Trump's Assault On The Constitution And Laws Intensifies

Two stories today to point to that demonstrate the willingness of would- be autocrat Donald "Rump" Trump and his party of hyenas to trample on the Constitution and on a law of the land (our emphasis throughout).

Congress "Has No Standing" To Investigate Trump

The White House’s top lawyer told the House Judiciary Committee chairman Wednesday that Congress has no right to a “do-over” of the special counsel’s investigation of President Trump and refused a broad demand for records and testimony from dozens of current and former White House staff.

White House Counsel Pat Cipollone’s letter to committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) constitutes a sweeping rejection — not just of Nadler’s request for White House records, but of Congress’s standing to investigate Trump for possible obstruction of justice. In his letter, Cipollone repeated a claim the White House and Trump’s business have begun making: that Congress is not a law enforcement body and does not have a legitimate purpose to investigate the questions it is pursuing. 

The Sabotage of the Affordable Care Act Continues

The Sunlight Foundation is a non-profit dedicated to keeping government transparent and accountable, and this report is part of its Web Integrity Project, which tracks government websites. This study has "documented 26 instances of ACA censorship—including excised words, removed links, altered paragraphs, and removed pages—on HHS websites." Furthermore, it reports, this "may represent only a small sample of the censorship that has occurred since President Trump took office." The censorship is widespread, with information that was intended for the general public, for prospective customers, for beneficiaries, and for providers and insurers all removed. That includes HHS having "surgically removed the term ‘Affordable Care Act’ from many webpages; taken down information on rights guaranteed under the ACA; eliminated statistics and data on the ACA's impact; and removed links to the federal government's main platform for enrolling in ACA coverage, HealthCare.gov."

The deletions, tracked with the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine on pages monitored by Sunlight, seem intended to make it much harder for people to find out about eligibility for ACA coverage, how to sign up, and what benefits are available. More troubling, Sunlight says, the information that has been systematically removed is particularly relevant to women and to people of color, as well as to LGBTQ people and people with mental illness—in other words, the most underserved communities, and those who've gained the most through Obamacare.

 As we and others are saying, the lights aren't flashing yellow any more; they're on red.

Reactionary Sabotage Round-up

The nihilists, thugs and sociopaths of the Trump regime and Republican Party are busy making sure you can't have nice things ... because Obama. Here's a brief, and not inclusive, summary (our emphasis throughout).

War On Women:

The Trump administration loosened Obama-era birth control requirements Friday, saying most providers of health insurance could refuse to pay for an employee’s birth control if the provider shows “sincerely held” religious or moral objections. [snip] 

“By taking away women’s access to no-cost birth control coverage, the rules give employers a license to discriminate against women,” said Fatima Goss Graves, president of the National Women’s Law Center. 

“This will leave countless women without the critical birth control coverage they need to protect their health and economic security. We will take immediate legal steps to block these unfair and discriminatory rules.

Obamacare Sabotage:

For months, officials in Republican-controlled Iowa had sought federal permission to revitalize their ailing health-insurance marketplace. Then President Trump read about the request in a newspaper story and called the federal director weighing the application. 

Trump’s message in late August was clear, according to individuals who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations: Tell Iowa no. [snip] 

And with the fifth enrollment season set to begin Nov. 1, advocates say the Health and Human Services Department has done more to suppress the number of people signing up than to boost it. HHS has slashed grants to groups that help consumers get insurance coverage, for example. It also has cut the enrollment period in half, reduced the advertising budget by 90 percent and announced an outage schedule that would make the HealthCare.gov website less available than last year. 

The White House also has yet to commit to funding the cost-sharing reductions that help about 7 million lower-income Americans afford out-of-pocket expenses on their ACA health plans. Trump has regularly threatened to block them and, according to an administration official who was not authorized to speak publicly, officials are considering action to end the payments in November. 

The uncertainty has driven premium prices much higher for 2018. A possible move by the Treasury Department to ease the requirement that most Americans obtain coverage could further erode a core element of the law.

Tax Cuts For Me, Medicare and Medicaid Cuts For Thee:

The House on Thursday passed a $4.1 trillion budget plan that promises deep cuts to social programs while paving the way for Republicans to rewrite the tax code later this year. 

The 2018 House GOP budget reprises a controversial plan to turn Medicare into a voucher-like program for future retirees as well as the party's efforts to repeal the "Obamacare" health law. Republicans controlling Congress have no plans to actually implement those cuts while they pursue their tax overhaul. [snip] 

The House measure, passed by a near party-line vote of 219-206, calls for more than $5 trillion in spending cuts over the coming decade, promising to slash Medicaid by about $1 trillion over the next 10 years, cutting other health care costs, and forcing huge cuts to domestic programs funded in future years by Congress. 

Stripping Away LGBT Protections:

In an order that undercuts protections for LGBT people, Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a sweeping directive to agencies Friday to do as much as possible to accommodate those who say their religious freedoms are being violated. 

The guidance, an attempt to deliver on President Donald Trump’s pledge to his evangelical and other religious supporters, effectively lifts a burden from religious objectors to prove that their beliefs about marriage or other topics are sincerely held. 

Under the new policy, a claim of a violation of religious freedom would be enough to override concerns for the civil rights of LGBT people and anti-discrimination protections for women and others. The guidelines are so sweeping that experts on religious liberty are calling them a legal powder-keg that could prompt wide-ranging lawsuits against the government. 

Decertifying the Iran Nuclear Deal:

President Trump is expected to announce next week that he will “decertify” the international nuclear deal with Iran, saying it is not in the national interest of the United States and kicking the issue to a reluctant Congress, people briefed on the White House strategy said Thursday. 

The move would mark the first step in a process that could eventually result in the resumption of U.S. sanctions against Iran, potentially derailing a deal limiting Iran’s nuclear activities reached in 2015 with the United States and five other nations. 

Moral: When you put dangerous, ugly people in power, you get dangerous, ugly results.