House Democrats are preparing to force votes that would have the chamber’s legal counsel defend Obamacare against a lawsuit seeking to invalidate the healthcare law.

The House will vote Thursday, as part of a larger rules package, to allow the House counsel to intervene in the case, known as Texas v. Azar. The formal vote on the resolution will happen next week, according to the office of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the likely incoming House Speaker.

The plan marks one of the first orders of business for Democrats in the House as they take over under the new Congress Thursday. Democrats hope to put the spotlight on Republicans who ran campaigns telling voters they were devoted to keeping in place Obamacare’s protections on pre-existing illnesses. They plan to argue that votes rejecting the resolution demonstrate Republicans aren’t really committed to the protections.

The Obamacare rules obligate insurers cover people with pre-existing conditions, such as cancer or diabetes, at the same price as they cover healthier people. The law also mandates a range of medical coverage and guarantees for which sicker patients cannot be refused coverage. The provision is one of Obamacare’s most popular among voters, even though it has contributed to higher premiums for certain enrollees.

“After two years of brutal attacks on health care and desperate GOP misrepresentations on the campaign trail, we’re not giving Republicans anywhere to hide,” Pelosi spokesman Henry Connelly said in an email. “Republicans who survived the election on their tardy promises to protect pre-existing conditions will have to explain why they have once again been complicit in trying to strike down those life-saving protections.”

A federal judge issued a ruling in December that not only would undo rules on pre-existing conditions, but the rest of Obamacare as well. The ruling is being stayed until it is appealed. While experts from both political persuasions have said they do not expect it will ultimately succeed, Democrats have signaled they intend to continue using the case as political ammunition.

Republican state officials started the lawsuit, which argues that all of Obamacare must be thrown out as a consequence of Congress zeroing out the fine on the uninsured in the tax law. The Trump administration sided with the GOP officials, but asked specifically for the rules on pre-existing illnesses to be thrown out. The federal judge, Reed O’Connor, sided with the GOP officials.

Democratic attorneys general have already said they plan to appeal the ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in New Orleans. The case also may make its way to the Supreme Court, which has become more conservative through President Trump’s appointments of Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.

Senate Democrats tried to vote in December to have the Senate legal counsel intervene on the case, but Republicans, who hold the majority in the upper chamber, blocked the vote.

The active-duty two-star Marine general former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis tapped to serve as the on-camera spokesman for the Pentagon asked not to take the job, after Mattis resigned, Pentagon officials say.

One official said that in a meeting with Shanahan, Marine Maj. Gen. Burke Whitman gave five reasons why he preferred not to take the job, and that after considering the reasons, Shanahan agreed.

The Pentagon announced in November that Mattis had tapped Marine Maj. Gen. Burke Whitman to fill the position that had been effectively vacant since chief Pentagon spokesperson Dana White stopped briefing in May 2018.

White resigned abruptly on New Year’s Eve, Mattis’ last day as defense secretary. Her deputy, Naval Reserve Captain Charles Summers, has been appointed in an acting capacity to fill her position.

Whitman’s appointment as the face of the Pentagon was controversial because of the strong tradition for members of the U.S. military to remain apolitical, while the Pentagon’s spokesman job often requires defending or explaining administration policy.

[Enter Patrick Shanahan: The Pentagon ‘remains focused on safeguarding our nation’]

The last uniformed Pentagon spokesman to serve as primary solo briefer was Rear Adm. John Kirby, who was forced out by Defense Secretary Ash Carter. Carter believed that a civilian, not a military officer, ought to be the one to defend Obama administration policy.

Kirby retired, hung up his uniform, and became the State Department spokesman, briefing as a civilian.

Kirby is now a paid contributor to CNN.

More typically, a civilian political appointee is paired with a military officer at the podium in the Pentagon briefing room, so that the civilian could handle policy questions and the military briefer could provide context on operational details.

Whitman, who was seen at the Pentagon Wednesday, will now be looking for a new assignment from the Marine Corps.

Whitman had just assumed command of the Marine Forces Reserve and Marine Forces North in New Orleans in September, a month before Mattis picked him to be the spokesman.

That job is still unfilled, so it is possible he could return to the assignment.

If presidents could be impeached for ignorance, Donald Trump just merited impeachment for endorsing the Soviet Union’s brutal 1979 invasion of Afghanistan.

To listen to what Trump said today at a Cabinet meeting is to enter a bizarrely anti-moral alternative universe. In a confused, ahistorical, and rambling comment in a ramblingly reality-deprived confab, Trump uttered this stunningly benighted take on the Soviets’ attempt to conquer and permanently communize Afghanistan: “The reason Russia was in Afghanistan was because terrorists were going into Russia. They [the Soviets] were right to be there.”

Right to be there? Really?

In 1979, there were no “terrorists” from Afghanistan going into the Soviet Union. None. Not even the Soviets claimed as much. The official Soviet excuse for invading was to shore up the supposedly legitimate Afghani government (itself installed in a pro-Soviet coup in the previous year), which had been upending local customs and brutalizing its internal enemies.

There was nothing “right” about the invasion. Not even close. Virtually the whole international community, even nations which usually kowtowed to the Soviets whenever conflicts arose, sharply denounced this flagrantly illegitimate use of Soviet power. The U.N. General Assembly, often a Soviet-friendly conclave, passed a resolution against the invasion, 104-18. In protest against the invasion, some 66 nations joined the U.S.-led boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow.

The invasion was an application of the Brezhnev Doctrine, which promised the use of Soviet armed force to crush any attempt to roll back communism or attain human rights, anywhere the Kremlin considered within the Soviet sphere of influence. The doctrine was, in a word, evil. Tens of millions of people had human rights, or hopes for them, destroyed, and of course many thousands lost their lives.

Opposition to the Soviet invasion was, in turn, a key facet of the Reagan Doctrine, aimed at rolling back the Russian Evil Empire. It was a moral American doctrine, part of an immensely moral worldwide struggle. Because of the Reagan Doctrine, the large U.S. military build-up, and the eventual success at evicting the Soviets from Afghanistan, the Soviet Empire of course did collapse — and hundreds of millions of people won the freedom that had been denied them for decades.

For an American president to say the Soviets were “right” to invade Afghanistan is mind-boggling. It’s morally akin to approving Mussolini’s fascist invasion and subjugation of Ethiopia or even the “ killing fields” of Pol Pot. It is unfathomable. It is an outrage.

Trump is either historically illiterate or morally monstrous. Let’s hope it’s the former. Either way, he should recant his remarks. They sully the Oval Office and the nation which its occupant is supposed to serve.