‘Obamacare’ likely to survive, high court arguments indicate
WASHINGTON — A more conservative Supreme Court appears unwilling to do what Republicans have long desired: kill off the Affordable Care Act, including its key protections for pre-existing health conditions and subsidized insurance premiums that affect tens of millions of Americans.
Meeting remotely a week after the election and in the midst of a pandemic that has closed their majestic courtroom, the justices on Tuesday took on the latest Republican challenge to the Obama-era health care law, with three appointees of President Donald Trump, an avowed foe of the law, among them.
But at least one of those Trump appointees, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, seemed likely to vote to leave the bulk of the law intact, even if he were to find the law’s now-toothless mandate that everyone obtain health insurance to be unconstitutional.
“It does seem fairly clear that the proper remedy would be to sever the mandate provision and leave the rest of the act in place,” Kavanaugh said.
Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote two earlier opinions preserving the law, stated similar views, and the court’s three liberal justices are almost certain to vote to uphold the law in its entirety. That presumably would form a majority by joining a decision to cut away only the mandate, which now has no financial penalty attached to it. Congress zeroed out the penalty in 2017, but left the rest of the law untouched.
Despite Trump’s claims, mail
voting ensured smooth election
ATLANTA — The 2020 presidential election had all the makings of a looming disaster: fears of Russian meddling, violence at the polls and voter intimidation, and poll workers fleeing their posts because of the coronavirus.
But aside from the long lines and minor technical glitches that happen every four years, the election unfolded smoothly. That’s due in large part to 107 million voters — more than two-thirds of the electorate — casting ballots ahead of time and taking pressure off Election Day operations.
The relatively trouble-free weeks of mail and early, in-person voting and Election Day balloting stand in stark contrast to the unsubstantiated claims of fraud now being leveled by President Donald Trump and his allies after the results made it clear that he lost his bid for another term.
“The 2020 general election was one of the smoothest and most well-run elections that we have ever seen, and that is remarkable considering all the challenges,” said Ben Hovland, a Democrat appointed by Trump to serve on the Election Assistance Commission, which works closely with officials on election administration.
And the turnout was historic, with experts predicting that the 2020 rate could hit heights not seen since the beginning of the 20th century, before all women were allowed to vote.
From wire sources
False claims of voting fraud, pushed by Trump, thrive online
It started months before Election Day with false claims on Facebook and Twitter that mail-in ballots cast for President Donald Trump had been chucked in dumpsters or rivers.
Now, a week after the final polls closed, falsehoods about dead people voting and ballots being thrown out by poll workers are still thriving on social media, reaching an audience of millions. Trump and his supporters are pointing to those debunked claims on social media as reason to not accept that Democrat Joe Biden won the election.
“These will probably persist for years or even decades unfortunately,” Kate Starbird, a University of Washington professor and online misinformation expert, said of the false claims about the U.S. election process. “People are very motivated to both participate in them and believe them.”
There is no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election. In fact, voting officials from both political parties have stated publicly that the election went well and international observers confirmed there were no serious irregularities.
The issues raised by Trump’s campaign and his allies are typical in every election: problems with signatures, secrecy envelopes and postal marks on mail-in ballots, as well as the potential for a small number of ballots miscast or lost. With Biden leading Trump by substantial margins in key battleground states, none of those issues would have any impact on the outcome of the election. Many of the legal challenges brought by Trump’s campaign have been tossed out by judges, some within hours of their filing.
Vatican report reveals anonymous letters accusing McCarrick
The Vatican’s report on ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick revealed the previously unknown contents of six anonymous letters accusing him of pedophilia that were sent to U.S. church leaders in the early 1990s and later forwarded to the Holy See.
New York’s then-archbishop, Cardinal John O’Connor, forwarded them to the Vatican in 1999, shortly before he died, along with a six-page confidential memo in which he recommended McCarrick not be promoted to any important U.S. diocese because of a “scandal of great proportions” that would erupt if the allegations became public.
The 449-page report also included testimony from a woman identified only as “Mother 1” who told Vatican investigators she, too, tried to raise the alarm with anonymous letters in the 1980s when McCarrick was bishop in Metuchen, New Jersey, after she saw McCarrick “massaging (her sons’) inner thighs” at her home.
The woman said she sent the letters to members of the ecclesiastical hierarchy “expressing her distress about McCarrick’s conduct with minors,” and she believed they “may have been thrown aside” because they were anonymous.
Jeff Anderson, an attorney for several of McCarrick’s accusers, said at a news conference Tuesday that he also represents two people in the woman’s family and criticized the church for turning a blind eye to the warning.
Lawyer: Britney Spears fears father, wants him out of career
LOS ANGELES — Britney Spears fears her father and will not resume her career so long as he has power over it, her attorney said in court Tuesday.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Brenda Penny declined to suspend James Spears from his central role in the court conservatorship that has controlled his daughter’s life and career for 12 years as Britney Spears’ attorney Samuel D. Ingham III requested at the contentious hearing. But the judge said she would consider future petitions for his suspension or outright removal, which Ingham plans to file.
“My client has informed me that she is afraid of her father,” Ingham told the judge. “She will not perform again if her father is in charge of her career.”
The pop star has been on an indefinite work hiatus since early 2019.
James Spears’ attorney, Vivian Lee Thoreen, defended what she said was his perfect record in his run as her conservator, which has seen her net worth go from in debt to well over $60 million.
