By Robert Barnes, Ann E. Marimow, Amy Goldstein, Paige Winfield Cunningham and Paulina Firozi

from Live updates @ WashingtonPost.com, November 10, 2020 at 12:38 p.m. EST

A majority of the Supreme Court appeared ready Tuesday to uphold most of the Affordable Care Act in the face of a challenge from Republican-led states and the Trump administration.

Two key members of the court — Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh — said that Congress’s decision in 2017 to zero-out the penalty for not buying health insurance did not indicate a desire to kill the entire law.

Roberts, who wrote the 2012 Supreme Court decision upholding the act’s constitutionality, suggested again that the justices should not do something Congress itself has failed to do — repeal the law.

“I think it’s hard for you to argue that Congress intended the entire act to fall if the mandate were struck down when the same Congress that lowered the penalty to zero did not even try to repeal the rest of the act,” Roberts told Kyle D. Hawkins, the Texas solicitor general leading the red-state effort. “I think, frankly, that they wanted the court to do that. But that’s not our job.”

The court’s three liberal justices again were ready to defend the law, which would indicate a majority [....]