Politics

GOP health care chaos spills into battleground midterm races

Published

1 month ago

December 12, 2025

Republicans’ failure to get on the same page on expiring Obamacare subsidies is creating significant rifts between GOP primary contenders and causing heartburn for some of the party’s most vulnerable incumbents heading into November’s midterms.

With just weeks left before Covid-era subsidies lapse, causing steep health insurance rate spikes for millions of people, Republicans are all over the spectrum about what to do — with many of the party’s top candidates ducking when asked about the thorny issue.

In Michigan, the subsidies have emerged as an early policy difference between President Donald Trump-backed Senate candidate Mike Rogers and his new challenger, former state GOP co-chair Bernadette Smith. Sen. Bill Cassidy’s (R-La.) proposal to replace the subsidies with federally funded health savings accounts is facing pushback from his primary opponents. In Georgia, a state with an especially high reliance on the Affordable Care Act, all three Republicans vying to take on Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff have refused to commit to any specific health care proposal — a sign of just how reluctant Republicans are to take a firm position.

Out of the 24 candidates Blue Light News surveyed across key GOP Senate primaries and general election battlegrounds, 10 did not respond to repeated requests for comment on their health care policy preferences, while others gave vague answers.

But as some Republicans dodge, other lawmakers in tough races are practically begging their leadership to fix the issue, which Democrats are already making a key focus of the 2026 midterm elections.

“I know my people back home care tremendously about this,” swing district Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), who is leading an effort to go against his own party leaders and force a vote on the expiring credits, said in an interview. “I would assume that’s the case in every district in America.”

There are already warning signs of political pitfalls for Republicans.

Most Americans want Congress to extend the subsidies, polls from health policy think tank KFF and Morning Consult show. And they’re already feeling the strain: Fifty-two percent of respondents to The Blue Light News Poll in November reported that their health insurance premiums have risen over the past two to three years — and they’re equally as worried about being able to afford an unexpected health care bill. Nearly half of respondents who said health care is difficult to afford blamed the Trump administration for those struggles.

Health care is a flashpoint in the crowded primary Cassidy is facing back in Louisiana that was fueled in large part by his 2021 vote to impeach Trump. The former physician also chairs the Senate Health Committee and co-authored one of the GOP proposals to try to address the surging rates.

“I want people to have coverage,” Cassidy said after the failed vote on his proposal. “I spent my medical career in a hospital for the underinsured and the poor and the uninsured. My life’s work is: How do you get care to those who otherwise cannot afford it? I understand where people are. The Democratic plan does not.”

His bill failed to advance Thursday afternoon — while giving his primary opponents new fodder for attacks.

St. Tammany Parish Councilmember Kathy Seiden said before the vote that the senator’s proposed health savings accounts are “out of touch” and called for a “time-limited extension” of the subsidies, while Public Service Commissioner Eric Skrmetta described Cassidy’s bill as a “step in the right direction” but said he wants the funding to be “supercharged.”

Republicans more worried about the general election than primaries sound much different on this issue, however.

Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), who are both facing potentially tough races, were among the four Republicans who crossed party lines to support Democrats’ three-year subsidy extension Thursday in the Senate. It failed, alongside Cassidy’s plan.

“My state’s hurting on this,” Sullivan said after both bills tanked.

Republicans have struggled ever since Obamacare’s 2010 passage to craft a functional, politically palatable alternative, even as health insurance rates have surged under the program. Now, Covid-era subsidies are set to expire, and they’re struggling once again to respond.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates 4 million fewer people would have health insurance by 2034 if the subsidies lapse. And premium payments would increase from an average of $888 this year to $1,904 next year if the subsidies expire, according to KFF.

Republican candidates vary widely in their suggestions for a policy fix.

In Michigan, where Republicans are looking to flip retiring Democratic Sen. Gary Peters’ seat, Rogers said “we can’t just put another bandaid” on a “broken health care system” and called for a “new system that works.” Smith advocated for a two-year subsidy extension while also working toward a new health care model.

In New Hampshire, where Republicans are chasing another retiring Democrat’s seat, former Sen. John E. Sununu called to modernize “outdated” regulations and give states more power over their Medicaid programs while ensuring lower-income people are “protected against price spikes.” His rival, former Sen. Scott Brown, said in a statement that “any meaningful solution is going to have to address the underlying cost drivers … and not just temporarily subsidize an unaffordable product.”

In Georgia, where Republicans have their best shot to unseat a Democratic incumbent, two of the three leading GOP candidates — Reps. Mike Collins and Buddy Carter — could soon run out of rope to avoid addressing the issue if a health plan hits the House floor. Derek Dooley, the former football coach backed by GOP Gov. Brian Kemp, said in a statement, “We should be focused on transparency, incentivizing doctors to deliver high-quality care, real market competition, and lowering healthcare costs for hardworking Americans—while making sure we put patients first.”

Democrats are yoking GOP candidates to the lapsing subsidies. Senate Democratic campaigns lambasted their GOP opponents for their votes Thursday, and Protect Our Care, a liberal health care advocacy group, signaled a deluge of attack ads to come.

“I’m worried about my colleagues,” Rep. Jeff Van Drew, a Republican who holds a safe red seat in blue New Jersey, said Wednesday at the Capitol. “Do I think this issue is worth a couple of points in an election? Yeah, I do.”

Erin Doherty contributed to this report.

Politics

‘Brain the size of a walnut’: Bessent goes off on Newsom

Published

5 hours ago

January 23, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has been one of the most vocal critics of President Donald Trump since his return to office last year. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent argues it’s a sign of Newsom’s weakness.

“I think Gavin Newsom may be cracking up, some of these things he’s saying. I think he may be in over his hairdo,” Bessent said in an interview Thursday with Blue Light News’s Dasha Burns for “The Conversation.”

Trump’s top economic adviser said that Newsom, a potential 2028 presidential candidate and longstanding Trump foe, has a “brain the size of a walnut” and that he knows “less about economics than” former Vice President Kamala Harris, which he clarified is “a terrible place to be in.”

The attacks are the latest in a simmering feud between Trump and Newsom, which escalated over the course of the week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Newsom was scheduled to speak at USA House on Wednesday as part of the conference, but his appearance was cancelled at the last minute. Newsom blamed the Trump administration, but an organizer said they decided to focus on programming with business leaders.

At Davos, Newsom met with world leaders, as did Bessent and Trump.

Upon arriving, Newsom urged European leaders not to cave to Trump’s demands over a wide-range of foreign policy issues. In a panel at the conference, the California governor brandished a pair of kneepads bearing Trump’s signature to mock world leaders he feels have been overly accommodating of the president.

Bessent dismissed the “strange things” Newsom has said to attack Trump, including the knee pad stunt and a comment in which Newsom analogized Trump to a dinosaur.

“To say strange things like President Trump is a tyrannosaurus rex, what the hell does that mean? I can say Gavin Newsom is a brontosaurus with a brain the size of a walnut,” Bessent said. “And, if you brought the knee pads, maybe that was for his meeting with Alex Soros.”

Bessent also defended the Trump administration from criticisms that they’re out of touch with the economic concerns of Americans. During a panel in Davos, Bessent said the administration wants to protect the investments of “mom and pop” retirees who may have purchased “5, 10, 12 homes.”

In his defense, Bessent took another opportunity to swipe at Newsom, who he labeled “Patrick Bateman meets Sparkle Beach Ken” during a speech earlier at the conference.

“I think it was a Dem governor, Newsom, who made the comment of being out of touch. What does he know? Like, his father worked for the Getty family,” Bessent said. “I actually think he knows less about economics than Kamala Harris, which is a terrible place to be in.”

The full interview with Bessent will air on “The Conversation.”

Politics

Scott Bessent at Davos on Greenland, affordability, and the Fed | The Conversation

Published

5 hours ago

January 23, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Scott Bessent at Davos on Greenland, affordability, and the Fed | The Conversation

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Politics

House Dems rally against ICE funding just one year after dozens broke ranks on immigration

Published

11 hours ago

January 22, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

House Democrats voted overwhelmingly Thursday to block additional funding for ICE, a remarkable shift from when dozens of them voted to expand the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement authority just one year ago — and a sign of how quickly the political ground has moved since President Donald Trump returned to the White House.

Just seven Democrats voted for the Homeland Security spending bill that included billions for Immigration and Customs Enforcement: Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez of Texas, Jared Golden of Maine, Laura Gillen and Tom Suozzi of New York, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Florida and Don Davis of North Carolina. All represent tough terrain — Trump carried all of their districts but Gillen’s, which he lost by just over one point.

Other Democrats, incensed by an ICE agent’s shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis, voted against the bill — including many who voted exactly one year ago to pass the Laken Riley Act that allows for the detention of undocumented immigrants accused of certain crimes.

One of them, Rep. Susie Lee (D-Nev.), a top GOP target in the midterms from a district Trump narrowly carried in 2024, argued this vote was different.

“What we have seen time and again is ICE has blatantly violated our Constitution and our law, whether you’re talking about the shooting of a young mother to sending a five year old thousands of miles away to entice his father to turn himself in — this type of shit is not American,” Lee said in an interview Thursday. “ICE has plenty of money … I can’t in good conscience give them any more money until we get some type of guardrails.”

Even the Democrats who voted for the funding were sharply critical of ICE.

“I hate what ICE is doing in my district and across the country. It’s atrocious. It’s appalling. We should find ways to defund those operations in a surgical way,” Gonzalez said in a brief interview, adding that he supported the bill because it also included funding for Coast Guard and FEMA operations. “But voting no, just to make a statement, could have its own repercussions.”

The House passed the DHS funding bill 220 to 207.

Democrats’ near-united stand against the bill comes amid building opposition to Trump’s mass deportation campaign. A 49 percent plurality of voters in a new Blue Light News poll conducted Jan. 16 to 19 said the effort — including Trump’s widespread deployment of ICE agents across the U.S. — is too aggressive.

“The shift is dramatic. And I think the reason for the shift is: Last year the debate in the country was about getting control of the borders and out-of-control immigration. Now the entire situation is about ICE itself and its behavior,” Mark Longabaugh, a veteran Democratic strategist, said of the party’s recalibration on immigration.

Amid the growing public furor over ICE’s hardline tactics, congressional Democrats had demanded that any new Homeland Security funding come with more guardrails.

The bill most of them voted against Thursday funds ICE at $10 billion through the rest of the fiscal year that ends in September, while cutting funding for removal and enforcement operations by $115 million and Border Patrol funding by $1.8 billion. It also included some Democratic demands: decreasing the number of detention beds by 5,500, providing $20 million each for body cameras for agents and independent oversight of DHS detention facilities, and directing the department to give officers more training on diffusing conflict while interacting with the public.

It does not include other items Democrats pushed for, however, such as banning agents from wearing masks during operations, requiring judicial warrants, preventing DHS from detaining and deporting U.S. citizens and blocking the department from using other agencies’ personnel for immigration enforcement.

The Democrats who voted in favor of the funding bill argued it was preferable to the alternative — giving Trump what Cuellar described as a “blank check” to carry out his hardline immigration agenda “virtually unchecked.”

And some expressed concerns about ramifications for their districts if other agencies who receive their funding through DHS were cut off. Davis warned of the potential consequences of lapsed FEMA and Coast Guard funding in his home state of North Carolina that has been battered by storms and floods in recent years.

“Obviously we should have the honest conversations about warrants. We should have the honest conversations about taking off the masks,” Davis said Thursday. But “if we can’t consistently predict when disasters are coming our way, then we’re leaving populations of people vulnerable.”

Erin Doherty and Calen Razor contributed to this report.