On December 24, the Trump Administration moved to dismiss our case challenging President Trump’s unconstitutional attempts to sabotage the Affordable Care Act. In our lawsuit, the cities of Columbus, Ohio; Baltimore, Maryland; Cincinnati, Ohio; and Chicago, Illinois, and individual citizens from Charlottesville, Virginia, allege that the Trump Administration has worked to undermine the ACA at every turn. In its motion to dismiss our lawsuit, one of the Administration’s primary responses is to promise that things are getting better, but it ignores the ways in which its own actions have made things worse by driving up the costs of quality health coverage.

Faced with our formidable challenge to President Trump’s intentional and unconstitutional efforts to sabotage the Affordable Care Act, the Administration offers a weak and misleading prediction that, despite the President’s efforts to interfere with Americans’ access to quality healthcare, things will fare better in 2019.

The Trump Administration ignores the many ways its own actions have driven up healthcare costs throughout the country, and fails to acknowledge that the ACA remains strong because citizens, cities, nonprofits and others are actively working to protect the law in the face of an administration intent on destroying it.

.@realDonaldTrump has sabotaged the Affordable Care Act and driven up the cost of health insurance. #TrumpSabotage hurts families and violates the Constitution, so Columbus, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Chicago & other Americans are taking Trump to court.
More: https://t.co/zPIDDsdSGt pic.twitter.com/OjIbJEBknf

— Democracy Forward (@DemocracyFwd) August 2, 2018

The lawsuit argues that President Trump’s repeated attempts to undermine the law violate his constitutional duty to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed,” increase the cost of health coverage, and increase the number of uninsured Americans.

The December 24 filing follows the Trump Administration’s ongoing departure from long-standing norms in failing to defend the ACA against a frivolous and politically motivated attack by a group of governors and state attorneys general in an unrelated case in Texas. Earlier this month, the court presiding over that case took the extraordinary step of declaring the entire ACA invalid—a ruling that legal experts from across the political spectrum have described as clearly wrong.