In the ABC Town Hall last night, in response to @GStephanopoulos's questions about why he's asking the Supreme Court to invalidate Obamacare's coverage for preexisting conditions, @realDonaldTrump repeatedly insisted ... /1

@nicholas_bagley @dorfonlaw @SCOTUSblog

2/ ... that "I got rid of the most unpopular thing [in Obamacare] -- and a very unfair thing -- which is the individual mandate."

That's a non sequitur, but in essence Trump's right!: /2 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trumps-abc-news-town-hall-full-transcript/story?id=73035489

He promoted and then signed a bill in December 2017 that eliminated the so-called "mandate" to maintain ACA-level health insurance by providing that you can either maintain such insurance ... or pay the government "$0." /3

Trump has been insistently boasting about his elimination of the "mandate" for almost three years. MEANWHILE, in the Supreme Court, his own Solicitor General just as strongly insists that Trump and the GOP Congress in 2017 *imposed* a legal mandate to purchase insurance. /4

Seriously, that's his argument: Trump imposed a mandate to purchase Obamacare insurance. Indeed, it's the essential predicate of the SG's broader argument that the Court must declare invalid the entire ACA, including the pre-existing conditions protections. /5

In this case, as in virtually no other, Trump's absolutely correct: The GOP's 2017 tax legislation he signed *eliminated* the legal burden in question--in effect it "got rid of" the mandate, rather than the opposite, i.e., requiring people to purchase insurance. /6

His own SG, however, is disregarding entirely--flatly contradicting--this oft-stated, accurate characterization of the President of the United States. (Whatever happened to the unitary executive?) The SG's argument is deeply cynical. More importantly, it's patently mistaken. /7

And therefore the Trump Administration's case in the SCOTUS against the entire ACA is built on a patent fiction. (And that's before one even gets to its almost-as-absurd inseverability argument.) /8

As @dorfonlaw, @CrialKilru and I explain in an amicus brief, this may be the easiest statutory interpretation question the Court has ever confronted. The SCOTUS should very quickly affirm that @realDonaldTrump is right: He got rid of the "mandate." /9

https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/19/19-840/143453/20200513142621080_No.%2019-840%20Amicus%20Professors%20Dorf%20and%20Lederman.pdf

And for that reason, the Court should also reject Texas's and Trump's effort to strike down the ACA, including its pre-existing conditions provisions. /10