WASHINGTON (AP) — A conservative federal judge in Texas has ruled the Affordable Care Act “invalid” on the eve of the sign-up deadline for next year. But with appeals certain, even the Trump White House said the law will remain in place for now.

In a 55-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor ruled Friday that last year’s tax cut bill knocked the constitutional foundation from under “Obamacare” by eliminating a penalty for not having coverage. The rest of the law cannot be separated from that provision and is therefore invalid, he wrote.

Supporters of the law immediately said they would appeal. “Today’s misguided ruling will not deter us: our coalition will continue to fight in court for the health and wellbeing of all Americans,” said California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who is leading a coalition of states defending the ACA.

The White House applauded O’Connor’s ruling, but said the law remains in place while appeals proceed. President Donald Trump tweeted that Congress should pass a new law.

“As I predicted all along, Obamacare has been struck down as an UNCONSTITUTIONAL disaster!” Trump tweeted. “Now Congress must pass a STRONG law that provides GREAT healthcare and protects pre-existing conditions.”

However, Congress is unlikely to act while the case remains in the courts. Numerous high-ranking Republican lawmakers have said they did not intend to also strike down popular provisions such as protection for people with pre-existing medical conditions when they repealed the ACA’s fines for people who can afford coverage but remain uninsured.

Still, Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who is expected to become House speaker in January, vowed to fight what she called an “absurd ruling.” She said the House “will move swiftly to formally intervene in the appeals process to uphold the life-saving protections for people with pre-existing conditions and reject Republicans’ effort to destroy the Affordable Care Act.”

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said: “We expect this ruling will be appealed to the Supreme Court. Pending the appeal process, the law remains in place.”

Legal expert Timothy Jost, a supporter of the health law, said O’Connor’s ruling would have repercussions for nearly all Americans if it stands. If the entire health law is invalidated, popular provisions that benefit Medicare beneficiaries and people with employer coverage would also be scrapped. That could include the section that allows parents to keep young adult children on their coverage until age 26.

About 20 million people have gained health insurance coverage since the ACA passed in 2010 without a single Republican vote. Currently, about 10 million have subsidized private insurance through the health law’s insurance markets, while an estimated 12 million low-income people are covered through its Medicaid expansion.

Saturday is the sign-up deadline for 2019 private plans through HealthCare.gov. Meanwhile, a number of states are expected to move forward with Medicaid expansion after Democratic victories in the midterm elections.

If the case were to reach the Supreme Court it would mark the third time the justices consider a challenge to fundamental provisions of the law. “Obamacare” opponents lost both the first two cases.

The five justices who upheld the health law in 2012 in the first major case — Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s four liberals — are all still serving.

Since then public opinion on the ACA has shifted from mostly negative to generally favorable.

Preserving the law’s protections for people with pre-existing medical conditions proved to be a strong argument for Democrats in the midterm elections. Republicans who tried to undermine those safeguards during their failed effort to repeal the health law last year were forced on the defensive and went on record saying they, too, want to make sure people with health problems can get coverage.

Democrats set to take control of the House in January are talking about passing legislation that enshrines protections for pre-existing conditions. It’s unclear what form that would take, or if the Republican-majority Senate would go along and Trump would sign it.

The GOP-led states who brought the lawsuit asked O’Connor to toss out the entire law after Congress repealed the “individual mandate” penalty for going without coverage. The conservative judge had previously ruled against other Obama-era policies.

The Trump administration weighed in, saying the government would no longer defend some core components of the ACA, but that others could remain, including Medicaid expansion, subsidies for private insurance and health insurance markets.

Along with the requirement to have health insurance, the administration said the parts of the law that should go included:

— The requirement that insurers must take all applicants for comprehensive coverage regardless of prior health history, including pre-existing conditions. That includes a prohibition on insurers writing policies that exclude a particular condition — for example, a recurrence of breast cancer.

— The prohibition on insurers charging higher premiums to people with health problems.

The health insurance industry says doing away with consumer protections will destabilize a market that seems to be finding its footing, with modest premium increases and more plan choices next year.

The American Medical Association called O’Connor’s ruling an “unfortunate step backward for our health system that is contrary to overwhelming public sentiment to preserve pre-existing condition protections.”

KANSAS CITY – A North Kansas City woman has been indicted for embezzling $116,367 from her employer.

Tonya Topel, 41, was charged in an 11-count indictment returned by a federal grand jury in Kansas City.

According to the indictment, Topel worked at SunSource Homes, Inc., from October 2016 to April 2018 as the officer manager and accountant.

The federal indictment alleges that Topel began embezzling from SunSource a month after she was hired, using several different methods.

Topel allegedly made $47,665 in unauthorized purchases on SunSource business credit cards, including purchasing an airline ticket for her boyfriend. Topel allegedly also issued $40,955 in unauthorized checks to herself. Topel allegedly claimed $19,713 in unauthorized or fraudulent expense reimbursements and allegedly created extra paychecks for herself totaling $5,283. In December 2017, Topel allegedly cashed an unauthorized $2,745 check from SunSource.

The indictment alleges Topel embezzled at least $116,367 from SunSource. According to the indictment, she used the embezzlement proceeds to travel, including to the Bahamas, Arizona, Boston, and Florida. She also used the embezzlement proceeds for retail purchases, restaurants, pets, vehicles, overdraft fees, and to pay her attorney.

The federal indictment charges Topel with two counts of money laundering, related to the payments to her attorney made with stolen funds, and nine counts of wire fraud. The indictment also contains a forfeiture allegation, which would require Topel to forfeit to the government any property derived from the proceeds of the alleged offenses, including a money judgment of $116,367.

The charges contained in this indictment are simply accusations, and not evidence of guilt. Evidence supporting the charges must be presented to a federal trial jury, whose duty is to determine guilt or innocence.

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — The resumption of soybean sales to China this week is encouraging to American farmers who have seen the value of their crop plummet amid a trade war with the world’s second-largest economy, but producers see it only as a small step and say they need more federal aid.

Private exporters reported sales of 1.13 million metric tons of soybeans to China on Thursday and another 300,000 metric tons on Friday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said. The Thursday report was the ninth-largest daily sale since 1977, according to the agency’s Foreign Agriculture Service, and it comes less than two weeks after the Trump administration reached a three-month truce in its trade war with China during which the two sides will try to work out their differences.

Davie Stephens, a Kentucky farmer who serves as president of the American Soybean Association, said the resumption of sales is “positive news” but that “it is vital that this 90-day process result in lifting the current 25 percent tariff that China continues to impose on U.S. soybean imports.”

“Without removal of this tariff, it is improbable that sales of U.S. soybeans to China can be sustained,” he said.

China had suspended U.S. soybean purchases earlier this year but under the truce agreed to buy more U.S. farm products. The country typically buys between 30 million and 35 million metric tons of U.S. beans in a normal year.

News of the U.S. sale might prompt some farmers to sell some of the soybeans they have stored on their farms, in part because South American crops will be hitting the world market within a couple of months, said Huron, South Dakota, farmer Brandon Wipf, who serves on the American Soybean Association board.

“We have a narrow window out of which to operate,” he said. “I think you’ll see some farmers selling, some holding on for a little better prices.”

No beans are moving yet out of North Dakota, which typically sends most of its annual crop to Pacific Northwest ports from which the beans go overseas to southeast Asia.

“It may take some time to get the shuttle trains in place and get ocean-going vessels stationed at the PNW,” said North Dakota Soybean Growers Association Executive Director Nancy Johnson. The sale announced this week is for delivery after the new year, she said, and it did not significantly boost prices.

January soybean futures in early Friday trading on the Chicago Board of Trade gained 40 cents to about $9.06 a bushel. That’s down from almost $15 a bushel four years ago and nearly $10 a bushel 18 months ago.

Soybean farmers are getting the largest share of a federal program created to compensate producers up to $12 billion for trade-related losses, though this year’s payment of 82 cents a bushel doesn’t match a market price drop of about $2 per bushel since May.

The Trump administration has said another 82 cents might be approved next year if a trade deal isn’t reached. Both the American Soybean Association and the National Farmers Union this week pushed for a second payment while the administration works on a long-term trade solution.

“The farm sector has already lost far more value to this trade war than the (compensation) payments will provide, and damages due to lost markets will persist long into the future,” Farmers Union President Roger Johnson said. “The administration should be doing everything it can to protect the men and women who feed, fuel and clothe this nation.”

North Dakota U.S. Sen. John Hoeven, chairman of the Senate Agriculture Appropriations Committee, said Friday that he stressed the importance of the second payment to Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney.

Not getting a second payment could be a “deal-breaker” for some farmers in terms of their support for the Trump administration, according to Wipf.

“They would see that as a broken promise by the administration,” he said. “We’re of course encouraging the administration not to make the miscalculation that this little bit of detente we have with China has suddenly fixed all the problems we have.”