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The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court late Thursday to overturn the Affordable Care Act — a move that, if successful, would bring a permanent end to the health insurance program popularly known as Obamacare and wipe out coverage for as many as 23 million Americans. In an 82-page brief submitted an hour before a midnight deadline, the administration joined Republican officials in Texas and 17 other states in arguing that in 2017, Congress, then controlled by Republicans, had rendered the law unconstitutional when it zeroed out the tax penalty for not buying insurance — the so-called individual mandate. (Gay Stolberg, 6/26)

The Justice Department said the 2010 health law, a signature achievement of the Obama administration, is invalid because Congress in 2017 ended the financial penalty for not having health insurance, though it didn’t take effect until 2019. “The entire ACA thus must fall with the individual mandate,” Solicitor General Noel Francisco wrote in the Justice Department’s brief, which was filed late Thursday. “The individual mandate is no longer a valid exercise of Congress’s legislative authority in light of Congress’s elimination of the penalty for noncompliance.” (Armour, 6/26)

At issue is whether the law's individual mandate was rendered unconstitutional because Congress reduced the penalty for remaining uninsured to zero and, if so, whether that would bring down the entire law. A federal appeals court in December ruled that the mandate was unconstitutional but punted the decision on which, if any, of the law's provisions could be retained back to the district court -- which had previously found the entire law to be invalidated. (de Vogue, Luhby and Mucha, 6/26)

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) responded to the brief by saying there is “no moral excuse for the Trump Administration’s disastrous efforts to take away Americans’ health care." Dismantling the ACA would leave more than 23 million people without healthcare plans, according to a recent analysis by the liberal-leaning think tank Center for American Progress. (Elfrink and Flynn, 6/26)

Legal experts in both parties have widely criticized this argument as weak, saying Congress's intent in the 2017 tax law was clearly only to repeal the mandate penalty, not the entire Affordable Care Act. (Sullivan, 6/25)

Two lower federal courts have ruled that the ACA’s individual mandate is unconstitutional after the GOP Congress in 2017 zeroed out the penalty for going without health insurance. The Supreme Court had previously upheld the mandate on the grounds that it was a tax. The lower courts also called into question the viability of the entire law without the mandate. (Dwyer, 6/26)

The move is sure to ignite further political controversy and elevate healthcare as a major election issue. Trump is seeking re-election in November against Obama’s vice president, Joe Biden, who has vowed to protect health insurance coverage for Americans under the law. The Trump administration’s filing came the same day the United States set a new record for a one-day increase in cases of the fatal and highly contagious coronavirus. The disease has killed thousands of Americans and forced millions to lose their jobs, including any employer-based health benefits they may have had. (Singh, 6/26)

Some 20 million Americans could lose their health coverage and protections for people with preexisting health conditions also would be put at risk if the court agrees with the administration in a case that won’t be heard before the fall. (Alonso-Zaldivar and Sherman, 6/26)

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden attacked President Trump on Thursday for his legal efforts to overturn the Affordable Care Act even amid the coronavirus pandemic, calling it "cruel" and "heartless." "I think it's cruel, it's heartless, it's callous and it's all because in my view he can't abide the thought of letting stand one of President Obama's greatest achievements, the Affordable Care Act," Biden said in a speech in Lancaster, Pa. "I cannot comprehend the cruelty that's driving him to inflict this pain on the very people he's supposed to serve," he said. (Sullivan, 6/25)

"They would live their lives caught in a vise between Donald Trump’s twin legacies: his failure to protect the American people from the coronavirus, and his heartless crusade to take health care protections away from American families," Biden said. (Luthi, 6/25)