Politics
GOP health care chaos spills into battleground midterm races
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.
Republicans spurned by President Donald Trump aren’t interested in rescuing their would-be replacements.
Instead, a growing number of retiring or ousted GOP incumbents from Nevada to North Carolina are sitting those races out, and in some cases, openly bucking their own party.
Outgoing Sen. John Cornyn has raised money for various Republican Senate candidates — just not for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who ousted him in the primary with support from Trump. He’s been vocal for months about what he sees as Paxton’s vulnerabilities and how Democrats could flip Texas blue for the first time in decades.
North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis — who has frequently criticized some of Trump’s Cabinet and broken with the White House on policy — has played little role in the campaign of former RNC Chair Michael Whatley, Trump’s hand-picked Senate candidate. The distance between the two Republicans is particularly notable as Whatley struggles to close the gap against Democrat Roy Cooper.
Rep. Mark Amodei has repeatedly criticized, and now openly rejected voting for, the GOP nominee to replace him, David Flippo.
“The bedwetting from outgoing moderate Republicans will define their legacy and only help socialists get elected,” said David McIntosh, president of the Trump-aligned Club for Growth, which has endorsed Flippo and Paxton. “People like John Cornyn and Mark Amodei need to get on board and support Republican nominees and stop posturing for an MSNOW contract.”
But other Republicans defended their colleagues: “I never would question the loyalty to the party of Thom Tillis or John Cornyn. Both of them have contributed immensely to our party and our party’s successes in the past and I suspect will be going forward,” said North Dakota GOP Sen. Kevin Cramer. “But I also don’t begrudge them for their opinions and their right to be open about them.”
These outgoing Republicans, several of whom were explicitly pushed out by Trump or persuaded to retire given his hold on the GOP, are using the midterms as a test: whether the party will demand loyalty to the president or can return to a pre-Trump era.
“What [Trump’s] done is created a coalition that, in my opinion, will not stay with Republicans once we go back to traditional Republican platform priorities,” Tillis said in a recent interview with POLITICO. “A lot of the elements of the populism that Trump created to expand a base that made him successful running for president, I don’t think that stays with the party long-term.”
Some of those intraparty frustrations are starting to boil over, with Trump loyalist candidates and outgoing Republicans swiping at one another as Election Day barrels closer and the party’s overall fortunes look dire. The blame game is especially prominent in some of the Senate battlegrounds where Republicans have begun to quietly retreat in the final stretch of the midterms.
Tillis never followed through on his offers to help Whatley by reaching out to holdout donors in the North Carolina Senate race, said one person familiar with the campaign who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about internal matters.
“He was never part of our strategy because … I mean, if he could have been helpful to us, then he could have ran,” the person said, referring to Tillis’ decision not to seek reelection last year. “The Tillis of the past year ain’t the same guy who worked overtime to help elect Republican majorities here in NC back in 2010.”
One person with knowledge of Tillis and North Carolina politics, also granted anonymity to speak candidly, countered that the outgoing GOP senator “doesn’t help sure winners or sure losers” and “Whatley has been a sure loser throughout 2026, running as Donald Trump’s ‘guy,’ and making zero effort to build his own brand.”
“All Whatley had to do was to keep this race competitive, but instead the party is facing a potential wipeout. This is an embarrassing effort by a former RNC chairman who only has himself and his consultants to blame for the completely avoidable beat down coming on Nov. 3,” the person added.
Spokespeople for Tillis did not respond to a request for comment. Whatley’s campaign declined to comment.
Natalie Baldassarre, a spokesperson for the Republican National Committee, touted the president’s endorsement record in a statement. More pointedly, she said that “Republicans who chose not to help elect other Republicans may as well be helping Democrats.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
While the dynamic is less pronounced on the House side — Reps. Don Bacon and Elise Stefanik have been helpful to the Republicans running to replace them — there’s a clear exception: Amodei.
Flippo, who’s trying to replace him, has dealt with a host of scandals, from stolen valor accusations to carpetbagging to campaign finance issues, but Trump’s endorsement helped boost him through the Republican primary in June. Top Republican outside groups, including Club for Growth, have poured millions into his race in Nevada’s 2nd District to rescue a seat the president won by 14 points in 2024.
Amodei said in an interview that whoever was advising Trump to jump in and endorse Flippo gave “awful advice.”
“The only criteria shouldn’t be, ‘Well, they’re the Republican,’” said Amodei, who cast his ballot for a third-party candidate this week. “I mean, politics is a team sport. But when a member of the team turns out to be this way, clearly this is not a bright and shining moment for the vetting process.”
Asked about Club for Growth president McIntosh’s criticism of moderate “bedwetting,” Amodei scoffed: “At least this crowd is absolutely consistent. Forget fundamental factual and character messes that campaigns won’t and can’t respond to; and attempt to change the focus to party loyalty,” the retiring representative said. “Let me know when Club For Growth does a statement on campaign finance compliance, stolen Valor, and individual background transparency.”
Even as figures like Cornyn and Amodei catch the fury of more Trump-aligned Republican forces for not falling behind the party line, that doesn’t mean they’re abandoning fellow Republicans overall.
Cornyn has raised more than $1.1 million at events in Dallas and Houston last month for the campaigns of Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Jon Husted of Ohio and Dan Sullivan of Alaska — as well as for the National Republican Senatorial Committee and other Senate candidates: Iowa Rep. Ashley Hinson, former Michigan Rep. Mike Rogers and former New Hampshire Sen. John Sununu, according to a person familiar with the senator’s political operation who was granted anonymity to discuss private events.
He still clearly and explicitly draws a line against helping Paxton, telling reporters earlier this year, “Everything I said about him in the primary is true.”
A spokesperson for Paxton did not respond to a request for comment.
In Georgia, popular GOP Gov. Brian Kemp has been all-in on the governor’s race for Republican Rick Jackson — but he’s been comparatively quieter when it comes to Rep. Mike Collins’ Senate campaign to oust Democrat Jon Ossoff.
The governor had initially recruited, backed and supported a different candidate in the GOP primary, though he’s since helped the Collins campaign with a public endorsement and by headlining a major fundraiser in Atlanta and others. Still, some Collins allies want the governor to be more involved.
“Brian Kemp is someone who needs to be on the trail and someone who needs to help if Republicans are going to win,” said one GOP strategist working on races in Georgia who supports Collins and was granted anonymity to discuss internal dynamics. “But he did create some of this mess with the primary he ran against Mike who we all knew would be the nominee.”
Meyer Sigfried, a Collins spokesperson, in a statement dismissed any suggestion that Kemp isn’t fully supporting Collins: “He’s been on the trail rallying Georgians to get out and vote early for Mike and Republicans up and down the ballot, and his help behind the scenes has been just as important.”
A representative for Kemp referred Blue Light News to Collins’ statement of support.
Across the map, other frustrated Republicans have more directly pointed the finger at Trump for his interference, lambasting the president’s tendency to prop up candidates whom they deem too weak for the role.
In South Carolina, Rep. Ralph Norman said this week he has refused to campaign with Sen. Darline Graham, who defeated him in the primary with Trump’s help. Graham has been under scrutiny for her lack of experience in elected office. Republicans still expect her to win in deep-red South Carolina, but they’ve also made late investments to shore up her campaign as Democrat Annie Andrews dominates in fundraising.
Norman blamed the president, saying, “What he did to South Carolina … it’s just not right,” but added he will still vote for Graham.
T.W. Arrighi, a spokesperson for Graham, thanked the representative for his support in a statement, before hammering other Republicans — like Norman’s son, Warren Norman — who will not be voting for the GOP nominee: “It is unconscionable for anyone who claims to be a conservative in South Carolina to not vote straight ticket Republican and therefore endorse a Chuck Schumer-led Senate.”
In many cases, GOP lawmakers are defending their disgruntled colleagues who have decided not to help Trump-picked candidates.
“Folks have to follow their conscience. If a guy ‘smells bad’ then I wouldn’t,” said Bacon, who is supporting Brinker Harding, an Omaha city councilmember, in the race to replace him in his blue-leaning Nebraska district. “I like Brinker. He’s a good person.”A
“I believe we all ought to do all we can to help the good guys win the election,” Cramer added. “But I also understand people that … feel aggrieved and want to maybe not be as enthusiastic about that as I am.”
Mia McCarthy, Meredith Lee Hill and Aaron Pellish contributed to this report.
Republican Ashley Hinson wants Iowans to know she’ll pick a fight with President Donald Trump. Democrat Josh Turek wants them to know he’ll work with him.
The rivals in Iowa’s closely contested Senate race each sought to establish their independence in separate interviews aired Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” pitching themselves as willing to put their state ahead of their respective party loyalty.
Asked about her campaign pledge to be Trump’s “strongest ally” in the Senate, Hinson added a condition: “If it’s for Iowa.”
“I will be someone’s ally when they’re with me on the issues that are important to Iowa,” the Republican lawmaker said. “And if they’re wrong, I’m going to pick a fight with them, no matter who that is.”
The conflicting comments come in a state Trump won by 13 points in the 2024 presidential election, but where Democrats now see an opportunity to win their first Senate election since 2008. The president campaigned in Iowa this past week as high fuel costs and frustration with his tariffs complicate Republicans’ efforts to maintain the seat.
Republicans close to Hinson told POLITICO last month that she needed to put some distance between herself and Trump, warning that his tariff agenda and the Iran war were undermining her chances.
On Sunday, Hinson rejected Trump’s positive assessment of the economy. “Well, sure doesn’t feel like it right now,” she said, later criticizing the administration’s dealings with Moscow.
“I don’t think we should be making any deals with Russia,” she said, pointing to her vote for sanctions. Her campaign told POLITICO on Friday that she opposed sanctions relief for Russia while supporting Trump’s use of the Defense Production Act to bolster domestic energy production.
But there were limits to her criticism. While calling for the Iran war to end quickly, Hinson declined to oppose a potential new offensive after the midterms, saying she trusted Trump and the military to determine what needed to be done.
Turek, meanwhile, called himself a “proud moderate” and sidestepped a question about whether Democrats had moved too far left.
“I don’t think a lot about the party as a whole. I think about myself, and I think about Iowa,” the Democratic state representative said.
That pitch follows a primary victory aided by national Democratic support, including from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s leadership PAC — which contributed the maximum to Turek’s campaign, though Schumer did not formally endorse. VoteVets spent more than $10 million advertising on Turek’s behalf. He’s also secured the formal endorsement of former President Barack Obama, who appeared in an ad alongside Turek as the two played basketball.
Asked what Trump had done right, Turek said Trump had done “a better job on the border than Biden, for sure.” He also cited agreement on keeping private equity out of housing and eliminating taxes on tips, overtime and Social Security, while arguing that Trump’s economic policies had concentrated wealth and power.
Also asked whether endorsements mattered, Turek offered a blunt assessment: “Probably not.”
AI chatbots are feeding non-native English speakers inaccurate information about the election, community activists and researchers warn, creating a barrier for some voters ahead of the midterms.
The challenge — which leading AI companies say they’re working to address — is distinct from intentional disinformation campaigns that have plagued the internet for decades. Instead, some researchers and community leaders warn that voters prompting chatbots in non-English languages are unintentionally being fed inaccurate and ambiguous information — like whether they can vote by mail in their state — or overly literal translations that confuse electoral terms and lack context in various languages’ unique dialects.
But the end result, the activists said, could still be the same: Voters whose native language is not English are more vulnerable to incorrect information and excluded from the most reliable answers ahead of the midterms.
“Latino communities cannot afford to be left behind as artificial intelligence transforms how people work, learn, communicate and access information,” said Héctor Sánchez Barba, the president and CEO of Mi Familia Vota. “The history of the immigrant community and the Latino community has been one where we have been historically and structurally excluded from the best technology and access to information.”
This digital divide has arisen, the activists and researchers say, in large part because AI models are trained in English, and fail to capture the nuances of other languages. Experts and grassroots organizations say this discrepancy in accuracy unintentionally disenfranchises non-English speaking voters across the country, where more than 20% of Americans speak a language other than English at home.
National voter organizations that work in Latino and Asian American communities are grappling with how to bridge the gap and keep up with the rapidly developing technology to ensure that their communities don’t get left behind.
Mi Familia Vota, which oversees some of the largest Latino voter mobilization efforts in the country, has built its own AI assistant dubbed “Nubi,” which comes from la nube or cloud in Spanish, for Spanish speakers seeking information on voting, voter registration and citizenship. The model is trained on government and nonpartisan datasets — as well as community data collected over 30 years of canvassing, town halls and citizenship workshops, said Denise Cook, chief innovation officer of Mi Familia Vota.
She said it includes dialects of Mexican, Central American, South American and Caribbean Spanish, which have different words for election-related terminology. Polling place, for example, can be referred to as casilla, recinto or colegio electoral depending on the dialect, she said.
Christine Choi, director of strategic communications at APIAVote, a civic engagement group for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, added that if AI fails to capture cultural and political nuances, “you can alienate a whole community or turn them off if you use the wrong interpretation.”
A study by the Institute of Strategic Dialogue released in September found that accuracy of AI chatbots declined 16% when prompted in Spanish about voter information. Spanish prompts were more likely to produce incomplete or ambiguous answers, omitting relevant details and relying on overly literal translations, said Valeria de la Fuente Suárez, the lead author of the ISD study.
“When voters are asking about registration deadlines or ID requirements, missing details can have real consequences,” she said. “Spanish-speaking voters deserve the same standards of clear, reliable and properly sourced information as English-speaking voters.”
The study tested six frontier models through their respective APIs, or application programming interfaces, which are available for other developers to use. OpenAI, Anthropic and Google said in separate statements that they were working to refine their models for non-English languages, but APIs are not appropriate representations of how consumers interact with the actual chatbot interfaces, because they often include other fail-safes like popups or banners linking to external sources of information on voting.
“Gemini is designed to respond with accurate and timely information and performed well in this analysis,” David Thompson, a spokesperson for Google, said in a statement. “However, this report accessed Gemini through our developer API, not the Gemini App, which has different protections and is how most people use our AI.”
Still, the leading AI companies say they are working to better provide election-related information to a wider swath of voters. To improve election information ahead of the midterms, OpenAI and Anthropic both said they are integrating information from Democracy Works, a nonprofit that collects official election information from the government, in its answers.
“OpenAI’s goal is to support people’s ability to participate freely in elections and make their own decisions with reliable information, transparency, and effective safeguards,” Nate Evans, a spokesperson for OpenAI, said in a statement.
Some groups like Asian Texans for Justice, a nonprofit that works to increase voter engagement in Asian American communities in the battleground state, have opted to steer clear of the technology ahead of the midterms.
“I do know that AI is being used more and more by AAPI communities, and we have made an organizational decision not to use AI for our in-language outreach due to inaccuracies,” said Nabila Mansoor, executive director of the organization.
Spanish, Chinese and Vietnamese are among the most widely spoken languages in the U.S. besides English, but there are more than 500 other languages and language groups spoken across the country, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The vast majority are considered low-resource languages with limited digitized data to train AI models, including Arabic, which has 1.3 million speakers in the U.S., and Swahili, which has about 150,000 speakers.
And leading tech companies say they will try to address language-related access to AI systems more broadly.
The Gates Foundation announced in September a coalition of 60 companies including OpenAI, Anthropic and Google dedicated to improving AI tools for an estimated 3.4 billion people around the world who speak languages underrepresented in AI models over the next five years. The joint commitment said, “The barrier is no longer the technology, which will only continue to improve. It requires a decision — to treat the world’s languages as a shared foundation worth building, together, for everyone.”
Community organizers say that while they welcome industry efforts to improve, the changes need to happen as soon as possible so immigrant communities can be equipped with the most reliable information for not only the midterms but the presidential election in 2028.
“The way people get information has fundamentally changed and civic engagement has to change with it,” said Mi Familia Vota’s Barba.
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