Congress

Capitol agenda: House GOP at the Obamacare cliff

Published

11 months ago

December 15, 2025

House Republicans are set to mark their final session week of 2025 with a muddled health care message that’s poised to have a big impact — a nationwide spike in insurance costs after Obamacare subsidies expire in less than three weeks.

— The plan: GOP leaders are eyeing a Wednesday vote on a package of conservative-friendly health policies they released last Friday (Pro subscribers can read more of the specifics here).

The proposal — a narrowly-focused attempt at striking consensus in a divided GOP conference — doesn’t include an extension of Affordable Care Act tax credits that lapse on Dec. 31. Instead, leadership is expected to throw a bone to anxious rank-and-file members by giving them the chance to vote on an amendment that would continue the subsidies — a vote that’s almost guaranteed to fail.

“I expect people are going to have an opportunity to vote their conscience and then go defend their votes back home like we always do,” House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) said.

— Mods scramble: Moderate Republicans in the House and Senate are privately strategizing about how to pull off an unlikely last-minute deal to avert a health care price shock that could have big ramifications for the midterms. A number of vulnerable Republicans have argued they will lose their seats if the ACA subsidies aren’t extended.

The Obamacare amendment that GOP moderates are set to offer this week is expected to be a two-year extension of the subsidies with an income cap and other changes — a plan modeled after a proposal from Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) and Jared Golden (D-Maine).

House Democratic leaders are waiting to see what the final amendment looks like. They could try to tank the bill by helping adopt the amendment, though many Democrats have criticized the Fitzpatrick-Golden plan.

— More unhappy campers: Key GOP hard-liners are upset that Republican leaders are allowing an ACA vote at all, and they know they have leverage. They’re pushing for more restrictive language in the Obamacare amendment and want commitments on conservative policy wins in health legislation early next year, in exchange for letting the bill proceed. To shore up support with conservatives, GOP leaders are pairing the health care package with two bills that would limit transgender surgeries for minors.

— Why it matters for the midterms: This week’s vote is clear evidence that the GOP is struggling to define an easily digestible message on health care costs heading into next year’s elections, as Democrats stay mostly unified around extending the ACA subsidies.

Every Senate Democrat voted to advance an Obamacare tax credit extension last week, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has managed to keep most of his members from endorsing compromise proposals from purple-district Republicans.

House GOP leaders have been unwilling to rethink a 15-year-old party message that Obamacare is a costly disaster, despite growing anxiety from their members about the electoral consequences.

The saga has left many House Republicans frustrated even if they share concerns about the cost of the subsidies and the legacy of the ACA.

“A lot of people are receiving this health care — they don’t need the rug pulled out from under them,” Rep. Dan Meuser (R-Pa.) told Blue Light News last week. “Definitely should have been done a ways back, we could say, because of the shutdown. But we’ve got to do everything we can and then do more.”

“I don’t see how we just leave things in limbo.”

What else we’re watching:

— House to take up permitting: House GOP leaders are eyeing a Thursday morning vote on bipartisan legislation that would aim to speed up energy project permitting. Republicans are working to shore up their votes, with resistant hard-liners arguing the bill would undermine President Donald Trump’s authority to block offshore wind energy projects.

— Thune’s busy week: Senate Majority Leader John Thune is looking to wrap the NDAA and confirm dozens of nominees before Congress leaves town for the holidays. Potential bonus items include some appropriations action and a war powers vote.

Meredith Lee Hill, Jordain Carney, Nicholas Wu and Josh Siegel contributed to this report.

Congress

Democrats’ affordability message collides with calls to defend transgender rights

Published

1 hour ago

October 27, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Some Democrats are fired up to use their potential majorities in Congress next year and undo President Donald Trump’s attacks on transgender Americans. Others just want to focus on the cost of gas.

Ahead of the midterms, progressive lawmakers and congressional candidates are clashing with moderates in office and on the campaign trail over whether to pursue a legislative agenda that includes protecting trans people — whose health care, participation in athletics and protections against discrimination have been targeted by the administration.

“We need to have an affirmative platform that protects and expands rights for LGBTQ people,” said Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Ed Markey in an interview.

He is among nearly a dozen lawmakers and advocates who said they want Democrats to pursue a two-pronged approach: pass legislation to codify certain rights for trans individuals, and use committee gavels to compel public testimony from Trump officials on their efforts to undermine protections for trans and nonbinary people.

But the need to tackle affordability, not culture war fights, has been the overriding theme of the Democrats’ push to retake control of Congress. Many Democrats believe that their promise to lower the cost of living will be the reason they win back majorities in the House or the Senate.

Many centrists fear any pivot away from that pledge would splinter a new Democratic majority on Capitol Hill, especially with some candidates openly rejecting some trans rights initiatives during their campaigns.

“You have to focus on what people care about,” Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.) said in an interview. “Right now that’s affordability, and they want some relief. That’s what we should talk about.”

Rep. Marc Veasey, a moderate Texas Democrat who is retiring this year, said “cultural issues” including transgender rights are “something we should dive into once [Trump] is gone.”

“The American public is going to want to see our caucus focus on costs as long as he continues to affect the markets negatively with his tariffs and wars,” he said.

Progressive advocacy groups and their Hill allies say they can’t wait. Democrats, they argue, should hold hearings on the DOJ’s decision last summer to subpoena more than 20 doctors and clinics who’ve provided gender-affirming care to obtain potentially patient-identifying information, advocates say, leading some hospitals to stop providing youth gender affirming care.

They also want Democrats to challenge the Education Department’s move last month to officially rescind anti-discrimination protections for transgender students instituted under former President Joe Biden. They’re pushing, too, for an investigation of the Justice Department’s restrictions on gender-affirming care for incarcerated people and policy against placing prisoners in populations consistent with their gender identity — a move which has faced legal challenges.

In terms of legislation, Democrats are sure to encounter limitations so long as long as Trump is in office. The president is opposed to the cornerstone piece of LGBTQ+ advocates’ agenda, the Equality Act, which would amend civil rights laws to explicitly prohibit gender identity discrimination. It might not even have the votes to overcome a Senate filibuster and get to Trump’s desk.

Democrats likewise are sure to run into resistance in trying to attach pro-transgender policies to must-pass legislative vehicles, such as government spending bills or the annual defense policy package. The same goes for any attempts to overrule or modify the administration’s suggested changes to the 2030 Census, which include a proposal to remove questions about sexual orientation.

That reality should not be a deterrent, argued Ramiro Sarmiento, national press secretary at the Human Rights Campaign, a pro-LGBTQ+ civil rights advocacy group.

“Congress needs to use every tool it has to push back against the dismantling of protections at the federal level,” said Sarmiento.

He, along with Ian Thompson, senior legislative advocate at the ACLU, and Tyler Hack, founder and executive director of the Christopher Street Project — a hybrid PAC and nonprofit focused on building support for transgender rights in Congress — said their organizations have already begun preliminary conversations with several Democrats about the moves they could make to reverse or combat anti-trans-rights initiatives by Trump administration.

Those Democrats include longstanding LGBTQ+ rights champions like Markey and Reps. Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, plus progressive candidates like Minnesota’s Peggy Flanagan and New York’s Claire Valdez and Brad Lander.

Hack conceded that trans protection issues are not what “most Americans are thinking about” but added, “Unfortunately, they are the issues that the White House is thinking about, and it’s the responsibility of Congress to be a check on their powers.”

The advocates say Trump’s executive orders and the GOP agenda have had drastic impacts on transgender Americans and their families, including by limiting their access to health care and identification documents that reflect their gender identity. It’s led some families with trans children to make plans to leave the country.

“I believe our role in Congress is to stand up for the little guys who are being picked on by bullies like Donald Trump and the Republicans,” Markey said about Democrats’ obligations.

They’re going up against Democrats who want nothing to do with any transgender-related fight as Republicans pummel their party for being out of touch and “woke.” GOP ads in nearly every battleground race have targeted their Democratic opponents over their party’s support for trans rights.

That has prompted numerous Democrats to run rebuttal ads, such as veteran Ohio Rep. Marcy Kaptur’s recent spot stating “boys should not play in girls’ sports.”

Alaska Democratic Senate nominee Mary Peltola told voters at a recent campaign event her “hope is that we don’t have to spend one second on a conversation about trans anything” in the next Congress, according to a Washington Sun report.

One senior House Democrat, who was granted anonymity to discuss a private conversation, recalled personally asking Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries not to focus on trans issues or other culture war flashpoints if the party wins the House.

Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer did not respond to requests for comment on their plans for tackling trans-related issues in the coming Congress.

Advocates argue that issues of gender identity and equality are, in fact, pocketbook issues and cannot be simply shunted aside.

“When you are putting in place, for example, policies that say that you can’t get a driver’s license that accurately reflects who you are, or that you can’t use a public restroom, what you are telling people is they can’t work, they can’t hold a job or participate in the public life of our country,” the ACLU’s Thompson said. “Those have very significant economic consequences.”

Several senior House Democrats — Minority Whip Katherine Clark, the No. 2 leader, Rep. Ted Lieu of California, the No. 4 leader, and Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, the top Rules Committee Democrat — said much the same in interviews.

“If we are telling people that we no longer value equality in this country, it’s really hard to build a fair economy,” Clark said. “You can’t silo these issues out.”

Riley Rogerson and Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.

Congress

Ralph Norman under pressure from fellow South Carolina Republicans to campaign for Darline Graham

Published

12 hours ago

October 26, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Rep. Russell Fry says fellow South Carolina Republican Rep. Ralph Norman should be doing more to help GOP Sen. Darline Graham win election to a full term in the Senate.

“As somebody who carried the conservative banner as long as he has, he should step into the arena,” Fry told reporters at a Monday campaign event in Myrtle Beach. “He didn’t win. I didn’t win either.”

Fry and Norman both competed against Graham in the Republican primary to be on the November ballot. Norman advanced to a runoff with Graham, who was appointed by Gov. Henry McMaster to fill out the remainder her late brother’s term and ultimately endorsed by President Donald Trump.

Now Graham is locked in a closer-than-expected race against Democratic nominee Annie Andrews, prompting national Republicans to flock to defend what is typically considered a safely red seat. Norman, who enjoys deep popularity among conservatives, said he plans to vote for Graham but not campaign with her.

Fry, appearing at an event Monday alongside House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), described Andrews as “a far more dangerous result for the future of this country” and urged Norman to be “more vocal” in the last week before the midterms.

“I hope that he does, in the final eight days, step into the sunlight a little bit and help his Republican nominee,” Fry said.

Trump is expected to hold a rally in Norman’s district Thursday. A spokesperson for Norman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Congress

House Republicans set leadership elections

Published

14 hours ago

October 26, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

House Republicans will choose their leaders for the upcoming Congress on Nov. 10, one week after Election Day, according to a schedule obtained by Blue Light News.

A two-hour candidate forum is scheduled for that morning, with the afternoon reserved for the elections of a leader, whip, conference chair and other junior positions. If Republicans can hold on to their narrow majority, members will also nominate a speaker ahead of the Jan. 3 floor vote.

Members have until noon Nov. 6 to declare their candidacy for a leadership post, according to the schedule.

A forum and session on the GOP conference rules will follow on Nov. 11, with elections on those rules and the makeup of the conference steering committee to follow on the morning of Nov. 12. All of the events are scheduled to take place in the Capitol Visitor Center Auditorium.