Health Care

The decision spells bad news for Republicans by allowing Democrats to replay a potent health care message that helped them flip 40 House seats.

Congress was ready to move on from Obamacare.

The midterm elections took repeal off the table, and Democrats were gearing up for a party-defining fight over “Medicare for All.” But Friday night’s ruling by a federal judge in Texas that the Affordable Care Act must be scrapped once again puts the law front and center when Democrats take back the House just weeks from now.

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The ruling is sure to be appealed, and the Trump administration says it’s business as usual in the meantime. But the decision spells bad news for Republicans, by allowing Democrats to replay a potent health care message that helped them flip 40 House seats: the GOP remains hellbent on gutting Obamacare and rolling back protections for pre-existing conditions.

“Republicans are never going to give up on trying to take away health care,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told POLITICO. “And it’s hard to figure out how Trump and Mitch McConnell would come up with any strategy to put the pieces back together.”

Republicans have been on the defensive since their repeated efforts to dismantle Obamacare while having full control of the government failed. While President Donald Trump and lawmakers like incoming House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) cheered the development, some in the party called for bipartisanship to address the failings of the country’s health care system.

“We have a rare opportunity for truly bipartisan health care reform that protects those with pre-existing conditions, increases transparency and choice, and lowers costs,” said Rep. Greg Walden, the current chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, in a statement.

But that doesn’t appear likely if Friday’s ruling is working its way through the courts during the 2020 election cycle. House Democrats had long planned to intervene in the lawsuit on behalf of the ACA and will likely introduce a resolution directing the House counsel to defend the law during the first days of the new Congress. People familiar with the conversations say the Democrats will quickly put it to a floor vote that will force GOP lawmakers to either signal support for Obamacare or endorse its elimination — along with the law’s most popular patient protections.

Trump and other key Republicans’ hailing of the ruling as vindication of their belief that the law is unworkable and needs to be jettisoned also doesn’t set a constructive tone, said Rodney Whitlock, a former top Republican Senate health care staffer.

“He’s got to lead,” Whitlock said of the president. “I don’t think you’ll see congressional Republicans wanting to go that route when it’s far from clear that they’d have support from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.”

The result is likely to be a split GOP caucus that draws flak from both the right and the left. Republicans who survived the midterm election by vowing to protect people with pre-existing conditions will find themselves in a particularly tough spot, feeling intense pressure to make good on that pledge.

“It’s all the downsides,” a House GOP aide said. “Politically, I don’t think that it helps us at all.”

But Democrats will face their own reckoning. Liberals were eager to push the debate forward on health care and put universal coverage through a government-run system at the center of the 2020 campaign. However, the renewed threat to the ACA’s survival is certain to keep the focus on the current law, and require Democrats to devote the next several months to protecting Obamacare’s coverage gains.

Already, Democrats are exploring how their GOP repeal message will play against Senate Republicans up for re-election in 2020. Those lawmakers voted to gut Obamacare’s individual mandate as part of the tax bill, argued Brad Woodhouse, executive director of the pro-Obamacare group Protect Our Care, effectively laying the groundwork for the Texas lawsuit’s winning argument.

“In some ways this starts not just the legislative discussion around health care for 2019 and 2020, but it also starts the political discussion,” Woodhouse said, ticking off a list of 2020 Republican targets that included Sens. Cory Gardner of Colorado, Joni Ernst of Iowa and Susan Collins of Maine, along with Trump.

The ruling came just over a day before the deadline for people to sign up for Obamacare coverage for 2019. Enrollments heading into the last week were down roughly 10 percent, sparking concerns among the law’s supporters that the Trump administration’s policies — including gutting marketing and outreach efforts — are further undercutting the law.

The legal fight ahead is sure to intensify anxiety for health care groups with a stake in Obamacare. They’ve already navigated the disastrous initial rollout of HealthCare.gov, incessant regulatory and legislative changes, failed repeal efforts and eight years of court battles.

“Sadly, we have seen this movie before,” said Ceci Connolly, CEO of the Alliance of Community Health Plans. “It is uncertainty that leads to instability and, in this situation, potentially chaos.”

Energy & Environment

David Bernhardt, who is set to become acting Interior secretary, has pleased President Donald Trump but is drawing attacks from environmental groups.

Like former EPA chief Scott Pruitt before him, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has an experienced deputy steeped in the world of bureaucratic infighting ready to fill his shoes — one with longstanding ties to the energy industry he now regulates.

Deputy Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, a former lobbyist for the oil, gas and water industries that rely on Interior’s decisions, is poised to become acting secretary following President Donald Trump’s announcement Saturday that Zinke will leave by the end of the year. And that’s already alarming environmentalists, some of whom had said they might prefer to see a distracted, scandal-plagued Zinke stay in the job.

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Berhnardt, who joined the Trump administration last year, has taken the lead in softening the department’s protections for endangered species, a move that will make it easier for oil and gas companies to drill on ecologically sensitive lands.

“The bottom line is that Bernhardt is too conflicted to even be acting secretary,” said Chris Saeger, executive director for Western Values Project, a conservation group that filed a lawsuit in July demanding access to Bernhardt’s official communications. “At the very least the American public deserves to know more about the man behind the curtain who is actually running the show at Interior and could soon be fully responsible for managing our country’s public lands, wildlife and natural resources.”

“If Ryan Zinke was bad, his likely replacement, David Bernhardt, is even worse,” the Alaska Wilderness League said in a statement Saturday.

And Bernhardt may end up with the post permanently, according to a source who said Trump has been happy with his effectiveness in running the bulk of the agency on Zinke’s watch. The source said it might be too problematic for Trump to find another Interior candidate amid a series of other high-level vacancies in his administration.

Other names have been floated among industry representatives and green groups, including Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), whom Trump had reportedly considered for the job before picking Zinke. But the consensus is that picking Bernhardt — already confirmed by the Senate — would be the path of least resistance.

Even the environmentalists conceded that Bernhardt may have the post for a while.

On the other hand, Bernhardt might not want it, said one lawyer who has business in front of Interior.

“Some folks think he [Bernhardt] may not want to stick around for another two years and may actually see all the of the ceremonial and speech making functions of the secretary as a distraction from getting done the things he wants,” said the lawyer, who asked for anonymity to discuss personnel issues.

Bernhardt has been on notice for quite some time that he may need to step in for Zinke, whose troubles included an ongoing investigation of a land deal in Montana — first reported by POLITICO — tied to the chairman of Halliburton, one of the world’s largest energy companies. Interior’s inspector general has referred that probe to the Justice Department for potential further investigation or even prosecution, according to several media reports.

“For the last month, if not longer, it has been a common reference, even from the secretary, that David needs to be ready,” a source close to Interior’s senior staff told POLITICO for a story published in October. The source requested anonymity to discuss internal department matters.

Bernhardt, a former lobbyist known as “a lawyer’s lawyer” in the industry, could wind up playing a role similar to the one that longtime Washington lobbyist Andrew Wheeler has played since becoming acting administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency this summer. In contrast to former EPA chief Pruitt, who had alienated even many Republican lawmakers with his cascade of personal scandals, Wheeler has kept a relatively low profile while continuing to methodically roll back environmental rules and promote coal and oil production.

Bernhardt worked at Interior as solicitor during the George W. Bush administration, a time when the department had also been rocked by scandal over its division overseeing energy leases. He then went to lobbyist firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, where he worked for a client seeking to pump water from the Mojave desert to southern California.

Many environmental activists fear that Bernhardt would be more effective than Zinke in executing Trump’s agenda. In fact, they contend he’s already doing it, having taken meetings with appropriations staff and led policy on top-tier items like overhauling the Endangered Species Act and reorganizing the department.

“Why would I want him to take over? I can’t say that I do,” said Aaron Weiss, media director with the Center for Western Priorities, told POLITICO earlier this fall.

“There are so many parallels with the Scott Pruitt and Andrew Wheeler situation [at EPA] and the Ryan Zinke and David Bernhardt situation. Andrew Wheeler knows exactly how to pull the levers of policy,” Weiss added. “Dave Bernhardt is the exact same way. He is a walking conflict of interest.”

Zinke’s tenure has been under a cloud formed by multiple investigations into his behavior at Interior. The IG office has been looking at his ties to Halliburton Chairman Dave Lesar, who met with Zinke at Interior headquarters to discuss a real estate deal involving land owned by a non-profit Zinke established that is now controlled by his wife.

The IG is also looking into whether Zinke bowed to political pressure in blocking requests from Native American tribes to open a Connecticut casino. That probe was requested in response to POLITICO’s report on lobbying by the tribes’ business rivals.

The heat on Zinke was only going to ratchet up in January, when Democrats take control of the House and with it the power to launch new probes into Trump’s Cabinet.

While the investigations kept Zinke’s names in headlines, Bernhardt has quietly been taking on much of the responsibility for pushing Trump’s agenda, sources have said.

Bernhardt has taken a lead role in what had been Zinke’s signature policy effort — reorganizing the department and sending more staff to Western states. Bernhardt has become “the main point of contact” on the reorganization, Jay Tilton, a spokesperson for Senate Appropriations Committee Democrats, told POLITICO in October.

Requests for records have turned up scant communication from Bernhardt — raising additional fears among green groups.

The watchdog group American Oversight urged the investigators who have spent the past year and a half probing Zinke’s abundant alleged conflicts of interest and potential misdeeds to turn their attention to his replacement.

“It is high time for the glare of sunlight to focus on Deputy Secretary Bernhardt,” the group’s Austin Evers said Saturday. “We’ll see if he has the spine to answer questions that Zinke lacked.”

Eliana Johnson contributed to this report.