The shutdown messaging war is in full effect, and early indications are that Republicans have been put in something of a bind, given the Democrats’ demand to extend enhanced Obamacare subsidies appears quite popular.
Analysis by Aaron Blake
So Republican leaders have returned to a very familiar strategy – making false generalizations and misleading claims about undocumented immigrants, in an attempt to center the debate on more favorable terrain.
They’ve argued over and over again that Democrats are trying to provide health care to undocumented immigrants.
In fact, as CNN’s Tami Luhby has fact-checked, the changes Democrats are seeking on Obamacare and Medicaid would not directly provide coverage to undocumented immigrants, since they aren’t and still wouldn’t be eligible for either program.
That’s not to say there aren’t kernels of truth behind their claims, and the issue is complicated. Medicaid dollars do, in some situations, end up paying health care costs for those in the country without documentation as a matter of longstanding federal law. But the GOP’s political strategy to cast Democrats as holding government funding hostage over the issue rests on a rather Machiavellian and factually challenged effort to demonize migrants.
Let’s break it down.
After Republicans spent days largely just making this claim without detailing it, Vice President JD Vance stepped forward at Wednesday’s White House press briefing to at least put some meat on the bone.
His case boiled down to two things.
His first point was that the asylum-seekers and others with temporary legal status who would be eligible for these programs under the Democrats’ shutdown-ending proposal should nonetheless be treated as “illegal aliens.” He said this was because the Biden administration granted such designations too freely.
House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana has also been vehement about this claim.
“Joe Biden used executive orders, and he expanded benefits, health care to illegal aliens in his four-year term,” Johnson said Thursday. “That was an outrageous violation of the existing federal law and of the principles of good stewardship.”
It’s an argument that could seemingly have plenty of appeal. Americans turned very sour on the Biden administration’s handling of immigration and asylum in recent years, before Biden moved to toughen up his approach. A Reuters-Ipsos earlier this year showed 56% of Americans wanted to “dramatically reduce” the number of migrants allowed to claim asylum at the border.
But saying these migrants should be considered “illegal” – even if Republicans genuinely believe that – doesn’t make them so, at least under current law.
To the extent Republicans want to treat them as illegal, they could take other steps to try to strip them of legal status. Unless and until they do, though, these people have legal status under US law and aren’t “illegal aliens.”
Vance’s second point was that there is at least one way in which federal dollars can be used to pay for the health care of immigrants who are actually undocumented – i.e. not just classes of people who he would prefer to treat as such.
A federal law called the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) mandates that any hospital that receives Medicare funds must treat anyone requiring emergency treatment, regardless of ability to pay, insurance or legal status. And the federal government reimburses hospitals for this treatment.
Vance painted undocumented immigrants in emergency rooms as a scourge, connecting it to longer waiting times because “very often, somebody who’s there in the emergency room waiting is an illegal alien.”
But in fact, new data shows federal reimbursements for emergency care for undocumented migrants is a minuscule portion of emergency Medicaid spending – only about 0.4% in Fiscal Year 2023, according to KFF.
And beyond that, it’s worth noting that this is not just a matter of federal law, but a federal law signed by a Republican president, Ronald Reagan. Republicans in their agenda bill earlier this year sought to reduce federal Emergency Medicaid funding; their argument is essentially that the move reduced a possible incentive hospitals might have to prioritize care for undocumented immigrants. But Democrats point out that just shifts costs to states and hospitals themselves, given they are still legally required to provide the care. That’s unless and until EMTALA is repealed.
That also raises some perhaps uncomfortable questions for the administration.
For one, the next logical question is whether Vance and Republicans would prefer that hospitals not provide potentially life-saving care to undocumented migrants who are severely ill, perhaps just allowing them to die.
An answer Thursday from White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt showed how difficult these questions become. She was asked if hospitals should ask for proof of citizenship before treating a dying patient, and she responded, “That’s probably not a question for me to answer.”
And secondly, it reinforces that even Trump’s agenda bill still allowed for federal money to flow to giving undocumented migrants emergency health care. It was just a more restricted amount that shifted the burden to states and hospitals.
Republicans have also increasingly argued that some blue states are moving money around in such a way that they’re effectively using federal Medicaid funds under the guise of state funding for undocumented health care. Leavitt on Friday accused California of “a gimmick that funds its Medicaid for illegals program.”
But as Luhby noted, a provision that would have penalized states that purportedly do this was stripped from Trump’s agenda bill. The law does eliminate states’ ability to get a certain waiver related to the taxes that states can charge certain providers to help pay for Medicaid, but the provision isn’t specifically about undocumented immigrants.
As these claims have been fact-checked, Republicans have increasingly turned to another, separate argument.
They’ve noted that, during the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, most of the top candidates supported covering undocumented immigrants with government health care. Vance, Leavitt and many other Republicans have pointed to a clip from a debate, in which the candidates all raised their hands in support of such a policy.
And this is true. It’s one of a number of positions Democrats staked out during that campaign to appeal to the political left that they probably wish they hadn’t. (Many such answers came back to bite Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential campaign.)
“Don’t let the Democrats lie to you,” Republicans Rep. Pete Stauber of Minnesota said Thursday on X. “In a 2019 debate, every Democrat candidate raised their hand in support of taxpayer-funded healthcare for illegal immigrants. Now, they have shut down the government over it.”
Johnson added Thursday: “Those hands included Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Now, what did they do? Did they follow through on that promise? Yeah, they absolutely did.”
He clarified that he meant Biden expanded those who were eligible for such coverage by allowing them to obtain at least temporary legal status. So again, the argument seems to be more that these people shouldn’t have been given legal status rather than that they are currently undocumented in a legal sense.
And just because those Democrats expressed that view back then doesn’t mean it has any impact on the current debate. Republicans would argue that this betrays Democrats’ long-term intentions. But it’s not what Democrats are currently asking for out of a shutdown deal; they are primarily pushing for more generous federal subsidies to help Americans afford Obamacare policies. (And indeed, it seems highly unlikely that Democrats would view any move to shut down the government over undocumented immigrants’ health care as smart or practical politics today.)
Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona has even said Democrats would support language making doubly sure that any coverage wouldn’t be extended to the undocumented.
“We are willing to pass anything in law that says people in this country illegally should not be receiving any benefits, subsidies, anything,” Gallego told Semafor.
It’s not uncommon for politicians to try to spin debates in terms that are more favorable to their side. To a certain degree, it’s politics as usual.
But what we’ve increasingly seen in the Trump-era GOP is a more shameless and almost unflinching willingness to say whatever is most advantageous in the moment, no matter if it misleads Americans about the very real issues in an important debate.
The party has increasingly warmed to the tactics of a president who not only uttered more than 30,000 false and misleading claims in his first term, according to the Washington Post, but actually got significantly more counterfactual as time went on.
Perhaps the epitome of this approach came in 2024. The Trump campaign not only spread unfounded claims about Haitian migrants in Ohio eating people’s pets that even local Republicans rejected; Vance effectively acknowledged willingly spreading misinformation – while arguing that the ends justified the means.
“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people,” Vance told CNN’s Dana Bash, “then that’s what I’m going to do, Dana. Because you guys are completely letting Kamala Harris coast.”
You could understand why Republicans feel the need to adjust the terms of the debate here, given the enhanced Obamacare subsidy extensions Democrats are pushing for are overwhelmingly popular.
A KFF poll released Friday showed 78% of Americans and even 57% of MAGA Republicans supported extending them. A Washington Post poll released a day earlier showed 47% of Americans believed Trump and the Republicans were “mainly responsible” for the shutdown, compared to 30% who blamed Democrats. That’s somewhat counterintuitive, given Democrats are the ones who won’t sign on to a clean bill to keep the government open.
Exclusive — Interior Sec. Doug Burgum: We’re Trying to Keep Things Open Unlike During the Obama-Era Shutdown
Interior Sec. Doug Burgum
Hannah Knudsen
3 Oct 2025
The Trump administration is not trying to inflict pain on people during this Democrat shutdown, unlike the former Obama administration, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said during an appearance on Breitbart News Daily.
“When there was a government shutdown, when Obama was in office, the point from the government was to make it hurt as much as possible, and I remember him shutting down parks and memorials and like things that, like the Washington Monument, like you can’t even go near it,” host Mike Slater recalled.
“And your goal, you just said, is to minimize the impact that this is having on people. That sounds like opposite things,” he observed.
Burgum reminded listeners that the Obama administration went out if its way to hurt people during that shutdown.
“What Obama did was I’d say nothing short of diabolical,” Burgum said. “They actually paid, using government money, to an erect a fence around the World War II Memorial in D.C. It’s on the mall. It’s open. It’s just an open space with fountains. And you could walk through there and like, you know, folks like my dad, who fought in World War II as a sailor in the Pacific, you know these honor flights come in from around the country.”
Yet, when these veterans came to see the memorial under Obama, there was a fence blocking access to it.
“They couldn’t even walk through or come through in a wheelchair to see the World War II monument. The thing never has a fence around it. They had to create a fence around it just to send a signal that it’s closed,” he said.
“So spending government money to try to inflict pain on veterans, but none of that’s happening here with, you know, President Trump,” the Interior Secretary made clear. “We’re fighting to make sure that we keep things open and just get the messaging out that, you know, hey, call your Democrat senators and say, ‘Why are we shutting down services when the Republicans have already passed a continuing resolution saying we’re going to keep funding exactly the way it is?'”
Blue State Blues: Trump’s Hostage Deal a Diplomatic Effort for the Ages
Joel B. Pollak
3 Oct 2025
President Donald Trump may have pulled off one of the most extraordinary diplomatic feats of the last several decades by negotiating a ceasefire and hostage deal between Israel and Hamas to end the Gaza war.
The key to ending the war was never stopping the Israeli counterattack against Hamas, which started the war and which would have declared victory if Israel had accepted the unilateral ceasefire demanded by its critics.
Rather, the key was that Hamas had to agree to release all of the hostages, thereby ending its leverage over Israel; and it had to agree to leave power and disarm. The latter may be a sticking point; the deal is not done.
Hamas is reluctant to give up its weapons because its entire reason for existing is so-called “resistance.” It also fears reprisals from its enemies, including Fatah and a variety of local clans and gangs in Gaza.
Israel does not want Hamas to retain any ability to attack in future, but it may have to accept a compromise — i.e. only securing two out of its three major demands. It will have to remain vigilant for the foreseeable future.
What Israel has gained in this deal is partnership with Arab nations in rebuilding Gaza, as well as oversight by the United States, which is not about to let Hamas rebuild a terror enclave in a strategic coastal location.
Israel also restored its deterrent — not just by smashing Hamas, but also by convincing its enemies that it would stop at nothing to achieve victory: attacking Qatar, for example, or even risking the hostages’ lives.
And along the way, Israel also destroyed Hezbollah along its northern border, and defeated Iran in war — knocking out, for the moment, the Iranian nuclear program, with American assistance in the final days.
It is now possible that Israel will end the October 7 war on October 7 itself — the second anniversary of the terror attack, whose sheer horror is not captured in numbers alone, but in the brutality of individual murders.
October 7, 2023, was the last day of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles, when Jews around the world commemorate the years of wandering in the desert before entering the Land of Israel.
October 7, 2025, will be the first day of Sukkot — thanks to the eccentricities of the Hebrew calendar — and a fitting close to the conflict, restoring the sanctity of the holiday to Israelis and to Jews around the world.
While those who were murdered, and many of those taken hostage, will never be recovered, the fact that as many as 20 hostage could return alive to Israel is cause for celebration — and for gratitude, toward Trump.
This week, Jewish communities around the world will read II Samuel 22, as they do every year at this time. This year, the words of King David’s song of praise are more relevant than they have been in generations:
“He delivered me from my mighty enemy; from them that hated me; for they were too powerful for me. / They confronted me on the day of my calamity [October 7!]; but the Lord was a support to me. / And He brought me forth into a wide place; He delivered me because He took delight in me. / The Lord rewarded me according to my righteousness; According to the cleanness of my hands He recompensed me.” (22: 18-21).
Hopefully, this deal will hold — thanks to God’s grace, to the extraordinary sacrifices of the common Israeli soldier, and to the brilliant and determined diplomacy of President Donald Trump, the peacemaker-in-chief.
Leavitt: Shutdown Layoffs Are Necessary Because U.S. Is $37 Trillion in Debt
Nick Gilbertson
3 Oct 2025
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Friday that layoffs are necessary amid the Democrat-forced government shutdown because of the United States’ exorbitant debt and absence of money flowing into federal coffers.
During her second press briefing of the week, Leavitt matter-of-factly answered a reporter who asked why layoffs were necessary.
"Why are layoffs now necessary in this shutdown?"@PressSec: "We are $37T in debt and the federal government is currently shut down. There is no more money... Democrats have given this Administration an unenviable choice." pic.twitter.com/rejyrDqQnz
“Because we have an administration and we have a president who are wholeheartedly focused on restoring fiscal sanity to our government and doing the right thing by the American taxpayer,” Leavitt detailed.
“We are $37 trillion in debt, and the federal government is currently shut down; there is no more money coming into the federal government’s coffers. And as you’ve also seen since the beginning, in January, this administration is focusing on waste, fraud, and abuse,” she added.
Leavitt said that Democrats have saddled the administration with the “unenviable choice” of selecting where to make cuts to keep essential government services running.
The White House has already announced several significant funding freezes, including halting $18 billion and $2.1 billion for infrastructure projects in New York City and Chicago, respectively, since Democrats forced a government shutdown on Wednesday.
Director of the Office of Management and Budget Russ Vought also announced on Wednesday that the administration was canceling nearly $8 billion in funding for the left-wing “Green New Scam.”
On September 19, House Republicans passed a clean continuing resolution, with no strings attached, to keep the government open into November, but all but three Senate Democrats voted to block the bill yet again on Friday.
Meanwhile, most Senate Democrats are seeking to pass a CR that “would require Medicaid to pay more for emergency care provided to illegal aliens than Medicaid does for American patients who are disabled, elderly, or children,” as Leavitt noted.
Leavitt: Dems’ Plan Funds More for Illegal Aliens Emergency Care via Medicaid than for America’s Most Vulnerable
Nick Gilbertson
3 Oct 2025
WASHINGTON–White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt admonished Democrat lawmakers on Friday for their government funding framework, which gives more to illegal aliens for emergency visits through Medicaid than it does to Americans who are children, elderly, or disabled.
Leavitt tore into the Democrat proposal during Friday’s White House press briefing, an uncharacteristic second briefing in just three days.
.@PressSec COOKS a Fake News reporter — bringing out the receipts on illegals getting free health care and how Democrats shut down the government to bring it back 🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/s3FjcREqXW
“What did the Democrats want in their continuing resolution? They inserted a provision to undo a provision in the working families tax cut, the One Big Beautiful Bill, that ended taxpayer-funded healthcare… benefits for illegal aliens,” she said.
“Democrats’ proposals would require Medicaid to pay more for emergency care provided to illegal aliens than Medicaid does for American patients who are disabled, elderly, or children,” Leavitt added. “And this bill would have also allowed California to continue a gimmick that funds its Medicaid for illegals program.”
While Democrats, who control neither chamber of the legislative branch, are making unrealistic demands to reopen the government, Republicans are merely looking to continue the current funding levels from fiscal year 2024, as approved by then-President Joe Biden and the very Democrats keeping the government closed, in a clean continuing resolution with zero strings attached.
The Republican proposal, which passed the House on September 19 and was blocked by Senate Democrats for a third time on Friday, would fund the government into November while Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune work to pass individual appropriations bills through regular order for the remainder of Fiscal Year 2026.
Because Democrats opted to close the government, the White House is now tasked with prioritizing funds for essential government services over non-essential services. Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought announced a pause in $2.1 billion in Chicago infrastructure projects on Friday, following the announcement of nearly $8 billion in cancellations to Democrats’ “Green Energy Scam” funding on Wednesday.
The White House has also paused $18 billion in New York City infrastructure projects due to the shutdown.
Expert: Democrats Shutting Down Government over ‘Obamacare Subsidies for the Wealthy’
Sean Moran
3 Oct 2025
Michael Cannon, the Cato Institute’s director of health policy studies, said that Democrats are essentially shutting down the government over “Obamacare subsidies for the wealthy.”
Breitbart News has explained on the Breitbart Fight Club how Democrats shut down the government over the looming expiration of enhanced Affordable Care Act (ACA), or Obamacare, subsidies.
These subsidies were first enhanced through the Biden-era $1.9 trillion coronavirus stimulus plan, formally known as the American Rescue Plan. Democrats continued these subsidies through the so-called Inflation Reduction Act.
The enhanced subsidies will expire on December 31, 2025.
Democrats have contended that the loss of enhanced subsidies will result in the widespread loss of Americans’ health care; however, experts have explained that these enhanced subsidies are not for the truly needy.
Cannon said, “What the enhanced subsidies do is they subsidize people making from $129,000 all the way up to $600,000 per year. And so these are really the Obamacare subsidies for the wealthy.”
Cannon remarked, “The part that offends people is that Obamacare is still so unaffordable that people earning $129,000, $200,000, $300,000, $400,000, $500,000 a year still can’t afford it — and that’s why the government is subsidizing them.”
“The most important kind of assistance we can provide to people who are having a hard time affording health insurance is to get all the Obamacare regulations out of the way. Because if you do that, then premiums will plummet by 50 to 60 percent for most people in the Exchanges,” he continued.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) found that the Democrat counterproposal to the Republican stopgap spending bill, which would permanently extend these Obamacare subsidies, would add $1.5 trillion to the national debt over the next ten years.
Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said in a statement:
If lawmakers want to extend any of the ACA subsidies, they should do so responsibly by targeting the extension and at least offsetting the costs. Ideally we should be offsetting new borrowing twice over. Plenty of options are available, from adopting site-neutral payments to reducing Medicare Advantage upcoding to funding Cost Sharing Reduction payments.
Meanwhile, if lawmakers want to pare back parts of the reconciliation law, they should focus on the $6 trillion in tax cuts and spending increases, not the payfors.
“Meanwhile, we should be able to keep the government’s lights on without making our devastating fiscal situation even worse,” MacGuineas added.
The Trump administration suffered a major blow on Friday when an appeals court upheld an injunction that blocked the president’s executive order to end birthright citizenship.
By James Bickerton
On January 20, hours after his second inauguration, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants and those in the U.S. on a temporary basis. However, a series of court rulings have prevented the order from taking effect.
With Republicans controlling both the White House and Congress, the courts have emerged as one of the main obstacles to the Trump administration’s policies, blocking efforts such as sanctions against International Criminal Court employees and stripping Haitian migrants of legal protection.
What To Know
On Friday, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is in Boston and comprises three judges, upheld a ruling that U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin made earlier this year.
In February, in response to a case brought by 18 Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia, Sorokin blocked Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship, which has widely been regarded as a constitutional right via the 14th Amendment, with only a few exemptions, since 1898’s United States v. Wong Kim Ark ruling—a case concerning the son of Chinese immigrants.
A series of lower courts have ruled that Trump’s executive order was unconstitutional as it violated the 14th Amendment.
In June, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 to limit, but not end, the power of lower courts to obstruct the executive order in a procedural case, but it has not ruled on the merits of birthright citizenship itself.
Following this ruling, Sorokin affirmed his original decision, and the case then went before the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
In July, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco separately upheld an injunction blocking Trump’s executive order from being applied on the basis that it violated the 14th Amendment.
The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, to issue its own ruling on the legality of the president’s executive order on birthright citizenship.
What People Are Saying
The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote in its ruling: “The Government was therefore wrong to argue that the plaintiffs are not likely to succeed in showing that the children that the EO covers are citizens of this country at birth, just as the Government is wrong to argue that various limits on our remedial power independently require us to reverse the preliminary injunctions.”
The judges added: “Our nation’s history of efforts to restrict birthright citizenship—from Dred Scott in the decade before the Civil War to the attempted justification for the enforcement of the Chinese Exclusion Act in Wong Kim Ark—has not been a proud one.”
Americans say it's harder to afford their groceries now than it was a year ago, a warning sign for President Trump and Republicans, in the latest Axios Vibes survey by The Harris Poll.
By Margaret Talev,Neil Irwin
Americans say it is harder to afford groceries than a year ago, according to a new Axios Vibes survey by The Harris Poll, underscoring a major political risk for President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans.
Nearly half of respondents reported higher difficulty in affording food, while only 20% said it has gotten easier. Eight in 10 Americans believe the president has significant influence on the economy, but just 47% credited Trump’s administration with having a positive impact this year.
Survey data show sharp increases in staple items: ground beef prices rose 12.8% in the past year, eggs climbed 10.9%, and coffee surged nearly 21%. Prices have compounded on earlier spikes from 2021–2022, leaving grocery costs more than 30% higher over five years. At the same time, wage growth has slowed while the job market has softened, magnifying the pressure on households.
Trump’s team defended its record, citing falling egg prices from earlier peaks and emphasizing inherited inflation from the Biden era. Still, only about one-third of respondents said Trump’s tariffs have helped the U.S. economy, and 63% expressed concern about shortages linked to trade policies.
The poll highlights voter frustration ahead of the 2026 midterms, with independents’ views aligning more closely with Democrats than Republicans on affordability and economic pressures.
Trump’s $100,000 visa fee will gut the immigrant workforce that keeps US hospitals – and patients – alive
By Eram Alam
The Trump administration announced last week that every new H-1B visa will now cost $100,000. Framed as a crackdown on Silicon Valley, the policy will devastate American hospitals. Its real casualties will be poor and rural Americans in need of medical care, but with no one left to provide it.
One in four US physicians are foreign-trained. Many enter through the H-1B program, disproportionately staffing rural and underserved hospitals where American graduates rarely go. In some facilities, every single doctor is an immigrant. These are the physicians who deliver babies in Mississippi Delta towns, staff emergency rooms in the Dakotas, and run primary care clinics in the Bronx. By raising visa costs from a few thousand dollars to $100,000, the administration is functionally cutting off their pipeline.
The consequences will be immediate and severe. In this year’s residency match, international graduates filled more than 6,600 positions, with the vast majority in internal medicine and family medicine – the unglamorous workhorses of primary care. American graduates consistently avoid these specialties, preferring higher-paying and more prestigious fields. Without immigrant physicians, safety-net hospitals will be unable to fill residency slots, rural areas will lose their only steady doctors, and wait times for basic care will stretch our even further than they already are. The result will not be new jobs for Americans; it will be shuttered clinics and lives lost.
The administration claims that cutting off immigrant doctors will catalyze domestic production of physicians. But training a doctor takes at least a decade, and requires investments in medical education that both major US political parties have consistently refused to make. Since the 1960s, Congress has chosen not to expand medical school and residency capacity in line with population growth, instead treating immigrant doctors as a convenient – and far cheaper – stopgap.
When Medicare was created in 1965, lawmakers agreed to fund graduate medical education precisely because hospitals argued they could not sustain the high cost of residency training on their own. But funding was capped in the 1990s, and despite repeated warnings about looming shortages, Congress has failed to lift those limits. Today, the Association of American Medical Colleges projects a shortfall of up to 86,000 physicians by 2036. That crisis is not the product of immigration policy. It is the predictable result of decades of underinvestment in training the workforce Americans need.
As I show in my forthcoming book, The Care of Foreigners: How Immigrant Physicians Changed US Healthcare, the US has always yoked the fate of immigrant physicians to the health of American patients. After the second world war, when new public insurance programs like Medicare and Medicaid expanded access to care, lawmakers turned to foreign doctors to fill the gaps. The 1965 Hart-Celler Act, passed the same year as Medicare, was explicitly designed to recruit highly trained professionals from abroad. Within a decade, tens of thousands of physicians – overwhelmingly from India and other postcolonial nations – were staffing hospitals across the United States.
This arrangement was hailed as mutually beneficial: the US got the doctors it needed, and immigrant physicians got training and opportunity. But the costs were exported. Countries such as India, with far fewer doctors per capita and vastly greater health burdens, lost tens of thousands of their best-trained clinicians. American lawmakers knew it. In 1967, Senator Walter Mondale called it a “national disgrace” that the US was siphoning lifesaving workers from countries “where thousands die daily of disease” in order to staff American hospitals. Yet the practice persisted, institutionalized as a structural feature of US healthcare.
What Donald Trump’s new policy does is break even with this pragmatic, longstanding “America first” tradition with which the country has long prioritized its own convenience over an honest accounting of its effects on the poorer nations from which it continually extracts value. Instead of using immigration policy to stabilize the system, it weaponizes it for exclusion. The $100,000 fee is not simply a labor market reform. It is a political message: immigrant doctors are expendable, and so are the patients they serve.
The American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association, and 53 leading medical societies have already urged the administration to exempt physicians from the new fee. But carving out exceptions misses the point. Relying on temporary waivers and emergency visas has always been a precarious way to run a healthcare system. Immigrant physicians are not a contingency plan. They are the backbone of American medicine – and they deserve stability, not discretionary exemptions subject to the whims of Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary.
The deeper crisis at play is not immigration at all. It is America’s refusal to build a sustainable pipeline with which to ensure care for its citizens. For 60 years, policymakers have papered over severe underinvestment in medical education and poor rural and urban communities by exploiting immigrant labor. Now, instead of repairing that rotten foundation, the administration is simply dynamiting the patchwork that has kept the system functional. Wealthy hospitals in big cities may find ways to absorb the costs. Rural and safety-net hospitals cannot. Patients in those communities – disproportionately poor, rural, and minority – will be the ones left sacrificed.
The lesson of this moment should not be that immigrant doctors need another exception. It is that Americans cannot afford to keep treating healthcare labor as a disposable commodity, imported when convenient and scapegoated when politically expedient. What we need is structural reform: expanding medical school and residency capacity, investing in primary care, and ensuring that immigrant doctors who already sustain the system have a predictable, efficient and permanent route to practice.
Immigrant physicians have long been America’s safety net. To slam the door on them now, without fixing the underlying shortages, is more than shortsighted. It is a policy of exclusion disguised as reform – and it will cost lives. America first, in this case, will make Americans die.
WINNING: How Trump Is Crushing Rudderless Dems on Shutdown
Oct. 04, 2025
On Thursday’s “Alex Marlow Show,” host and Breitbart Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow talked about the government shutdown.
Marlow said, “This is such a terrible platform for Democrats…they wrote the healthcare plan. This is Joe Biden’s budget and the law of the land is still Obamacare, by and large.”
“The Alex Marlow Show,” hosted by Breitbart Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow, is a weekday podcast produced by Breitbart News and Salem Podcast Network. You can subscribe to the podcast on YouTube, Rumble, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.
What Do Democrats and Republicans Want in Government Shutdown Dispute?
Democrats say they’re protecting health care subsidies, which Republicans say would restore loopholes that let illegal immigrants access taxpayer-funded care.
By Tom Ozimek
Oct. 02, 2025
Partisan deadlock on Capitol Hill has triggered a government shutdown, with Democrats conditioning their support for a stopgap funding bill on health care provisions they say are essential to protecting Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies.
Meanwhile, Republicans say that the Democratic plan would once again open the door to billions of taxpayer dollars flowing to illegal immigrants and other non-citizens.
At the heart of the dispute is whether to keep or repeal provisions of the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) Act and the Working Families Tax Cut Act (WFTCA), signed into law in July, which Republicans said will ensure Medicaid, Medicare, and ACA subsidies are reserved for citizens and lawful residents.
What Do Democrats and Republicans Want?
With Republicans controlling both chambers of Congress, Democrats lack the numbers to pass legislation outright, but they retain leverage in the Senate, where 60 votes are needed to advance a spending bill. They are using that leverage to push for continued ACA subsidies and to roll back OBBB/WFTCA provisions enacted in July that they say unfairly target immigrants and low-income households.
Democrats want to make permanent the enhanced ACA subsidies that are set to expire at year’s end, saying that millions of Americans could face sharp premium hikes without them. They also want to prevent the Trump administration from using executive actions to sideline or suspend the ACA provisions.
But their proposal goes further. Section 2141 of the Democratic version of the continuing resolution (CR)—or stopgap funding bill—would scrap parts of the July law that cut off many non-citizens from federally funded health programs, including some who entered the United States illegally.
Democrats describe this as restoring the pre-July status quo and deny any intent to expand federally funded health care to people who are in the United States unlawfully. Republicans call it a deliberate attempt to direct federal health care dollars to illegal immigrants.
While federal law bars illegal immigrants from Medicaid, Medicare, CHIP, and ACA subsidies, Republicans say that repealing the July reforms would reopen loopholes—through asylum, parole, and state schemes—that had effectively extended federal benefits to people in the United States unlawfully.
Republicans say they are open to considering a fix for the expiring ACA tax breaks, but they say the issue should be handled separately. They are backing a straightforward stopgap spending bill with no “riders” that was passed by the House and would fund the government through Nov. 21 at the existing spending level before the shutdown. It does not include any changes to ACA subsidies.
The Rollbacks in Question
Previously, hospitals treating illegal immigrants in emergencies could claim an enhanced federal match rate through Medicaid—in some cases higher than what children or seniors generated. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act ends this “bonus” emergency Medicaid reimbursement beginning in October 2026, saving an estimated $28.2 billion. The Democrat version of the continuing resolution bill would restore it.
Also, pre-July rules allowed many asylum seekers and parolees to qualify for Medicaid or ACA coverage, but the One Big Beautiful Bill Act redefined “lawfully present” to exclude them. The Democrat-proposed repeal reopens eligibility to a group that Republicans say is routinely used to mask illegal entry.
The Democrats’ bill would also reopen a Medicaid financing strategy that was described by the White House as the California “loophole,” which drew down billions in extra federal dollars without state spending, channeling funds into programs covering illegal immigrants.
Taken together, Republicans say, these changes show Democrats are not merely defending ACA subsidies for citizens but actively reversing reforms designed to block taxpayer-financed healthcare for those here unlawfully.
A memo released by the White House on Oct. 1 outlines nearly $200 billion in projected costs over 10 years if these provisions are repealed as Democrats requested.
Democrats say Republicans are distorting their intent. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) told CNN on Oct. 1 that “taxpayer dollars cannot be spent on Medicaid or Medicare or the Affordable Care Act related to undocumented immigrants, and not a single Democrat has raised the issue of trying to reverse that federal law.”
Rather, Jeffries added, Democrats are trying to “save the health care of the American people, lower their costs and cancel these cuts,” referring to the July rollbacks.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) accused Democrats of masking the nature of their proposal, which he said would result in nearly $200 billion in spending on noncitizens.
“They have made a decision that they would rather give taxpayer funded benefits to illegal aliens than to keep the doors open for the American people to keep vital services, veteran services, health care and nutrition for women, infants, and children,” he said in a statement.
What’s in Trump’s Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education – A Point-by-Point Analysis
by Antonio Graceffo
Oct. 3, 2025 7:00 pm
Activists gather at a solidarity encampment, displaying Palestinian flags and banners in a public space to advocate for Palestinian rights.
Liberals strongly oppose President Trump’s new Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education, yet a point-by-point analysis shows the compact is designed to reverse years of DEI and woke policies that have stifled free speech and scientific debate on campus. It prioritizes STEM education, requires universities to make students aware of salary expectations for different majors, and demands that schools use their endowments responsibly. Institutions with large endowments must provide free education for STEM students, ensuring resources are directed toward academic excellence and real-world outcomes.
An Analysis of the requirements of the Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education
1. Marketplace of Ideas & Academic Freedom
The compact begins with a call for a “vibrant marketplace of ideas” where no single ideology dominates campus culture. It requires universities to revise governance structures to eliminate departments that suppress or punish conservative views, while also strengthening protections for academic freedom and prohibiting discriminatory or harassing behavior. This principle echoes the historic mission of universities to cultivate intellectual diversity and open inquiry.
2. Non-Discrimination in Hiring and Admissions
The compact prohibits universities from considering sex, ethnicity, race, national origin, disability, or religion in hiring, promotion, or admissions decisions, aligning with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title VII already bars employers—including educational institutions, from discriminating in employment based on these characteristics, whether through intentional actions or policies that have a discriminatory effect. It also covers harassment and requires reasonable accommodations for religious practices unless they cause undue hardship.
The compact directly mirrors these requirements, stating that no such factors may be considered in academic, administrative, or staff decisions except where Title VII provides specific exceptions. In essence, it does not impose new rules but demands that universities comply with existing anti-discrimination law.
3. Institutional Neutrality
The compact requires that university employees, in their official capacity, refrain from making statements or taking actions on social and political issues unless those issues directly affect the institution. The intent is to prevent universities from acting as political entities rather than educational institutions, ensuring they remain focused on teaching, research, and open inquiry
4. Foreign Student Enrollment & Transparency
The compact limits international undergraduate enrollment to 15 percent of the student body, with no single country exceeding 5 percent, and requires full disclosure of all direct and indirect foreign funding. China remains a central concern: in 2023/24 it sent about 277,000 students to the U.S., roughly 25 percent of all international students, though India recently surpassed it as the top sender. The FBI has identified China as the most severe counterintelligence threat to the United States, with nearly 1,000 open investigations into economic espionage and intellectual property theft, most linked to Chinese actors targeting American universities and research institutions.
The provision also addresses foreign funding transparency. During Trump’s first term, Department of Education investigations found that universities had failed to report more than $6.5 billion in foreign gifts and contracts from countries including China, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, despite Section 117 of the Higher Education Act requiring disclosure of amounts over $250,000. In April 2025, Trump signed an executive order tightening these rules and threatening to withhold federal funding from institutions that fail to disclose foreign support.
5. Grade Integrity
The compact commits to addressing grade inflation and maintaining rigorous standards for student grading. Grade inflation is a well-documented problem: in the 1960s the most common grade at American universities was a C, while by the 2010s–2020s it became an A. At many elite universities, over 40–50 percent of grades are now A’s, with average GPAs reported above 3.6 or 3.7. When too many students receive top marks, grades lose their ability to distinguish between exceptional, good, and mediocre performance, devaluing credentials and undermining their signaling function to employers and graduate schools.
This trend also feeds into the “everyone gets a trophy” culture, creating a false sense of mastery. Students may believe they are well-prepared when in fact inflated grades mask deficiencies that surface later on professional exams, in graduate programs, or in the workplace. For example, a pre-med student who earns A’s in organic chemistry might still struggle with the MCAT chemistry section because their grades gave them false confidence rather than rigorous preparation. When students can achieve high marks without exceptional effort, the incentive to push themselves intellectually diminishes, reducing both learning and long-term growth.
6. Tuition Freeze & Affordability
The compact also requires schools to freeze tuition for American students for five years, curb grade inflation, and eliminate programs that fail to serve students. Universities with endowments exceeding $2 billion per undergraduate must provide free tuition for students in hard science programs, except for those from wealthy families. This provision achieves the long-discussed goal of free education for STEM students without placing the financial burden on taxpayers, unlike liberal proposals for universal free tuition and loan forgiveness. It also eliminates taxpayer money wasted on programs such as gender studies or general studies that provide little value to society after graduation.
7. Student Outcomes Transparency
The compact requires universities to publish statistics on average earnings for graduates in each program and to refund tuition to students who withdraw during their first academic term. These measures address two key problems in higher education: information asymmetry, where students take on large debts without knowing the real return on their degree, and financial risk, where those who quickly realize a program is a poor fit lose their entire investment. By providing earnings data, students can make informed choices rather than blindly entering debt in a “trophy culture” of inflated grades, and by offering refunds, universities are forced to share the risk and deliver on their promises. Together, these reforms promote transparency and accountability, empowering students as informed consumers rather than powerless customers.This provision targets the hypocrisy of wealthy universities hoarding tax-exempt endowments worth billions while still charging families $80,000–90,000 per year in tuition. Schools like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton each hold more than $6 million per student in endowment funds yet continue to burden middle-class families with crushing costs, even though their annual endowment gains alone could cover all tuition many times over. Under the compact, universities with endowments exceeding $2 billion per undergraduate student must provide free tuition for those studying hard science programs, with exceptions for families of substantial means. By prioritizing STEM, this measure addresses both the nation’s urgent need for scientific talent and the injustice of universities functioning as tax-exempt hedge funds rather than fulfilling their educational mission.
8. Gender Policies & Title IX Compliance
The compact commits universities to definitions of sex and gender consistent with the administration’s interpretation, particularly in relation to transgender participation in women’s sports and access to facilities. Compliance will be monitored annually through certifications by senior administrators and anonymous polling of faculty, students, and staff, with reviews conducted by the Department of Justice. Schools found in violation risk losing federal benefits for at least two years. This provision reinforces legal compliance and traditional academic principles, requiring institutions to uphold Title VII’s ban on considering sex, race, religion, national origin, or disability in hiring, admissions, or promotion decisions. It also aligns with recent Supreme Court rulings that struck down race-based admissions, ensuring universities conform to established law rather than continuing unconstitutional practices.
9. Compliance & Certification
The compact requires annual certification by the university president, provost, and head of admissions affirming adherence to its principles. Compliance will also be monitored through anonymous polling of faculty, students, and staff, with results reviewed by the Department of Justice. Institutions found in violation would face deprioritization for federal funding.
Supreme Court allows Trump admin to strip deportation protections from 300K Venezuelan migrants
By Victor Nava
Published Oct. 3, 2025, 7:41 p.m. ET
The Supreme Court on Friday gave the Trump administration the go-ahead to scrap temporary deportation protections for more than 300,000 Venezuelan migrants.
In their latest emergency order, the justices on the high court paused Obama-appointed District Judge Edward Chen’s September ruling that the Trump administration wrongly terminated an 18-month extension of temporary protected status (TPS) for migrants from Venezuela.
Liberal justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson opposed the majority in the unsigned order.
The Trump administration has moved to revoke legal protections for several groups migrants. AP
“Although the posture of the case has changed, the parties’ legal arguments and relative harms generally have not,” the court wrote.
“The same result that we reached in May is appropriate here,” the opinion continued, referring to an earlier ruling from the high court that lifted a March stay Chen had issued in the case.
Since the 1990s, the TPS program has granted humanitarian relief to the migrants from several disaster-plagued countries.
The federal program allows migrants to enjoy temporary legal status in the US and obtain work permits.
The Trump administration has sought to withdraw various legal protections for migrants from several nations granted under former President Joe Biden.
Venezuelan migrants arriving in Jaque, Colombia by boat.
The 300,000 or so Venezuelans were granted TPS, and received extensions, during the Biden administration. AP
Four heavily armed US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents stand guard.
The migrants could be deported if they don’t leave the US as litigation plays out over the administration’s move to end TPS.
In her dissent, Jackson argued that “TPS statute plainly states” the designation for Venezuelan migrants shall remain effective until the expiration of its ‘most recent previous extension,’” which, before Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem terminated the extension, would have been October 2026.
“By now, our lower court colleagues have determined five times over that this abrupt truncation of the TPS period was unlawful or likely so,” Jackson argued. “They have done so in reasoned and thoughtful written opinions — opinions that, in the normal course, we would get to parse, assess, and embrace or reject, while fully explaining our reasoning.”
Jackson also argued that as litigation over Noem’s move to scrap TPS for Venezuelans plays out, lower courts went with the “obvious — i.e., least disruptive and most humane” option, in deciding to allow the migrants to keep their legal protections for the time being – which the Supreme Court has overturned.
“I view today’s decision as yet another grave misuse of our emergency docket,” she added. “This Court should have stayed its hand.”
“Having opted instead to join the fray, the Court plainly misjudges the irreparable harm and balance-of-the-equities factors by privileging the bald assertion of unconstrained executive power over countless families’ pleas for the stability our Government has promised them.”
Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin called the Trump administration’s Supreme Court victory “a win for the American people and commonsense.”
“The American people should not have had to go to the Supreme Court twice to see justice done,” McLaughlin said in a statement. “Temporary Protected Status was always supposed to be just that: Temporary. Yet, previous administrations abused, exploited, and mangled TPS into a de facto amnesty program.”
She added: “Meanwhile, the Biden administration allowed millions of unvetted illegal aliens into our country exacerbating the issue and endangering all Americans. Now, that it’s clear the law and the American people are on our side, Secretary Noem will continue to use every tool at our disposal to prioritize the safety of all U.S. citizens.”
A judge disqualified Sigal Chattah from handling a set of cases after the defendants challenged her legal authority.
By Erica Orden
A federal judge ruled Tuesday that the top federal prosecutor in Nevada is disqualified from handling cases, a rebuke to the Trump administration’s effort to sidestep the traditional methods of installing U.S. attorneys.
U.S. District Judge David Campbell wrote in a 32-page opinion that Sigal Chattah “is not validly serving as Acting U.S. Attorney” and therefore her involvement in prosecutions “would be unlawful.”
Chattah is the second U.S. attorney installed by the Trump administration to see her authority stripped by a federal judge in recent months. In August, a federal judge disqualified Alina Habba as acting U.S. attorney in New Jersey, though that ruling is on pause pending appeal.
The Nevada U.S. attorney’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
U.S. attorneys are typically confirmed by the Senate, or in some cases installed by judicial appointment. In districts around the country, however, the Trump administration has sought to bypass those channels, installing top prosecutors on a temporary basis in “acting” or “interim” capacities. Increasingly, however, defendants are challenging the authority of those U.S. attorneys.
In Chattah’s case, four defendants indicted in Nevada moved to dismiss their indictments, arguing that she was not validly serving in the job. Campbell, an Arizona judge appointed by George W. Bush, was assigned to the matter after the Nevada district judges recused themselves. Campbell declined to dismiss the indictments, but disqualified Chattah from supervising their cases “or any attorneys in the handling of these cases.”
And he ordered the prosecutors working on the cases to file statements within one week stating that they are not being supervised by Chattah in those cases.
Chattah was installed as interim U.S. attorney in April after running as the Republican nominee for Nevada attorney general in 2022. Like Habba, she was seen as unconfirmable by the Senate, and in fact Trump never nominated Chattah to take the job permanently.
In the final days of her 120-day appointment as interim U.S. attorney, a group of more than 100 retired federal and state judges wrote to the chief federal district judge in Nevada to object to voting to install Chattah after her appointment expired. The group said her history of “racially charged, violence-tinged, and inflammatory public statements” disqualified her.
Instead of waiting for the judicial vote, the Trump administration named her the acting U.S. attorney.
Republicans continue to claim that the latest government shutdown happened in part because Democrats want to allow undocumented migrants to receive healthcare, which is not true. So, on Thursday night, Stephen Colbert begged them to tell a more “fun” lie.
By Andi Ortiz
To kick off his monologue, Colbert joked that President Trump “has tried every possible option to end the shutdown,” beginning and ending with blaming Democrats. The CBS host took particular issue with Republicans characterizing Democrats’ desire to restore some of the Affordable Care Act as “demanding free health care for illegal aliens.”
At that, a montage began playing featuring clips of various journalists debunking the claim on-air, explaining that undocumented migrants cannot even sign up for the Affordable Care Act.
“Yeah!” Colbert added. “And if you’re just going to completely make up stupid fear-mongering arguments, at least make them fun!”
Naturally, the late night host had a suggestion at the ready.
“Ladies and gentlemen, Democrats are spending trillions of dollars so they can ‘Jurassic Park’ your children,” he joked. “It’s shocking. They’re going to trap your child in amber! Suck out the baby blood, and then turn your child into little T rexes. The worst part is, the worst part, ladies and gentlemen, they’ll never be able to hug you.”
U.S. President Donald Trump's approval rating is underwater in all seven swing states, according to aggregated polling data.
By Kate Plummer
According to analysis by data journalist G. Elliott Morris posted in his Substack blog Strength In Numbers, the president's approval rating has sunk in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Arizona, all states he won in the 2024 election.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told Newsweek: "President Trump is keeping his promises and Making America Great Again: whether it’s securing the border, securing historic investments in American manufacturing, taming Biden’s inflation crisis, or fighting against the Democrats’ radical demands of free health care for illegal aliens." Referring to a Rasmussen Reports poll from September 25, she added: "That’s why over 57 percent of Americans approve of the President and the incredible job he’s doing!"
Why It Matters
Politically volatile, swing states were important in determining the result of the 2024 presidential election and securing Trump the keys to the White House.
If Trump's popularity continues to decline in swing states, it may affect Republicans' performance in the November 2026 midterms and enable Democrats to pick up key seats in the House and the Senate. This, in turn, could affect the balance of power in Congress and the passage of legislation.
What To Know
According to the analysis, Trump's approval rating is -10 in Wisconsin, a state he won with 0.9 percent of the vote share.
In Michigan, a state he won with by 1.4 percent, his approval rating is at -12 percentage points.
In Pennsylvania, his 1.7 percent lead in 2024 has declined to -13 percentage points and his approval rating in Georgia is -11 points, a drop from 2024 when he won the state with a 2.2 percent margin.
Trump won Nevada by 3.1 points in 2024 but his rating there has since plummeted to -12 percentage points.
In North Carolina, his 3.2 percent margin has declined to -9 points.
In Arizona, his net approval rating stands at -7 percentage points. Trump won the state by 5.5 points in 2024.
Morris estimated Trump's approval rating in each state by looking at what his net approval rating would be if his 2024 results in each race were swung 14 points against him, a swing implied by his national approval rating. He averaged these findings with estimates from a model which makes state estimates using national survey data.
Meanwhile, the polling also follows a May survey by Civiqs which also showed that Trump's approval rating had declined in these states.
What People Are Saying
Speaking to Newsweek, Craig Agranoff, an Adjunct Professor at Florida Atlantic University (FAU) specializing in political marketing and campaigning said: "Based on these figures, it presents potential hurdles for Republicans as the 2026 midterms draw near. Past patterns suggest that when a president’s approval dips below 50 percent, their party may face setbacks in congressional contests, especially in battleground areas where independents and moderates hold sway. This situation might open doors for Democratic advances in the House or Senate should the numbers persist, given how lower approval can influence voter turnout dynamics across partisan lines."
He continued: "Regarding possible reasons for the slide, economic factors seem prominent, including ongoing inflation and tariff effects that have not eased as quickly as some anticipated, affecting various voter segments like younger people and lower-income households. Immigration policies, such as expanded deportations, could also factor in, potentially shifting views among groups that supported the President in 2024, highlighting a gap between campaign pledges and perceived outcomes."
What Happens Next
Trump's popularity is likely to fluctuate as his term continues. The midterm elections are scheduled to take place in November 2026.
Michael Ben’Ary, a veteran federal prosecutor, described deepening disappointment over what he deemed “political interference."
By Kyle Cheney and Daniel Barnes
A veteran federal prosecutor fired abruptly this week issued a stark warning to colleagues Friday: The Trump administration’s effort to cull perceived adversaries from the Justice Department has put Americans’ safety at risk.
“The leadership is more concerned with punishing the President’s perceived enemies than they are with protecting our national security,” wrote Michael Ben’Ary, in a note scotch-taped to his door after he cleaned out his office Friday, the last act of a 20-year career as a federal prosecutor.
In his note, Ben’Ary said his termination was a surprise, coming just hours after a conservative journalist pointed out he had once worked as senior counsel to Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, one of the Biden-era officials Trump despises most. And it came while he is in the midst of leading the prosecution of Mohammad Sharifullah, who is charged with orchestrating the fatal bombing of 13 U.S. military service members in Afghanistan.
“Justice for Americans killed and injured by our enemies should not be contingent on what someone in the Department of Justice sees in their social media feed that day,” Ben’Ary wrote.
Spokespeople for the Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Ben’Ary’s exit from the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia came days after the termination of Maya Song, the office’s top deputy and another former aide to Monaco. The shake-up, in one of the most prominent hubs for national security cases in the country, adds to growing turmoil in that office stoked by Trump himself.
Last month, Trump engineered the ouster of the U.S. attorney in the district amid pressure to bring criminal charges against former FBI Director James Comey and other Trump adversaries. And he pressed Attorney General Pam Bondi to install his former personal lawyer, Lindsey Halligan, to lead the office. Within days of Halligan’s swearing in, Comey was indicted on two counts related to his 2020 testimony to Congress — a case riddled with anomalies and legal defects.
Ben’Ary described deepening disappointment over what he deemed “political interference” in the department’s work and urged his colleagues to resist giving into those demands. It’s a microcosm of broader alarm among Justice Department veterans and other fired prosecutors, who have described pressure from senior officials to take actions they viewed as political or unethical.
NEW YORK (AP) — Most Americans want Congress to extend tax credits that, if left to expire at the end of the year, could raise health insurance costs for millions of Americans, according to a new poll released Friday from the health care research nonprofit KFF.
By ALI SWENSON
The survey, which was conducted from Sept. 23-29, just prior to the shutdown that began Wednesday, shows initial public support for a move that Democrats have been demanding be included in any government funding bill they sign. A Senate standoff, in part over the enhanced premium tax credits set to end in 2025 if Congress doesn’t act, has resulted in a government shutdown that’s lasted into a third day with no end in sight.
At the same time, the survey showed that only about 4 in 10 U.S. adults had read “a lot” or “some” about the subsidies as the shutdown began, leaving room for public opinion to shift in either direction as the political fight continues. A New York Times/Siena poll of registered voters conducted roughly in the same time period as the KFF poll found that most voters did not want Democrats to shut down the government, even if their demands were not met.
Republicans in Congress have expressed openness to negotiating the extension, but argue it can wait until government funding is restored through a stopgap measure they say is noncontroversial.
The vast majority of Democrats supported the extended tax credits, the poll found, but so did a slimmer majority of Republicans. Those who wanted the health care subsidies to continue were more likely to say they would blame President Donald Trump or the Republicans than Democrats if the credits expired.
Most want ACA tax credits extended
At stake is the cost of health insurance for the 24 million people who have signed up for health coverage through the ACA, in part encouraged by the billions of dollars in subsidies that made it more affordable for many people.
According to the KFF poll, about 3 in 4 Americans — 78% — said that they wanted Congress to extend expiring tax credits for people who buy health insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplace.
That view cuts across party lines, including majorities of Democrats, independents and Republicans. More than half of Republicans who align with President Trump’s Make America Great Again movement — 57% — also supported an extension, the poll found.
Looming expiration isn’t widely known, even among affected groups
The expanded subsidies, first passed in 2021 and extended a year later, allow some low-income enrollees to access health plans with no premiums and cap high earners’ premiums at 8.5% of their income. When they expire, ACA premiums will more than double for the average ACA enrollee, according to another KFF analysis.
KFF’s new poll shows that if the subsidies aren’t extended by the start of the Nov. 1 open enrollment period, many Americans who buy their own health insurance could be caught unaware that their premiums are set to rise next year.
About 6 in 10 people who have self-purchased insurance said they had heard “a little” or “nothing” about the tax credits’ expiration.
Asked if they could afford nearly double the cost they pay in health insurance premiums, 70% of people who purchase insurance through the ACA Marketplace said they could not do this without significantly disrupting their household finances. About 4 in 10 said they’d go without health insurance coverage if their premiums rose that much, while a similar share said they would keep paying and 22% would seek insurance from another source, like an employer or spouse’s employer.
Prior to shutdown, Republicans received more blame for tax credits ending
The poll found that just before the shutdown began, Americans who supported the tax credits were more likely to blame Republicans, who hold the presidency and majorities in both houses of Congress, if the subsidies are left to expire at the end of the year. According to the poll, about 8 in 10 U.S. adults who wanted the subsidies extended said either Trump or Republicans in Congress would deserve most of the blame, while about 2 in 10 said they would blame Democrats in Congress.
In general, though, Democrats were more likely than Republicans or independents to be aware of the pending expiration, leaving room for views to shift as the issue rises in prominence.
The findings come as a recent poll from The Washington Post also found more Americans lay blame for the shutdown on Trump and congressional Republicans than on congressional Democrats, though the findings were preliminary and many respondents were unsure.
Republican leaders, meanwhile, say Democrats are holding the government hostage over a decision that does not need to be tied to the immediate restoration of government funding.
House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries on Thursday said that millions of Americans are facing “dramatically increased health care premiums, co-pays and deductibles because of the Republican unwillingness to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits.”
Diễn Đàn Người Việt Hải Ngoại. Tự do ngôn luận, an toàn và uy tín. Vì một tương lai tươi đẹp cho các thế hệ Việt Nam hãy ghé thăm chúng tôi, hãy tâm sự với chúng tôi mỗi ngày, mỗi giờ và mỗi giây phút có thể. VietBF.Com Xin cám ơn các bạn, chúc tất cả các bạn vui vẻ và gặp nhiều may mắn.
Welcome to Vietnamese American Community, Vietnamese European, Canadian, Australian Forum, Vietnamese Overseas Forum. Freedom of speech, safety and prestige. For a beautiful future for Vietnamese generations, please visit us, talk to us every day, every hour and every moment possible. VietBF.Com Thank you all and good luck.
