Updated at 3:57pm ET Conservatives' surprise and anger over Thursday's Supreme Court decision upholding the Affordable Care Act are still sinking in, but they’re turning to the work of transforming defeat in the courtroom on Thursday into victory at the ballot box on Election Day.

In Senate and House races from North Dakota to New Hampshire, Republicans are or soon will be using Democratic candidates’ support for the ACA as a motivator to get conservatives to vote.

“I know many of you are angry about the Supreme Court's decision to uphold Obamacare,” said Sen. Jim DeMint, R- S.C., in a fund-raising e-mail to supporters of his Senate Conservatives Fund. “I am too. We're now living in a post-constitutional era that is destroying our country.”

Recommended: Mission Impossible: Romney's ambitious first term agenda

But he said in the wake of Thursday’s decision, “there is only one solution to our government's unchecked power: win elections.”

Rep. Phil Gingrey, R- Ga., told reporters Friday, “I want to say to our base in the Republican Party: Get even more active than you’ve been. Get out and vote and take your friends with you. Because this train is leaving the station and there’s not going to be another opportunity. If Barack Obama is re-elected to a second term and we don’t replace him with the 45^th president then this law sinks in, it gets roots and it ain’t going away.”

In a more neutral tone, Chief Justice John Roberts had a similar message in his decision Thursday: If you’re unhappy with a decision made by Congress or the president, vote.

Roberts reminded Americans that -- unlike Roberts himself -- elected officials “can be thrown out of office if the people disagree with them.”

Roberts’s decision may have the effect of helping the Republican message machine by re-framing the insurance purchase mandate as a tax increase. As Roberts put it in his decision, going without insurance will now be “just another thing the Government taxes, like buying gasoline or earn­ing income.” The Republican anti-tax message isn’t new, but it does appeal to most loyal base voters, some of whom did not bother to turn out for John McCain in 2008.

It remains to be seen in races from New Hampshire’s Second Congressional district to Montana’s Senate race whether support for “Obamacare” is going to help or hurt Democrats.

On the House side, one might think that any Democrat who was going to lose his or her seat due to a vote for the ACA would have already been defeated in the 2010 election massacre.

More than a dozen Democrats in Republican-leaning districts went down to defeat in 2010 due in part for the vote for “Obamacare,” from John Spratt in South Carolina to John Salazar in Colorado.

Recommended: Romney: To get rid of 'ObamaCare,' must replace Obama

There are seven Democrats who voted for the ACA lost their seats in 2010 and are now trying a comeback, including Dan Maffei in New York and Alan Grayson in Florida

“Democrats got booted out of office in 2010 for their support of ObamaCare, and now they’re out taking self-congratulatory victory laps, said National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Nat Sillin. “Voting for ObamaCare ended their congressional careers and it’s going to sink their chances at a comeback.”  

But Sillin said there could be a few potential comeback stories out there: for one, the district Maffei is now running in has become more Democratic due to redistricting.

The NRCC is launching a website and campaign next week focusing on ten vulnerable Democrats – both incumbents and former members who voted for and support the ACA who are running in competitive districts where the NRCC believes support for the law could scuttle their candidacy.

One hears counter arguments from Democrats who say voters are now more aware of the ACA’s benefits than were in 2010.

Rep. David Loebsack, D-Iowa, whose district is less Democratic after redistricting than it was in 2010, faces a more competitive race than he did two years ago.

Loebsack said he can’t predict what effect the Supreme Court decision will have on his race.

“What I’m going to do, and what I did last time, is talking about the things that people in the district are telling me they like about it: things such as children age 26 and below staying on their parents’ insurance,” Loebsack said. “There are a lot of seniors in Iowa and that (prescription drug) donut hole is getting closed; I go to a lot of senior centers and they’re very appreciative of that.”

Democratic Congressional Campaign Commitee spokesman Jesse Ferguson said that House Republicans were "trying to put their insurance company campaign donors back in charge of health care at the expense of consumer protections for the middle class but the American people won't stand for it."

He said "Republicans will pay a big political price for spending 18 months choosing obstruction and extremism to protect insurance companies instead of consumers and millionaires instead of Medicare."

Sen. Jon Tester, D- Montana, whose re-election fight with Republican Rep. Denny Rehberg is rated as a toss-up by the non-partisan Cook Political Report, said Thursday’s Supreme Court affirmation of the ACA would not have much effect on his race.

“I don’t think anything changes much, other than there’s more surety about how we’re moving forward, which I think is positive,” Tester said. “It’s still about holding insurance companies accountable, about making sure folks with pre-existing conditions can get insurance, and folks who get sick don’t get thrown off because of lifetime caps.”

But Jonathan Collegio, spokesman for the conservative group American Crossroads, argued in an e-mail Thursday that “Obamacare is no longer an abstraction.....  Obamacare is now a real, concrete, tax-hiking and regulatory-expanding law that will or will not be repealed in January 2013 – depending on the outcome of the 2012 elections.”

Collegio singled out Rep. Joe Donnelly, D- Ind., who is running against Republican Richard Mourdock for the Indiana Senate seat now held by Sen. Richard Lugar.

Collegio said that in his 2010 House campaign, “Donnelly had to defend a vote on Obamacare that he took eight months earlier – which was on the books, but which folks were moving past. This year, Democrats like Donnelly must defend voting for the legislation and its massive tax hikes again – with an election between now and the vote for repeal. For Indiana voters, a vote for Joe Donnelly will literally become a vote for Obamacare.”

Donnelly said in a statement Friday that in the wake of the high court’s decision, “Hoosiers will be pleased to learn that many positive aspects of this law, such as lower prescription drug costs for seniors, making sure people cannot be dropped by insurance companies if they get sick, and making healthcare more affordable and accessible, remain law. Yet this law is far from perfect, and I will work with both parties to improve it and protect Medicare.”

He added that Mourdock’s “only unique contribution to the debate on lowering healthcare costs has been to suggest that employers could choose not to offer cancer treatment coverage to their employees.”

For Republicans, as they focus voters on the reality of the ACA, there may be a few dissonant notes in their message:

• A law which many Republicans characterized as an oppressive Obama over-reach has now in large part been given the seal of approval by the nation’s highest-ranking conservative jurist.
• For many taxpayers, especially those with incomes below $250,000, the direct impact of the tax part of the law doesn’t begin in 2015 which is when those refusing to purchase insurance must start to pay the penalty (or tax). And unless Congress changes the law that tax penalty is not really so painful. As Roberts said in his decision, “for most Americans the amount due will be far less than the price of insurance.”
• The tax on so-called “Cadillac” health care plans, which would likely be unpopular, doesn’t take effect until 2018 and some Democrats who voted for the ACA have said they will try to weaken, postpone or kill that tax.

Even in the best-case Election Day scenario for Senate Republicans they won’t have 60 seats in 2013, and thus won’t be able to fully repeal the ACA.  But they could do a lot of damage to the law under the budget reconciliation process which requires only 51 votes in the Senate. Mitt Romney would have to be president to sign that reconciliation bill into law.

Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has laid out a first term agenda that is nothing short of ambitious, outlining a list of priorities that would require him to marshal a near-impossible amount of political capital to achieve.

"What the court did not do on its last day in session, I will do on my first day if elected president of the United States. And that is I will act to repeal ‘ObamaCare,’" Romney said Thursday in Washington, adding to his portfolio the politically thorny pledge to undo President Obama’s health reform law.

Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney gives his reaction to the Supreme Court's upholding key parts of President Barack Obama's signature healthcare overhaul law in Washington June 28, 2012.

The list of promises Romney has made for his first term is extensive. His two “Day One” ads outline other policies the former Massachusetts governor would put in motion on his first day:

• Seeking tax cuts and deficit reduction,
• Approving the Keystone XL oil pipeline,
• Issuing more aggressive strictures for trade with China,
• And seeking the repeal of “job-killing regulations” (the financial regulatory reform bill, Dodd-Frank, is an example Romney mentions frequently on the campaign trail)

More substantially, Romney has promised to seek some type of comprehensive immigration reform – an accomplishment that has escaped both Obama and President George W. Bush – in his first year in office.

"In my first year I will make sure we actually do take on immigration, we secure our border, we make sure that we grow legal immigration in a way that provides people here with skill and expertise that we want," Romney said at a fundraiser earlier this week.

All this is on top of lofty expectations Romney’s set for himself on the economy; he said in May that an unemployment rate above 4 percent is “not cause for celebration.”

“It's going to be busy,” deadpanned a House Republican leadership aide, speaking of Romney’s agenda.

Presidential candidates are not typically modest in their election year promises.

Obama, as a candidate in 2008, made a number of promises that haven’t made their way to fulfillment. Romney has been eager to highlight, for instance, the president’s inability to accomplish comprehensive immigration reform.

And to Romney’s credit, despite the criticism the presumptive Republican nominee has weathered for offering few specifics about his first-term agenda, his first term proposals seem to outpace Obama’s ambitions for his second.

Romney, like Obama and any number of candidates entering their first term as president, might encounter a stark reality. Governing is about as easy as herding cats, and that process isn’t helped by the glacial pace on Capitol Hill.

First Thoughts: Ending the month on a high note

Presidents often enjoy a “honeymoon” in which they’re able to advance a major element of their platform. Bush got education reform and his signature tax cuts; Obama got his stimulus bill.

And that’s to assume, the Republicans maintain control of the House and take over the Senate – in which case, prospective Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) would be tasked with convincing a non-trivial number of Democrats to join the GOP in advancing Romney’s agenda.

Romney could seek the repeal of health care as his first priority, something he might accomplish by using the process of budget reconciliation. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) suggested Friday on “Morning Joe” that Republicans could use this tactic, which allows the Senate to approve legislation with a simple majority of votes, to gut the heart of Obama’s law.

But even if this were to be achievable practically, it would be a bloody fight on which Romney would have to spend considerable political capital.

“He comes into office, and Day One is getting your secretary of State or secretary of Treasury confirmed!” said former Delaware Sen. Ted Kaufman (D), who long served as an aide in the chamber before succeeding Joe Biden in the chamber, of a new president’s traditional to-do list.

“You’re just going to declare war on the Democrats from the first day you get into office?” Kaufman said. “Obama didn’t do that, and he had 60 votes.”

There are always foreign policy crises and the unexpected issues – like 2010’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico – that can divert from the business of governing.

“If the Democratic leadership wants to criticize a President Romney for fulfilling his promises, it's not something that's going to play well with voters,” said the House Republican aide, evaluating the broad range of issues Romney has promised to advance.

On some of those issues, too, Romney is boxed in politically. Republicans in Congress have so frequently voted to repeal the president’s health care law – the next vote is set for July 11 – in part because they made it a cornerstone of their 2010 campaign.

“If Romney is to win, that's a major part of what he's run on,” the GOP aide said of Romney’s vow to repeal the law. “Despite protestations from Democrats, some of whom will vote for repeal, that A) depoliticizes it, but B) is also part of why he's running.”

But Romney will also have to reckon with the so-called “fiscal cliff” – the cocktail of expiring tax cuts, automated spending cuts and necessary extension of the nation’s debt ceiling – early in his term, unless Congress were to reach a deal in its lame-duck session, an unlikely prospect.

 “You may be critical of Obama – why’d he use up all of his mojo on health care reform?” Kaufman noted. “You’re going to need mojo just to get a debt limit vote and figure out what we’re doing on the Bush tax cut.”

Even after all of this has been addressed, even in the best case scenario for Romney, in which the GOP controls both chambers, he’ll be dealing with a Congress that prides itself on regular order. Romney has prepared few detailed plans or pieces of legislation to drop on Capitol Hill’s doorstep; in fact, when asked earlier this month on CBS about which tax exemptions he’d kill to finance tax reform, Romney said he’d “go through that process with Congress.”

That process can be lengthy, though, and force any president to prioritize agenda items. And congressional Republicans are cognizant of that.

“It's something that could be moved through a process,” the GOP aide said of Romney’s immigration reform plans. “Does it end up at a president's desk? That remains to be seen. Things that are comprehensive take a long time.”

Updated 2:12 p.m. - Congress ended months of partisan bickering on Friday by passing and sending to President Barack Obama a comprehensive extension of highway and infrastructure projects, along with a one-year extension of low student loan rates that were set to double.

The House voted 373 to 52 to approve a $120 billion, 27-month bill to fund highway projects. Attached to that bill was the student loan extension, which prevented rates from doubling from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent on July 1.

The Senate approved the package shortly thereafter in a 74-19 vote. The legislation now heads to the White House for the president's signature.

The package lumps together some of the biggest stumbling blocks to beguile lawmakers in the past few months. Squabbling over how to finance each priority had divided the Republican-controlled House and the Democratic-run Senate.

Republicans had also insisted on including a measure to move the Keystone XL oil pipeline forward. President Obama and Democrats opposed it, though, and it was ultimately omitted from today’s bill.

Instead, Republicans were able to use funds set aside for "beautification, bike paths, and sidewalk lighting" for higher priority infrastructure projects such as the national highway system instead.  They were also able to keep funding at current levels.

The package also cuts the average review and permitting process for new infrastructure projects in half, done mostly by streamlining environmental reviews so they can run concurrently, something for which Republicans had also fought.

After the Supreme Court’s second day of oral arguments, back on March 27, there was a sense that the justices were not sold on the health care law.

“I think it’s very doubtful that court is going to find the health care law constitutional,” NBC’s Pete Williams said at the time. “I don’t see five votes to find the law constitutional.”

And with good reason. The justices were very skeptical of the thrust of the government’s case -- that the mandate was justified under the so-called “commerce clause” of the Constitution and the government’s right to regulate markets. It was clear Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Anthony Kennedy, usually a swing vote, were skeptical of the “commerce clause” argument, especially how it could be limited to the health care market. And star conservative lawyer Paul Clement, who argued for the states that filed suit against the law, focused his case on it.

Stringer / Reuters

In this courtroom illustration, U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli (R) speaks at the lectern to members of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington March 27, 2012.

The rough day in court for the government led some to criticize the government’s lawyer, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli. The Republican National Committee went so far as to mock Verrilli with this video, focusing on style -- a pause and stammer.

But court arguments are not television anchor tryouts; they’re about the merits of an argument, and a review of the transcript of the oral arguments from that day (with the benefit of hindsight, of course) finds Verrilli made a strong case for the government’s taxing power. While the taxing power argument was certainly not the focus of post-oral arguments analyses, it was the one that eventually won the day. And though Chief Justice John Roberts gave few clues that he might be leaning toward the argument, there were some signs he might have been warmer to the government’s case than some thought.

The heart of Verrilli’s argument, that the mandate should be considered justified under the Congress’ taxing power, seemed to center on this point, which he made twice that day -- that the mandate would be administered by the Internal Revenue Service, the agency responsible for taxation.

“With respect to the question of characterization,” Verrilli told Justice Scalia, “the -- this is -- in the Internal Revenue Code, it is administered by the IRS; it is paid on your Form 1040 on April 15^th.”

A few minutes later, pressed by Justice Roberts, he reiterated the point. “[I]t is in the Internal Revenue Code,” Verrilli said. “It is collected by the IRS on April 15^th.”

Verrilli fended off tough questions from nearly all the justices on the taxing power argument, from the court's conservatives to liberals.

Some of the toughest questioning came as it related to the president and members of Congress arguing the mandate was not a tax. But Verrilli countered that: (1) Some members of Congress did argue that the mandate would be valid under the taxing power, and (2) that shouldn’t matter; that it’s up to the court to decide what’s justified under the law, not the rhetoric of politicians.

With Scalia:

JUSTICE SCALIA: The president said it wasn't a tax, didn't he?

GENERAL VERRILLI: Well, Justice Scalia, what the -- two things about that. First, as it seems to me, what matters is what power Congress was exercising. And they were -- and I think it's clear that the -- they were exercising the tax power as well as -­

JUSTICE SCALIA: You're making two arguments. Number one, it's a tax; and number two, even if it isn't a tax, it's within the taxing power. I'm just addressing the first.

GENERAL VERRILLI: What the president said -­

JUSTICE SCALIA: Is it a tax or not a tax? The president didn't think it was.

GENERAL VERRILLI: The president said it wasn't a tax increase because it ought to be understood as an incentive to get people to have insurance.  I don't think it's fair to infer from that anything about whether that is an exercise of the tax power or not.

With Kagan:

JUSTICE KAGAN: I suppose, though, General, one question is whether the determined efforts of Congress not to refer to this as a tax make a difference. I mean, you're suggesting we should just look to the practical operation. We shouldn't look at labels. And that seems right, except that here we have a case in which Congress determinedly said, this is not a tax, and the question is why should that be irrelevant?

GENERAL VERRILLI: I don't think that that's a fair characterization of the actions of Congress here, Justice Kagan. On the -- December 23rd, a point of constitutional order was called, too, in fact, with respect to this law. The floor sponsor, Senator Baucus, defended it as an exercise of the taxing power. In his response to the point of order, the Senate voted 60 to 39 on that proposition. The legislative history is replete with members of Congress explaining that this law is constitutional as an exercise of the taxing power. It was attacked as a tax by its opponents. So I don't think this is a situation where you can say that Congress was avoiding any mention of the tax power.

It would be one thing if Congress explicitly disavowed an exercise of the tax power. But given that it hasn't done so, it seems to me that it's -- not only is it fair to read this as an exercise of the tax power, but this Court has got an obligation to construe it as an exercise of the tax power, if it can be upheld on that basis.

Scalia again pressed Verrilli in a somewhat testy exchange. But Verrilli held his own. Ultimately, Scalia backed down, albeit with a sarcastic conclusion:

JUSTICE SCALIA: You're saying that all the discussion we had earlier about how this is one big uniform scheme and the Commerce Clause, blah, blah, blah, it really doesn't matter. This is a tax and the Federal Government could simply have said, without all of the rest of this legislation, could simply have said, everybody who doesn't buy health insurance at a certain age will be taxed so much money, right?

GENERAL VERRILLI: It -- it used its powers together to solve the problem of the market not -­

JUSTICE SCALIA: Yes, but you didn't need that.

GENERAL VERRILLI -- providing affordable coverage -­

JUSTICE SCALIA: You didn't need that. If it's a tax, it's only -- raising money is enough.

GENERAL VERRILLI: It is justifiable under its tax power.

JUSTICE SCALIA: Okay. Extraordinary.

And perhaps most telling, here’s Verrilli’s most extended exchange with Roberts on taxing authority in which Verrilli admits the likely political considerations for the president and members of Congress not calling it a tax.

That admission may have clarified things and won the day.

Note Roberts’ conclusion:

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Why didn't Congress call it a tax, then?

GENERAL VERRILLI: Well -­

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: You're telling me they thought of it as a tax, they defended it on the tax power. Why didn't they say it was a tax?

GENERAL VERRILLI: They might have thought, Your Honor, that calling it a penalty as they did would make it more effective in accomplishing its objectives. But it is in the Internal Revenue Code, it is collected by the IRS on April 15th. I don't think this is a situation in which you can say -­

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Well, that's the reason. They thought it might be more effective if they called it a penalty.

The Daily Rundown's Chuck Todd talks about the mood at the White House and the mood of Republicans after the Supreme Court's ruling to uphold the health care reform law.

Team Obama, after a rough start, ends the month on a high note… Obama the escape artist… Can Republicans still repeal the law?... And do they have the appetite to do so?... Roberts puts his stamp on the decision... Obama travels to Colorado (arriving at 1:55 pm ET) to inspect the wildfires there… Rothenberg Report doesn’t see a House wave coming… And “Meet the Press” will have Nancy Pelosi, Bobby Jindal, and Howard Dean.

Pete Souza / AFP - Getty Images

President Barack Obama talking on the phone with Solicitor General Donald Verrilli in the Oval Office of the White House June 28, 2012 after learning of the Supreme Court's ruling on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

*** Ending the month on a high note: Perception-wise, June started off as a rough month for President Obama and his allies. First came that disappointing May jobs report; then the Democrats’ loss in the Wisconsin recall; then more bad news out of Europe; Obama’s “the private sector is doing fine” remark; and finally the development that Team Romney outraised Team Obama in May. But the thing about perception is that it can change, and it did in the second half of the month. The president’s immigration/deportation announcement put Romney on the defensive; the Washington Post made the charge that Romney invested in firms that shipped jobs overseas; numerous polls showed that the overall fundamentals of the race hadn’t changed, suggesting that the Obama ads have been more effective in the swing states than the GOP ads; and yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court -- countering a lot of the conventional wisdom -- upheld his signature health-care law. So what started out as a rocky month for Obama ended in a better place for him, just as he embarks on his post-July 4 bus tour through Ohio and Pennsylvania next week.

*** The escape artist: Yesterday’s SCOTUS outcome was typical of what we’ve seen for Obama over the past four years: He finds his back against the wall -- sometimes due to his own doing, sometimes not -- and then escapes disaster. We saw this during the Dem primary season before Iowa (remember the summer of ’07); during Jeremiah Wright; during the ’08 general after the McCain-Palin bounce, during the 2009-2010 health-care fight; and now after the Supreme Court’s ruling yesterday, which easily could have gone the other way. And make no mistake: The decision upholding the law was something Obama and his allies NEEDED; they had to have something to show for the steep price they paid for the health-care law. This was a hurdle the president had to clear to get to November; but the ruling is no political booster rocket. He simply doesn’t have a new drag. Of course, as relates to his re-election, Obama once again finds his back against the wall. The unemployment rate is at 8.2%, and a majority of Americans think the country is on the wrong track. Can he again pull a rabbit from his hat here? We’ll find out in four months.

*** Can Republicans still repeal the law? As for Mitt Romney, his campaign made lemonade out of yesterday’s health-care lemons by announcing that it and its victory fund raised more than $4 million from 42,000 donors since Thursday’s ruling. (Although do keep in mind that Team Romney averaged $2.5 million per day last month.) And Romney made this argument after the decision -- vote for me because I will repeal the health-care law. But is repeal a realistic outcome? On “Morning Joe,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said that Senate Republicans could do it through reconciliation. But conservative writer David Frum argues that Republicans would no longer have the high political ground; they’d find themselves in the same position Democrats did in 2009-2010. “Suddenly it will be their town halls filled with outraged senior citizens whose benefits are threatened; their incumbencies that will be threatened.” The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza makes two other points: 1) the Congressional Budget Office, like it did last time, would probably rule that repealing the health-care would INCREASE the deficit, and 2) reconciliation can be used only for things that have a budgetary effect. “Much of the A.C.A., such as the insurance exchanges and subsidies, would fall under these categories. But a lot of it, including the hated individual mandate, does not.”

*** And how much appetite do they have? Here’s a separate question: How much appetite will Romney have in continually making this repeal argument? Indeed, Obama already had a rebuttal to this in his own remarks yesterday: Isn’t it time to move on? “The highest Court in the land has now spoken… But what we won’t do -- what the country can’t afford to do -- is refight the political battles of two years ago, or go back to the way things were.” There’s also the risk for Romney that talking about repealing health-care will only give Team Obama opportunities to show clips like this one, via American Bridge, of Romney touting his Massachusetts health-care law and its own individual mandate. And Romney’s folks may come to the conclusion that they don’t need to talk about health care because every other Republican will. He may have the luxury (and political necessity) to pivot off of health care, other than using it at rallies, while the various House and Senate GOP candidates pound away. This is one of those issues that could have less impact on the presidential but more on the downballot races.

*** Roberts puts his stamp on the decision: And, of course, we have to talk about Chief Justice John Roberts. Back in March, after the oral arguments in the health-care case, we wrote about the negative consequences of another 5-4 decision. But the 5-4 decision we got yesterday -- with the conservative Roberts joining the four reliable liberal justices – was something different: It made the court look less political. “The fact that the chief justice, a conservative appointed by Republicans, wrote the opinion today would and should give Americans a lot of confidence in the decision that it's not just a political thing," SCOTUSBlog’s Tom Goldstein told NBC’s Pete Williams yesterday. In the process, Roberts is getting lots of praise in the MSM (though also criticism on the right). Here’s Dana Milbank’s headline in the Washington Post: “The umpire strikes back.” For you conservative historians, we even saw some Twitter references to the old “impeach Earl Warren” billboards. That said, we’re fascinated by the contortions many more serious conservative commentators are doing re: Roberts. They are actually holding their fire.

*** Obama travels to Colorado: Transitioning from yesterday’s health-care decision, Obama heads to Colorado today to inspect the wildfires spreading throughout the state. He arrives in the state at 1:55 pm ET.

*** Team Rothenberg doesn’t see a House wave coming: The Rothenberg Political Report has updated its House forecast for November. Bottom line: It (like the Cook Political Report) doesn’t see a wave coming. “Our new projection for gains/losses in the House this November is now between a +1 gain for Republicans and a +6 gain for Democrats.” More: “We rate 201 seats a safe GOP, 161 safe Dem, 25 as Lean/Favored for the GOP, 19 for Lean/Favored for the Dems, and we have 29 total tossups. The 29 includes 9 pure toss-ups (CA-7, CO-6, IL-11, MN-8, NY-1, NY-19, NY-21, NY-27, PA-12), 15 Toss-Up/Tilt GOP (CA-52, CO-3, FL18, IA-3 moved this week toward the GOP, IL 12, IL13, MI 1 moved this week toward the Democrats, MI11, NH1, NV3, NY11, NY18, OH, 16, TX 23 and UT4), and 5 Toss-Up/Tilt Democrat (CA-41, NY24, RI1, WA1).”

*** On “Meet” this Sunday: NBC’s David Gregory will interview House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, plus have a debate between Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and Howard Dean.

Countdown to GOP convention: 59 days
Countdown to Dem convention: 66 days
Countdown to Election Day: 130 days

Click here to sign up for First Read emails.
Text FIRST to 622639, to sign up for First Read alerts to your mobile phone.
Check us out on Facebook and also on Twitter. Follow us @chucktodd, @mmurraypolitics, @DomenicoNBC, @brookebrower

Mitt Romney's successor as governor of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick (D), praised the Supreme Court's ruling upholding the 2010 health-care law -- and tweaked Romney in the process.

"Today's decision is a victory for the American people, a victory for the proper role of government, and a victory for our constitutional checks and balances," Patrick said at press conference in Boston.  

Patrick, an Obama campaign co-chair, sought to tie the federal health-care plan to the one Romney signed into law as Massachusetts governor.

"Congress acted, in 2009, for the same reasons our legislature. And Gov. Romney acted in 2006 because health is a public good and everyone deserves access to it -- because reforming the system brings costs down and improves the system for everyone. Today the court upheld that power."

"[Romney] deserves credit for his role together with the Democratic legislature and Sen. Kennedy and the business community and patient advocates for doing a lot of good, for helping people help themselves," he added.

Patrick said the system in place in Massachusetts has improved coverage, citing stabilizing premiums and coverage of 99.8% of children. Patrick then used Massachusetts' results to counter Romney's claims that the federal law will raise taxes, drop coverage, and eliminate jobs. 

"Each and every one of the list of horrors Gov. Romney now says will happen in America because of Obamacare did not happen in Massachusetts because of Romneycare," Patrick said. 

Patrick also praised Chief Justice John Roberts for setting aside partisanship by siding with the Court's liberal justices to uphold the law.

"The chief justice said basically that it's not the court's business to offer an opinion about whether they approve or disapprove of the choices the Congress has made, but instead in a constitutional system to determine whether the Congress had the power to make the choices it made," Patrick said. "The Affordable Care Act is not ultimately about President Obama or Chief Justice Roberts or any other member of the Court or Congress. It's about Americans all across this country who are trying their very best to make their way forward.  It's about helping people help themselves."

Ohio Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-OH) found herself caught in the preliminary confusion over the Supreme Court's ruling on health care reform.

A source passed to NBC News some video, taken by iPhone, of Schmidt standing outside the court as news of the ruling was apparently being passed to her via cell phone.

"Yes! Yes!!! And what else?!" Schmidt says into her cell phone, under the belief that the Supreme Court had struck down the law. (Like most Republicans, Schmidt was an ardent critic of the law.)

Her reaction is a testament to the initial flurry of misinformation surrounding the court's ruling. Even President Obama had thought that his signature legislative achievement had been defeated at the court, before an aide informed him otherwise.

NASVHILLE, Tenn. -- On the same day that the nation's high court upheld President Obama's health-care legislation, First Lady Michelle Obama told black churchgoers in Nashville that the black community's legal fights for justice continue long after the Civil Rights era. 

"The connection between our laws and our lives isn't always as clear as it was 50 years or 150 years ago," Mrs. Obama told thousands of members of the African Methodist Episcopal Church at their quadrennial conference in Nashville. "And, as a result, it's sometimes easy to assume that the battles in our courts and legislatures have all been won."

The first lady urged the audience to begin by addressing issues like their children's education and health with responsible parenting, but she added that civic engagement remains an important part of the equation. 

"But while we certainly need to start at home," she said, "we all know that we canot stop there because the fact is that our laws still matter."

Mrs. Obama did not directly mention the issue of health care in her speech -- or today's 5-4 ruling in favor of the health law's requirement that most Americans buy insurance.

But, later in the day, at another event in Memphis, Obama directly addressed the Supreme Court case:

“When it comes to healthcare, please, please tell people about the historic reform this president passed,” she said. “Tell them that today’s Supreme Court  decision was truly a victory for families all across this country. ... Because of this reform, help them understand that insurance companies will have to cover preventative care for things like contraception, cancer screening, prenatal care... Insurance companies will no longer be able to cap your coverage because you’re 'too sick' … (or) deny you coverage just because you have a preexisting condition."

During her speech here, she referenced civil rights battles that were won in dramatic court cases like Brown v. Board of Education. Today's fights, she said, are far less clear than that landmark 1954 court victory to end segregation. 

"What about all those kids growing up in neighborhoods where they don't feel safe, kids who never have opportunities worthy of their promise," she asked. "What court case do we bring on their behalf? What laws do we pass for them?" 

About 10,000 participants were on hand for the First Lady's address, which included some teasing of those who might shy away from talking politics at the churches that anchor their communities. 

"To anyone who says that church is no place to talk about these issues," she said, "you tell them there is no place better, because ultimately these are not just political issues, they are moral issues." 

Then-Sen. Barack Obama addressed the same conference during his presidential campaign in 2008. 

The first lady's remarks Thursday included frequent references to black leaders who she said paved the way for her husband's historic ascent to the presidency. She referenced the story of a son of an African American White House staffer who asked the president if his hair felt the same as his own. 

"If you ever wonder whether change is possible in this country, I want you to think about that little black boy in the Oval Office touching the head of the first black president," the first lady said. "And I want you to think about how children who see that photo today think nothing of it because that is all they have ever known. Because they have grown up taking for granted that an African American can be president of the United States." 

The relationship between Barack Obama and John Roberts got off to a rocky start, but Thursday brought the president and the chief justice together in a historic alignment of a conservative judge and a progressive president.

Veteran Supreme Court lawyer Tom Goldstein told NBC’s Pete Williams that “the Affordable Care Act was saved by Chief Justice John Roberts” – due to his decisive fifth vote and his majority opinion upholding the 2010 health care law as an exercise of Congress’s power to tax.

Tim Sloan / AFP - Getty Images

US Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts participates in the court's official photo session on Oct. 8, 2010 at the Supreme Court in Washington, DC.

Obama voted against confirming Roberts as chief justice in 2005, arguing that he lacked a heart and had “far more often used his formidable skills on behalf of the strong in opposition to the weak." Roberts, Obama said then, “seemed consistently to side with those who were dismissive of efforts to eradicate the remnants of racial discrimination in our political process."

It was no surprise when Obama said as he campaigned for president in 2008 that he wouldn’t have appointed Roberts to the high court -- but after Thursday’s decision by Roberts, Obama has good reason to be grateful to his predecessor, George W. Bush, for having done so.

Roberts inadvertently got Obama’s presidency off to an awkward start on inauguration day when the chief justice flubbed the words of the oath of office as he tried to administer it to Obama, putting the word “faithfully" in the wrong place. That embarrassment led to a do-over the next day at the White House.

The two men have a few superficial similarities – they’re both ambitious Midwesterners, both Harvard Law School graduates, and both are ‘no drama’ un-flamboyant types – but after law school each pursued divergent career paths and adopted clashing ideologies.

Roberts started out as a Reagan Republican, clerking for the man Ronald Reagan later elevated to chief justice, William Rehnquist, and working in the White House counsel’s office under Reagan and in the Reagan Justice Department.

Roberts maintains some attachment to the Reagan Era: for his very first speech as chief justice he chose to accept Nancy Reagan’s invitation to speak at the Reagan library in Simi Valley, Calif.

As chief justice, Roberts has so far established an undeniably conservative record, for example, he joined the five-to-four decision that Obama has most vehemently criticized: the Citizens United ruling that allows independent political spending by corporations and labor unions.

Right after the court handed down that decision, Obama took the occasion of his State of the Union address to scold the justices – some of whom, including Roberts, were sitting right in front of him in the House chamber.

Justice Samuel Alito caused a furor that night by shaking his head in disagreement at the way Obama described Citizens United. After the president said it would “open the floodgates to special interests – including foreign corporations” to influence elections, Alito seemed to mouth the words, “not true.”

Roberts was dismayed by that dramatic nationally televised collision of the executive and judicial branches, telling an audience at the University of Alabama that while he didn’t object to public officials voicing criticism of the decisions of the Court, "to the extent the State of the Union has degenerated into a political pep rally, I'm not sure why we're there.”

He said it was “very troubling “ to have members of Congress (Democrats, who hated the Citizens United decision) "literally surrounding the Supreme Court, cheering and hollering while the court -- according to the requirements of protocol -- has to sit there expressionless….” (Although Roberts did attend State of the Union addresses in 2011 and 2012.)

That comment illustrates why Roberts is far more comfortable in the hushed and stately environment of the building across the street from Capitol – no “cheering and hollering” are ever heard inside the courtroom and no pep rallies are allowed.

At age 57, Roberts seems likely to serve many more years on the high court. It’s anyone’s guess as to whether his decision in the Affordable Care Act case will be the one that, a quarter century from now, legal analysts see as his most enduring. Too many unknowns lurk out in the future and too many future acts of Congress remain to be decided by Roberts and his colleagues.

Despite Thursday’s decision, his record so far has been not that of an Obama progressive, but of a conservative.

For example, he wrote the majority opinion in a 2007 case that told public schools which had no history of racial segregation they couldn’t use a student’s race as a basis for assigning him or her to a school, even if the larger goal was to achieve greater racial diversity in the school population.

“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race,” Roberts wrote.

And Roberts in 2009 wrote the majority decision in a Voting Rights Act case that cast deep doubt on whether section 5 of that law will survive. Writing for the court, Roberts questioned “whether conditions continue to justify such legislation.”

Neal Katyal, who served as acting solicitor general in the Obama administration, and defended the Affordable Care Act in the appeals court, said Roberts’s decision on the ACA was quite characteristic of him.

 “This is – to a T— the Voting Right Act opinion in 2009 which had all the similarities (to Thursday’s),” Katyal said. “You had an oral argument in which he and other members of the court were extremely questioning…. You had pundits who said that it was going to be declared unconstitutional after the oral argument.”

Then when the decision was announced, “the chief spent several minutes explaining why the act was an unprecedented intrusion into federalism, and then you have the chief reversing course, minutes into his hand-down, and saying “but it’s constitutional because the court rewrites the statute, essentially, to save it from a constitutional problem. All of those are the same exact moves that happened here,” Katyal said.

Roberts told the Senate Judiciary Committee during his confirmation hearings that "judges are not politicians who can promise to do certain things in exchange for votes” and he reminded Americans again in his Thursday that if they see problems created by the ACA, then it’s up to them on Election Day, and not up to the court, to fix them.

Policy choices are “entrusted to our Nation’s elected leaders, who can be thrown out of office if the people disagree with them. It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.”

It must have been a long 40 seconds.

Minutes after 10 o’clock this morning, as news of the health-care ruling was coming out, President Obama -- who does not get any forewarning from the Supreme Court on its decisions -- was, like much of the rest of the country, relegated to watching television.

He stood in front of a television, with a split screen of four different channels, when banners flashed on two cable networks showing that the law’s central tenet -- the mandate requiring all Americans to buy health insurance -- had been struck down, according to White House aides who briefed reporters today.

For about 40 seconds, the president believed that his landmark, legacy-defining legislative accomplishment, had been gutted.

That was until White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler came into the room and gave the president two thumbs up -- the law had actually been upheld. She quickly explained to a confused president what had happened.

While others, including NBC News and MSNBC, reported the correct information, the White House also did have a government lawyer at the high court relaying information to Ruemmler.

Obama’s first call, according to White House aides, was to his Solicitor General Donald Verrilli to congratulate him. Verrilli, who argued the case before a sometimes contentious row of justices, had been mocked by some in the legal community for his handling of the case.

The president made it clear he was not among the doubters. He told Verrilli he always thought he had done an excellent job. Ruemmler got a hug.

On the details of the law, one aide stressed that some estimates show less than one percent of people will end up having to pay -- what’s now been labeled by the court as -- the health-care tax.

Aides believe the Medicaid portion of the decision is not particularly significant, because, in the past, when faced with such decisions (the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, for example), the states usually end up enacting the laws.

The White House is also downplaying any kind of poll bump the president could get from the ruling. Advisers to the president believe the country is burned out on the health-care argument, the last thing people want is a bloody fight, and there's no way the GOP can repeal it without such a fight.

The White House also happily points out that Obama's challenger, presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney, put a mandate in place as governor of Massachusetts, and that now he's running away from it -- at least as federal law.

One aide also admitted that advisers had always assumed the Commerce Clause argument was the better way to get five justices on their side.

Of course, there's also the legislative reality that calling the mandate a "tax" would have made the law even less palatable when trying to pass it through Congress.

By Maggie Fox

The Supreme Court upheld President Barack Obama’s health reform law on Thursday, with conservative Chief Justice John Roberts making up the surprise swing vote and writing out a road map for making the law work.

It is of course a big victory for the Obama administration. But it’s not the end of the story, not by a long shot. Even if everything goes smoothly, many important provisions don’t go into effect until 2014 and later. And Republicans, from presidential hopeful Mitt Romney through to members of Congress and governors of close to half the states, renewed their promised on Thursday to fight tooth and nail to either repeal the law or at least chip away at it.

"Today's decision makes one thing clear: Congress must act to repeal this misguided law,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said Thursday.

More than half the states have been gambling that the law would be struck down and have done little or nothing to put into effect one of the law’s main provisions – the exchanges, where people are supposed to be able to go online and get enough good information to choose a health insurance policy. They’re scheduled to be up and running by 2014. The Health and Human Services Department says 34 states have taken money to set up exchanges.

And HHS hasn’t finished making all the rules clear for how to put the full law into effect, and doesn’t have all the money and staff it needs to do that work. The November elections will be very important for determining whether Congress helps or hinders this effort.

Plenty of provisions look set to move ahead. They include changes meant to make doctors provide more effective care. Starting in 2015, doctors will get paid for keeping patients well, not necessarily for every test or procedure. That means, in theory, that a doctor will get paid the same by Medicare or Medicaid whether she gets a patient’s blood pressure down by prescribing drugs or by persuading him to lose weight and exercise.

Accountable Care Organizations will also continue to be created. These new organizations are meant to encourage cooperation by grouping independent care providers such as doctors with hospitals. And the trend toward consolidation is likely to continue no matter what happens with the health reform law – something that, in theory, will make it easier to connect patients with specialists, for instance.

Rules that stop insurers from what the government considers abusive practices also stay in place. “Insurance companies can no longer impose lifetime limits on the amount of care you receive. They can no longer discriminate against children with preexisting conditions,” Obama said in Thursday in response to the ruling. “They can no longer drop your coverage if you get sick. They can no longer jack up your premiums without reason. They are required to provide free preventive care like check-ups and mammograms -- a provision that's already helped 54 million Americans with private insurance,” Obama added.

“And by this August, nearly 13 million of you will receive a rebate from your insurance company because it spent too much on things like administrative costs and CEO bonuses, and not enough on your health care.” The Health and Human Services Department checks insurance plans to make sure they spend at least 80 percent of premiums on direct health care.

Small businesses will still get tax credits to help pay for health insurance for workers and people who retired at age 55 can get special insurance to hold them until they turn 65 and become eligible for Medicare.

Poll: Do you agree with the Supreme Court ruling on health care?

The controversial requirement that insurers and employers pay for all contraceptive care free of charge to women will also stand.

One group has an uncertain future – poor people without children. The Supreme Court ruling struck down the requirement that states expand Medicaid to about 16 million people who make less than 133 percent of the federal poverty level, or about $30,700 for a family of four. Many states currently offer Medicaid mostly to pregnant women and children, but poor adults are often not eligible. The health care law did require states to broaden that and the federal government was going to pay for almost all of it starting in 2014 and would pay more than 90 percent through 2022.

The ruling says states can’t be forced to do this, and now it’s not clear which states might decide not to.

 More on health care ruling:

Supreme Court upholds health care law

Thrilled and relieved, sick patients cheer court ruling

Health reform is legal, but is it moral? Bioethicist weighs in

Gerardo Mora / Getty Images

Republicans in the House voted Thursday to cite Attorney General Eric Holder for contempt of Congress.

Updated 5:01 p.m. - Republicans in the House voted Thursday to cite Attorney General Eric Holder for contempt of Congress in a politically-charged vote stemming from an investigation into alleged gun-running by the U.S. government.

The House voted 255-67, with one member voting "present," to cite Holder for criminal contempt. Most Democrats, led by the Congressional Black Caucus, abstained from the vote and staged a walk-out. But 17 conservative moderate and Democrats voted in favor of the resolution; two Republicans broke ranks to oppose it.

The House staged the vote against Holder for refusing to turn over documents subpoenaed by the House Oversight and Government Reform in relation to its investigation into the "Fast and Furious" program. The investigation is probing whether the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms deliberately allowed firearms to fall into the hands of drug cartels in Mexico.

The vote came on a day already marked as politically significant, after the Supreme Court issued its opinion upholding President Barack Obama's signature health reform law.

"Over the past fourteen months, the Justice Department accommodated Congressional investigators, producing 7,600 pages of documents, and testifying at eleven Congressional hearings. In an act of good faith, this week the administration made an additional offer which would have resulted in the Committee getting unprecedented access to documents dispelling any notion of an intent to mislead," White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer said in a statement. "But unfortunately, a politically-motivated agenda prevailed and instead of engaging with the president in efforts to create jobs and grow the economy, today we saw the House of Representatives perform a transparently political stunt."

Republicans had sought an agreement with the White House earlier in the week, but talks broke down.

"We'd rather not be there. We'd rather have the attorney general and president work with us to get the bottom of a very serious issue," House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) told reporters on Capitol Hill Wednesday morning. "We're going to proceed. We've given them ample opportunity to comply."

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, speaking after the walk-out, called the vote an "abuse of power."

The vote, like most scheduled in Congress for the rest of this summer, is certainly imbued with election year politics. The oversight panel, led by California Rep. Darrell Issa, has been a consistent thorn in the administration's side, and has tangled frequently with Holder.

"Today's vote is the regrettable culmination of what became a misguided -- and politically motivated -- investigation during an election year," Holder said. "By advancing it over the past year and a half, Congressman Issa and others have focused on politics over public safety."

Tensions escalated last week when the White House invoked executive privilege over documentation sought by Issa as his committee prepared its own contempt vote. Republicans, in turn, have asked how the White House could invoke privilege when there are few indications that it had anything to do with "Fast and Furious."

That program came to national attention in late 2010 when a border agent was killed with a firearm purchased by suspects under investigation by the ATF. Conservative news outlets have pushed the story as a potential example of federal malfeasance, and Republicans have voiced suspicion about whether the Obama administration had known about the program. A Fortune magazine investigation published Wednesday, however, suggesting the ATF's work to intercede in illegal arms trafficking was hamstrung by personnel disputes and prosecutorial discretion.

"It is a political hatchet job and I believe the American people are disgusted with Congress, these types of actions, and we should vote no on this contempt process that will be on the floor tomorrow and return to the real problems confronting the American people," New York Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D) said on Wednesday of the vote.

But 17 of Maloney's colleagues -- as many 20 conservative and moderate Democrats, according to reports -- broke with their party and join Republicans in holding Holder in contempt. The politically powerful National Rifle Association sent notice to lawmakers that it intends to "score" this vote -- or, in other words, monitor members' votes in determining their endorsements in this fall's elections. (The pro-gun rights group is encouraging a "yes" vote to cite Holder for contempt.)

Democrats, when they controlled the House in 2007, voted to cite then-White House chief of staff Josh Bolton and former White House counsel Harriet Miers for contempt for refusing to testify in an investigation into allegedly politically-motivated firings of U.S. attorneys.

But contempt citations -- the House voted Thursday on both a criminal and civil contempt citation -- rarely proceed with much effect. While the citations are usually referred to a U.S. Attorney to present before a grand jury, administrations have historically invoked privileges that, they contend, don't compel them to prosecute.

The whole situation would seem to risk adding a degree of tarnish for the Obama administration as the president himself heads into the thick of the election season. Republicans have also sought to stoke inquiries into the administration's management of a program of loans to green energy companies, including the defunct solar energy firm Solyndra.

But while Mitt Romney frequently mentions the Solyndra bankruptcy on the campaign trail, he's made scant reference to "Fast and Furious." A spokesman for said the former Massachusetts governor supports citing Holder for contempt.

NBC's Frank Thorp contributed reporting.

Updated 2:34 p.m. - Democrats are no doubt thrilled by Thursday's Supreme Court ruling upholding the president's health care reform law.

So thrilled, that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is throwing a party for select Democratic staffers on Capitol Hill.

NBC News obtained the following invitation sent out this morning a few hours after the decision:

Nancy Pelosi
Democratic Leader
United States House of Representatives

requests the pleasure of your company at a reception honoring today's victory on the Supreme Court decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act on Thursday, the twenty  eighth day of June, two thousand twelve at five o'clock in the afternoon

Leader's Conference Room
United States Capitol

A Pelosi aide adds: "This reception will consist of Costco cake and brownie bites. No taxpayer dollars being spent, very informal." No alcohol will be served.

WASHINGTON -- Mitt Romney condemned the Supreme Court's ruling upholding the president's health-care reform law, and called for opponents of the law to support him if they wish to see the law repealed.

"This is a time of choice for the American people," Romney said from a rooftop overlooking the Capitol. "Our mission is clear: If we want to get rid of 'ObamaCare,' we're going to have replace President Obama."

The presumptive Republican nominee, who spoke for four minutes and did not take questions, said that while the Supreme Court chose not to strike down the law as unconstitutional, he will work to repeal the act which he considers bad law and bad policy.

"As you might imagine, I disagree with the Supreme Court's decision," Romney said, "and I agree with the dissent. What the court did not do on its last day in session, I will do on my first day if elected president of the United States -- and that is I will act to repeal 'ObamaCare.'"

Romney, who has long been haunted by his support for an individual mandate, similar to the one undergirding President Obama's reform package, did not mention the mandate specifically today and did not take questions. He instead focused his ire on the law's tax and deficit implications.

"Obamacare raises taxes on the American people by approximately 500 billion dollars," Romney said. "'ObamaCare' cuts Medicare, cuts Medicare by approximately $500 billion, and even with those cuts and tax increases, 'ObamaCare' ads trillions to our deficits and to our national debts, and pushes those obligations on to coming generations."

Romney also broadly laid out some of the "real reform" he would enact to replace the Affordable Care Act, calling for legislation to help keep health-care costs down, keep insured those with preexisting conditions who had been continuously covered, and support state-based reform efforts.

Updated 1:00 p.m. - Among the flurry of conservatives vowing to redouble their efforts to repeal President Obama’s health reform law was the handful of Republicans whom Mitt Romney might pick as a running mate.

Below is a rundown of portions of their statements, which we will continue to update throughout the day.

Ohio Sen. Rob Portman:

While the Court has deemed the law constitutional as a tax on the American people, it is still flawed policy that is unaffordable for our families, our small businesses, and our government.  The President's one-size-fits-all health care spending law is the centerpiece of a failed agenda that has increased economic uncertainty, stalled job creation, and deepened the spending hole that Washington has dug. 

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio:

What's important to remember is that what the Court rules on is whether something is constitutional or not, not whether it's a good idea. And while the Court has said that the law is constitutional, it remains a bad idea for our economy, and I hope that in the fall we will have a majority here that will not just repeal this law, but replace it with real solutions that will insure more people and cost a lot less money.

Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan

Today’s decision strengthens the case for repeal and replace. With the right leadership in place, I am confident we can advance real health care solutions for the American people. It is now in the hands of the American people to determine whether this disastrous law will stand.

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell:

Today's ruling crystallizes all that's at stake in November's election.  The only way to stop Barack Obama's budget-busting health care takeover is by electing a new president. Barack Obama's health care takeover encapsulates his Presidency: Obamacare increases taxes, grows the size of government and puts bureaucrats over patients while doing nothing to improve the economy.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie:

Today's Supreme Court decision is disappointing and I still believe this is the wrong approach for the people of New Jersey who should be able to make their own judgments about health care. Most importantly, the Supreme Court is confirming what we knew all along about this law - it is a tax on middle class Americans.

New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte:

By imposing a coercive tax on the American people, the president's health care law represents an unprecedented federal overreach into individuals' personal lives. ... If we don't repeal it, Americans can expect to see higher costs, less choice and fewer jobs.  I will continue to fight to repeal this law and replace it with market-based reforms that reduce costs and expand consumer choice.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal:

Ironically, the Supreme Court has decided to be far more honest about Obamacare than Obama was.  They rightly have called it a tax. Today's decision is a blow to our freedoms. The Court should have protected our constitutional freedoms, but remember, it was the President that forced this law on us.

For President Obama and Democrats, the politics of health-care reform haven't been pretty.

Not only do polls still show that more Americans believe the overall health-care law passed in 2010 is a bad idea than good idea, Democrats paid a deep price for passing the reform.

In the '10 midterms -- waged over the health-care law, the stimulus, and the state of the economy -- Republicans picked up 63 House seats, six Senate seats, and several governor's mansions. It was a rout.

But the early significance of today's 5-4 Supreme Court decision upholding the health-care law is that political price wasn't in vain.

Make no mistake: The Supreme Court overturning the health-care would have been a body blow for the president and his party. All the negotiations, the arm-twisting, the speeches, and the compromises would have been for naught. 

For Obama, his chief domestic achievement -- the biggest since the LBJ years -- is upheld.

For congressional Democrats -- even those who were ousted in 2010 -- they have a major legislative accomplishment to tout.

How the Supreme Court's health-care decision plays out in the 2012 presidential election remains a mystery. It could energize conservatives angered by the ruling. It could fire up Democratic voters. Or it could, as our NBC/WSJ co-pollsters have suggested, actually change public opinion about the health-care law.

It's also unclear if the legislation, in the long run, ends up bending health care's cost curve (as Democrats claim it will), or if it ends up raising premiums and costs (as Republicans claim).

But here's what we can say: The court's ruling today -- by a narrow 5-4 decision -- preserves Democrats' domestic-policy achievement for the history books.

Updated 12:57 p.m. - President Barack Obama hailed a Supreme Court opinion upholding his signature health reform law as "a victory for people all over this country," as Mitt Romney led galvanized conservatives in vowing to seek the legislation's repeal.

The political stakes imbued in the high court's 5-4 ruling allowing the Affordable Care Act to stand were starkly evident by midday Thursday in Washington, as Obama and Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, laid out clearly different visions when it came to the law, "Obamacare."

The opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, who joined the court's liberals, determined that the act's individual mandate -- the requirement that individuals purchase health insurance, or face a penalty -- was constitutional as a tax.

"I know there will be a lot of discussion today about the politics of all this, about who won and who lost," Obama said in remarks at the White House, in which he emphasized many of the law's benefits. "That discussion completely misses the point. Whatever the politics, today's decision was a victory for people all over this country whose lives are more secure because of this law and the Supreme Court's decision to uphold it."

Related: Supreme Court upholds health care law

A few minutes earlier, Romney renewed his promise to seek the full repeal of the law from his first day in office.

"What the court did not do on the last day of its session I will do on my first day as president," Romney said. He called the court's opinion both bad law and bad policy.

Each candidate's comments underscored, though, the political dividing lines that will shape the battle for control of the White House and Congress this November.

J. Scott Applewhite / AP

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of Calif. relays the breaking news to her staff that the Supreme Court had just upheld the Affordable Care Act, June 28 on Capitol Hill.

For Obama and Democrats, the decision represented an unmitigated victory after he had championed passage of the law at considerable political expense.

And for Romney, the decision is poised to mobilize conservatives who have, at times, been less than enthusiastic about his candidacy. A number of Republicans' statements in reaction to the ruling emphasized the need to defeat Obama this fall. As a token of that enthusiasm for Romney, his campaign's aides boasted of raising hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations after the decision was handed down.

"This is now a time for the American people to make a choice," Romney said in remarks to reporters in downtown Washington. "Our mission is clear" -- if we want to get rid of Obamacare, we're going to have to replace President Obama."

The president treated the Affordable Care Act as a settled matter, now that the court has ruled. He urged the country to move forward.

"The highest court in the land has now spoken. We will continue to implement this law, and we'll work together to improve upon it where we can," Obama said. "But what we won't do -- and what the country can't afford to do -- is re-fight the political battles of two years ago, or go back to the way things were."

But already, House Republicans have scheduled a vote to repeal the law for July 11. They have made similar attempts in the past, but their legislation has failed in the Senate, where a supermajority of 60 votes is needed to advance legislation.

"Today's ruling underscores the urgency of repealing this harmful law in its entirety," said House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) in a statement. "Republicans stand ready to work with a president who will listen to the people and will not repeat the mistakes that gave our country Obamacare."

Vote now: Do you agree with Supreme Court ruling on health care law?

Democrats, though, were jubilant. Many liberals had been bracing for defeat in front of the Supreme Court after the conservative jurists aggressively questioned Obama administration lawyers in oral arguments earlier this year.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) helped shepherd the law to passage in the House as speaker in spring of 2010; Democrats lost control of the chamber in that fall's midterm elections, in part due to Republican-driven fury toward the health reform law.

"In passing health reform, we made history for our nation and progress for the American people," she said in a statement. "Today, the Supreme Court affirmed our progress and protected that right, securing a future of health and economic security for the middle class and for every American."

Democratic aides on Capitol Hill said that Pelosi this morning called Vicki Kennedy, the widow of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA), a longtime champion of health reform.

"Now, Teddy can rest," Pelosi told Kennedy.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), speaking on the Senate floor, said he was "pleased to see the Supreme Court put the rule of law ahead of partisanship."

It was difficult, hours after the opinion was issued, to discern how the day's news would affect the long arc of the presidential campaign.

Romney has mostly focused his criticism of Obama on the anemic state of the economy; the health reform law Romney had signed as governor of Massachusetts also included an individual mandate. (Obama, in his remarks, took a shot at Romney, noting that many political figures had supported that provision, "including the current Republican nominee for president.")

But while the Supreme Court's opinion lets stand the Affordable Care Act, the law still invites intense political reaction from voters, and it's likely to remain as a central issue in the electoral battle for the presidency and control of Congress.

An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released earlier this week found that 37 percent of Americans said they would be pleased if the court struck down the law, while 22 percent would be disappointed.

And more Americans -- 41 percent -- said they thought the law was a bad idea, versus 35 percent who said it was a good plan.

In a victory for President Barack Obama, the Supreme Court has upheld the 2010 health care law, with Chief Justice John Roberts writing that the law was a valid exercise of Congress’s power to tax. Take our poll below.

Read the NBC Politics report on the decision.

Read the full Supreme Court decision (pdf).

Updated at 11:55 a.m. ET: In a dramatic victory for President Barack Obama, the Supreme Court upheld the 2010 health care law Thursday, preserving Obama’s landmark legislative achievement.

The majority opinion was written by Chief Justice John Roberts, who held that the law was a valid exercise of Congress’s power to tax.

Roberts re-framed the debate over health care as a debate over increasing taxes. Congress, he said, is “increasing taxes” on those who choose to go uninsured.

Poll: Do you agree with Supreme Court ruling on health care law?

Click here for the text of the ruling

The 2010 law, the Affordable Care Act, requires non-exempted individuals to maintain a minimum level of health insurance or pay a tax penalty.

The essence of Roberts’s ruling was:

•       “The Affordable Care Act is constitutional in part and unconstitutional in part,” Roberts wrote.

•       “The individual mandate cannot be upheld as an exercise of Congress’s power under the Commerce Clause. That Clause authorizes Congress to regulate interstate commerce, not to order individuals to engage in it.”

•       But “it is reasonable to construe what Congress has done as increasing taxes on those who have a certain amount of income, but (who) choose to go without health insurance. Such legislation is within Congress’s power to tax.”

Roberts made a point of noting that he and the other justices “possess neither the expertise nor the prerogative to make policy judgments. Those decisions are entrusted to our Nation’s elected leaders, who can be thrown out of office if the people disagree with them. It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.”

Click here for Twitter reactions to the ruling

The law, Roberts wrote, “makes going without insurance just another thing the Government taxes, like buying gasoline or earning income. And if the mandate is in effect just a tax hike on certain taxpayers who do not have health insurance, it may be within Congress’s constitutional power to tax.”

Jason Reed / Reuters

A sharply divided Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the centerpiece of Obama's signature healthcare overhaul law that requires that most Americans get insurance by 2014 or pay a financial penalty.

He said “The question is not whether that is the most natural interpretation of the mandate, but only whether it is a ‘fairly possible’ one.”

He said the Supreme Court precedent is that “every reasonable construction” of a law passed by Congress “must be resorted to, in order to save a statute from unconstitutionality.” 

Dems cheer high court as galvanized GOP vows 'full repeal'

Veteran Supreme Court lawyer Tom Goldstein told NBC’s Pete Williams that “the Affordable Care Act was saved by Chief Justice John Roberts.”

Claire McAndrew of Washington, left, and Donny Kirsch of Washington celebrate outside the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., Thursday, after a the court's ruling on health care.

Goldstein said the Obama administration “got the one vote they really needed in Chief Justice John Roberts.”

When he served in the Senate in 2005, Obama voted against confirming Roberts as chief justice, arguing that he lacked empathy for underdogs and “he has far more often used his formidable skills on behalf of the strong in opposition to the weak.”

(Twenty-one other Democratic senators, including Joe Biden, also voted against confirming Roberts. Twenty-two Democratic senators voted to confirm him.)

Obama hailed his victory: “The highest court in the land has now spoken. We will continue to implement this law and we'll work together to improve on it where we can.”

But he urged Americans to refrain from re-fighting "the political battles of two years ago" or trying to "go back to the way things were.”

The four justices joining Roberts in upholding the law were Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

The dissenting justices were Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

For individuals who choose to not comply with the individual insurance mandate, Congress deliberately chose to make the penalty fairly weak: only $95 for 2014; $325 for 2015; and $695 in 2016.

After 2016, that $695 amount is indexed to the consumer price index.

Congress specifically did not allow the use of liens and seizures of property as methods of enforcing the penalty.

Non-compliance with the mandate is also not subject to criminal or civil penalties under the Tax Code and interest does not accrue for failure to pay the penalty in a timely manner, according to the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation.

Chief Justice Roberts announces the Supreme Court's opinion in health care law

NBC's Pete Williams reported that Roberts reasoned that “there’s no real compulsion here” since those who do not pay the penalty for not having insurance can’t be sent to jail. “This is one of the scenarios that administration officials had considered that if the court did this they would consider it a big victory,” Williams said.

In his reaction to the court’s decision, Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney said, “What the court did today was say that Obamacare does not violate the Constitution. What they did not do was say that Obamacare is good law or that it's good policy.”

He said the ruling had made it clear “If we want to get rid of Obamacare, we're going to have replace President Obama.”

But in a major victory for the states who challenged the law, the court said that the Obama administration cannot coerce states to go along with the Medicaid insurance program for low-income people.

The financial pressure which the federal government puts on the states in the expansion of Medicaid “is a gun to the head,” Roberts wrote.

“A State that opts out of the Affordable Care Act’s expansion in health care coverage thus stands to lose not merely ‘a relatively small percentage’ of its existing Medicaid funding, but all of it,” Roberts said.

Congress cannot “penalize States that choose not to participate in that new program by taking away their existing Medicaid funding,” Roberts said.

The Medicaid provision is projected to add nearly 30 million more people to the insurance program for low-income Americans -- but the court’s decision left states free to opt out of the expansion if they choose.

Updated at 4:15 pm ET The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down a federal law called the Stolen Valor Act which prohibits a person from falsely claiming that he has been awarded a military honor.

The case involved Xavier Alvarez who was an elected member of the Three Valleys Municipal Water District Board in Pomona, California.

In 2007 Alvarez said at a public water district board meeting that he was a retired Marine, had been “wounded many times,” and had been “awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor” in 1987.

In fact, he never served in the United States armed forces.

Alvarez pleaded guilty to violating the Stolen Valor Act, but claimed that his false statements were protected by the First Amendment right of free speech.

The majority opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy said, “The remedy for speech that is false is speech that is true. This is the ordinary course in a free society.”

Related: Lying about military service? Bloggers have you in their sights

Kennedy quoted from the famous dissent by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in the 1919 Abrams decision: “The best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market.”

Kennedy said, "Some false statements are inevitable if there is to be an open and vigorous expression of views in public and private conversation, expression the First Amendment seeks to guarantee."

Recommended: Supreme Court upholds health care law

Writing a dissent for himself, Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Antonin Scalia, Justice Samuel Alito said a long line of prior court decisions recognized “that the right to free speech does not protect false factual statements that inflict real harm and serve no legitimate interest.”

Alito said, “Legitimate award recipients and their families have expressed the harm they endure when an imposter takes credit for heroic actions that he never performed. One Medal of Honor recipient described the feeling as a ‘slap in the face of veterans who have paid the price and earned their medals.’”

Alito said diluting the effect of military awards “harms the military by hampering its efforts to foster morale and esprit de corps.”

TODAY's Savannah Guthrie and David Gregory, host of NBC's "Meet the Press," discusses the impact the Supreme Court's decision could have on health care and American families.