Cont’d
The closest Trump would come to repealing the ACA came later in 2017, when — as part of the Republican tax bill — he effectively negated the individual mandate, which required individuals to carry a minimum level of healthcare coverage or face an annual penalty of up to $695; the tax bill reduced the amount of that penalty to $0. The Trump administration also cut back on marketing for the ACA’s open enrollment periods and expanded the availability of short-term limited-duration insurance policies, which are generally less expensive than those that meet ACA requirements but offer fewer protections, particularly for preexisting conditions. Despite repeated promises from the president that a true ACA replacement was in the offing, it never materialized.
Though Obama’s legislation remains on the books, its initial surge in coverage numbers began to reverse itself after 2017. According to a 2020 Kaiser Family Foundation report, there were 28.9 million uninsured nonelderly Americans by the end of 2019, an increase of 2.2 million since the beginning of 2017, with the number expected to continue rising in 2020 due to the historic levels of unemployment resulting from p******c-related layoffs and closings.
In addition to resulting in more uninsured Americans, the Obamacare repeal campaign set the tone of bluster, partisanship and misinformation that would come to define many aspects of the Trump years. As ProPublica reported in May 2017, backers of the repeal legislation had engaged in a campaign of inaccurate information, misleading euphemisms and a curated online discussion bubble in which members of Congress blocked critical comments from their constituents.
Biden and the new Democratic-led Congress could reinstate the individual mandate, but financial penalties for uninsured Americans will be difficult for the White House and legislators to sell to a public living through mass unemployment. Rather, as part of his $1.9 trillion C****-** relief package, the new president hopes to maintain insurance rolls by increasing the value of the Premium Tax Credit — a refundable credit that helps eligible taxpayers afford insurance coverage — so that their net cost of insurance premiums is no more than 8.5% of an individual’s yearly income.
The new White House will face pressure from within its own party as progressive Democrats push to replace traditional insurance plans with a single-payer “Medicare for All” plan. Support for this concept is increasing among the general public. According to a September 2020 report from Pew Research, 63% of Americans support at least some mix of government and private insurance plans, up 4 percentage points from the previous year. Support for a single national government program was up 6 percentage points year-over-year, rising from 30% to 36%. During the campaign, Biden did not push for a Medicare for All plan, but rather for expansion of the ACA marketplace via the “public option,” meaning government-run insurance plans that would compete with private insurers.
The Wall
In early 2018, with nothing to show for his campaign promises and no indication that Mexico wanted any involvement in funding the border wall, Trump floated to then-Defense Secretary James Mattis the idea of using money earmarked for the armed forces to build it.
It would be nearly a year before Trump moved forward with this plan, setting off a slew of legal challenges, some involving the Supreme Court. Opponents said Trump did not have the authority to reallocate billions of congressionally appropriated military funds. The standoff over money for the wall resulted in the longest shutdown in U.S. government history. Congress, now with a Democratic majority in the House, eventually agreed to give Trump part of what he requested, but with some restrictions. The president was also allowed to use billions that had previously been allocated for the military’s counter-narcotics efforts.
About 80 miles of the southern border had newly-built sections of border wall by the end of Trump’s presidency. Another several hundred miles of wall were built in areas where other barriers already existed. Credit: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
After construction on the wall finally began in earnest, a ProPublica/Texas Tribune investigation found that costs for the structure were running significantly higher than expected. For example, the Army Corps of Engineers issued two contracts worth $788 million for construction of one 83-mile stretch of wall. In less than a year, the value of those contracts increased by more than $1 billion. Within a year, after the length of the wall segments in those contracts was extended by 63% to 135 miles, the total cost more than tripled to $3 billion. ProPublica and the Tribune found multiple instances where the value of border wall contracts was increased through the use of supplemental contracts without any competitive bidding.
Read More
The Trump Administration Keeps Awarding Border Wall Contracts but Doesn’t Own the Land to Build On
While more than 400 miles of wall were constructed by the end of Trump’s term, only about 80 miles involved building a barrier where none had existed before, according to news reports. The Washington Post reported that Biden may be obligated to build more than 200 additional miles of wall.
On his first day in office, Biden issued an executive order describing the wall as a “waste of money that diverts attention from genuine threats to our homeland security.” The order pauses construction and spending on the wall “to the extent permitted by law,” leaving open the possibility that construction could continue or that money will continue to be spent on the project. Our investigation confirmed that some wall contracts come with hefty termination fees. One agreement stipulates a cancellation fee of nearly $15 million.
The Erosion of Trust
The legacy of the Trump administration will be one of erosion, both of norms and of trust in government. Arguably the strongest example is Trump’s yearslong campaign to convince the American people that their e******ns are not secure.
Trump became president by winning the e*******l college in 2016, but he repeatedly insisted without evidence that he’d only lost the popular v**e to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton because of widespread e******n f***d.
“I won the popular v**e if you deduct the millions of people who v**ed illegally,” Trump tweeted on Nov. 27, 2016, despite all evidence to the contrary. The next day, he added, “Serious v***r f***d in Virginia, New Hampshire and California - so why isn’t the media reporting on this? Serious bias - big problem!” Again, his claims were not backed up by the facts.
His zeal for the v***r f***d myth did not cool after taking office. A May 11, 2017, executive order created the P**********l Advisory Commission on E******n Integrity to investigate, among other things, issues “that could lead to improper v***r r**********ns and improper v****g, including fraudulent v***r r**********ns and fraudulent v****g.”
In the end, the commission only met three times before Trump summarily dissolved it in January 2018, amid internecine legal squabbles and other troubles. Though the administration said the Department of Homeland Security would continue the commission’s work, the Trump White House never unearthed any actual evidence of substantial v***r f***d.
The commission was a failure, but it thrust members like Hans von Spakovsky into the spotlight. Von Spakovsky, a prominent purveyor of discredited v***r f***d claims, would go on to become a central figure in some Republican efforts to restrict mail-in and early v****g during the 2020 e******n.
As Trump and his surrogates stoked unfounded fears of dead people and undocumented migrants v****g, Americans grew concerned about interference in e******ns. A Gallup poll released in early 2020 found that nearly 3 in 5 Americans no longer had confidence in the e******n process, an inversion from only a decade earlier when that same poll found that almost 3 in 5 Americans were confident in the integrity of their e******ns.
With the 2020 e******n drawing near, Trump preemptively claimed that if he lost on E******n Day it would have to be the result of fraud.
“The Democrats are also trying to rig the e******n by sending tens of millions of b****ts using the China v***s as the excuse for allowing people not to go to the polls,” Trump said during a June 2020 campaign event in Phoenix, Arizona. He later predicted, “This will be, in my opinion, the most c*****t e******n in the history of our country, and we cannot let this happen.”
The volume of ominous statements from Trump soared in the weeks leading up to the November e******n. According to The Washington Post’s tally of Trump’s false and misleading claims, the president made more than 1,500 such statements about the e******n between July 1 and Nov. 2, 2020.
A bust of President Zachary Taylor is covered with plastic. It was smeared with blood when a pro-Trump mob broke into the U.S. Capitol following a rally with President Donald Trump on the National Mall. Credit: Samuel Corum/Getty Images
Even after Trump’s legal team and his unofficial legal supporters failed more than 60 times to convince courts to overturn e******n results in multiple states, and after the J*** 6 Stop the Steal rally escalated into an i**********n at the Capitol that left at least five people dead, a large number of Americans still believe in the fiction of a s****n e******n.
According to a CNN/SSRS poll taken after the violence at the Capitol, 32% of Americans said they think Biden did not legitimately win the e******n. Nearly one-quarter of all respondents believe there is “solid evidence” that Biden actually lost. Three-quarters of Republican respondents said they had little or no confidence that e******ns reflect the will of American v**ers.
The 2020 e******n will not be the end of outrageous v***r f***d myths. The longer-term effect is only just being seen, as state legislatures around the country reconvene for their new sessions, with a number of Republican-led assemblies already moving to restrict or repeal efforts to make v****g easier.
In Pennsylvania, where most Republican lawmakers supported expanded mail-in v****g even before the C****-** p******c, the state Senate v**ed on its first day back to create a special committee to investigate e******n reforms.
“Far too many residents of Pennsylvania are questioning the validity of their v**es or have doubt that the process was conducted fairly, securely and produced accurate results,” state Sen. Jake Corman, who had v**ed for the 2019 e******n reforms, said about the commission in December. His statement echoed an argument similar to that made by U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz on J*** 6, only minutes before i**********nists breached the Capitol.
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