The strategy has been dubbed “repeal and delay.” Republicans could eliminate major pieces of the law within a matter of weeks. But party leaders want to postpone the date the rollback goes into effect, by a couple of years, to prevent disruption in people’s insurance coverage (read, to protect themselves from blowback in the 2018 elections). In the meantime, Republicans promise, they’ll pass a replacement—“something terrific,” to quote Donald Trump.

Democrats have made it very clear that they have no interest in cooperating later to pass a replacement bill. But they aren’t the only ones opposed to “repeal and delay.” Only one in five Americans supports the strategy, according to a poll released Friday by the Kaiser Family Foundation. And a growing number of moderate and conservative voices chimed in this week to register unease. “I don’t think we can just repeal Obamacare and say we’re going to get the answer two years from now,” Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton said Thursday on MSNBC. “Health care is a very complex issue. We haven’t coalesced around a solution for six years, in part because it is so complicated. Kicking the can down the road for a year or two years is not going to make it any easier to solve.” Three other Republican senators have expressed doubts about repealing the law before proposing a replacement. (A plan to use the repeal legislation to defund Planned Parenthood may further erode support for it; GOP senators Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins tried to remove a similar provision in an Obamacare repeal bill last year.)

Objections to a quick repeal are also coming from Republican leaders in states with a lot to lose if federal dollars for the Medicaid expansion are yanked back. Ohio Governor John Kasich said Thursday that he wants “to know what’s going to happen to all those people who find themselves left out in the cold.” In Michigan, where more than 642,300 people have signed up for the state’s version of the Medicaid expansion since 2014, Republican Governor Rick Snyder defended the program in a recent interview, calling it a “successful” model. Arizona Governor Doug Doucey has also urged against repealing the law before a viable replacement is in place; about 400,000 of his constituents could lose coverage if federal funds for the Medicaid expansion disappear. Montana House speaker Austin Knudsen voiced similar concerns last month.

Yesterday, the Obama administration announced the transfer of four detainees to Saudi Arabia. That leaves 55 prisoners, 19 of whom have been cleared for release. The administration has all but conceded that it will fail in its efforts to shutter the prison, and even if every detainee cleared for transfer is released, the detention facility will continue to hold nearly 40 men.

Lt. Col. Sterling Thomas represents Zahir, and in a telephone interview the day after Trump’s tweet, told The Nation about the stress his client is facing. “He is very worried,” says Thomas. “He is quite anxious, as many of the men are down there, about what their fate will be. Whether they will be released, or whether they will be held without end under the incoming administration.”

Little is known about the specifics of the abuse Zahir underwent while in US custody. His name doesn’t appear in the unclassified executive summary of the Senate Torture report, but when asked if Zahir had been tortured, Thomas said, “He was. I can’t get too much further into it….but yes, he was.”

Beyond the nightmarish limbo that Zahir is in, it is all but certain that indefinite detention at Guantánamo Bay will be a feature of the Trump administration, virtually codifying it as a permanent aspect of the US national security state. Beyond Trump himself, the president-elect has surrounded himself with pro-Guantánamo figures, from National Security Adviser Michael Flynn to CIA-head-in-waiting Mike Pompeo. Yesterday, a Trump transition-team member said the president-elect will name recently-retired senator Dan Coats as his pick for director of national intelligence. In that role, Coats will be responsible for yearly reports on the possibility of reengagement among Guantánamo detainees, reports that could be used to justify indefinite detention.

Take the Republican Party’s commitment to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which it is already making moves toward. If it succeeds, 36,000 people could die every year. Proposed cuts to Medicare and Medicaid could drive that figure up even higher, with the burden put disproportionately on poor people and people of color. The elderly would be particularly hard-hit, especially if Republicans succeed in cutting and/or privatizing Social Security.

Plenty more natural disasters could be coming down the pipeline as well. According to the World Health Organization, climate change is expected to cause approximately 250,000 additional deaths per year, worldwide, between 2030 and 2050. Already, an estimated 400,000 die per year from warming-related causes, not to mention the millions forced to flee places like Syria, where climate change related drought has exacerbated the ongoing conflict. Trump’s Cabinet picks, meanwhile, are eager to gut the Environmental Protection Agency from within and pull out of the Paris Agreement. Secretary of State hopeful and former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson is poised to open the floodgates to unprecedented levels of fossil fuel extraction. Lisa Murkowski, Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee chairman, is already plotting ways to peel back Obama-era bans on oil and gas drilling in the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans. As scientists have been saying for years, that’s the exact opposite of what is needed to cap warming at levels that are anything other than catastrophic.

Obviously, this list is incomplete, and doesn’t factor in potential expansions in mass incarceration, the erosion of labor protections, new wars, and—of course—the threat of nuclear annihilation (to name just a few.) But with these and other measures, it’s clear that the GOP, in no uncertain terms, is trying to kill you.

Colleagues of former Sen. Dan Coats, R-Ind., describe the septuagenarian as competent and congenial — the “Mister Rogers” of Republicans, as Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., said — but his positions on issues including NSA surveillance, Edward Snowden, torture, and Guantanamo Bay are bound to spark arguments with civil libertarians as Congress debates his nomination today by President-elect Donald Trump to succeed James Clapper as director of national intelligence.

Coats said the NSA’s programs, including its bulk collection of American telephone records, were “legal, constitutional and used under the strict oversight of all three branches of government” — though courts later disagreed, and Congress amended the law to end the American records collection program, as Snowden pointed out on Twitter on Thursday.

Coats and Trump’s team are also in accord on Guantanamo. In the past, Coats has railed against President Barack Obama’s attempts to close the prison. “For years, the facility at Guantanamo Bay has been a valuable tool in our counterterrorism efforts. Moving Guantanamo detainees into the United States poses significant security risks, and we should not endanger American families simply for President Obama’s legacy,” Coats said in a February 2016 statement. He has also described the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation into CIA torture as “only a partisan account of the last decade’s counterterrorism efforts.”

Another concern about Coats that may come up in hearings: while ambassador to Germany he was embroiled in an embarrassing scandal around the wrongful imprisonment and torture of German citizen Khaled Masri — who was kidnapped while vacationing in Macedonia, sent to Afghanistan, tortured, and released five months later without ever being charged with a crime.

Writing for the New York Times on Thursday, Drew Altman, president and chief executive of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, discussed the findings of six focus groups conducted by the foundation in the Rust Belt region—"three with Trump voters who are enrolled in the Affordable Care Act marketplaces, and three with Trump voters receiving Medicaid."

"They were not, by and large, angry about their health care," Altman noted, "they were simply afraid they will be unable to afford coverage for themselves and their families."

When "asked about policies found in several Republican plans to replace the Affordable Care Act—including a tax credit to help defray the cost of premiums, a tax-preferred savings account and a large deductible typical of catastrophic coverage—several of these Trump voters recoiled, calling such proposals 'not insurance at all,'" he wrote. They also "expressed disbelief" when they were told Trump "might embrace a plan that included these elements."

In Kentucky, Missouri, and New Hampshire, three states that flipped to unified Republican control, legislators have prioritized passing Right to Work, a law that quickly diminishes union power by allowing workers in unionized workplaces to withhold fees used to organize and advocate on their behalf.

Business interests helped win new Republican victories, now legislators are paying them back.

In Kentucky, Republicans won the legislature for the first time in 95 years with strong campaign support from Americans for Prosperity, the group founded and funded by the billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch that is deeply focused on undermining union influence. Americans for Prosperity maintained a major presence in the state, funding campaign expenditures attacking state and local Democrats in swing districts, fielding a large voter canvassing effort, and providing specialized technology for campaign workers. No one knows how much Americans for Prosperity spent on local Kentucky races because the group is not required to disclose state-based campaign expenditures or its donors.

Along with the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce and other business interests, the Koch-funded group demanded that the new GOP majority in Kentucky pass Right to Work. On Thursday, Kentucky state House legislators passed the union-busting measure, and the senate Senate is expected the follow suit on Saturday, with Republican Gov. Matt Bevin prepared to sign it.

Nationally, the incoming Trump administration may continue this trend. Analysts expect Trump to attempt to roll back Obama administration rules that make labor organizing easier for franchise restaurants such as McDonalds. Trump is also expected to appoint a Supreme Court judge who will strike down mandatory fees paid by nonunion members in organized workplaces. Congressional Republicans have also agitated for a national Right to Work law that could turn the tide in Democratic-trending states like Nevada and California.

U.S. Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Chuck Schumer of New York will attend a health care rally with Michigan Democrats in suburban Detroit.

The rally announced Friday is scheduled for Jan. 15 in Warren in blue-collar Macomb County, where President-elect Donald Trump performed well in his surprise win over Hillary Clinton.

Democrats are fighting to preserve the federal health care law as Trump and Republicans look to repeal and replace it. Schumer is the Democratic leader in the Senate, and Sanders won Michigan over Clinton in the presidential primary.

58% favor replacing the ACA with federally funded healthcare system

Presented with three separate scenarios for the future of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), 58% of U.S. adults favor the idea of replacing the law with a federally funded healthcare system that provides insurance for all Americans. At the same time, Americans are split on the idea of maintaining the ACA as it is, with 48% in favor and 49% opposed. The slight majority, 51%, favor repealing the act.

Gallup included these three questions in its interviewing on May 6-8 to provide insight into how Americans might react to the three remaining presidential candidates' proposals for dealing with the ACA. Bernie Sanders calls for replacing the ACA with a single-payer, federally administered system that he calls "Medicare for All." Donald Trump has said he would repeal the ACA, and Hillary Clinton generally says she would keep the ACA in place. Americans were asked in the survey to react to each of these proposals separately, and there was no mention of the candidates in the question wording.