Obamacare Repeal and Transgender Military Ban : President Trump Is Leading but Some Republicans are not Following

BREAKING NEWS. On Wednesday, President Trump tweeted that the US government will not allow transgender individuals “to serve in any capacity in the U.S. military.” In a series of tweets, he wrote : "After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow...Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming...victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you." • The President’s tweets came a few weeks after Defense Secretary James Mattis said he would give military chiefs another six months to conduct a review to determine if allowing transgender individuals to enlist in the armed services will affect the “readiness or lethality” of the force. The deadline for that review was December 1, 2017. Transgender service members have been able to serve openly in the military since last year, when former Defense Secretary Ash Carter ended the ban. It was not immediately known how Trump’s ban would affect transgender troops already openly serving in the military. • How President Trump's shift in policy will survive court challenges is hard to see, given the status of US law concerning non-discrimination. But, there are two arguments working in President Trump's favor -- first, "transgender" -- or specifically the LGBT community -- is generally thought not to be covered by the Title VII requirement of non-discrimination because of "sex," and that argument could be extended to other areas of non-discrimination because of "sex"; and, second, the military is a particular institution that has sometimes been relieved of the burdens of non-discrimination placed on the civilian population, and as an institution uniquely bound to the President as Commander-in-Chief, it may be able to convince courts that the ban is vital for national defense reasons. • • • THE SESSIONS DOJ SET TO TAKE A POSITION. The Washington Blade, an outlet that reports on LGBT issues, published an article on Wednesday stating that "the US Justice Department under US Attorney General Jeff Sessions is set to file a brief undermining efforts to ensure LGBT people are protected from discrimination under current federal civil rights law, according to two outside sources familiar with the effort." The Blade goes on to say : "Although LGBT groups -- and a growing number of courts -- are taking the view the prohibition on sex discrimination in employment under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 also bars discrimination against LGBT people, sources say the Justice Department will file a brief in an employment discrimination case before the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals opposing that view." James Esseks, director of ACLU’s LGBT and HIV Project, told the Blade that the Trump administration filing such a brief would be going out of its way to undermine LGBT rights : “But fortunately whether the Civil Rights Act protects LGBT people is ultimately a question for the courts to resolve, and not for the Attorney General. We are confident that the courts will come to the right decision here.” • The case in which the DOJ is filing a brief is not related to transgenders but to a gay man. The case is Zarda v. Altitude Express, and the plaintiff is the estate of deceased New York skydiver, which alleges he was fired from his job in 2010 for being gay. A three-judge panel of the Second Circuit determined Title VII doesn’t prohibit anti-gay discrimination, and therefore doesn’t apply to Zarda’s case, but the court, at the request of Lambda Legal, an LGBT legal group, has agreed to reconsider the ruling “en banc,” before the full court. • Before the deadline on Wednesday, sources have told the Blade that the Justice Department intends to file a friend-of-the-court "amicus" brief that would affirm the view of the three-judge panel and argue that the prohibition of sex discrimination under Title VII doesn’t prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Additionally, according to the Blade, "sources say DOJ is going to take the opportunity to argue Title VII also doesn’t prohibit discrimination based on gender identity -- even though transgender discrimination isn’t at issue in the case. Such a brief would reverse a position under former US Attorney Eric Holder asserting discrimination on the basis of gender identity is prohibited under Title VII. In a 2014 memo, Holder wrote the Justice Department will no longer assert Title VII’s prohibition on gender discrimination “does not encompass gender identity per se (including transgender discrimination).” Although the Justice Department under the Obama administration never took an official view on whether sexual orientation discrimination is prohibited under Title VII, the Blade says that "a brief arguing against the position that LGBT people are protected under Title VII would effectively turn a Justice Department that once argued for protections for LGBT people into an institution that seeks to undermine them." The Blade argued in its article that four federal appellate courts -- the First, Sixth, Ninth and Eleventh circuit courts of appeals -- have determined employment discrimination against transgender people is barred under the law. Although case law that has determined Title VII bars workplace discrimination against lesbian, gay and bisexual people is less developed, some courts are reconsidering decisions made in past decades against protections based on sexual orientation. The Seventh Circuit determined earlier this year...that sexual orientation discrimination constitutes sex discrimination under Title VII, but the Eleventh Circuit came to the opposite view." • According to the Blade, Lambda Legal is preparing to submit a petition before the US Supreme Court seeking a nationwide affirmation that anti-gay workplace discrimination is barred under current law. Lambda Legal will apparently argue that the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the US agency that enforces federal employment non-discrimination law, determined in administrative cases that transgender people are protected under Title VII in its 2012 ruling in Macy v. Holder and lesbian, gay and bisexual people are protected under the law in its 2015 decision in Baldwin v. Foxx. • President Trump's statement on Wednesday was particularly timely -- a sign that the White House and the Sessions DOJ are in fact talking to each other -- coming on the morning of the day when the DOJ is expected to file a brief in federal court supporting the position that Title VII does not include protection from non-discrimination in employment for the LGBT community. While the Justice Department brief would apparently be restricted to an interpretation of law related to employment, it could have broader implications for other federal laws barring sex discrimination in areas such as housing and education. And, according to the Blade : "although the Justice Department and the Education Department agreed to revoke Obama-era guidance assuring transgender kids access to the restroom consistent with their gender identity under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the Education Department issued a memo declaring the administration may take up complaints filed by transgender students [concerning] incidents of sex discrimination outside of the bathroom issue." • Will the DOJ mention the Department of Defense and military "employment" of transgender people, i.e., those claiming a sexual preference different than their birth sex, in its amicus brief on Wednesday? • • • IN OTHER NEWS -- HEALTHCARE. • We all know who baby Charlie Gard is. The little tyke, soon to have his first birthday, and soon to be dead, after the British nationalized healthcare system (the NIH), its hopsital and doctors, and the British and European courts decided in effect that little Charlie is not worth trying to save. It was a battle of two young parents who just wanted to try to make their baby's condition a little better and give him a chance at life up against a system that is short on resources and constrained to make 'death' decisions based not on caregiving but on money. • America tried to help -- An American doctor who is an expert in Charlie's genetic disease went to the UK,examined Charlie,and told the doctors in London he could improve Charlie's condition; Congress passed special legislation giving the family permanent residency in the US for as long as Charlie needed care; the US doctor and his hospital as a last resort even said they would send the needed drugs to the London hospital and explain how to use them to help Charlie. The answer was "No" -- no intervention, no effort to save Charlie, no solution of the British NIH but to pull the plug and let Charlie die. • That is what American Progressive Democrats want for Americans -- 'death' decisions from a one-payer government-controlled nationalized health care system that decides who lives and who dies. That is not an exaggeration. I know British people who wait for months simply to get the diagnostic process started, even when their doctor is sure they have some form of cancer. There is an age limit on dialysis. There is refusal to prescribe too expensive life-saving drugs. British who can afford it buy private insurance to cover what the UK's NIH does not, do so in order to get immediate treatment in emergencies. Do not believe ANYBODY who tells you that government-run medicine works. It does not. In France nad Italy, and even in Germany, there are rules about who gets what treatment. There is in many countries a year-long wait to get something as simple as lazer cataract removal. Nationalized healthcare is a soulless behemoth that decides based on a financial bottom line and regulations who gets care and who doesn't. • Any US Democrat or Republican member of Congress who is on the side of Obamacare should be run out of office as fast as the next election. That includes Senator John McCain, who feels free to support Obamacare II while he is getting top of the line treatment because of his cushy medical coverage paid for by US taxpayers who cannot even afford to go to a doctor under Obamacare. • The Charlie Gard case is simply unprosecutable murder carried out by a socialist state that objects to little babies with severe health problems becoming a financial drag on a stretched nationalized healthcare system. DO NOT LET IT HAPPEN IN AMERICA. Your life could literally depend on fighting off the Progressive goal of one-payer government-run nationalied healthcare. If your House member or Senator is not on the side of VP Pence and President Trump, elect somebody who is. • • • THE FAKE GOP SENATORS. American Thinker asked a vitally important question last week -- "Do Republicans who would undermine constitutional process by vetoing the election of President Trump disagree with Vice President Pence's assertion on July 18 : 'Obamacare has failed and Obamacare must go.' " Vice President Pence went on to say : "Every day Obamacare survives is another day the American economy and American families struggle...When Obamacare passed, we were promised that families would save up to $2,500 in premiums every year, but the average Obamacare plan today costs nearly $3,000 more than a plan did in 2013. While premiums are soaring, choices are plummeting. Next year, nearly 40% of Americans counties, including nine entire states, will have only one choice of a health insurance provider -- meaning they'll have essentially no choice at all." • Fox News and AP reported Tuesday on the Senate vote Monday that blocked a wide-ranging proposal by Republicans to repeal much of former President Barack Obama’s healthcare law and replace it with a more restrictive plan. The amendment vote, says Fox, portends a rough road ahead for GOP efforts to advance some form of ObamaCare replacement, even after the Senate narrowly revived the core bill in a dramatic test vote Tuesday afternoon. Senators voted 57-43 late Tuesday to reject the plan in the first vote on an amendment to the bill. Those voting “no” included nine defecting Republicans -- Senators Susan Collins, Bob Corker, Tom Cotton, Lindsey Graham, Dean Heller, Mike Lee, Jerry Moran, Lisa Murkowski and Rand Paul. The rejected amendment was centered on language by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, erasing Obama's tax penalties on people not buying insurance, cutting Medicaid and trimming its subsidies for consumers. Senators still plan to vote on another Republican amendment repealing much of Obamacare and giving Congress two years to come up with a replacement. A combination of solid Democratic opposition and Republicans unwilling to tear down the law without a replacement in hand were expected to defeat that plan as well. President Trump on Tuesday warned four opponents to ObamaCare repeal legislation -- two of them Republicans. "Any Senator who votes against repeal and replace...they'll have a lot of problems," Trump said during a speech in Youngstown, Ohio. • • • ARE REPUBLICANS SIMPLY TRYING TO REFORM OBAMACARE? American Thinker gives a full history of the GOP Obamacare debacle. In 2013, House Republicans thought about issuing two separate bills -- one funding the government, and a separate bill to defund Obamacare. This was the path of GOP “compromise.” But, it really was turned out to be little more than capitulation. The Senate, then with a Democrat majority under Harry Reid, could simply pass the bill funding government in its entirety, and ignore the bill to defund Obamacare. Some conservative House members devised a different approach -- providing a single bill that provided a stopgap allowance to continue funding the government with the exception of Obamacare. House Speaker John Boehner opted for it, saying that Obamacare was “a train wreck. It’s time to start protecting families from this unworkable law.” So, the House bill passed, and it went to the Senate. Ted Cruz famously filibustered for over 20 hours to protest the Senate Democrats’ insistence upon passing a “clean bill” which continued funding Obamacare. Cruz's allies included Jeff Sessions, Mike Lee, Rand Paul, and David Vitter. However, turncoat Republican Senators John Cornyn and Mitch McConnell undermined Cruz’s efforts by rallying Republicans against him. Knowing that the Senate wouldn’t have the 60 votes to pass a “clean bill,” Cornyn and McConnell pushed for and voted for a cloture vote to allow a gutting of the House bill with 51 votes. They then voted against funding Obamacare, but only after it had become a meaningless show vote. Then, 2014 was another landslide victory for the GOP -- giving it the largest majority in Congress and state legislatures since 1928. So, in 2015, Republicans passed a bill to repeal Obamacare. President Obama vetoed the bill in January of 2016, and Republicans did not have the votes to override the veto. Later in 2016, Democrats lost the presidency to candidate Donald Trump, who railed against Obamacare during the campaign. • The American people, after nearly seven long years of struggle which led to a complete reversal in the balance of power at the federal level, had created the circumstances necessary to eliminate the ever-unpopular Obamacare once and for all, relegating it the annals of history as a failed socialist experiment. Republicans had "proven" that they are driven to repeal Obamacare at all costs. • But, once in power, Republicans didn’t try to repeal Obamacare at all. They tried to “reform” Obamacare. Daniel Henninger at The Wall Street Journal characterizes the recent efforts of Congress as the Republican “Obamacare reform failure.” American Thinker says it has become very clear that "Republicans’ outward desire to 'repeal' Obamacare had become Republicans’ outward desire to 'reform' Obamacare once they had attained the power to repeal it outright. That is what 'repeal and replace' means. It may sound better to the Republican faithful to 'repeal and replace' rather than 'reforming' the big-government, liberty-strangling monstrosity that is Obamacare, but there is little difference when you’re trading one federal law regulating our healthcare system for another that features an awful lot of the same regulatory strictures on private industry, rather than eliminating the federal regulations which Obamacare introduced altogether." • Henninger writes that, though Republicans had become “self-identifiably conservative” in recent years, we’ve just learned that they’re “not as conservative as they think they are.” American Thinker doesn't believe that Republicans, particularly of the Washington establishment variety, ever thought of themselves as conservatives. More likely, "they knowingly feigned conservative positions in order to get elected. And they could wear the conservative mask easily when it came to Obamacare, because none of their efforts in the past could ever actually repeal it. When Boehner championed defunding Obamacare in 2013, he knew it would never end Obamacare. It was a way to express conservative bona fides on the cheap, pandering to the conservative base, leaving now-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (who’s leading the effort to 'repeal' Obamacare in the Senate) to do the dirty work of quietly sabotaging the effort. Similarly, in 2015, Republicans in Congress knew that Obama would veto their bill to repeal, and that they wouldn’t have the votes to override the veto." • Why is the GOP majority of both houses of Congress not sending that same repeal bill from 2015 to President Trump’s desk, knowing that he would sign it? American Thinker says it is because most of the GOP majority in Congress wants reform, not repeal. Republicans can still win this -- against all odds, the American people have put the pieces in place necessary to repeal Obamacare outright. Republicans who vote against a pure repeal will surely be defeated as quickly as House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia, who spectacularly lost the Republican primary as a result of his pro-amnesty position in 2014. And, if Republicans do not repeal Obamacare, they will own whatever happens to Americans because of the existence of Obamacare. • • • IS THE TEA PARTY GEARING UP TO DO BATTLE? The Washington Post wrote last week that conservatives are furious and plotting revenge for the GOP failure to repeal Obamacare. They are furious that Senate Republicans got close to repealing big parts of Obamacare and are now on the verge of walking away from the effort altogether, possibly leaving President Obama’s healthcare law on the books for the foreseeable future. The WP says : "No issue motivated conservative activists more over the past seven years than repealing Obamacare, with groups on the right expending huge dollars and resources to get Republicans elected across two branches of government so they could finally pass a repeal bill. Their path seemed clear. First, the GOP took the House in 2010. Four years later, Republicans seized the Senate majority. And then in November, when President Trump unexpectedly won, conservatives thought victory was theirs. Just about every Republican who won a national election since the ACA was passed had promised to repeal it as part of their platform." • Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder and national coordinator of the Tea Party Patriots, stated on a call with the press : “If there is a single unifying issue in the Tea Party movement, it is the desire to repeal Obamacare." But, Martin and the Tea Party can easily see that nothing is working out as promised to them by the GOP congressional classes of 2010 and later. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has got his vote to start debate on a repeal bill. But, unless Senators can hash out an agreement on how to treat Medicaid spending -- as they have tried to do since January -- it will likely fail. • Breitbart reports that while the Senate GOP battles with its renegade members, in the House, Representative Tom Garrett, a Virginia Republican, along with a dozen Freedom Caucus members, has announced his intent to file a discharge petition that would put a clean repeal of Obamacare before the House. The House Freedom Caucus repeatedly argued that the best path to repealing Obamacare revolves around a simple repeal of Obamacare and then replacing the Affordable Care Act with a free-market alternative. Congress passed a clean repeal bill of Obamacare in 2015 only to have it vetoed by President Obama. Representative Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican and former chairman of the Freedom Caucus, reintroduced the same clean repeal bill in 2017. However, Congress has not taken up that legislation. But, Representative Garrett has said his discharge petition would put that clean Obamacare repeal bill before the House. Garrett said : “I commend both the President and Republican leadership for working to replace the monstrosity that is Obamacare. However, we have seen discussions for replacement continue to stall and we must change our approach to reforming healthcare.” The Virginia congressman concluded : “The House should lead with an incremental approach by supporting a clean-repeal bill and then enter into replacement negotiations. As such, I just initiated a seldom-used parliamentary procedure to advance H.R. 1436 through a discharge petition. The overwhelming majority of my Republican colleagues cast their vote in support of this legislation in 2015, and I have faith they will do nothing short of that now.” • • • DEAR READERS, as baby Charlie Gard lies dying and many Americans cannot afford to visit a doctor, we have practical evidence of the catastrophe that one-payer nationalized medicine is for everyone. • Affordability is the key issue for any healthcare system. American families today with an income of even $100,000 can’t afford their premiums and deductibles. If a major medical problem crops up, the not-unusual $5,000 or more deductible means that the family must find that money just to get into the hospital or specialist's office, after paying perhaps $25,000 a year in premiums. That is not Affordable. It is not Reasonable. It is not Healthcare. It is government mirrors and taxes meant to hide the fact that it cannot manage the American healthcare system after putting in place an Affordable Care Act whose title is an insult to every US citizen. Healthcare must be made affordable. If this cannot be done, then the entire system collapses. And, affordability does not mean that US taxpayers come to the rescue. Affordability means private sector competition, cheaper drugs, and innovative, cheaper technology. And, with affordability will come fairness. No American wants any fellow-citizen to suffer because of a lack of medical care. Americans have always supported a safety net that protects those Americans unable to protect themselves. Accessiblity to healthcare is a key moral issue for all of us. But, fairness can only exist within a healthcare system that is affordable -- HHS Secretary Tom Price said on CNBC Wednesday morning that President Trump and his administration want healthcare to be available on an affordable basis to everyone, with nobody left out, in a system that empowers patients and their doctors and providers to make the decisions, not the federal government. In a system like that, the moral character of American society will shine through. But, do not expect Americans to pay for others to have subsidized healthcare when they themselves cannot afford it. That is the world turned on its head -- it is the healthcare system of socialism where the little Charlie Gards are left to die so that illegal immigrants and other favored groups can be fed, clothed, sheltered, and treated for medical problems. Some Americans need help, but Congress -- especially the renegade GOP Senators -- must accept that the free lunch is provided through the sweat of those able to provide it. When those people are treated like the irrelevant cash cows of society, then it all comes crashing down. Progressive Democrats and #NeverTrump Republicans conveniently forget this reality.