Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., answers questions from reporters after chairing a hearing of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on Sept. 17, 2025. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Republicans announced Tuesday they will hold a vote on their own health care proposal later this week to counter a Democratic bill that would extend enhanced tax credits for Affordable Care Act marketplace plans for three more years.

The 32-page GOP bill would not address the expiring ACA marketplace tax credits but would send payments to certain Americans through Health Savings Accounts to cover some of the cost of health care. 

Neither measure has the 60 votes needed to advance under that chamber’s rules. That would leave the ACA marketplace subsidies to expire at the end of the year and dramatically spike the cost of health insurance for the millions of people enrolled in those plans. 

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said Democrats’ bill to simply extend the enhanced ACA marketplace tax credits to offset the costs Americans pay for that insurance was unacceptable. 

“The way that the program is structured, the money goes straight to the insurance companies,” Thune said. “And the way that we think this ought to work is you ought to come up with a way in which you can deliver the benefit to the patients and not to the insurance companies.”

Thune said the Democratic bill lacks an income cap for ACA marketplace tax credits and allows $0 premiums for health insurance plans — guaranteeing the measure will fail.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, of New York, called the GOP proposal a “nonstarter” that would lead to “junk insurance.” He said the only way to avoid a dramatic increase in health insurance costs next year is to extend the enhanced ACA tax credits. 

“Their phony proposal is dead on arrival,” Schumer said. “The bill not only fails to extend the tax credits, it increases costs, adds tons of new abortion restrictions for women, expands junk fees and permanently funds cost-sharing reductions.”

Multiple plans

Senate Republicans have debated for weeks whether to hold a vote on a GOP plan to show the party has something to offer toward reducing health care costs. Thune promised Democrats a vote on a health care bill of their choosing in exchange for votes to end the government shutdown. 

Schumer announced last week that Democrats would hold the vote on a three-year extension of the enhanced ACA tax credits as they exist now. 

Several GOP senators, including Maine’s Susan Collins and Ohio’s Bernie Moreno, have released plans that would include an extension of the expiring tax credits while beginning to transition away from those subsidies. 

But Republican leaders ultimately decided to hold a vote on a proposal released earlier this week by Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Bill Cassidy, R-La., and Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo, R-Idaho. 

The Cassidy-Crapo legislation would have the Department of Health and Human Services deposit money into Health Savings Accounts for people enrolled in bronze or catastrophic health insurance plans purchased on the ACA marketplace in 2026 or 2027, according to a summary of the bill. 

Health Savings Accounts are tax-advantaged savings accounts that consumers can use to pay for medical expenses that are not otherwise reimbursed. They are not health insurance products.

ACA marketplace enrollees who select a bronze or catastrophic plan and make up to 700% of the federal poverty level would receive $1,000 annually if they are between the ages of 18 and 49 and $1,500 per year if they are between the ages of 50 and 64. 

That would set a threshold of $109,550 in annual income for one person, or $225,050 for a family of four, according to the 2025 federal poverty guidelines. The numbers are somewhat higher for residents of Alaska and Hawaii.  

The funding could not go toward abortion access or gender transitions, according to the Republican bill summary. 

Proposal modeled on Trump comments

Cassidy and Crapo outlined how their proposal would work during afternoon floor speeches, where they also aired their grievances with how the Affordable Care Act has affected Americans’ health care costs. 

Crapo rebuked Democrats for establishing the enhanced ACA marketplace tax credits during the coronavirus pandemic and scheduling them to sunset at the end of this year. 

“The pattern has become clear: Democrats respond to rising premiums by throwing taxpayer dollars at the problem,” Crapo said. “Their supposedly short-term fixes only drive premiums higher and make the problem harder to solve. Leaving us with apparently no choice other than to do the same thing again and again and again.”

The GOP plan, he said, was modeled off President Donald Trump’s request to send funding directly to Americans to spend on their health care. 

“Families can use that money to cover costs not handled by their insurance policy without having to wait for insurance companies to approve their treatment decisions,” Crapo said. “Because families want the best value for their money, they will seek out the most appropriate treatment. Over time this will result in lower health care costs as providers compete for patients.”

Cassidy said the bill would not subsidize health insurance premiums but would help some Americans pay for doctor exams, dentist visits, glasses and prescriptions. 

Once eligible ACA marketplace enrollees receive that funding in their Health Savings Accounts, he said, they will shop around for better prices, including on x-rays, which are often used to determine if someone has broken a bone. 

“She’s going to say, ‘Wait a second, the x-ray is $150 here and $500 there. I’m going to where it’s cheaper, not more expensive,’” Cassidy said, giving an example. “And I can tell you when that begins to happen, the people who are more expensive begin to lower their price.”

Dr. Martin Makary testifies during his confirmation hearing to lead the Food and Drug Administration before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee at the Dirksen Senate Office Building on March 06, 2025 in Washington, DC.  (Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Two of the country’s largest anti-abortion organizations want President Donald Trump to fire U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary over access to medication abortion. 

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, expressed frustration Tuesday that the FDA hasn’t completed a review of the prescription drug mifepristone.

“The FDA needs a new commissioner who will immediately reinstate in-person dispensing as it existed under President Trump’s first term and immediately conduct a comprehensive study,” she wrote in a statement. “Commissioner Makary is severely undermining President Trump and Vice President Vance’s pro-life credentials and their position that states should have the right to enact and enforce pro-life protections. Makary must go.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, which houses the FDA, wrote in a statement that “FDA’s comprehensive scientific reviews take the time necessary to get the science right, and that is what Dr. Makary is ensuring as part of the Department’s commitment to gold-standard science and evidence-based reviews.”

White House spokesman Kush Desai wrote in an email to States Newsroom that “Makary is working diligently to ensure that Americans have the best possible, Gold Standard Science study of mifepristone.”

“The White House maintains the utmost confidence in Commissioner Makary, whose leadership at the FDA has delivered and continues to deliver one landmark victory for the American people after another, from cracking down on artificial ingredients in our food supply to conducting the first safety review of baby formula in decades,” Desai added. “Uninformed attacks against Commissioner Makary from individuals outside the Administration will not change these facts.”

FDA approval 

Mifepristone is one of two pharmaceuticals used in medication abortion. It is FDA-approved for up to 10 weeks gestation and can be prescribed via telehealth and shipped to patients remotely. 

About 63% of the abortions in 2023 were medication, as opposed to procedural, according to the Guttmacher Institute. 

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected an attempt by anti-abortion medical organizations to overturn the FDA’s current prescribing guidelines for mifepristone in 2024. 

Numerous medical organizations, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Medical Association, filed briefs to the justices in that case attesting to the safety and efficacy of medication abortion. 

“The scientific evidence is overwhelming: major adverse events occur in less than 0.32% of patients,” the groups wrote. “The risk of death is almost non-existent.”

‘No preconceived plans’

Makary testified before a Senate committee in March as part of his confirmation process that he planned to review data on mifepristone and follow the research where it led him.

“I have no preconceived plans on mifepristone policy except to take a solid, hard look at the data and to meet with the professional career scientists who have reviewed the data at the FDA,” Makary said at the time.

Lila Rose, founder of the anti-abortion group Live Action, also called for Makary to be fired, writing in a social media post that his request to delay the results of the review until after the November 2026 midterm elections, which was reported by Bloomberg Law, was unacceptable. 

“If Dr Makary will not act as head of the FDA to protect children and mothers he should be fired,” Rose wrote, later adding the administration should, “Ban the abortion pill now!”

Americans United for Life CEO John Mize released a statement after meeting with Makary, saying it “is glaringly obvious that flawed political calculations” have stalled the FDA’s review of mifepristone. 

“To avoid political backlash in the upcoming midterm elections, advisors within the Administration are acting on a false premise, that emphasizing the importance of women’s safety and direct in-person consultation with her clinician is a political liability,” Mize wrote. 

U.S. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., points to text messages by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth during an annual worldwide threats assessment hearing at the Longworth House Office Building on March 26, 2025 in Washington, DC. The hearing held by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence addressed top aides inadvertently including Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief for The Atlantic magazine, on a high level Trump administration Signal group chat discussing plans to bomb Houthi targets in Yemen. (Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth violated official policy when he used the publicly available Signal app to message about military plans from his personal cell phone, including imminent bombings in Yemen, according to a report released Thursday by the Pentagon’s own watchdog. 

The Defense Department Inspector General’s 84-page report concluded Hegseth sent information about the “strike times of manned U.S. aircraft over hostile territory over an unapproved, unsecure network approximately 2 to 4 hours before the execution of those strikes.” 

“Although the Secretary wrote in his July 25 statement to the DoD OIG that ‘there were no details that would endanger our troops or the mission,’ if this information had fallen into the hands of U.S. adversaries, Houthi forces might have been able to counter U.S. forces or reposition personnel and assets to avoid planned U.S. strikes,” the report states. “Even though these events did not ultimately occur, the Secretary’s actions created a risk to operational security that could have resulted in failed U.S. mission objectives and potential harm to U.S. pilots.”

Members of Congress from both political parties requested the Defense Department Inspector General look into Hegseth’s use of Signal after a journalist at The Atlantic was inadvertently added to a group chat of national security officials planning the bombing in Yemen. Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg later published a series of stories detailing the messages. 

Acting Defense Department Inspector General Steven A. Stebbins released a memo in April announcing he had opened an investigation into the matter. 

GOP wants more Pentagon tech, Dems want Hegseth gone

Members of Congress’ reaction to the report was mixed, with Republicans suggesting more technology is needed for the Pentagon, while Democrats called for Hegseth to resign. 

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss., issued a statement saying the report shows Hegseth “acted within his authority to communicate the information in question to other cabinet level officials.” 

“It is also clear to me that our senior leaders need more tools available to them to communicate classified information in real time and a variety of environments,” Wicker added. “I think we have some work to do in providing those tools to our national security leaders.”

Senate Armed Services Committee ranking member Jack Reed, D-R.I., said in a statement the report confirms “that Secretary Hegseth violated military regulations and continues to show reckless disregard for the safety of American servicemembers.”

“For months, Secretary Hegseth has attempted to mislead Congress and the American people, claiming repeatedly that no classified information was involved,” Reed said. “The Inspector General has now definitively cast doubt on those false assurances.”

Reed added that Hegseth should “explain himself to Congress, the public, and the servicemembers he leads. The men and women of our armed forces deserve leadership they can trust with their lives.”

Hegseth refuses to give cell phone to investigators

The Inspector General report said Hegseth declined to sit for an interview with the Defense Department’s oversight agency, that he refused to hand over his personal cell phone to investigators and that he didn’t retain some of the messages in accordance with federal recordkeeping requirements. 

Officials working for Hegseth shared copies of the Signal chat with the inspector general, but those were incomplete since the app’s auto-delete feature was on at the time. Signal users can adjust that for different lengths of time or turn it off completely.

Hegseth was in the Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF, in his home the morning and early afternoon of March 15 to monitor “the operation against the Houthis,” according to the report. 

Two aides who were with Hegseth at the time told investigators he used “secure, classified” systems to communicate with United States Central Command officials “during the planning and execution of the strikes against Houthi targets that day and reviewed information related to the strikes.” 

“In the SCIF, the Secretary had access to multiple means of secure communication that allowed him to provide the necessary operational details and updates to non-DoD government officials on the Signal group chat,” the report states. 

The group chat about the Yemen bombing that accidentally included a journalist wasn’t the only one Hegseth used to communicate about official Pentagon business from his personal phone. 

Eight officials within the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Office of the Chief Information Officer told investigators that Hegseth created “multiple Signal group chats in which the Secretary and others allegedly discussed official DoD business and nonpublic information.” 

“One of the officials we spoke with stated that the Secretary posted the same sensitive operational information concerning the Houthi attack plans on the ‘Defense Team Huddle’ group chat,” the report states, later adding Hegseth declined to provide any information about that chat. 

The Inspector General opted not to make any recommendations about the use of Signal in the report, since “records management issues arising from the use of Signal and other commercially available messaging applications are a DoD-wide issue.”

A previous inspector general report also called on the department to “improve training for DoD senior officials on compliance with records retention laws and policies.”

Alabama’s Rogers says mission not compromised

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala., wrote in a statement that it is “important to remember that this was a successful operation that took out a dangerous target with no harm to U.S. troops. It’s clear that the discussion on Signal didn’t compromise the mission.”

“During the past few administrations, the use of Signal for communication between government officials has grown, so I appreciate the comprehensive work by the IG to develop recommendations on how to improve and secure communications,” Rogers said. “I encourage the Administration to follow these recommendations, and I look forward to discussions with the Pentagon on how to implement them.”

House Armed Services Committee ranking member Adam Smith, D-Wash., called the report “a damning review of an incompetent secretary of defense who is profoundly incapable of the job and clearly has no respect for or comprehension of what is required to safeguard our service members.”

“It confirms staggering violations of policy – namely that unsecured platforms were used by the secretary to boast about sensitive operational details that could have jeopardized both the mission and, more importantly, the lives of American service members tasked with carrying out Operation Rough Rider,” Smith said.

‘A fireable offense for anyone else in the Department of Defense’

Senate Defense Appropriations subcommittee ranking member Chris Coons, D-Del., said in a statement the report “concluded that Secretary Hegseth violated DOD procedure and put service members’ lives at risk with his reckless mishandling of sensitive information.” 

“In March, I led a group of senators in pressing the Trump administration to investigate this blatant misconduct. Any service member who acted with such disregard for our national security would be dismissed, at the very least,” Coons said. “Our nation’s highest ranking defense official should not be held to a lower standard than the men and women he oversees. For the good of our nation, I once again call on Secretary Hegseth to resign.”

House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence ranking member Jim Himes, D-Conn., said in a statement the report “confirms what I feared when this Signal thread became public: We are fortunate that the mission was not compromised and that servicemembers were not put at needless risk thanks to Secretary Hegseth’s reckless treatment of classified information.”

“Pete Hegseth’s behavior and lack of judgment would be a fireable offense for anyone else in the Department of Defense,” Himes said. “What’s more, his refusal to sit for an interview with the Inspector General or submit his device for examination is yet another example of his failure to take responsibility for his actions.”

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., speak with reporters during a press conference in the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2025. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer announced Thursday the chamber will vote next week to extend enhanced tax credits for three years for people who purchase their health insurance from the Affordable Care Act marketplace, though the plan seems unlikely to get the bipartisan support needed to advance. 

While it would typically be difficult for the minority leader to schedule a floor vote, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., agreed that Democrats could bring up a health care bill of their choosing in exchange for voting to end the government shutdown.

Schumer told reporters in recent days to “stay tuned” for details about the legislation while maintaining all Senate Democrats were united around the proposal. The three-year plan he previewed during his floor speech appears identical to one House Democratic leaders have been pressing for in that chamber. 

“Any Republican who claims to care about premium increases on January 1 has only one realistic path, and that’s to support our bill for a simple, clean, three-year extension,” Schumer said. “If Republicans block our bill, there’s no going back. We won’t get another chance to halt these premium spikes before they kick in at the start of the new year.” 

The vote will take place next Thursday, Schumer said. 

Clock ticking on solution

Health care costs have surged to the forefront of the national conversation in recent months, with both Democrats and Republicans in Congress pledging to find solutions. Both agree much more time is needed to make larger, structural changes. 

The Senate committee in charge of health care policy held a hearing Wednesday where senators began to coalesce around extending the enhanced tax credits beyond the end-of-December sunset date. But a bipartisan bill has not yet been introduced in that chamber on that subject. 

Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Chairman Bill Cassidy, R-La., said just after the hearing wrapped up there will likely be a GOP bill, or even a bipartisan one, to counter Schumer’s bill. 

“Yeah, absolutely,” Cassidy said. “I’d like to have a plan that both sides can vote for. But there will be a Republican plan if I have anything to do with it.”

Congress has an especially brief time frame to find a short-term resolution on the expiring tax credits, which would lead the cost of ACA marketplace plans to rise by hundreds or thousands of dollars. 

Open enrollment for ACA marketplace plans ends at different times throughout the country, with some states finishing on Dec. 15. Residents of other states are able to sign up through varying dates in January, but with their coverage starting later in the year. Lawmakers are set to leave Capitol Hill on Dec. 19 for their winter holiday break. 

A poll released Thursday by the nonpartisan health organization KFF showed nearly 60% of ACA marketplace enrollees could not cover the costs of a $300 annual increase in their premiums, while an additional 20% said they couldn’t afford a $1,000 jump in prices per year. 

Gottheimer, Kiggans unveil House bipartisan bill

At the same time Schumer was speaking on the Senate floor, a bipartisan group of House lawmakers, led by New Jersey Democratic Rep. Josh Gottheimer and Virginia Republican Rep. Jen Kiggans, introduced a bill they said could address some of the short-term issues facing ACA enrollees. 

“Although we may have different opinions over the long-term solutions for reforming marketplace health care or if there are even better and cheaper options for publicly available health insurance, we agree on the many aspects of the short-term solutions,” Kiggans said. 

The legislation — which needs to pass a floor vote, make it through the Senate and garner President Donald Trump’s signature — would extend the enhanced ACA marketplace tax credits with new income caps, “guardrails for waste, fraud and abuse” and an overhaul of the pharmacy benefit manager, or PBM, system, Kiggans said. 

The bipartisan group of representatives would then move on to the second part of their plan, not included in the bill, where they would try to make more structural changes to the entire country’s health care system. 

Those bills, Kiggans said, would address hospital billing transparency, implement Health Savings Accounts and advance the Give Kids a Chance Act “to accelerate pediatric cancer treatments and expand access to life-saving therapies for children battling rare diseases.”

Gottheimer said the group wants House leaders to put their bill up for a vote before members leave town for the two-week, end-of-year break. 

“In the last month, families have seen their health insurance premiums surge as they’ve shopped for insurance during open enrollment because enhanced premium tax credits are set to expire, as we all know, at the end of the year,” Gottheimer said. “In fact, because of this, for millions of families on the ACA, their health premiums will rise an average of 26% next year. 

“In Jersey, where we live, it could be even rougher with a 175% increase. That’s $20,000 for a family of four. And that’s why we’re all here together to try to solve this problem, do something about it, and avoid a massive new tax on hard-working families,” he said.

Senators don’t see future in bipartisan House bill

Schumer and other Senate Democrats didn’t appear to take the bipartisan House plan seriously when pressed about it during an early afternoon press conference, asking reporters in the room whether Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., would actually put it on the floor for a vote. 

“As for whatever House proposals there are, we’ll always look at something, but I don’t even see 15 Republicans supporting it right now,” Schumer said. “Sure an individual or two or three people can say this or that. It’s not going to solve the problem.”

Schumer maintained Senate Democrats’ three-year extension, which does not come with income caps or other changes to the tax credits proposed by centrist Republicans, is the best path forward.

He appeared frustrated when reporters asked him why he didn’t include changes that could have swayed at least some GOP senators to vote for the bill. 

Schumer said it wasn’t worth it for Democrats to put together a bill that a few Republicans might support when he doesn’t expect Speaker Johnson to put the bill on the floor in that chamber given strong opposition to the enhanced tax credits by “half his caucus.”

“Come on,” he said. “The fault is there, not with us.”

The website of Connect for Health Colorado, the state's health insurance marketplace, is pictured on Aug. 27, 2025. (Photo by Chase Woodruff/Colorado Newsline)

WASHINGTON — Americans who purchase their health insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplace are bracing for a steep rise in costs next year that many say they will not be able to afford, according to a poll released Thursday by the nonpartisan health organization KFF.

Nearly 60% of enrollees surveyed could not cover the costs of a $300 annual increase in their premiums, while an additional 20% said they couldn’t afford a $1,000 jump in prices per year. 

About 90% of those polled said it would be somewhat or very difficult to afford health insurance within their budget if they could no longer purchase a plan through the ACA marketplace.

The spike in prices is predominantly due to the end-of-year expiration date for enhanced tax credits for ACA marketplace plans. Republicans in Congress have so far declined to extend the subsidies, while Democrats shut down the government in an unsuccessful attempt to continue the credits.

While increases would vary considerably based on location, income and plan type, a Sept. 30 KFF analysis projected individuals’ annual premiums would rise between around $350 and more than $1,800.

Open enrollment for ACA marketplace plans ends at different times throughout the country, with some states finishing on Dec. 15. Residents of other states are able to sign up through varying dates in January, but with their coverage starting later in the year. That doesn’t give Congress much time to broker a deal before the ability to purchase a plan for next year closes.

No progress on negotiations

The Senate is expected to vote next week on a Democratic bill to extend the subsidies, though that legislation appears unlikely to get the 60 votes needed to advance in the Republican-controlled chamber. 

The Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee held a hearing this week to explore short- and long-term options to bring down health care costs, but senators on that panel didn’t reach a clear consensus. 

KFF President and CEO Drew Altman said in a statement the “poll shows the range of problems Marketplace enrollees will face if the enhanced tax credits are not extended in some form, and those problems will be the poster child of the struggles Americans are having with health care costs in the midterms if Republicans and Democrats cannot resolve their differences.”

The KFF poll showed only 9% of marketplace enrollees have a lot of confidence that Republicans in Congress will address rising health insurance costs, with 24% saying they had some confidence, 25% saying they didn’t have much confidence and 42% responding they had no confidence in GOP lawmakers on that particular issue.

Blame falls to Trump

ACA marketplace enrollees would predominantly fault President Donald Trump if their overall health care costs, including premiums, co-pays and deductibles, were to increase by $1,000 next year, though Republicans and Democrats in Congress would share nearly as much blame, the survey found.

Thirty-seven percent would place the responsibility with Trump, while 33% would cite GOP lawmakers and 29% would fault Democrats with the rising costs.

Those numbers fluctuate significantly depending on a person’s political affiliation, with 65% of Republicans saying they would blame Democrats, while 20% would credit Republicans in Congress and 14% would fault Trump.

Forty-four percent of people who identified as independents said they would blame Trump, while 32% said they would cite Republicans in Congress and 23% said they would fault Democrats.

Among Democrats, 49% would blame Trump, 46% would credit congressional Republicans, with the remainder would fault members of their own party.

KFF conducted the survey of 1,350 people between Nov. 7-15. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points for the full sample, with a plus or minus 6 percentage points margin of error for political party affiliation questions.

Louisiana Republican U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy talks with reporters in the Dirksen Senate office building on Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2025. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate committee that oversees health care started coalescing around an approach to lower costs for Americans during a Wednesday hearing, though several hurdles lay ahead.

Republicans and Democrats on the panel appeared to accept that enhanced tax credits for people who purchase their health insurance from the Affordable Care Act marketplace should not expire at the end of the year. Just days are left for open enrollment and premiums are expected to greatly increase. 

The bipartisan momentum among a select group of senators will need to build significantly in the days ahead if an extension of the subsidies is going to speedily garner the 60 votes needed to advance in the Senate and then move through the GOP-controlled House. 

It will also need President Donald Trump’s signature to become law, and he has so far not signaled support for an extension.

“I’m hoping that we can find a bill that can get 60 votes, that can fix the problem with the exchanges for January 1, 2026,” Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Bill Cassidy, R-La., said. “It shouldn’t be a Republican solution. It shouldn’t be a Democratic solution. It should be an American solution.”

Cassidy cautioned lawmakers on the panel from pressing for “grandiose ideas,” saying Congress must “have a solution for three weeks from now.”  

A ‘political problem’ seen for the GOP

But extending the ACA marketplace subsidies, possibly with tweaks, is just a short-term solution that senators on the committee agreed will need to be followed up with an overhaul of the American health care system. 

Any efforts on larger-scale legislation will bump up against the deeply entrenched politics of the Affordable Care Act, well-funded lobbyists and next year’s midterm elections, none of which will make the process easy. 

Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, the ranking member on the panel, said he appreciated Cassidy’s “sentiment about wanting to do something quickly,” but said Republicans should have focused on the expiring ACA tax credits earlier in the year, instead of leaving it until now.  

“The reason for this hearing, to be frank, is that my Republican friends understand they’ve got a political problem,” Sanders said. “Their political problem is that all over America today, people on the Affordable Care Act are opening up packages coming from the insurance companies, and guess what? Their premiums on average are doubling and in some cases in my state are tripling or quadrupling.”

Sanders said Congress should extend the enhanced ACA marketplace tax credits for another year, or two, or three, while lawmakers sort through larger, structural issues around health care costs. 

“Yes, the current system is broken. Yes, we need to create a new system,” Sanders said. “But unfortunately, we aren’t going to do it in two weeks.”

Sanders suggested the committee hold a series of hearings in the months ahead featuring leaders from other developed countries that provide health care to all of their residents.

Extensions of tax credits debated

Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins said “there’s a limit to what we can do in this first year” and that lawmakers are “going to need a two-year plan.”

Collins indicated that she wants to see “reasonable” income caps to limit eligibility for ACA marketplace tax credits in any short-term extension that Congress may pass. 

Washington state Democratic Sen. Patty Murray said Republicans who are serious about addressing the spike in costs for ACA marketplace enrollees should work with Democrats to pass a “clean, one-year extension” of the enhanced subsidies. 

“And if their call for reforming tax credits is serious, we should look at that. We can talk about those reforms ahead of the 2027 year,” Murray said. “But I have to say, I’m not optimistic that most Republicans are serious about this because they refused to talk about this problem before right now, and I’ve been down this road before.”

Murray also rebuked Cassidy for not focusing the committee’s attention on the expiring tax credits earlier in the year by taking a swipe at his vote to confirm Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

“This is about as serious as expressing concern about RFK Jr.’s anti-vax crusade after voting to make him the most powerful public health official in the country,” Murray said.

‘Reasonable caps’ backed

Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski said members of the committee need to focus on what the next few months and years look like for Americans’ health care costs. 

“I think we’re going to need to have a short-term extension. But I think we can put reasonable caps on. I think that we can put some of the parameters that we have been talking about. There’s no great secret sauce here to how we’re going to deal with this particular dilemma that we’re in,” Murkowski said. “But we’ve got to be looking longer term to — how do we ultimately reduce these costs of care?”

Murkowski said she was also concerned about a decrease in funding for public health and prevention initiatives, before asking the witnesses appearing before the committee what their top recommendations would be for “prevention-type programs that have the strongest evidence for reducing long-term costs.”

Joel White, president of the Council for Affordable Health Coverage in Washington, D.C., said Congress should allow “premium discounts in the individual market for wellness programs,” which he said is currently illegal.

Marcie Strouse, owner and partner at Capitol Benefits Group in Des Moines, Iowa, suggested lawmakers open up health savings accounts “to allow for more holistic and preventive services.” She also said Congress could highlight “direct primary care and making sure people are actually getting the care that they need.”

Dr. Claudia M. Fegan, national coordinator at Physicians for a National Health Program in Chicago, suggested enhanced primary care and screening people for diseases like cancer that can be easier to treat when caught early. 

Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin said the hearing clearly demonstrated that there is “underlying agreement that this system needs a lot of reform.”

But, she said, Congress needs to take a look at the entire health care system, not just the Affordable Care Act. 

“I want to make a point that just under 50% of Americans get their health insurance through employers or group insurance, 20% are on Medicaid, 15% on Medicare, 1% on TRICARE or VA, and just over 6% are in this market,” Baldwin said. “There are problems with this market. But I have to say that abandoning the ACA … is not going to solve the system as a whole.”

Ohio Republican Sen. Jon Husted appeared supportive of a short-term extension of the enhanced ACA tax credits to provide Congress more time to address larger issues with health care affordability.

“We can freeze the subsidies where they’re at right now for a temporary period of time. I don’t know if that’s one year or two years to help give some relief,” he said. “And by the way, just because we continue those tax credits does not drive down the cost. It transfers the burden to the taxpayer and future generations. But it is a little help right now that we both can agree on. And then we’ve got to fix it.” 

Husted said there are easily a dozen bills that Congress could take up individually to start bringing down health care costs. 

Hawley offers plan for health costs tax exemption

Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley also appeared to side with extending the enhanced ACA marketplace tax credits in the short term.

“We are looking at a massive crisis unless Congress acts and acts soon,” Hawley said. “And my message is to the leadership of this body — to the leaders of the House, the leaders of the Senate —maybe it’s time we all locked ourselves in a room and got to a solution here.”

Halwey pitched a bill he just introduced to exempt health care from taxes. 

“If you pay premiums, you ought to be able to deduct that from your taxes. If you have out-of-pocket medical expenses, you ought to be able to deduct every dollar off of your taxes. You want to lower the cost of health care immediately. Do that. No taxes on health care for any American,” Hawley said. “And you set an upper limit so you don’t have rich people gaming the system. I get it. That’s fine. But let’s think about working people in this country who cannot afford health care.”

Hawley said it should be allowed whether an American itemizes on their taxes or not. 

All three panelists seemed initially supportive of the idea. 

Redoing tax credits in 2026

Cassidy said after the two-hour hearing he’s working to get support from lawmakers in both political parties for an integrated approach for next year.

“You could use the income that would be used to extend the subsidies, apply them to the bronze plan, because the bronze plan is so much less expensive. You could then put that balance into the health savings account,” Cassidy said, referring to coverage levels in plans on the ACA marketplace. “So it does continue the support using the existing mechanisms we have, but integrates the HSA, which gives first dollar coverage and could potentially lower the net deductible.”

Cassidy said Congress could extend the open enrollment period for the ACA marketplace and then fund the Health Savings Accounts, which are tax-advantaged savings accounts, before the end of March. 

“People would save their receipts and submit them for payment,” he said. “People do that all the time.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., speaks to reporters while walking to his office on Nov. 10, 2025 on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Tom Brenner/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Republicans and Democrats in the Senate agree that health care costs are rising too quickly and expect to vote next week on legislation that could help Americans. 

The only catch is that party leaders hadn’t decided as of Tuesday what to include in the bills. 

Senators also seemed to accept that neither proposal will garner the bipartisan support needed to advance, leaving the tens of millions of Americans who purchase their health insurance from the Affordable Care Act marketplace with complicated decisions to make before open enrollment in some states ends as soon as Dec. 15. 

ACA marketplace plans are expected to increase by 26% on average next year, though a failure by Congress to extend enhanced tax credits would lead monthly payments for subsidized enrollees to increase by 114% on average, according to analysis from the nonpartisan health organization KFF. 

“I don’t think at this point we have a clear path forward,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said. “I don’t think the Democrats have a clear path forward.”

Vote on Democratic bill expected

Thune guaranteed a small group of Democratic senators a floor vote on a health care proposal of their choosing in exchange for their votes on the spending package that ended the government shutdown. 

Democrats are widely expected to put forward a bill to extend enhanced tax credits for people who buy their health insurance from the Affordable Care Act Marketplace. Those subsidies are set to expire at the end of the year without congressional action. 

But it isn’t clear if the Democratic bill would extend the credits for one year or a longer period. 

GOP leaders are trying to rally support around a health care proposal of their own, while acknowledging it won’t get the 60 votes needed to advance under the Senate’s legislative filibuster rules. 

Thune said Republican senators had a “robust discussion” about health care issues during their closed-door lunch, where Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo of Idaho and Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Bill Cassidy of Louisiana presented some ideas. But no final agreements were reached. 

Thune, R-S.D., said conversations will continue ahead of the vote next week and likely afterward.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said Democrats “have a plan” but declined to say exactly what it entails.

“Stay tuned,” Schumer said. “We had a great discussion and I will tell you this: We will be focused like a laser on lowering people’s costs.”

Looking for a solution

West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said Republican talks on health care have been “vigorous” but that they hadn’t yet “decided on the clear path.” 

Capito said her “expectation” is that GOP senators will put a bill on the floor next week to bring down the costs of health insurance premiums and health care as quickly as possible, though that hadn’t been finalized.  

“I like the idea of people having control of the money as opposed to insurance companies, where they take a 20% profit,” Capito said, echoing comments by President Donald Trump. “I think that has merit.”

Capito said senators didn’t discuss during their lunch whether to extend open enrollment or possibly reopen it next year, should Congress pass a health care bill that addresses the ACA marketplace tax credits in some way.

New Hampshire Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen said there is no indication there will be bipartisan agreement to extend the enhanced ACA subsidies or any other health care proposal by next week’s vote, though bipartisan conversations continue.  

As for Democrats’ plan, Shaheen said it wasn’t “clear” what legislation party leaders will put on the floor for a vote or when they’d make that announcement. 

‘Mindful of the timeline’

North Dakota Republican Sen. John Hoeven said there is “strong support” among GOP lawmakers for making changes to how the enhanced ACA tax credits work before extending them for any length of time. 

But he said those negotiations will take more time. 

“In my opinion, if we have (the vote) next week, we probably won’t be at a point where we can get a big bipartisan agreement,” Hoeven said. “It’s more likely they’ll put something up that fails. We put something up that fails. And we keep working towards, hopefully, something that can work and that is bipartisan.”

There is a “good chance,” he said, that will happen in December or January, a timeline that would likely put a solution after open enrollment closes. 

Hoeven declined to say if a deal would extend open enrollment or include a second window for Americans to select insurance, but said Republicans are aware of the deadlines. 

“We’re very mindful of the timeline,” Hoeven said. “So all the things we’re talking about recognize that it needs to be able to take effect next year or this year.”

Arizona Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly speaks with reporters in the Mansfield Room of the U.S. Capitol on Monday, Dec. 1, 2025. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)   

WASHINGTON — Arizona Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly said Monday the threat of a court-martial for a video he and other senators released telling military members not to follow illegal orders is an effort to silence the president’s political opponents. 

Kelly, a retired Navy captain, was one of six Democratic lawmakers with backgrounds in the military or intelligence agencies who appeared in the video that was posted on social media in mid-November. 

President Donald Trump alleged the lawmakers had committed “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” for telling members of the military and intelligence communities that they “can” and “must refuse illegal orders.”

Kelly said during a press conference that he and his wife, former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords, who survived being shot during a town hall in 2011, have experienced a sharp increase in threats in the weeks since Trump reacted negatively to the video. 

“My family knows the cost of political violence. My wife, Gabby, was shot in the head and nearly died while speaking with her constituents,” Kelly said. “The president should understand this too. He has been the target of political violence himself.”

Kelly then listed off other recent instances of political violence, including the killing of Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, the arson at the official home of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and the assassination of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk during a rally at Utah Valley University. 

“Every other president we have ever had in the history of this nation would have tried to heal the country,” Kelly said. “But we all know Donald Trump, he uses every single opportunity to divide us, and that’s dangerous.”

The Defense Department has announced officials are looking into recalling Kelly to active duty for a potential court-martial. The FBI has also contacted the House and Senate Sergeant at Arms to request interviews with the six lawmakers in the video. 

Kelly said he and the other Democrats in the video would not be intimidated or silenced by Trump’s comments or the investigations.

“It’s a dangerous moment for the United States of America when the president and his loyalists use every lever of power to silence United States senators for speaking up,” Kelly said. “But we all know that this isn’t about me and it’s not about the others in that video.

“They’re trying to send a message to retired service members, to government employees, the members of the military, to elected officials and to all Americans who are thinking about speaking up — you better keep your mouth shut, or else.”

Video caused stir

The lawmakers’ video reminded servicemembers they’d sworn an oath to the Constitution, something Kelly said shouldn’t have been controversial. 

“No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution. We know this is hard and that it’s a difficult time to be a public servant,” the Democrats said in the video. “But whether you’re serving in the CIA, in the Army, or Navy, or the Air Force, your vigilance is critical.”

Kelly declined to say directly during the press conference if the video was a response to ongoing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea that Trump and others in the administration have said are shipping illegal substances to the United States. 

“I think it’s good for people to get a reminder. And we wanted to show that we had their back and we understood the situation they were in,” Kelly said. “And we said something that is in the Uniform Code of Military Justice, according to the law of armed combat.”

Investigations opened

The House and Senate Armed Services Committees have each opened investigations into the strikes after The Washington Post reported that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a verbal order to make sure everyone died during a Sept. 2 strike on one of the boats. 

Kelly said that he has “tremendous confidence” in committee Chairman Roger Wicker of Mississippi and ranking member Jack Reed of Rhode Island. But he repeatedly criticized Hegseth as unqualified, saying he often “runs around on a stage like he’s a 12-year-old playing army.” 

“If there is anyone who needs to answer questions in public and under oath, it is Pete Hegseth,” Kelly said. 

The Armed Services Committee, he said, should have both a public hearing and one for senators in a classified setting to get more details on the strikes on boats off the coast of Venezuela, including whether the Trump administration has a strategy. 

Kelly said if Trump wants to remove Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, then he must make that clear so Congress can have a debate and Americans can have a say in a potential war.

“Regime change as a policy in the United States, generally, in our history, has not worked out well. Think of South Vietnam, think of the Bay of Pigs, Iraq and Afghanistan. It results in the deaths of U.S. service members without the intended outcome,” Kelly said. “And in this case, I don’t even think we know the intended outcome. The president needs to make a case to the American people when he is about to put thousands of American men and women in harm’s way.”

President Donald Trump speaks during an executive order signing in the Oval Office on Feb. 11, 2025. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

President Donald Trump said Friday he will try to reverse any law, pardon or still-in-effect executive order that former President Joe Biden signed with an autopen, though it wasn’t immediately clear how that would work or whether it would be legal. 

Trump declared in a social media post that any documents Biden signed with the autopen are “hereby terminated, and of no further force or effect.”

“I am hereby cancelling all Executive Orders, and anything else that was not directly signed by Crooked Joe Biden, because the people who operated the Autopen did so illegally,” Trump alleged. “Joe Biden was not involved in the Autopen process and, if he says he was, he will be brought up on charges of perjury. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

The White House press office didn’t immediately respond to a request for the list of documents Trump believes he has the ability to rescind based on the manner they were signed.

States Newsroom also asked the Trump administration if officials believe the president would need to sign an executive order in order to implement his social media post. 

Experts dismissed earlier autopen challenge 

The post was similar to one Trump published in March when he claimed any pardons Biden signed with the autopen were void, something legal experts said at the time was “absurd” and a “red herring.”

Trump brought up his frustration with autopen use again in June when he ordered the White House legal counsel and U.S. attorney general to investigate when and why Biden administration staff used an autopen. 

Trump said during an Oval Office appearance at the time he hadn’t found any evidence Biden aides violated the law.

“No, but I’ve uncovered the human mind,” Trump said. “I was in a debate with the human mind and I didn’t think he knew what the hell he was doing. So it’s one of those things, one of those problems. We can’t ever allow that to happen to our country.”

Biden and spokespeople working for him have repeatedly said he knew what official documents were being signed in his name and rejected claims that White House staff used the autopen without his authorization or knowledge. 

Biden released a statement in June following the Trump memorandum, saying the investigation “is nothing more than a distraction by Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans who are working to push disastrous legislation that would cut essential programs like Medicaid and raise costs on American families, all to pay for tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy and big corporations.”

“Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency. I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations,” Biden wrote at the time. “Any suggestion that I didn’t is ridiculous and false.”

While presidents have regularly rescinded their predecessors executive orders, usually within their first few days or weeks in office, Congress would very likely need to act in order to alter or eliminate any laws that Biden signed with an autopen. Trump seeking to overturn a law, or part of a law, unilaterally would likely lead to a lawsuit over whether he holds that power. 

Trump doesn’t cite legal authority

It also wasn’t immediately clear what legal authority Trump believes he has as president to undo pardons if Biden used an autopen to sign the documents. 

David Super, a constitutional and administrative law professor at Georgetown University, told States Newsroom in March that “the Constitution does not require signatures for pardons. It simply says the president has the power to pardon.”

“So if President Biden wanted to simply verbally tell someone they’re pardoned, he could do that. It wouldn’t have to be in writing at all,” he said. “Administratively, of course, we want things in writing. It makes things a lot simpler, but there’s no constitutional requirement.”

Ashley Murray contributed to this report. 

A small memorial of flowers and an American flag outside the Farragut West Metro station in Washington, D.C., near where two members of the West Virginia National Guard were shot on Nov. 26. (Photo by Andrew Leyden/Getty Images)

The United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia announced Friday it has charged the man who allegedly shot two National Guard members earlier this week with first-degree murder after one of the soldiers died as a result of her injuries. 

Other charges include three counts of possession of a firearm during a crime of violence and two counts of assault with intent to kill while armed. 

The attack shocked the country and has led to a renewed discussion about immigration policy as well as the war in Afghanistan and how the country withdrew during the Biden administration. 

President Donald Trump announced late Thursday night he intends to “permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries,” though he didn’t specify which countries would be included or exactly how such an order would be implemented. 

Trump wrote on social media he plans to “remove anyone who is not a net asset to the United States, or is incapable of loving our Country, end all Federal benefits and subsidies to noncitizens of our Country, denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility, and deport any Foreign National who is a public charge, security risk, or non-compatible with Western Civilization.”

The post came just hours after U.S. Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom, 20, died from injuries she sustained during a Wednesday shooting a couple of blocks from the White House. The other victim, U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24, remained hospitalized in critical condition. Both were West Virginia National Guard members.

The alleged shooter, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, an Afghan national who worked with United States forces, entered the country on Sept. 8, 2021, as part of Operation Allies Welcome, according to a statement from Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

No details of immigration proposals

The White House press office declined to say Friday which countries would have their residents barred from entering the United States under the new order, referring back to the president’s social media posts, which did not include a list.

“Only REVERSE MIGRATION can fully cure this situation,” Trump wrote. “Other than that, HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL, except those that hate, steal, murder, and destroy everything that America stands for — You won’t be here for long!”

Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a Thursday afternoon statement the administration would pause immigration applications for Afghan nationals.

“Effective immediately, processing of all immigration requests relating to Afghan nationals is stopped indefinitely pending further review of security and vetting protocols,” she wrote. 

The Trump administration will also review “all asylum cases approved under the Biden Administration,” McLaughlin said, saying those cases required more vetting. 

Biden Afghanistan policy blamed

In a separate post, Trump blamed former President Joe Biden for allowing the alleged shooter into the country. 

McLaughlin echoed that sentiment.

Lakanwal “was paroled in by the Biden Administration. After that, Biden signed into law that parole program, and then entered into the 2023 Ahmed Court Settlement, which bound (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services) to adjudicate his asylum claim on an expedited basis. Regardless if his asylum was granted or not, this monster would not have been removed because of his parole.” 

The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, following two decades of war that began as a result of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, has been widely criticized.

Many of the Afghan nationals who aided the United States and allied countries were left behind as the Taliban quickly regained control. 

The nonprofit #AfghanEvac, formed in August 2021 to help resettle Afghan refugees, criticized the administration’s proposal to indefinitely halt the processing of immigration requests from Afghans.  

“Our allies are under attack today because of the actions of one deranged man. Those actions should not be ascribed to an entire community,” the organization posted on social media late Thursday.

In a lengthier statement issued Wednesday following the shooting of two National Guard members, the organization’s president, Shawn VanDiver, said #AfghanEvac “expects and fully supports the perpetrator facing full accountability and prosecution under the law.”

VanDiver continued: “AfghanEvac rejects any attempt to leverage this tragedy as a political ploy to isolate or harm Afghans who have resettled in the United States.”

Motive unknown

Lakanwal had been residing in Washington state and drove across the country before the shooting, according to Jeanine Pirro, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.

Officials investigating the shooting have yet to release a possible motive.

Lakanwal was granted asylum in the U.S. in April, according to reporting by many media outlets, including NPR.

The Department of Homeland Security did not confirm for States Newsroom the date Lakanwal was granted asylum.

Members of law enforcement and National Guard soldiers respond to a shooting of two National Guard members on Nov. 26, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Andrew Leyden/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Two National Guard members from West Virginia were in critical condition Wednesday evening after being shot near the White House in Washington, D.C., officials said.

FBI Director Kash Patel, a Metropolitan Police Department leader and Mayor Muriel Bowser emphasized during a press conference the investigation was in the preliminary stages, but said the shooting was “targeted” and that one suspect, who was also shot, was in custody. 

“At approximately 2:15 this afternoon, members of the D.C. National Guard were on high visibility patrols in the area of 17th and I Street Northwest when a suspect came around the corner, raised his arm with a firearm and discharged at the National Guard members,” MPD Executive Assistant Chief Jeffery Carroll said. 

“There were other (National Guard) members that were in the area. They were able to, after some back and forth … subdue the individual and bring them into custody,” Carroll added. “Within moments, members of law enforcement in the area were also able to assist and bring that individual into custody.”

The Department of Homeland Security in a press release late Wednesday identified the suspect as an Afghan national who entered the U.S. in September 2021. Numerous news reports gave his name as Rahmanullah Lakanwal. The Associated Press, citing a law enforcement official not authorized to speak publicly, reported the suspect sustained “injuries that are not believed to be life-threatening.”

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services posted late Wednesday that “Effective immediately, processing of all immigration requests relating to Afghan nationals is stopped indefinitely pending further review of security and vetting protocols.”

Carroll said there were no other suspects at the time of the press conference, in the early evening, and that law enforcement officials had reviewed video footage from the area where the shooting took place. 

“It appears, like I said, to be a lone gunman that raised the firearm and ambushed these members of the National Guard, and he was quickly taken into custody by other National Guard members and law enforcement members,” he said. 

The guardsmen were armed, but Carroll said investigators had not yet determined if they shot back or how the suspect, whom he did not name, was shot. 

“At this point, we’re still investigating exactly who shot the individual. It’s not clear at this time,” he said. 

Officials were also not yet sure “what kind of weapon” the suspect used during the shooting, which Carroll said “happened right in front of the Metro, although there is no indication that the perpetrator was on the Metro.” The Metro is the district’s public transit system.

Bowser reiterated during the press conference that the two National Guard members were in critical condition and referred to the shooting as “targeted.” 

Trump delivers remarks

President Donald Trump delivered brief remarks Wednesday night from Florida, condemning the “monstrous, ambush-style attack.”

Trump praised his deployment of guard troops to the district as “part of the most successful public safety and national security mission in the history of our nation’s capital.”

“This heinous assault was an act of evil, an act of hatred and an act of terror. It was a crime against our entire nation. It was a crime against humanity. The hearts of all Americans tonight are with those two members of the West Virginia National Guard and their families,” Trump said in a recorded video message posted on his social media platform, Truth Social, around 9:20 p.m. Eastern. 

Trump said “based on the best available information” the suspect is from Afghanistan, which he called “a hellhole on Earth” and that he had been “flown in” by former President Joe Biden.

Trump said his administration will “re-examine every single alien who has entered our country from Afghanistan under Biden.” 

Biden established a program to bring Afghans who assisted American troops during two decades of war to the United States after his administration withdrew troops in August 2021.

FBI and partners to lead investigation

Patel said the investigation will be treated as an assault on a federal law enforcement officer. 

“The FBI will lead out on that mission with our interagency partners to include the Department of Homeland Security, Secret Service, ATF, DEA, and we’re thankful for the mayor’s assistance in this matter,” Patel said. “The Metropolitan Police Department and their skills in investigating homicides and gun shootings in this city is exceptional. 

“We will work together collaboratively, because this is a matter of national security, because it’s a matter of pride.”

West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey wrote on social media before the press conference that the guard members had died, though he later posted he was hearing “conflicting reports about the condition of our two Guard members and will provide additional updates once we receive more complete information.”

“Our prayers are with these brave service members, their families, and the entire Guard community,” he added. 

Trump was briefed on the shooting and was “actively monitoring this tragic situation,” according to a statement Wednesday afternoon from White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. The shooting happened just one day before Thanksgiving. 

Trump posted on social media that both guardsmen were “critically wounded” and taken to two separate hospitals. The shooter, he added, was “also severely wounded, but regardless, will pay a very steep price.”

Trump mobilized 800 National Guard members to the district in August, on the grounds of a “crime emergency,” despite a nearly 30-year low in violent crime in the city. 

Some of the guard troops were instructed they would be carrying service weapons while deployed in the district, according to an Aug. 17 report in the Wall Street Journal. 

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told reporters Wednesday the administration will send an additional 500 National Guard troops to the district.

“This will only stiffen our resolve to ensure that we make Washington DC safe and beautiful,” Hegseth said.

The White House was placed on lockdown for a period due to the shooting, according to a White House official. Trump and first lady Melania Trump were not present at the time of the shooting.

Last week, a District of Columbia federal judge found the Trump administration’s deployment of the National Guard in the city illegal. However, Judge Jia Cobb paused her order for three weeks to give the Trump administration time to remove the guard members along with appealing her ruling.  

More than 2,000 members of the guard have remained in the district, and are expected to stay until the end of February, according to Cobb’s order.

The Trump administration on Wednesday asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in an emergency motion to intervene.

When Trump mobilized the Guard, he also federalized the district’s police force for 30 days. While the federalization of the police force expired, Trump has kept the National Guard in the district.

Since then, Republican governors have agreed to send their own Guard members to the district, from Louisiana, Ohio, South Carolina and West Virginia, among others. 

Lawmakers react

Members of Congress responded to the initial reports of the shooting with prayers and gratitude for the service members. 

“Praying for the National Guard members wounded in this horrific shooting,” U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., wrote on social media. “Thankful for the brave law enforcement officers and first responders who swiftly apprehended a suspect. There is no place for violence in America.”

Sen. Joni Ernst, an Iowa Republican and retired lieutenant colonel in the Iowa National Guard, called for prayers for the victims. 

“Join me in praying for the two National Guardsmen shot in D.C. and their families,” she said. “Our men and women in uniform truly put their lives on the line to keep us safe and deserve our greatest respect.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., wrote he was “closely monitoring the situation and am praying for the wounded National Guardsmen and their families.”

“My heart breaks for the victims of this horrific shooting in Washington DC near the White House,” Schumer wrote. “I thank all the first responders for their quick action to capture the suspect.”

Speaking in Fort Campbell, Kentucky, Vice President JD Vance, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, said the attack was “a somber reminder.”

“Our soldiers are the sword and the shield of the United States of America,” he said. “And as a person who goes into work every single day in that building and knows that there are a lot of people who wear the uniform of the United States Army, let me just say very personally thank them for what they’re doing.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., wrote that his “thoughts and prayers are with the National Guardsmen who were attacked this afternoon. I urge you to keep them in your prayers too.”

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., wrote the “National Guard has done heroic work this year working around the clock to make our nation’s capital safe again. We are forever grateful for the swift actions of law enforcement and for all those who risk their own lives to protect everyone else.”

Jacob Fischler and Leann Ray contributed to this report.

Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., rehearses the Democratic response to President Donald Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress on March 4, 2025 in Wyandotte, Michigan. (Photo by Paul Sancya – Pool/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Democratic members of Congress who released a video in mid-November telling members of the military that they are not required to follow illegal orders announced Tuesday the Federal Bureau of Investigation has asked to speak with them about the matter. 

Four House members, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly and Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin wrote the inquiry will not deter them from publicly stating their concerns about the Trump administration. 

“Last night, the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division appeared to open an inquiry into me in response to a video President Trump did not like,” Slotkin wrote in a statement published on social media. 

“The President directing the FBI to target us is exactly why we made this video in the first place,” Slotkin added. “He believes in weaponizing the federal government against his perceived enemies and does not believe laws apply to him or his Cabinet. He uses legal harassment as an intimidation tactic to scare people out of speaking up.”  

Kelly’s office said it had “received this inquiry via the Sergeant at Arms.”  The House members said the FBI has contacted the House Sergeant at Arms office requesting interviews.

“Senator Kelly won’t be silenced by President Trump and Secretary Hegseth’s attempt to intimidate him and keep him from doing his job as a U.S. Senator,” the spokesperson said. 

Reps. Jason Crow of Colorado, Chris Deluzio and Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania and Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire separately issued a joint statement alleging that “Trump is using the FBI as a tool to intimidate and harass Members of Congress.”

“No amount of intimidation or harassment will ever stop us from doing our jobs and honoring our Constitution,” they wrote. “We swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. That oath lasts a lifetime, and we intend to keep it. We will not be bullied. We will never give up the ship.”

President Donald Trump after learning of the video posted on social media that he believed the statement from six Democratic lawmakers represented “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH.”

The FBI declined to comment. 

Illegal orders

Those six lawmakers posted a video on social media on Nov. 18 telling members of the military and intelligence community that they “can” and “must refuse illegal orders.”

“No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution. We know this is hard and that it’s a difficult time to be a public servant,” they said. “But whether you’re serving in the CIA, in the Army, or Navy, or the Air Force, your vigilance is critical.”

The Defense Department announced Monday that it was looking into “serious allegations of misconduct” against Kelly, a former Navy captain and NASA astronaut, for his participation in the video. 

The statement said defense officials may recall Kelly “to active duty for court-martial proceedings or administrative measures.” 

Kelly wrote in a statement responding to the investigation that he had “given too much to this country to be silenced by bullies who care more about their own power than protecting the Constitution.”

“If this is meant to intimidate me and other members of Congress from doing our jobs and holding this administration accountable, it won’t work,” Kelly wrote.

Hegseth asks for briefing

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted on social media Tuesday that he wants the Secretary of the Navy to brief him “on the outcome of your review by no later than December 10, 2025.”

Members of Congress’ official actions are generally protected under the speech and debate clause of the Constitution. 

A report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service states the judiciary’s “immunity principle protects Members from ‘intimidation by the executive’ or a ‘hostile judiciary’ by prohibiting both the executive and judicial powers from being used to improperly influence or harass legislators.”

U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., speaks to reporters at the U.S. Capitol on March 25, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The Department of Defense announced on social media Monday it’s looking into “serious allegations of misconduct” against Arizona Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, one of several lawmakers who posted a video last week telling military members they are not required to follow orders that violate the law. 

The video spurred anger from President Donald Trump, who posted, also on social media, that he believed the statement from six Democratic lawmakers represented “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”

The claim led to safety concerns on Capitol Hill, especially after a year that included numerous acts of violence against lawmakers and key political figures. 

The Defense Department announcement didn’t detail exactly how Kelly may have violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice but stated that “a thorough review of these allegations has been initiated to determine further actions, which may include recall to active duty for court-martial proceedings or administrative measures.” 

It was unclear how the military review and threat of court-martial proceedings would fit with the constitutional protections held by members of Congress for speech and debate.

Kelly wrote in a statement the Defense Department’s post was the first time he’d heard about the inquiry. 

“If this is meant to intimidate me and other members of Congress from doing our jobs and holding this administration accountable, it won’t work,” Kelly wrote. “I’ve given too much to this country to be silenced by bullies who care more about their own power than protecting the Constitution.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Kelly and the other senators in the video were encouraging “disorder and chaos within the ranks.”

“Not a single one of them … can point to a single illegal order that this administration has given down because it does not exist,” Leavitt said. “They knew what they were doing in this video and Sen. Mark Kelly and all of them should be held accountable for that.”

Kelly military background

Kelly served as an aviator in the United States Navy from 1987 until 2012. He was deployed as part of Operation Desert Storm during the first Gulf War. He received several awards throughout his military career, including the Legion of Merit and the Distinguished Flying Cross. 

Kelly reached the rank of captain before his retirement from military service. 

Kelly, who was also a NASA astronaut, was first elected to the U.S. Senate in November 2020. 

The Defense Department’s post announcing an investigation into Kelly said military officials wanted to remind people that “military retirees remain subject to the UCMJ for applicable offenses, and federal laws such as 18 U.S.C. § 2387 prohibit actions intended to interfere with the loyalty, morale, or good order and discipline of the armed forces.”

The statement added that all service members “have a legal obligation under the UCMJ to obey lawful orders and that orders are presumed to be lawful.  A servicemember’s personal philosophy does not justify or excuse the disobedience of an otherwise lawful order.”

The statement appeared somewhat similar to the one Kelly, Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin, Colorado Rep. Jason Crow, Pennsylvania Reps. Chris Deluzio and Chrissy Houlahan, and New Hampshire Rep. Maggie Goodlander gave in the video they published Nov 18. 

The Democrats, all of whom served in the military or worked in intelligence agencies, said they wanted “to speak directly to members of the military and the intelligence community who take risks each day to keep Americans safe.”

They said that Americans in those institutions “can” and “must refuse illegal orders.”

“No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution. We know this is hard and that it’s a difficult time to be a public servant,” they said. “But whether you’re serving in the CIA, in the Army, or Navy, or the Air Force, your vigilance is critical.”

Broad constitutional protections for Congress

Members of Congress are broadly protected under the speech and debate clause of the U.S. Constitution, which states that unless a lawmaker is involved in treason, felony and breach of the peace, they are “privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.”

The annotated explanation of the clause on Congress’ official website says the Supreme Court has “broadly” interpreted its applications over the years to ensure an independent legislative branch. 

“Despite uncertainty at the margins, it is well established that the Clause serves to secure the independence of the federal legislature by providing Members of Congress and their aides with immunity from criminal prosecutions or civil suits that stem from acts taken within the legislative sphere,” it states. “As succinctly described by the Court, the Clause’s immunity from liability applies ‘even though their conduct, if performed in other than legislative contexts, would in itself be unconstitutional or otherwise contrary to criminal or civil statutes.’ This general immunity principle forms the core of the protections afforded by the Clause.”

A report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service states the judiciary’s “immunity principle protects Members from ‘intimidation by the executive’ or a ‘hostile judiciary’ by prohibiting both the executive and judicial powers from being used to improperly influence or harass legislators.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., talks with reporters as he arrives at the U.S. Capitol on Feb. 20, 2025 in Washington, D.C.  Graham is one of eight senators who could sue the government over an FBI subpoena of his cell phone call logs, under a law passed to reopen the government. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. House approved legislation Wednesday that would revoke part of a law Congress approved just last week, which for the first time allows senators to sue the federal government, potentially for millions of dollars, if their data is subpoenaed without their knowledge. 

The 426-0 vote sent the bill to the Senate, where Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., doesn’t appear inclined to put the measure on the floor for a vote, though he hasn’t entirely ruled it out. 

“You have an independent, co-equal branch of the government whose members were, through illegal means, having their phone records acquired, spied on if you will, through a weaponized Biden Justice Department,” Thune said. “That, to me, demands some accountability.”

Thune said he understands why several Republican senators were frustrated they didn’t know the provision was added to the funding package that ended the government shutdown.

“I take that as a legitimate criticism in terms of the process,” Thune said. “But I think, on the substance, I believe that you need to have some sort of accountability and consequence for that kind of weaponization against a co-equal branch of the government.”

Thune declined to say if he thinks it’s appropriate for senators to sue for millions in taxpayer dollars for having their phone call records pulled as part of the investigation into President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. 

“I don’t think there’s anybody that was targeted for whom the money matters,” Thune said. “I think it’s more about the principle.”

GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, one of eight senators who could benefit, said shortly after the House wrapped up debate he plans to sue Verizon as well as the Department of Justice under the new provision. 

“The subpoena that was issued, I think, was fatally flawed. The judicial order saying if you told me (about the subpoena) I would tamper with witnesses or tamper with evidence is legally offensive,” Graham said. “I’m not going to take this crap anymore. I am going into court, and we’ll see what happens.”

Dispute among Republicans

Senate Republicans’ decision to include the lawsuit provision in the stopgap spending law that ended the 43-day government shutdown represented a rare public break between GOP congressional leaders.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said last week just after the House passed the funding law he was “very angry” the lawsuit language was added to the package without his knowledge or sign off. 

“I think that was way out of line. I don’t think that was the smart thing to do. I don’t think that was the right thing to do,” Johnson said at the time. “And the House is going to reverse it. We’re going to repeal that. And I’m going to expect our colleagues in the Senate to do the same thing.”

The provision, which will remain in effect unless the Senate passes the new bill and Trump signs it, allows senators who had their cell phone or other data subpoenaed without their knowledge to sue the federal government for $500,000 “for each instance of a violation.” 

The language is retroactive until Jan. 1, 2022, and allows the eight senators who had their cell phone call logs subpoenaed as part of the FBI’s 2023 investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election to sue for millions of dollars. 

The FBI reportedly obtained data for cell phone use between Jan. 4 and Jan. 7, 2021, for Graham and Sens. Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, Dan Sullivan of Alaska and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, as well as Pennsylvania Rep. Mike Kelly. All are Republicans. 

The law allows judges to delay notification for 60 days if the information was pulled as part of a criminal investigation and if telling the senator would endanger someone’s safety or life, lead the lawmaker to flee prosecution, result in someone tampering with or destroying evidence, lead to witness intimidation, place the investigation in jeopardy, or unduly delay the trial. 

A judge could keep renewing that 60-day notification delay in criminal investigations if one or several of those elements continued to exist. 

Both parties object 

House debate on the two-page bill sponsored by Georgia GOP Rep. Austin Scott was broadly bipartisan, though Democrats and Republicans expressed frustration with the lawsuit language for different reasons. 

Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil, R-Wis., said the “troubling provision” in the spending law must be stricken.

“These provisions are not the right path to address the true concerns over the separation of powers,” Steil said. “Remember, Congress serves the American people, not the other way around.”

Steil said the FBI pulling cell phone call records for senators as part of its investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election, known as Operation Arctic Frost, was an abuse of power that should be addressed. But he said allowing senators to sue for millions of dollars in taxpayer money was the wrong way to do that. 

“I’m committed to holding those involved accountable. No one benefited by the failures of the Biden administration,” Steil said. “However, that does not mean that elected officials should be financially benefiting from those failures now.”

New York Rep. Joe Morelle, ranking Democrat on the committee, said those eight senators’ cell phone logs were pulled because FBI agents believed the lawmakers “had knowledge of or even participated in efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Efforts that culminated in a violent attack on this very institution.”

Morelle said anyone with a basic understanding of criminal investigations knows that phone records “are among the most routine tools used” to gain a better understanding of events. 

“They do not reveal the content of any conversations. They simply show which numbers were called, which numbers called them and when those calls were made,” Morelle said.

“If these Republican senators genuinely believe that their civil liberties were violated or if they are interested in changing the law relating to subpoenas, then they are better positioned than literally anyone on planet Earth to hold hearings, draft legislation and debate proposed changes in the open,” Morelle added. “But that’s not what this is all about. This is about ensuring the law applies to every other American, just not to them.”

Scott said House Republicans voted for the spending law to end the government shutdown, not because they supported the lawsuit provision, which he called “the most self-centered, self-serving piece of language that I have ever seen in any piece of legislation.”

He also rebuked Sen. Graham for saying during interviews that he plans to sue the federal government. 

“We have one senator, one, who maintains that this provision is good and is currently saying that he is going to sue for tens of millions of dollars,” Scott said. “I believe my side did the right thing in voting to open up the government. There are a select few people that did the wrong thing in putting language in the bill that would make themselves individually wealthy.”

Bombs, cows, the Postal Service and lawsuits

Graham, who was an Air Force Judge Advocate General officer before entering politics, compared having his cell phone data pulled as part of the investigation to a case he handled earlier in his career after the Air Force “dropped a bomb on a guy’s barn and killed his cow. And he was able to make a claim.”

Graham also compared it to someone suing the government after being hit by a U.S. Postal Service truck, when asked by a reporter what he plans to do with the millions of dollars he will likely receive if he were to win the case. 

“You do whatever you want to do with the money if you’ve been wronged,” Graham said.  

In addition to filing a lawsuit, Graham hopes to broaden the language so that organizations and private individuals can file suit against the government under the Federal Tort Claims Act if they feel they’ve been wronged similarly. 

“I will insist on a vote in the United States Senate to expand the ability of people to make claims that may have been harmed,” Graham said, adding that would likely include the Republican Attorneys General Association, the Republican National Committee and Turning Point USA.

Graham rejected criticisms of the lawsuit provision from fellow GOP lawmakers, saying it doesn’t represent “self-dealing.”

“I understand politics, but I’m not worried about that. I’m worried about getting the right outcome,” Graham said. “I mean, if you don’t want me to sue the government, that’s up to you. I’m going to sue, whether you like it or not. I’m not going to put up with this anymore, and people in my spot shouldn’t have to deal with this in the future.”

The U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., amid fog on Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2024. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — U.S. senators began debating how to reduce health care costs for Americans during a hearing Wednesday, where experts’ varied recommendations and comments from lawmakers previewed the rocky and potentially long path ahead. 

Republicans on the Finance Committee argued the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, has led to a spike in health insurance costs for individuals  that shouldn’t be offset by tax credits any longer. 

Democrats urged their colleagues to extend the enhanced subsidies for at least another year to give Congress more time to address larger, more complex issues within the country’s health insurance and health care systems. 

Committee Chairman Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, said the hearing marked “the first step in building the foundation for” health care reform.

“We need both short-term and long-term solutions,” Crapo said. “In the short term, we cannot simply throw good money after bad policy. If we keep advancing a system that drives up premiums, we will make this problem even harder to solve.”

“Instead, we should set the groundwork for giving Americans more control over their health care choices,” Crapo added. “Rather than accepting the current system of giving billions of taxpayer dollars to insurers, we should consider providing financial assistance directly to consumers through health savings accounts, which are now available on the Obamacare exchanges through a provision in the One Big Beautiful Bill.”

Such tax-advantaged accounts are used to save money to pay for medical expenses and generally are used in conjunction with a high-deductible insurance plan, but an HSA “is a trust/custodial account and is not health insurance,” according to the Congressional Research Service.

The ACA, signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2010, overhauled the U.S. health care system with the intent of reducing high rates of uninsured people and ending insurance industry practices such as exclusions based on pre-existing conditions and the sale of policies with high costs and skimpy coverage. The law also expanded Medicaid and, for individual coverage, introduced the health insurance exchanges, or marketplaces, that now are at issue.

According to the health organization KFF, the number of uninsured Americans fell from about 14% to 16% in the years preceding passage of the law to a record low of 7.7% in 2023.

Pessimism about health care action

Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the panel, rebuked Republicans for focusing on other policy areas throughout the year instead of making improvements to health care.

“Sitting on your hands has consequences,” he said. 

Wyden doesn’t see a way for Congress to extend the enhanced tax credits set to expire at the end of the year for people who get their health insurance from the ACA marketplace, despite Democrats pressing for that during the 43-day government shutdown that ended in mid-November. 

Wyden expressed support for working with Republican senators to address health insurance companies’ structure, though he said he is “skeptical” his GOP colleagues will actually approve legislation on that particular issue in the months ahead. 

“Now if they are serious about taking on the crooks that dominate big insurance, like UnitedHealthcare, I’m all in,” Wyden said. “In my view that starts with a laser focus on lower costs for consumers, going after fraud where it truly exists, and cracking down on middlemen.”

‘Very little that this Congress can do’

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president at the center-right American Action Forum and former chief economist at the Council for Economic Advisers during the President George W. Bush administration, told the committee the structure of the Affordable Care Act poses problems. 

“As a piece of health policy, economic policy and budget policy, the ACA has always been a troubling construct,” Holtz-Eakin said, later adding there is “very little that this Congress can do to change the outlook” for 2026. 

Holtz-Eakin testified that Congress is long “overdue for a real rethinking of health care policy at the federal level” that he believes should focus on two primary areas. 

The first is to “rationalize the insurance subsidies” and the second is to address what he referred to as “high-value care,” which he said should include Medicare, the health program that covers 69 million Americans over 65 and some people with disabilities. 

“Medicare is a great budgetary threat, and so I encourage the committee and the Congress as a whole to take a hard look at that and make some progress toward better health care outcomes and better budgetary outcomes,” Holtz-Eakin said.  

Jason Levitis, senior fellow of the Health Policy Division at the left-leaning Urban Institute and a Treasury employee who led the ACA implementation at the department during the Obama administration, urged lawmakers to address the “too complicated and segmented” health insurance marketplace. 

Levitis said the best short-term option for Congress would be to extend the enhanced tax credits for ACA enrollees during 2026, despite the time crunch. 

“At this point the only feasible option is a clean extension of the existing enhancements,” Levitis said. “The marketplaces have already built that option and have been preparing for months for the possibility of an extension.” 

Former Trump adviser says ACA ‘failed’

Brian Blase, president of the Paragon Health Institute and a former special assistant to President Donald Trump at the White House National Economic Council, said bluntly that the Affordable Care Act has “failed.”

“The law entrenched an inefficient insurance-dominated health sector with massive subsidies flowing straight from the Treasury to health companies,” Blase said. 

The subsidies for ACA marketplace plans, he said, were “ill-designed and inflationary,” urging lawmakers not to extend them for another year.  

“The enrollee share of the premium is capped regardless of the total premium. When enrollees pay only a small slice of the premium or no premium at all, insurers face almost no price discipline,” Blase said. “Insurers can raise premiums knowing the taxpayers will absorb almost all of the increase.”

Blase said he believes the ACA’s regulations on health insurance companies are one of the reasons costs have spiked. 

“For example, under the medical loss ratio, insurers must spend a minimum share of premium revenue on medical claims. In other words, to increase profits, insurers must increase premiums,” Blase said. “The ACA’s essential health benefits require plans to cover the same set of services regardless of what people want or need. These rules increase premiums and wasteful spending.”

The medical loss ratio was included in the ACA in response to insurers who spent “a substantial portion” of premiums on administrative costs and profits, including executive salaries, overhead and marketing, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

‘We all believe we need to reform’

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters separately from the hearing the debate over how to restructure health insurance to bring down costs has highlighted the “differences of opinion” among GOP lawmakers. 

“We’ve got a lot of people who have strong views, but the one thing that unites us is we all believe we need to reform, and we’ve got to do something to drive health care costs down,” Thune said. 

GOP leaders, he added, are “looking for solutions that will lower health care premiums, not increase them. And what we see today is just constant inflationary impacts from some of these policies of the past.”

Trump, who would need to support any health care overhaul bill for it to move through Congress, wrote in a social media post Tuesday that he wants lawmakers to send money straight to Americans, without detail on how that would work. 

“THE ONLY HEALTHCARE I WILL SUPPORT OR APPROVE IS SENDING THE MONEY DIRECTLY BACK TO THE PEOPLE, WITH NOTHING GOING TO THE BIG, FAT, RICH INSURANCE COMPANIES, WHO HAVE MADE $TRILLIONS, AND RIPPED OFF AMERICA LONG ENOUGH,” Trump wrote. “THE PEOPLE WILL BE ALLOWED TO NEGOTIATE AND BUY THEIR OWN, MUCH BETTER, INSURANCE. POWER TO THE PEOPLE! Congress, do not waste your time and energy on anything else. This is the only way to have great Healthcare in America!!! GET IT DONE, NOW. President DJT”

The Federal Emergency Management Agency building in Washington, D.C., is pictured on Nov. 25, 2024. (Photo by Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — David Richardson, the senior official performing the duties of the administrator at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has resigned and moved to the “private sector,” a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said Monday. 

Karen Evans, the agency’s chief of staff, is expected to take on the role of acting administrator starting Dec. 1. 

“Mr. Richardson led FEMA through the 2025 hurricane season, delivering historic funding to North Carolina, Texas, Florida, New Mexico and Alaska, and overseeing a comprehensive review that identified and eliminated serious governmental waste and inefficiency, while refocusing the agency to deliver swift resources to Americans in crisis,” the spokesperson said.

Previous FEMA acting head ousted in May

President Donald Trump has yet to send the Senate a nominee for FEMA administrator, opting instead to have a string of officials serve as acting leaders of the agency that he hopes to overhaul in the months ahead. 

Cam Hamilton worked as the senior official performing the duties of the administrator until May, when he was let go one day after he testified before a House committee that he did “not believe it is in the best interest of the American people to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency.”

Richardson, who was working as the assistant secretary of the Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office at the Department of Homeland Security, was then named as the senior official performing the duties of the administrator at FEMA. 

Richardson testified before a House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee in July that FEMA’s response to the catastrophic Fourth of July floods in Texas was well managed.

“Texas got what they needed when they needed it,” he said at the time.

The Washington Post reported in September that “key staff members could not reach” Richardson for “about 24 hours in the early aftermath” of those floods, which killed more than 130 people. 

Trump review council misses deadline

The White House deferred questions about Richardson’s resignation to the Department of Homeland Security, opting not to say whether Trump would eventually send a FEMA administrator nominee to the Senate for confirmation. 

Trump has long criticized FEMA and created a review council earlier this year to assess how the agency performed during the last few years and suggest ways to rework its structure. 

The review council was supposed to send Trump its recommendations before Monday but missed the deadline. 

The Homeland Security spokesperson who confirmed Richardson’s resignation to States Newsroom said the administration expects the report to be released in the near future. 

“We anticipate the forthcoming release of the FEMA Review Council’s final report, which will inform this Administration’s ongoing efforts to fundamentally restructure FEMA, transforming it from its current form into a streamlined, mission-focused disaster-response force,” said the spokesperson.

A sign is seen outside the FEMA Disaster Recovery Center at Weaverville Town Hall on March 29, 2025 in Weaverville, North Carolina. (Photo by Allison Joyce/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The review council that President Donald Trump tasked with overhauling the Federal Emergency Management Agency was supposed to release its recommendations before Monday but missed the deadline. 

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security declined to say when the report would be published, but wrote in a statement that it would “inform this Administration’s ongoing efforts to fundamentally restructure FEMA, transforming it from its current form into a streamlined, mission-focused disaster-response force.” 

A congressional staffer, not authorized to speak publicly, said the report could be published as soon as mid-December.  A spokesperson for Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a council member, said the review council will vote to finalize the report at an upcoming public meeting. 

Trump established the 12-person council through an executive order he signed back in January and tasked the group with releasing the report within 180 days of its first meeting, which it held on May 20. 

That should have meant a release this past weekend, though it’s possible staff writing the report were furloughed or tasked with other work during the 43-day government shutdown. 

Hegseth, Noem are co-chairs

The council, co-chaired by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, held three public meetings earlier this year, where members spoke about possible ways to restructure FEMA but didn’t preview what recommendations they would actually put in the report. 

Trump said in June “the FEMA thing has not been a very successful experiment” and that he would like states to shoulder more of the responsibility for natural disaster response and recovery. 

“When you have a tornado or a hurricane, or you have a problem of any kind in a state, that’s what you have governors for,” Trump said. “They’re supposed to fix those problems. And it’s much more local. And they’ll develop a system. And I think it will be a great system.”

The FEMA Review Council’s report is supposed to include an 

• “assessment of the adequacy of FEMA’s response to disasters during the previous 4 years,”
• “comparison of the FEMA responses with State, local, and private sector responses” and
• “analysis of the principal arguments in the public debate for and against FEMA reform, including an appraisal of the merits and legality of particular reform proposals,” among several other elements. 

FEMA action underway in Congress

Any major changes to FEMA would likely need to move through Congress before they could take effect. But a bipartisan group of lawmakers hasn’t waited for the review council’s suggestions to get started. 

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee voted 57-3 in September to send a bill to the floor that would make significant changes to FEMA, including making it a Cabinet-level agency. 

House GOP leaders have yet to schedule the legislation for a vote. If passed, it would need Senate approval and Trump’s signature to become law.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., left, accompanied by Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., points to a poster depicting rising medical costs if Congress allows the Affordable Care Act tax credits to expire in December as he speaks to reporters following a Democratic policy luncheon at the U.S. Capitol on Oct. 15, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Congress has roughly two months to find bipartisan agreement to curb rising health insurance costs if lawmakers want to avoid another government shutdown.

That herculean task would be difficult in the best circumstances, but is much more challenging after lawmakers spent the last 43 days criticizing each other instead of building the types of trust that are usually needed for large deals. Democrats maintained they wanted to address skyrocketing premiums for individual health care plans, while Republicans insisted those talks had to occur when the government was open.

At the same time, congressional leaders will try to wrap up work on the nine full-year government funding bills that were supposed to become law before Oct. 1 and weren’t included in the package that reopened the government. 

Congress must pass all of those bills or another stopgap measure before the new Jan. 30 deadline, regardless of how well or disastrous talks on a health care bill turn out. 

The two-track negotiations will push party leaders to compromise on issues they’d rather not, especially as next year’s November midterm elections inch closer. 

Early signs were not good.

House Speaker Mike Johnson said during a Wednesday night press conference the enhanced Affordable Care Act tax credits set to expire at the end of the year are a “boondoggle” and that “Republicans would demand a lot of reforms” before agreeing to extend those in any way. 

“We currently have 433 members of the House of Representatives. There’s a lot of opinions in this building. And on our side, certainly, a lot of opinions on how to fix health care and make it more affordable. I have to allow that process to play out,” Johnson, R-La., said. 

While Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., made a commitment to hold a vote on a health care bill before the end of December to conclude the shutdown, Johnson has avoided giving a timeline for when he would bring any similar legislation to the floor. 

President Donald Trump, aside from throwing insults at Democrats, largely stayed on the sidelines of the shutdown fight, though he suggested the funds used for the tax credits should in some way go directly to individuals instead of large insurance companies.

Pessimism over progress

The shutdown highlighted the stark differences Republicans and Democrats hold on health care as prices for insurance continue to spike, forcing millions of Americans to choose between taking care of themselves and breaking their budgets, States Newsroom found in interviews with members of Congress. 

GOP leaders held together throughout the funding lapse and didn’t negotiate on the expiring ACA marketplace tax credits, or anything else. 

Now that it’s over, Republicans will need to put something forward.

Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said her sense is that Congress will “probably be in the same place on January 30th that we are now.”

“We have two parties here, two sides,” DeLauro said. “In the past … we’ve had serious negotiation back and forth, and that’s what we need to do, and that’s not happening.”

While Republicans have unified control of government, major legislation needs the support of at least 60 senators to advance in that chamber. Republicans hold 53 seats at the moment, meaning at least some Democrats must support a bill for it to pass. 

DeLauro did not rule out another shutdown, saying Democrats plan to take the next few months “one day at a time,” while closely watching what Republicans are willing to do on the nine full-year appropriations bills and health care costs. 

Maryland Democratic Rep. Steny Hoyer, former House majority leader and a senior member of the Appropriations Committee, said Republican leaders keeping that chamber in recess for nearly two months leading up to and during the shutdown significantly delayed work on the full-year government funding bills. 

Hoyer said that scheduling decision was a clear “indication they’re not interested in solving the problem.”

“If they were, they would have had members here working on appropriation bills,” Hoyer said. “And the only way you’re going to ultimately solve this problem is to pass appropriation bills.”

Hoyer said the real question facing Congress now isn’t whether there is time to work out agreement on the remaining nine government spending bills, but whether there’s a will to make the types of compromises needed. 

Untangling spending bills

The spending package that reopened the government included three of the dozen full-year bills, funding the Agriculture Department, Food and Drug Administration, Legislative Branch, military construction projects and Department of Veterans Affairs.

The remaining appropriations bills will be considerably tougher to resolve, especially because the House and Senate have yet to agree on how much they want to spend across the thousands of programs. Trump proposed major cutbacks in multiple programs in his budget request earlier this year that Democrats have strongly resisted.

The Defense, Homeland Security, Labor-HHS-Education and State-Foreign Operations bills will be some of the more difficult to settle. 

Congress could always lean on another stopgap spending bill to keep funding relatively flat for the departments and agencies not covered by a full-year bill before Jan. 30. But lawmakers will need bipartisan support to advance in the Senate.

Washington Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal, former chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said Republicans don’t seem to grasp how much Americans are struggling with the cost of living, including for health insurance and health care. 

“My constituents are already telling me that they’re making that choice between having health insurance or having a house to live in, and they’re going to choose the house,” Jayapal said. 

Whether or not a partial government shutdown begins in early 2026 will likely depend on whether Republican lawmakers from swing districts force bipartisanship on a health care bill. 

“I really don’t know,” Jayapal said. “I think it depends on these vulnerable House Republicans, who are not going to be able to go back to their constituents without telling them that they’ve done something on health care.”

Political juice and a backbone

Democratic Rep. Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico said she wouldn’t be surprised if Congress is unable to strike a deal on government funding and winds up in a partial shutdown by February. 

“Do I think that the Republicans have the political juice to get … the rest of their appropriation bills across the finish line and a health care deal? No,” Stansbury said. 

She added that she hopes a handful of Republicans decide to join Democrats on the discharge petition bill that would force a floor vote on a bill to extend the ACA marketplace subsidies for three years. 

“We gotta find a few brave Republicans who still have a backbone and some guts to stand up to this administration and actually care for their constituents,” Stansbury said. 

But any bipartisan deal to extend those health care tax credits seems fraught, as House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries slammed Republicans as having “zero credibility on this issue.”

He pointed to Republicans trying several times to repeal the Affordable Care Act, including their last attempt in 2017, when GOP Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine and the late John McCain of Arizona crossed party lines to vote against repealing the 2010 law.

“There’s no evidence that they’re serious about extending the Affordable Care Act tax credits,” Jeffries, of New York, said. “Republicans have zero interest in fixing the health care crisis that they’ve created.”

‘No point in taking 41 days to cave’

When Democrats controlled both chambers, temporary health care subsidies were originally passed as part of the COVID-19-era American Rescue Plan in 2021 for two years. 

With Democrats still controlling both chambers, lawmakers approved the Inflation Reduction Act, the 2022 signature climate policy bill from the Biden administration, that extended those health care subsidies for three years, expiring at the end of December 2025.

The outcome of the just concluded shutdown is shaping some House Democrats’ views.

Virginia Democratic Rep. Bobby Scott said if there is a new shutdown come February, Senate Democrats will have to decide whether they’re going to “cave again, or at least engage in negotiations.” 

“When the (Senate) Democrats say: ‘Our strategy wasn’t working,’ it wasn’t working because they assume you’re going to cave, which you just proved,” Scott told States Newsroom. “Their strategy worked — trying to get them to negotiate and talk to you doesn’t because they know you’re going to cave.”

Scott said “there’s no point in taking 41 days to cave,” pointing to the eight members of the Senate Democratic Caucus who broke ranks to advance and later approve the package to reopen the government. 

“Why don’t you just cave right at the beginning, on February 2nd?” he said. “If the Republican strategy is: ‘We’re not going to negotiate at all because you’re going to cave,’ you have to show them that you’re not going to cave, then you can have a discussion.”

Scott said the same health care issues will still exist if nothing happens between now and the package’s Jan. 30 government funding deadline.  

“By then, we’ll know that several million people don’t have health insurance, we’ll know that rural hospitals are beginning to suffer,” Scott said. 

Delaware Democratic Rep. Sarah McBride said that “from today through November (2026) and after, we will continue to be talking about health care, to be fighting for health care.”

“I think what you’ve seen over the last several months, you will continue to see from us through November and then, God willing, once we’re in a majority, we’ll do all that we can to reverse these cuts and restore care and expand access to it,” she said. 

Furloughed federal workers stand in line for hours ahead of a special food distribution by the Capital Area Food Bank and No Limits Outreach Ministries on Barlowe Road in Hyattsville, Maryland, on Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2025. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

This report has been updated.

WASHINGTON — The longest shutdown in U.S. history ended Wednesday night when President Donald Trump signed a spending package that  reopens the government and funds most of it through January.

The Oval Office ceremony came just hours after the House voted to approve the legislation, which senators passed earlier in the week. 

“I hope we can all agree that the government should never be shut down again,” Trump said, before urging Senate Republicans to eliminate the rule that requires bills to garner the support of at least 60 lawmakers to advance. “Terminate the filibuster.”

The 222-209 vote marked the first time that chamber took up a bill since mid-September, when Republican leaders recessed after members approved a stopgap spending measure they knew couldn’t advance in the Senate. 

That stalemate, centered around sharply rising health care costs, led to a 43-day shutdown that affected nearly every corner of the country through delayed funding for nutrition programs for millions of Americans, no pay for federal workers, flight delays tied to staffing shortages and much more. 

But after nearly six weeks of failed procedural votes, seven centrist Senate Democrats and one independent broke with party leaders on Sunday to advance the reworked spending package and then voted to approve the legislation Monday. 

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., who said throughout the shutdown he was interested in a bipartisan path forward on health insurance costs after the shutdown ended, committed to hold a floor vote on a Democratic bill “no later than the second week in December.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said repeatedly throughout the funding lapse GOP lawmakers have ideas to improve the health care system. However, he didn’t detail any of those publicly and hasn’t committed to a floor vote. 

“We have volumes of ideas on how to do this, on how to fix it, on how to drive costs down and how to increase access to care and quality of care, and you’re going to see all that vigorous debate,” Johnson said during a brief press conference after the vote.

House debate on the spending package that will reopen government was largely along party lines, though Republican Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Greg Steube of Florida voted against the bill.

Democratic Reps. Henry Cuellar of Texas, Don Davis of North Carolina, Jared Golden of Maine, Adam Gray of California, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington state and Tom Suozzi of New York voted for passage. 

Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., urged support for the legislation ahead of the vote, saying “history reminds us that shutdowns never change the outcome.” 

“Over the last 43 days the facts did not shift, the votes required did not shift, the path forward did not change,” Cole said. “The only thing that did move was the level of pain Democrats inflicted on the nation.”

Much higher premiums predicted 

Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the spending panel, rejected the legislation and said it does nothing to address the rising cost of health care. 

“More than 20 million Americans will have to pay double, even triple, their monthly insurance premium in just a matter of weeks,” DeLauro said. “And this bill leaves families without even a glimmer of hope that their costs might go down.”

The Senate significantly reworked the stopgap bill the House originally passed in mid-September into what is now a 394-page package, adding in three of the full-year government funding bills and changing the date of the stopgap measure to Jan. 30, among many other provisions. The original stopgap was set to last through Nov. 21. 

The updated measure gives Congress a couple more months to work out agreement on the remaining nine appropriations bills that were supposed to become law before the start of the current fiscal year on Oct. 1. 

Lawmakers could create a partial government shutdown if they’re unable to agree on approving the remaining appropriations bill before the new government funding deadline at the end of January.

Democratic discharge petition

Trump will turn his attention toward the rising cost of health care that Democrats highlighted during the shutdown, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at a Wednesday briefing, though she didn’t put a firm timeline on when he’ll release any plans.

“Once the government reopens, the president, as he’s always maintained, is absolutely open to having conversations about health care,” Leavitt said. “And I think you’ll see the president putting forth some really good policy proposals that Democrats should take very seriously to fix, again, the system that they broke.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters following a closed-door meeting that Democrats will try to get the necessary signatures on a discharge petition to force a floor vote on legislation to extend tax credits for three years for people who buy their health insurance from the Affordable Care Act marketplace.

The New York Democrat said the extension mirrors how long the enhanced tax credits were set to last initially in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. 

Temporary health care subsidies were originally passed as part of the COVID-19-era American Rescue Plan in 2021 for two years. The Inflation Reduction Act, the signature climate policy bill from the Biden administration, then extended those health care subsidies for three years, expiring at the end of December 2025. 

“The legislation that we will introduce in the context of a discharge petition will provide that level of certainty to working-class Americans who are on the verge of seeing their premiums, co-pays and deductibles skyrocket,” Jeffries said. 

Democrats will need the support of at least a handful of Republicans in order to get the 218 signatures needed to force a vote on the bill. The discharge petition was released mid-afternoon.

What’s in the new bill

The spending package wraps in several different bills and provisions, such as the three full-year funding bills that cover the Agriculture Department, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Legislative Branch, military construction projects and Department of Veterans Affairs.

Included are:

• A stopgap spending bill that will keep the rest of the federal government running through Jan. 30;
• $30 million for the U.S. Capitol Police to enhance protections for lawmakers, $30 million for the U.S. Marshals Service to bolster security for members of the judicial and executive branches, and $28 million for enhanced safety for Supreme Court justices;
• Language requiring the Trump administration to reinstate the thousands of workers it sent layoff notices to during the shutdown and preventing officials from firing those workers through January;
• Provisions mandating the Trump administration provide back pay to all federal workers, including those furloughed during the shutdown. Trump at one point during the shutdown had threatened to yank that back pay, though it is required by law.

The Trump administration issued a Statement of Administration Policy a few hours before the House voted, saying the administration strongly supports the bill, describing the measure as “a fiscally responsible package that provides the full-year funding necessary to support the Nation’s veterans, farmers, and rural communities.”

The package also “ends disruptions to programs the American people rely on and ensures the thousands of Federal employees who have been forced to work without a paycheck, such as air traffic controllers, will be promptly paid,” the administration added. 

The Agriculture and Military Construction-VA spending bills include tens of billions of dollars in earmarks requested by lawmakers from both political parties, important to them as midterm elections loom in 2026.

‘Legislative self-dealing’ in Senate attacked

But not every Republican on Capitol Hill is happy with how the full-year bills turned out. 

Speaker Johnson announced mid-afternoon that the House would take a separate vote later this month to remove language from the package that will allow senators to file suit against the federal government if their data is subpoenaed.

“We are putting this legislation on the fast track suspension calendar in the House for next week,” Johnson wrote in a social media post. 

The provision, tucked into the full-year Legislative Branch spending bill, is retroactive to January 1, 2022, and would apply to the eight senators who had their cell phone records subpoenaed during a 2023 investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. 

The FBI reportedly obtained data for cell phone use between Jan. 4 and Jan. 7, 2021, for Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, Dan Sullivan of Alaska, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, as well as Rep. Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania. 

Maryland Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin said during floor debate the bill “contains the single most corrupt provision for legislative self-dealing that anyone in this chamber today has ever voted on.”

“This provision is an affront to our taxpayers, to the rule of law, to everyone who believes that we in public office must be the servants of the people, not the masters of the people who get special legal rights and privileges and multi-million-dollar payoffs,” Raskin said. 

South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham told reporters earlier in the day that he will “definitely” be filing a lawsuit after the new provision becomes law. 

“And if you think I’m going to settle this thing for a million dollars? No. I want to make it so painful no one ever does this again,” Graham said, later adding he wasn’t sure if he’d win such a case.

Dissatisfaction among GOP lawmakers with that provision was on full display on social media, where Florida’s Steube responded to Speaker Johnson’s post by writing that the “Senate will never take up your ‘standalone’ bill. This is precisely why you shouldn’t let the Senate jam the House.”

 

Jeff Garland, right, gives a tour of Papa G’s Organic Hemp Farm in Crawford County, Indiana, on June 23, 2022. Jeff and his son started the farm in 2020.  At left is Lee Schnell of the U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service, which is part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.  (NRCS photo by Brandon O’Connor)

WASHINGTON — Kentucky’s two U.S. senators sparred this week over the future of the country’s hemp industry — one arguing that a provision attached to the package that will reopen the government will close a problematic loophole and the other contending the language will regulate the industry “to death.”

Sen. Mitch McConnell ultimately prevailed and was able to keep the section in the Agriculture appropriations bill cracking down on hemp that Sen. Rand Paul tried to remove during floor debate. Both are Republicans.

The appropriations bill is riding along with a stopgap spending bill that will end the government shutdown and is expected to be voted on by the House as soon as Wednesday. The hemp measure has raised alarm in farm states benefiting from a robust hemp growing industry.

Hemp plants have 0.3% or less of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, while cannabis or marijuana plants have higher concentrations of that substance, which is what gives users the “high or stoned” feeling. 

A summary of the bill put together by Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Susan Collins’ staff says the new language would prevent “the unregulated sale of intoxicating hemp-based or hemp-derived products, including Delta-8, from being sold online, in gas stations, and corner stores, while preserving non-intoxicating CBD and industrial hemp products.”

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has a warning page on its website cautioning “that delta-8 THC products have not been evaluated or approved by the FDA for safe use in any context.”

Farm Bill origins

McConnell explained he is targeting hemp because its uses have expanded beyond what was intended. 

“I led the effort to legalize industrial hemp through the 2014 pilot program and the 2018 Farm Bill,” McConnell said. “Unfortunately, companies have exploited a loophole in the 2018 legislation by taking legal amounts of THC from hemp and turning it into intoxicating substances, and then marketing it to children in candy-like packaging and selling it in easily accessible places, like gas stations and convenience stores all across our country.”

McConnell said the new provision, which won’t take effect until a year after the bill becomes law, would “keep these dangerous products out of the hands of children while preserving the hemp industry for farmers.”

Paul and Oregon Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley urged their colleagues to remove that McConnell provision from the larger spending package, but were unsuccessful. 

“This is the most thoughtless, ignorant proposal to an industry that I’ve seen in a long, long time,” Paul said. 

The new language would change the definition of what makes a hemp plant legal, a move Paul said would mean “every plant in the country will have to be destroyed.” 

“This bill’s per-serving THC content limit would make illegal any hemp product that contains more than point four milligrams,” Paul said. “That would be nearly 100% of the existing market. That amounts to an effective ban, because the limit is so low that the products intended to manage pain or anxiety will lose their effect.”

State laws said to be nullified

The legislation, Paul added, will negatively impact the nearly two dozen states that have set higher limits on hemp production.

“Currently, Maine limits THC to three milligrams per serving. That will be overruled. My home state limits THC to five milligrams in beverages; that will be overruled. Minnesota, Utah, Louisiana also have five milligrams per serving. Alabama and Georgia have 10 milligrams. Tennessee has 15 milligrams,” Paul said. “The bill before us nullifies all these state laws.”

Merkley said the new provision in the larger spending package would eliminate the hemp industry, which Congress took steps to establish more than a decade ago.

“I support my other colleague from Kentucky who doesn’t want intoxicated products produced from hemp,” Merkley said. “But the definition that is in this bill does far more than that, and it has to be fixed. So for now, it needs to be stripped out.”

The Senate voted 76-24 to table, or set aside, Paul’s amendment after McConnell moved to block it from being taken up directly. 

The Agriculture funding bill is one of three full-year government spending bills included in the stopgap spending package that will end the government shutdown once the House approves the measure later this week and President Donald Trump signs the bill. 

Trade group warns of hundreds of thousands of jobs affected

Hemp Industry & Farmers of America Executive Director Brian Swensen wrote in a statement released last week that McConnell’s provision would have a devastating impact on the industry and its workers. 

“Congress legalized hemp, Americans built an industry, and now Washington wants to pull the rug out from under hardworking farmers and small business owners. The industry wants a solid regulatory package that protects kids, but instead, Congress wants to place industry-killing caps on cannabinoids. Congress is not listening to the industry they created — they’re dismantling an industry with over 325,000 jobs and driving consumers to an unregulated, unsafe, and untaxed black market.”

John and Kara Grady, owners of Slappyhappy Hemp Company, said during an interview with the Missouri Independent the new language could hinder their business, possibly forcing them to close down.

“You’re sick to your stomach all day long,” said Kara Grady, “knowing your hard work is for not.”

Zack Kobrin, a Fort Lauderdale attorney with the firm of Saul Ewing who works in the hemp and cannabis industry, told the Florida Phoenix that many in the industry “are surprised it was such a sudden and sweeping measure.”

“I think for those that are cowboys, they will just maximize on making as much as they can until they can’t,” Kobrin said. “I think for those hemp operators that were trying to work with regulators and trying to follow the rules, this will be a real blow.”