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      Uber bought itself a law. Here's why that's dangerous for struggling drivers like me | Cherri Murphy

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      Last week, Uber bought itself a law.Along with Lyft, Instacart, DoorDash and Postmates, app companies spent more than $200m – the most spent on any ballot campaign in US history – to bankroll Proposition 22 in California. With its passage, the law will now exempt drivers like me from basic protections afforded to most other workers in the state.And in the aftermath of their bought-and-paid-for victory, these companies are promising to roll out this model nationwide, foretelling a grim future for gig workers across the US.But let’s be absolutely clear: Prop 22 is a dangerous law. Voters in California, inundated with ads promising drivers a “living wage”, flexibility and greater benefits, believed they were ensuring drivers a better future in the middle of a pandemic and recession.But voters were hoodwinked. Drivers are now neither employees, guaranteed rights and benefits such as healthcare, nor true independent contractors, since we can’t set our own rates, choose our own clients, or build wealth on the apps.Instead, Prop 22 promises substandard healthcare, a death sentence to many in the middle of a pandemic. We’re promised a sub-minimum wage in the middle of a recession that an independent study showed would be as low as $5.64 an hour – not the eventual $15 state minimum. We’re given no family leave, no paid sick days and no access to state unemployment compensation. Most importantly, while we’re already prevented from unionizing under federal law, the measure also makes it nearly impossible for California to pass laws protecting drivers who organize collectively, a fundamental right that companies undermine to silence worker power. More

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      The Guardian view on the election endgame: end Trump’s war on the truth | Editorial

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      Since he took office Donald Trump has posed a grave threat to democracy. His wild, relentless post-poll fight against reality this week has shown just how dangerous he can be. Designed to give his supporters a rationale for their anger over losing the popular vote, the falsehoods raised troubling questions about when, and how, Mr Trump will leave the White House.The bad news is that it won’t be anytime soon. Democracy in America is rare in giving a president more than 10 weeks of power after losing an election. Mr Trump is using this time to ratchet up the rhetoric to a fever pitch, seeding the idea that society is irreconcilably at odds with itself. This is profoundly damaging to America, a fact that cable networks have thankfully and belatedly woken up to after election day. Around the world former democracies are slipping into autocracy. The United States is not immune.The fact is Mr Trump will lose the popular vote by millions of votes and only America’s outdated electoral college has saved him from a crushing defeat. The president should be preparing to leave the White House, not be instructing his lawyers. Perhaps Mr Trump cannot afford to lose. Presidential immunity from prosecution vanishes once Mr Trump leaves office, a consideration that may weigh heavily given the ongoing investigations by the New York district attorney into reported“protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organization”. Mr Trump denies any wrongdoing.For months it has been obvious that Mr Trump would claim victory and fraud should he lose the election. He has refused to say he would accept a peaceful transfer of power. The polls, he claimed, could not be trusted. Without a shred of shame, Mr Trump appears willing to challenge the validity of the vote in any state he loses, seeking to undermine the electoral process and ultimately invalidate it.This is a dangerous moment. There’s no evidence of widespread illegal votes in any state. Yet a fully fledged constitutional crisis over the process of counting ballots is on the cards because Mr Trump is demanding recounts and court cases while conditioning his base to view the election in existential terms. Last year, in an influential and prescient analysis, Ohio University’s Edward B Foley wargamed how a quarrel over mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania could lead to a disputed result in the 2020 presidential election.The most frightening scenario, said Prof Foley, was “where the dispute remains unresolved on January 20, 2021, the date for the inauguration of the new presidential term, and the military is uncertain as to who is entitled to receive the nuclear codes as commander-in-chief”. This ends with the US attorney general, William Barr, announcing that it is legally sound for Mr Trump to be recognised as re-elected for a second term while Democrats call for nationwide protests to dislodge the squatters in the White House. It would be better to avoid such a predicament rather than plan to get into it.Republicans must not be seduced by Mr Trump into manipulating the electoral system, through political and legal battles, to defy the popular will for partisan advantage. The Grand Old Party has profited from voter suppression and gerrymandering to keep an emerging Democratic majority at bay. But these darker impulses have given rise to Mr Trump and an unhealthy reliance on a shrinking coalition of overwhelmingly white Christian voters paranoid about losing power.Joe Biden looks to have done enough to win the White House. He will have his work cut out when he gets there, needing to rebuild the US government’s credibility after Trumpism hollowed out its institutions. That means offering hope to a country that faces a pandemic and an economic recession. He will have to reassert America’s role as the global problem-solver. Under Mr Trump the “indispensable nation” disappeared when it was needed the most. By any reasonable standard Mr Biden should not have to continue to run against Mr Trump. He must be allowed to get on with running America. More

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      Trump lawyers petitioning supreme court have close ties to Brett Kavanaugh

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      [embedded content]
      Trump campaign lawyers who have asked the supreme court to intervene in Pennsylvania’s vote count have close ties to Brett Kavanaugh, the justice who is expected to have a decisive vote in any upcoming election-related rulings.
      Justin Clark, a senior lawyer for Donald Trump’s campaign, helped shepherd Kavanaugh’s controversial 2018 confirmation through the Senate in his previous role as White House congressional liaison.
      Another lawyer, William Consovoy, the litigator who filed the supreme court challenge on behalf of the Trump campaign, helped to bankroll a high-profile Federalist Society dinner in Kavanaugh’s honour in 2019.
      It is far from clear whether the Trump campaign’s bid before the US supreme court – which is challenging Pennsylvania’s inclusion of mail-in ballots received after 3 November – will lead to any changes in the state’s ultimate vote count. But the relationships between the campaign lawyers and Kavanaugh are an example of how conservative lawyers and jurists who have been appointed to the highest court have especially close political ties.
      Activist Chris Kang, who serves as chief counsel for Demand Justice, a progressive group that has said it is trying to restore federal courts’ “legitimacy”, said the relationships between Consovoy, Clark and Kavanaugh, were “alarming”.
      “It is very troubling. This kind of thing is more commonplace these days, but I don’t think it makes it any less concerning,” Kang said. “It’s a very insular world of supreme court justices and the lawyers who argue in front of them. It does breed a backscratching culture that is very problematic.”
      The Federalist Society lies at the heart of the conservative bar, and has played what critics call an outsized role in advising the White House on the nomination of judges and justices.
      The lawyers who are part of the Federalist Society, some of whom become judges, share a strict conservative view of the law which, in turn, has helped to propel Republican political causes, like restricting voting rights and opposition to environmental regulations.
      One staunch critic of the group, the Rhode Island Democratic senator Sheldon Whitehouse, has said that nearly 90% of Trump’s appellate judges, as well as most of the supreme court’s conservative justices, are members of the Federalist Society, which is funded entirely by anonymous conservative donors and corporations. More

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      Could Trump really settle US election result in the supreme court?

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      Given Donald Trump’s lifelong predilection for tying up opponents in the courts, and his long-stated threat to do the same with an election result that threatened to go against him, his call to have the 2020 election settled in the supreme court is not a surprise.
      So can he do it?
      Trump may, with this in mind, have filled the supreme court with conservative appointees, but things aren’t so straightforward. The supreme court is the final court of appeal in the US and has discretion over which cases it should hear, largely relating to challenges to cases heard in lower courts on points of federal law and the constitution.
      So a lot of action will happen initially at state-level courts – the election has prompted a spate of new cases in the hotly contested battleground state of Pennsylvania, including two due to be heard later on Wednesday.
      What has made the current election landscape more of a minefield is the fact the coronavirus pandemic has led states to look for ways to make voting safer, including expanding absentee ballots, which has opened states up to challenges in the courts over issues such as proposed extensions to the period in which late mail-in votes are counted.
      It is important to remember that election challenges in state courts are nothing new, sometimes without merit, and often have little impact in the end. However, one important exception to that was the 2000 election where a series of legal challenges over faulty voting procedures in Florida handed the election to George W Bush.
      What’s the thrust of Trump’s tactic?
      With more than 40 pre-election cases by Republicans, Trump’s strategy is to argue that any measure to make voting easier and safer in the midst of a pandemic is unconstitutional and open to fraud, a framing aimed at the supreme court.
      A second argument that has been deployed several times is that many of the measures to ensure voting is easy have been made by state officials – like governors – rather than state legislatures, opening a path, say conservatives, for a constitutional challenge.

      How could this work?
      The most common scenario is for lawyers to challenge the way an election was conducted locally and seek to have votes discarded. In the key state of Pennsylvania, conservative groups have already ramped up cases to ensure late mail-in ballots are not counted, with two cases due to be heard on Wednesday.
      However, Pennsylvania requires an unusually high burden of proof for challenging elections, including written affidavits detailing wrongdoing.
      Pennsylvania is already on the supreme court’s radar in this respect. Republicans in the state have already appealed against a Pennsylvania supreme court decision ordering state election officials to accept mail-in ballots that arrive up to three days after the election, relying on an interpretation of the state’s own constitution.
      The US supreme court deferred hearing this case before the election but in a case that it did rule on, the court sided with a Republican challenge saying the state could not count late mail in ballots in Wisconsin. The supreme court chief justice John Roberts made clear, however, that “different bodies of law and different precedents” meant the court did not consider the situation in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin as the same.
      Isn’t that good news for Democrats?
      It’s difficult to know. The Wisconsin decision was delivered before Trump’s third pick for the supreme court, Amy Coney Barrett, formally joined the bench last week, giving conservatives a 6-3 majority.
      Trump’s hope, as he has made very clear, is that this would help in the event he challenged the election result, but it is also unclear how Barrett would respond given Trump’s comments. And she could recuse herself from hearing any election-related cases because of a perceived conflict.
      Where else could we see challenges?
      Michigan, if it is close, is an outlier in that it has no formally laid-out system for a challenge, although any recount is automatically triggered by a margin of less than 2,000 votes.
      North Carolina, for instance, also has a challenge to a late voting extension before the courts. It all becomes something of moot point should Biden secure enough of a lead in the electoral college.
      What’s the worst-case scenario?
      The closer the outcome in the electoral college, the more messy things become, with the memory of Florida in 2000 looming above everything. The closest of results led to 35 messy days of legal challenges and laborious hand recounts, which gave the election to George W Bush after the state was originally called by news organisations for the Democratic challenger Al Gore.
      Bush took 271 of the 538 electoral votes, winning Florida by fewer than 600 votes, after a recount was halted by the supreme court, making Bush the first Republican president since 1888 to win despite losing the popular vote. More

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      USA OK? My FAQs about Trump, Biden, the election and what happens next | Robert Reich

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      You’ve been in or around politics for more than 50 years. How are you feeling about Tuesday’s election?
      I’m more frightened for my country than I’ve ever been. Another four years of Donald Trump would be devastating. Still, I suspect Biden will win.
      But in 2016, the polls ….
      Polling is better now, and Biden’s lead is larger than Hillary Clinton’s was.
      What about the electoral college?
      He is also leading in the so-called “swing” states that gave Trump an electoral college victory in 2016.
      Will Trump contest the election?
      Undoubtedly. He’ll claim fraudulent mail-in ballots in any swing state Biden wins where the governor is a Republican – states such as Florida, Georgia, Ohio and Arizona. He’ll ask those governors not to certify Biden electors until fraudulent ballots are weeded out.
      What’s his goal?
      To deny Biden a majority of electors and throw the decision into the House of Representatives, where Republicans are likely to have a majority of state delegations.
      Will it work?
      No, because technically Biden only needs a majority of electors already appointed. Even if disputed ones are excluded, I expect he’ll still get a majority.
      What about late ballots?
      Trump has demanded all ballots be counted by midnight election day. It’s not up to him. It’s up to individual state legislatures and state courts. Most will count ballots as long as they’re postmarked no later than election day.
      Will these issues end up in the supreme court?
      Some may, but the justices know they have to appear impartial. Last week they turned down a request to extend the deadline for receiving mail-in ballots in Wisconsin but allowed extensions to remain in place in Pennsylvania and North Carolina.
      But the supreme court decided the 2000 election for George W Bush.
      The last thing John Roberts, the chief justice, wants is another Bush v Gore. With six Republican appointees now on the court, he knows its legitimacy hangs in the balance.
      Trump has called for 50,000 partisans to monitor polls while people vote, naming these recruits the “army for Trump”. Do you expect violence or intimidation?
      Not enough to affect the outcome.
      Assume you’re right and Biden wins. Will Trump concede?
      I doubt it. He can’t stand to lose. He’ll continue to claim the election was stolen from him.
      Will the Democrats retake the Senate?
      Too close to call.
      If not, can Biden get anything done?
      Biden was a senator for 36 years and has worked with many of the current Republicans. He believes he can coax them into working with him.
      Is he right?
      I fear he’s overly optimistic. The GOP isn’t what it used to be. It’s now answerable to a much more conservative, Trumpian base.
      If Republicans keep the Senate, what can we expect from a Biden administration?
      Reversals of Trump executive orders and regulations – which will restore environmental and labor protections and strengthen the Affordable Care Act. Biden will also fill the executive branch with competent people, who will make a big difference. And he’ll end Trump’s isolationist, go-it-alone foreign policy.
      And if Democrats retake the Senate?
      Helpful, but keep your expectations low. Both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama had Democratic Congresses for their first two years yet spent all their political capital cleaning up economic messes their Republican predecessors left behind. Biden will inherit an even bigger economic mess plus a pandemic. With luck, he’ll enact a big stimulus package, reverse the Trump Republican tax cuts for the wealthy, and distribute and administer a Covid vaccine. All important, but nothing earth-shattering.
      If Biden wins, he’ll be the oldest man to ever be president. Will this be a problem for him in governing?
      I don’t see why. He’s healthy. But I doubt he’ll seek a second term, which will affect how he governs.
      What do you mean?
      He’s going to be a transitional rather than a transformational president. He won’t change the underlying structure of power in society. He won’t lead a movement. He says he’ll be a “bridge” to the next generation of leaders, by which I think he means that he’ll try to stabilize the country, maybe heal some of the nation’s wounds, so that he can turn the keys over to the visionaries and movement builders of the future.
      Will Trump just fade into the sunset?
      Hardly. He and Fox News will continue to be the most powerful forces in the GOP, at least for the next four years.
      And what happens if your whole premise is wrong and Donald Trump wins a second term?
      America and the rest of the world are seriously imperiled. I prefer not to think about it.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a columnist for Guardian US More

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      Could the 2020 US election really be decided by the supreme court?

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      Like Babe Ruth pointing a bat over a fence, Donald Trump last month called his shot.
      “I think this will end up in the supreme court,” Trump told reporters, referring to the election. “And I think it’s very important that we have nine justices. I think having a 4-4 situation is not a good situation.”
      Earlier this week, Trump got his ninth justice, with the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the seat vacated by the late justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
      But is the 2020 presidential election really headed for the supreme court? Here’s a look at the situation:
      Can Barrett hand Trump the election?
      Probably not. The most likely scenario is that American voters alone will decide the election.
      For all its flaws and added complications this year from the coronavirus pandemic, the US elections system has basic features to ensure a high correlation between the vote that is cast and the result that is announced.
      It is highly decentralized, with thousands of jurisdictions staffed by members of each major party, all using different technologies and independently reporting results, which can be reviewed or recounted, with both sides and the media watching out for irregularities before, during and after election day. It might take awhile, and the tragic story of disenfranchisement in the United States continues, but elections officials have vowed to deliver an accurate count.
      Sometimes, however, US elections are very close, and in an era of nihilistic partisanship, court fights during elections are becoming increasingly common. Such disputes might land with increasing frequency before the supreme court.
      It is extremely rare for a presidential election to land before the supreme court. In 1876, five justices sat on a commission that decided the 1876 race for Rutherford B Hayes over Samuel Tilden.
      In the modern era, it has happened just once, in 2000, after the Florida state supreme court ordered a recount in a razor-thin race that the Republican secretary of state said George W Bush had won. Republicans challenged the recount order and the case went to the supreme court, which sustained the challenge and stopped the recount.
      How might a 2020 election-supreme court scenario unfold?
      The supreme court has already issued two significant rulings in the election, one that allowed ballots received in Pennsylvania up to three days after election day to be counted, and a second blocking ballots received in Wisconsin after election day from being counted. Lower courts have issued numerous decisions on issues around voting and counting.
      Republicans in Pennsylvania have vowed to renew their challenge to ballots received after election day, and if they can push the case back to the supreme court, they might find victory this time with Barrett making a majority.
      But if the supreme court ends up getting involved in a major way in the presidential election, it would likely be to weigh in on a question that is not yet clear because we don’t know what legal conflicts will play out in which states.
      In Bush v Gore (2000), lawyers on the Republican side argued that the state supreme court had usurped the legislature’s authority by ordering a recount. The supreme court stopped the recount, not by relying on the argument about the court bigfooting the legislature, but by finding that different standards for vote-counting in different counties violated the equal protection clause.
      Is there a chance Barrett would recuse herself from any case involving a president who appointed her so recently?
      At her confirmation hearing, Barrett dodged just this question. “I commit to you to fully and faithfully applying the law of recusal,” she said. “And part of the law is to consider any appearance questions. And I will apply the factors that other justices have before me in determining whether the circumstances require my recusal or not. But I can’t offer a legal conclusion right now about the outcome of the decision I would reach.” More

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      Biden attacks Trump's 'rushed and unprecedented' confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett – US politics live

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      Key events

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      1.25am EDT01:25
      Barrett reaction: ‘They have lied, cheated, and compromised democracy’

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      5.42am EDT05:42

      Also on a foreign policy front, secretary of state Mike Pompeo is in India at the moment. He has paid respects at the National War Memorial, and then stated India and the United States are cooperating to take on all threats, including China.
      “Today is a new opportunity for two great democracies like ours to grow closer,” Pompeo said before the talks with Indian foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and defence minister Rajnath Singh.
      “There is much more work to do for sure. We have a lot to discuss today: Our cooperation on the pandemic that originated in Wuhan, to confronting the Chinese Communist Party’s threats to security and freedom to promoting peace and stability throughout the region.*
      The two countries have signed an agreement on sharing geospatial data, which Singh has said is a “significant achievement”.

      Secretary Pompeo
      (@SecPompeo)
      A solemn moment laying a wreath at the National War Memorial in New Delhi with U.S. Secretary of Defense @EsperDoD. We will never forget the brave men and women who have given their lives in defense of the world’s largest democracy. pic.twitter.com/xvwUdgSvlF

      October 27, 2020

      On coronavirus, Pompeo said US companies are making efforts to sell Gilead’s Remdesivir drug to India. India is on course to shortly reach 8 million cases, and has the second highest case count in the world behind the US.
      China, perhaps unsurprisingly, has not taken too kindly to Pompeo’s words. Reuters report that Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a news briefing in Beijing. “We urge Pompeo to abandon his Cold War mentality, zero-sum mindset, and stop harping on the ‘China threat’”.

      5.33am EDT05:33

      A very quick snap here – an American citizen was kidnapped near the town of Birnin Konni in southern Niger in the early hours of Tuesday morning, three security sources and a local official told Reuters.
      The details of the kidnapping were not immediately clear, and no one had claimed responsibility.
      Niger is struggling with a security crisis as groups with links to al Qaeda and Islamic State carry out an increasing number of attacks on the army and civilians, particularly in the west region bordering Mali and Burkina Faso. Birnin Konni is a few hundred miles to the east of that region, near the border with Nigeria.

      Updated
      at 5.51am EDT

      5.28am EDT05:28

      CNN have a run-down on what Amy Coney Barrett can expect to find in her in-tray as she takes her place on the supreme court. They highlight:
      Trump taxes case – the justices are primed to decide soon whether a New York prosecutor will get access to Trump’s financial documents from January 2011 to August 2019, including his tax returns. Last July, the Supreme Court, voting 7-2, rejected the President’s broad claims of immunity.
      Pennsylvania ballot extensions – Republicans in Pennsylvania asked the Supreme Court on Friday to block a ballot receipt extension that would allow them to be counted if they are received within three days of Election Day – even if they do not have a legible postmark.
      North Carolina ballot counting extension – Republicans in North Carolina are asking the Supreme Court to block a nine-day extension of the counting of ballots if they are received by Election Day and reinstate a three-day extension established by the legislature last June.
      Minnesota congressional election date – a Republican candidate for Minnesota’s 2nd Congressional District is asking the justices to intervene in a case concerning whether his election takes place on November 3 or on February 9, 2021, after the recent death of Legal Marijuana Now Party candidate Adam Weeks caused the contest to be moved to next year as required by state law.
      Mississippi abortion case – the case pertains to Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban, which Republican Gov. Phil Bryant signed into law in 2018. The law made exceptions only for medical emergencies or cases in which there’s a “severe fetal abnormality,” but not for incidents of rape or incest.
      Read more here: CNN – Trump’s taxes, election and abortion cases await Amy Coney Barrett in her first week

      5.22am EDT05:22

      Even before Amy Cony Barrett takes her seat, there’s a sign of things to come with judgements over the election, as yesterday the supreme court sided with Republicans to prevent Wisconsin from counting mail-in ballots that are received after election day. Maanvi Singh and Sam Levine report:

      In a 5-3 ruling, the justices refused to reinstate a lower court order that called for mailed ballots to be counted if they are received up to six days after the 3 November election. A federal appeals court had already put that order on hold.
      The ruling awards a victory for Republicans in their crusade against expanding voting rights and access. The three liberal justices dissented. John Roberts, the chief justice, last week joined the liberals to preserve a Pennsylvania state court order extending the absentee ballot deadline but voted the other way in the Wisconsin case, which has moved through federal courts.
      “Different bodies of law and different precedents govern these two situations and require, in these particular circumstances, that we allow the modification of election rules in Pennsylvania but not Wisconsin,” Roberts wrote.
      “As the Covid pandemic rages, the court has failed to adequately protect the nation’s voters,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in a dissent that noted the state allowed the six-day extension for primary voting in April and that roughly 80,000 ballots were received after the day of the primary election.

      Read more here: Wisconsin can’t count mail-in ballots received after election day, supreme court rules

      5.12am EDT05:12

      There’s been an understandable focus on the possible impact of seating Amy Coney Barrett on healthcare during a pandemic. But the potential impacts of her ruling on the Affordable Care Act go much further than coronavirus, as Katelyn Burns writes for us today:

      Jack Jimenez tried to obtain private health insurance, only to be denied because of a pre-existing condition – his gender dysphoria diagnosis. Jimenez is trans and him living his true identity was reason enough to deny him coverage.
      It wasn’t until 2014 when the Affordable Care Act (also known as the comprehensive healthcare reform law and as Obamacare) was implemented, that Jimenez was able to get insurance, the specialist treatment he needed, and a diagnosis because the law eliminated exclusions for pre-existing conditions. It turned out he had pseudotumor cerebri, a condition in which spinal fluid leaks into the skull. The symptoms mimic those of a brain tumor, including vision issues, headaches and ringing in the ears.
      “It’s that very first doctor appointment. It’s unbelievable,” he said. “To have people look at you and go, ‘Oh, OK. Yes. I can see why that’s a big concern. Let me write down these three pages of weird symptoms that you’ve been having and let’s do some tests and figure out what the hell is wrong with you,’” he said. “Nobody, nobody had really done that at all.”

      Read more here: As the future of Obamacare heads to the supreme court, so does trans rights

      5.05am EDT05:05

      Here’s what the New York Times editorial board had to say about the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett:

      When she takes her seat on the bench at One First Street, it will represent the culmination of a four-decade crusade by conservatives to fill the federal courts with reliably Republican judges who will serve for decades as a barricade against an ever more progressive nation.
      This is not a wild conspiracy theory. Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader and one of the main architects of this crusade, gloated about it openly on Sunday, following a bare-majority vote to move Judge Barrett’s nomination to the Senate floor. “A lot of what we’ve done over the last four years will be undone sooner or later by the next election,” Mr. McConnell said. “They won’t be able to do much about this for a long time to come.”
      That’s the perfect distillation of what this has been all about. It also reveals what it was never about. It was never about letting the American people have a voice in the makeup of the Supreme Court.

      Read more here: New York Times – the Republican party’s supreme court

      4.58am EDT04:58

      Away from the election and the supreme court for a moment, California is bracing for another round of fire danger from gusts even as crews battle two southern blazes that have left more than 100,000 under evacuation orders.
      Associated Press report that some of the fiercest winds of the fire season drove fires up and down the state Sunday night and Monday before easing, but they were expected to resume overnight and continue into Tuesday morning. More

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      As the future of Obamacare heads to the supreme court, so does trans rights

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      Starting in 2009, Jack Jimenez’s face would feel tingly and his vision would turn wonky. Sometimes it felt like he was getting a deep-tissue head massage, even when no one was touching him. The now 37-year-old from California tried for five years to get help from various doctors, many of whom told him he was just anxious.“Of course I’m anxious. But also legit I have a problem. Every single doctor was just terrible,” he said.At the time, Jimenez was working as a caregiver. “I worked 24-hour shifts because a client could die at any second,” he said. “They weren’t required to give us insurance because we were all part-time employees.”He tried to obtain private health insurance, only to be denied because of a pre-existing condition – his gender dysphoria diagnosis. Jimenez is trans and him living his true identity was reason enough to deny him coverage.It wasn’t until 2014 when the Affordable Care Act (also known as the comprehensive healthcare reform law and as Obamacare) was implemented, that Jimenez was able to get insurance, the specialist treatment he needed, and a diagnosis because the law eliminated exclusions for pre-existing conditions. It turned out he had pseudotumor cerebri, a condition in which spinal fluid leaks into the skull. The symptoms mimic those of a brain tumor, including vision issues, headaches and ringing in the ears.“It’s that very first doctor appointment. It’s unbelievable,” he said. “To have people look at you and go, ‘Oh, OK. Yes. I can see why that’s a big concern. Let me write down these three pages of weird symptoms that you’ve been having and let’s do some tests and figure out what the hell is wrong with you,’” he said. “Nobody, nobody had really done that at all.”The potential to have the greatest impact on transgender people it’s unquestionably the ACAAfter several rounds of tests and multiple MRIs, he started treatment and is healthy with minimal symptoms today. But the law that allowed Jimenez to finally find some relief is at risk of being entirely done away with.The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is scheduled to be argued before the supreme court on 4 November. The lawsuit – which has been widely panned by legal experts – was brought by 19 Republican state attorneys general and seeks to have the entire landmark healthcare law tossed out. The future of the ACA was a common theme during hearings for Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the high court – now that she has been confirmed, she will soon be hearing California v Texas, a case challenging the landmark healthcare law. More