As you said, McConnell and the Republican Senate refused to hold hearings on Obama's Supreme Court nominee, in March more than seven months before the election 2016 election - "Give the people a voice in the filling of this vacancy" said McConnell. [1]

The other half:

Four years later, they had no problem confirming Trump's nominee in late October, not two weeks before Trump's 2020 election - and McConnell said "The precedent only applies when different parties control the Senate and the White House." [2]

To me the inconsistency seems contrary to the spirit of democracy.

[1] https://www.republicanleader.senate.gov/newsroom/remarks/mcc...

[2] the precedent only applies when different parties control the Senate and the White House

FWIW, Nixoncare, totally blocked by Ted Kennedy because the dems didn't want Nixon's name on anything else that was nice (the Clean Air Act President kept claiming he'd end Johnson's war in Vietnam and then he had the gall to open relations with China!), was more like the single-payer health care Obama ran on but could not produce.

Also: Disclaimer, I'm absolutely not a conservative. I just don't like the liberal rewrites of actual history.

Despite promises to "repeal Obamacare" they never did repeal it... or even change it much at all. It was just too popular / the consequences too much to consider.

The joke at the time being that the Republicans would repeal Obamacare and replace it with the Affordable Care Act ;)

It seems like the parent is clearly asking for a concrete example.

Justice Alito and Justice Thomas in particular latch on to any fig leaf of legality to excuse the administration's out-of-court admissions of intent to break the law [1]:

> If courts pay more attention to out-of-court presidential and Administration statements, that will be another example of how the “presumption of regularity”—”the courts’ baseline assumption that government officials act lawfully and in good faith,” as Alan Rozenshtein puts it—is in serious jeopardy. Justice Alito’s dissent to the A.A.R.P. order, in which Justice Thomas joined, shows that those two justices remain content to rely on the Government’s representation’s in court—and vexed that their colleagues apparently feel differently.

> I'm not sure how much difference that bill's clause makes in practice.

There are at least three massive problems aside from undermining the role of courts in enforcing their interpretations of the law.

- The clause applies to both government-associated defendants and non-governmental defendants. [2]

- Federal Rule 65(c) does not apply to final injunctions, but the wording of the clause might apply to final injunctions. [2]

- The clause applies retroactively.

[1] https://blog.dividedargument.com/p/in-the-trump-20-era-the-c...

[2] https://blog.dividedargument.com/p/the-house-judiciary-commi...

Do not pretend otherwise.