than 2-3 opinions I'll have to cut out.
As many people have noted, SCOTUS didn't issue the last 2 major #ACA decisions until the end of June (June 28th for NFIB v. Sebelius, June 25th for King v. Burwell), so there's a *very* good chance they'll wait until then for the #TexasFoldEm case as well...but who knows?
🔥 OK, here we go...apparently there's 26 SCOTUS opinions left to announce this session, which I believe ends on June 30th. Will the #ACA case be among those announced today? Stay tuned...the opinions come out every 10 minutes starting at 10:00am...
FIRST OPINION...is "Garland v. Ming Dai"
This is NOT the #ACA case.
It's a unanimous decision.
via @SCOTUSblog: "The case involves the Ninth Circuit's rule providing that in the absence of an explicit adverse credibility determination by an immigration judge or the Board of Immigration Appeals, a reviewing court must treat a non-citizen's testimony as credible and true."
There's no "R number" which apparently means there are still more opinions to be issued this morning.
Again, once we hit 10:30 I have to cut out...ironically because I have a medical appointment at 11am...
While we wait for the 2nd opinion of the morning, here's a PARTIAL list of what would happen if the Supreme Court were to strike down the entire #ACA (or nearly all of it):
SECOND OPINION OF THE DAY: "United States vs. Cooley"
There have been so many false alarms from SCOTUS re. announcing their #TexasFoldEm#ACA lawsuit decision that I’m not even linking to my explainer this time. But...yeah, they’re supposed to announce more opinions tomorrow morning.
There’s apparently 24 more cases to decide on in the next 28 days, so theoretically they could announce like 1-2 per day and still hold off until June 30th for the ACA case.
For those wondering about the timeline in a worst-case scenario, it’s not pretty. This is from last fall: acasignups.net/21/02/19/if-ac…
📣 VIRGINIA: OK, does someone more familiar with Virginia demographics/politics want to take a look at this for me? VA doesn't seem to make ANY sense...not only is there no obvious partisan pattern, but there's no pattern along population size either: acasignups.net/21/06/02/virgi…
Virginia's data is missing for 9 counties, but all of them are pretty small and they range across the partisan spectrum so I don't think that explains it. There's also an unusually high % of "county unknown" but it's not THAT high (9.6%).
Possible data error?
OK this has GOT to be a data error...according to the CDC data, there's like 30 counties in Virginia which haven't even broken 10% fully vaxxed yet. I can't fathom that.
Have any think pieces been written about the ethical implications of Aquaman forcing dolphins to do his bidding? When the Giant Eagles were sent in by Gandalf to rescue Frodo & Sam, they only did so because they *agreed* to do so.
As an aside, that also answers the question of "Why didn't they just have the eagles fly the entire Fellowship to Mordor in the first place?"
It was an incredibly dangerous journey and they would've been sitting ducks...er, eagles.
They only agreed to swoop in for a couple of quick rescue missions (Gandalf, then later Frodo/Sam)...in & out, they wouldn't get bogged down in combat, etc.
.@SenatorSinema prior to slavery being outlawed: "I agree that human rights aren't working well. But the way to fix that is to fix slaveholder's behavior, not to change the rules."
The ENTIRE FUNCTION OF THE LEGISLATIVE BRANCH OF GOVERNMENT is SPECIFICALLY to "change the rules" (i.e., pass legislation) in order to "change people's behavior."
It's LITERALLY PART OF HER JOB.
Otherwise what's the point of ANY law??
"There's been a lot of murders lately! Perhaps we should outlaw it?"
@SenatorSinema: "Nah...we just need to change people's behavior so they don't murder people."
There’s several types of non-ACA plans available on the individual market. Some are worse than others but none of them include most ACA protections:
—“short-term plans”
—“association plans”
—“grandfathered plans”
—“grandmothered (transitional) plans”
—“farm bureau plans”
...oh, and “sharing ministry” plans, where you have to sign a pledge to live your life by a moral code (or at least you used to).
Some of each of these types of plans have a long history of fraud and scammyness...and in most cases there’s not much regulators can do.