The Dictatorship
House GOP passes health care bill going nowhere while real deal takes shape
Despite holding one of the smallest House majorities in history, Republicans muscled their health care bill through the chamber on Wednesday — a politically important win aimed at blunting Democratic attacks on affordabilitybut one that is largely symbolic, with the legislation likely to languish in the Senate.
The House passed the package of conservative health proposals, 216-211, with all but one Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., supporting the bill. All Democrats opposed.
Notably, the bill doesn’t address the expiring Obamacare subsidies, meaning that even if the Senate were to sign off — which again, isn’t likely to happen — millions of Obamacare enrollees would still see their premiums skyrocket is Jan. 1.
Instead, the House GOP proposal incorporates a grab bag of conservative priorities, including expanded association health plans, cost-sharing reductions in the ACA marketplace and new transparency requirements for pharmacy benefit managers.
Top Republican leaders insist the bill would lower premiums for “all Americans.” But compared with the looming increases facing Obamacare enrollees, any potential savings would be marginal. And that assumes the bill somehow becomes law — a long shot given Democratic opposition and the Senate’s 60-vote threshold.
As House Republicans acted publicly on a proposal going nowhere, however, a key group of more moderate lawmakers in both chambers were working behind the scenes on a bill that could go somewhere.
While that proposal still doesn’t quite exist — and just about everyone on Capitol Hill acknowledges it won’t come in time to avert the steep increases in Obamacare premiums — there’s a chance lawmakers could deliver something early next year that would alleviate some of the rising premiums.
Members of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus met with key senators in the basement of the Capitol on Wednesday, as moderate Democrats and Republicans searched for an elusive compromise on the subsidies.
The plan, according to Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa. — who co-chairs the Problem Solvers Caucus — is for the House to send the Senate a three-year Obamacare extension, and then for the Senate to take up the product, make changes, and then send it back to the House.
“We will find a way to get that bill to the floor,” Fitzpatrick said.
How Fitzpatrick and other vulnerable House Republicans plan to send the Senate that initial three-year subsidy extension is no mystery.
After Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., blocked several amendments to the health care bill that would have extended the subsidies in some form — an important vote for numerous vulnerable Republicans looking to distance themselves from the GOP strategy of letting the tax credits expire — four House Republicans broke from GOP leaders and signed a discharge petition to force a vote on a Democratic proposal to extend the subsidies for three years. Those four signatures were enough to clinch the 218 mark required to force the vote.
The four moderate Republicans who signed on — Reps. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., Robert Bresnahan, R-Pa., Ryan Mackenzie, R-Pa., and Fitzpatrick — all face difficult reelection bids in next year’s midterms and wanted a chance to vote on the subsidies.
“We did what was in the interest of my bosses back home,” Fitzpatrick told reporters.
Lawler argued the procedural step of signing the discharge petition wasn’t “an endorsement of the bill written,” explaining that he wants to see changes made to the subsidies.
“But when leadership blocks action entirely, Congress has a responsibility to act,” Lawler said.
It’s just the latest successful discharge petition in a string of successful discharge petitions in the House — a procedural maneuver that is historically rare, as it requires members of the minority party to effectively circumvent leadership and control action on the House floor. But in recent weeks, a handful of Republicans have joined with Democrats to force votes on legislation to release the Epstein files and to protect union rights for federal workers.
Pressed by reporters Wednesday, Johnson insisted he has not lost control of the House.
“When you have the luxury of having 10 or 15 people who disagree on something, you know, you don’t have to deal with it,” he said. “But when you have a razor-thin margin, as we do, then all the procedures in the book, people think, are on the table — and that’s the difference.”
Democrats are hopeful that the combination of the discharge petition and voters paying higher premiums next month may finally shake loose a deal.
As Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., put it: ”The pressure on the Senate will be so enormous that I think the winds will change.”
But the communications director for Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., is already throwing cold water on the prospect.
“A clean, three-year extension of the Biden COVID bonuses was on the Senate floor last week, and it failed,” Ryan Wrasse posted on X.
Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, backed up that assessment, telling reporters that they “already saw that movie” when the Senate tried — and failed — to advance a three-year extension.
“We’re not going to do a straight up extension for three years without reforms,” Moreno said.
But Moreno was also somewhat bullish on the ability of lawmakers to find some sort of agreement.
“I would say we’re not in the red zone, but we’re in the field goal range,” Moreno told MS NOW on Wednesday afternoon.
What that product will look like, however, and if the House would ever stage a vote on the final proposal, is anyone’s guess.
Lawmakers in both chambers have proposed more than a dozen health care plans — some involving the subsidies, others not — leaving members back in square one as they try to figure out what product can make its way to President Donald Trump’s desk.
Asked Wednesday afternoon if lawmakers could clinch a deal in January, Thune was noncommittal.
“We’ll see,” Thune said. “I think that’s the question. You know.”
Syedah Asghar, Peggy Helman and Lillie Boudreaux contributed to this report.
Kevin Frey is a congressional reporter for MS NOW.
Mychael Schnell is a reporter for MS NOW.
The Dictatorship
President Trump spoke to Live Nation CEO before antitrust case was settled, company lawyers reveal
NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump spoke personally with the chief executive of Live Nation in the weeks before the Justice Department abruptly settled its longstanding antitrust lawsuit against the entertainment giant and its Ticketmaster subsidiary, the company revealed in a court filing.
Lawyers for Live Nation told the court on Monday that Trump and the company’s CEO, Michael Rapino, spoke about the antitrust lawsuit in February, but didn’t discuss “substantive terms” of any potential settlement.
They also said that White House lawyers were involved in some of the numerous in-person meetings, videoconferences, telephone calls and written communications between the company and the Justice Department in February and March.
Just days into the March trial, the Justice Department announced a settlement that most states refused to join, saying it did not go far enough to curb the company’s dominance over concert venues and ticketing for live events though Ticketmaster.
The trial continued, and a jury concluded several weeks later that the company was a monopoly that cost concertgoers and sports fans.
The White House declined to comment on Live Nation’s disclosure, referring questions to the Justice Department, which didn’t immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
The revelation comes as the Justice Department has faced criticism that its independence has been threatened by substantial oversight or interference from the White House and the president.
The Justice Department and dozens of states originally teamed up to bring the antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation.
Among other things, the jury in New York found Ticketmaster’s anticompetitive practices led to people in 22 states paying an extra $1.72 per ticket, which the judge could order the companies to pay back.
State attorneys general who sued Live Nation said the verdict could potentially lead to lower ticket prices for music fans.
The federal government’s settlement deal included a cap on service fees at some amphitheaters, plus some new ticket-selling options for promoters and venues — potentially allowing, but not requiring, them to open doors to Ticketmaster competitors such as SeatGeek or AXS.
In April, Live Nation said in a statement that the verdict “is not the last word on this matter.”
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance say their interim deal to end the war with Iran will deliver a financial windfall to American farmers.
But the Iranians deny it. And in the absence of more details, sanctions experts are flummoxed over exactly how billions of dollars’ worth of Iranian assets would make their way to the American heartland from the escrow accounts where they’ve been locked for years by U.S. sanctions.
A tentative agreement reached last week would reopen the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas once passed, and allow Iran to start selling its oil freely again during a 60-day period when the two countries will continue negotiating key issues. The memorandum of understanding also promised to unfreeze Iranian assets.
Trump’s deal has come under fire for failing to address the reasons the president cited for going to war with Iran on Feb. 28, including curbing Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, its missile program and its support for militant groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.
Lashing back at critics Tuesday on his Truth Social media platform, Trump said U.S. farmers would get a payday: The U.S. Treasury Department, he wrote, would release the Iranian assets “into escrow, controlled by the U.S.A., and will be used for the purchase of food and medical supplies, exclusively from the United States, including Corn, Wheat, and Soybeans from our great American farmers. These are things that are desperately needed by Iran.’’
Vance, who spoke about the proposal after high-level talks in Switzerland, and Trump say that any frozen funds and assets held outside of Iran will be used to buy U.S. crops.
But the Iranians deny that’s part of the deal. A spokesperson for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Esmail Baghaei, said any agricultural purchases would be based on “prices and quality,’’ not terms dictated by Washington.
“It is interesting that the philosophy and goal of the war, which was the destruction of the Iranian civilization and the collapse of Iran, has become enriching American farmers,” Baghaei said.
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Iran’s ambassador in Geneva, Ali Bahreini, rejected Vance’s contention that the U.S. and Qatar would dictate how Iran uses unfrozen funds. “Iran is the only country who decides what to do with those assets,” he told reporters.
A U.S. official dismissed the contradiction, asserting that Iranian leaders were speaking to their domestic audience. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record.
Joseph Glauber, a research fellow emeritus at the International Food Policy Research Institute, said Iran was unlikely to abandon its other trade partners on food.
Iran’s major suppliers include Brazil, India, Turkey, the European Union, Canada, Australia and Argentina, he said. Trump’s demand to buy from the U.S. would “create some hard feelings with some of our competitors.”
Under previous sanctions, the U.S. has required that money foreign countries spend on imports from Iran — such as South Korean purchases of oil and Iraqi purchases of Iranian electricity — be locked in escrow accounts and typically released only if the Treasury approves and if the proceeds go toward “non-sanctionable’’ items such as food and medicine.
On Monday, the U.S. Treasury approved the sale of Iranian oil, petrochemicals and petroleum products through Aug. 21. It did not mention any escrow accounts.
Richard Goldberg of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, who coordinated efforts to put diplomatic pressure on Iran in the first Trump administration, said in a post on X that he would welcome “a clarification that Iran is actually restricted to only buying U.S. agricultural products.”
Richard Nephew, senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, said it’s unclear what the new U.S.-Iran agreement actually means for releasing restricted Iranian assets.
Could the U.S. require that the assets be used to buy American farm products?
“Well, we can try!’’ Nephew, who helped design Iran sanctions in the Obama and Biden administrations, said by email. “All you really need to do is to tell a foreign bank that they can move the money but only to a U.S. bank to buy soybeans or whatever.”
Banks do not have to comply, he said. If they refuse, the U.S. could sanction them as well.
But it’s rare for the U.S. to conduct itself that way, he added, “in part because we don’t usually like to give the impression that we treat national security issues as a cash grab.”
___
Associated Press writers Josh Boak and Michelle L. Price in Washington contributed to this report.
Wednesday marks four years since the Supreme Court issued its landmark Dobbs decisionwhich effectively overturned Roe v. Wade and repealed the constitutional right to an abortion. On “Morning Joe,” co-host Mika Brzezinski explained how the ruling set off a domino effect across the United States, affecting not just abortion-related care, but also altering “the state of women’s healthcare as a whole.”
As Brzezinski noted, states across the country have enacted harsher abortion restrictions since the 2022 ruling, with 13 outright banning the procedure with very limited exceptions. This has created a climate of fear among those who treat pregnant patients, with many healthcare providers worrying that any care involving an abortion could violate the law, even when the mother’s health is at risk.
“We are talking about people dying when they’re miscarrying because doctors are too afraid to intervene and save their lives,” Amy Littlefield, abortion access correspondent for The Nation, told MS NOW.
Brzezinski said the laws have effectively limited women’s “access to lifesaving healthcare.”
The MS NOW host reflected on some high-profile stories of pregnant women who faced delayed care in states with near-total abortion bans, noting “the numbers of cases that we’ve covered here on the show of women who have had their lives threatened, have been forced to give birth to dying or dead babies, and then, by the way, denied the access to ever create life again, because they became sterilized in the process.”
“There’s an image I can’t get out of my head,” Brzezinski added, before sharing reporting from ProPublica about Porsha Ngumezi, a 35-year-old mother who died in Texas in 2023 after not receiving timely care for a miscarriage.
“For months afterward, Porsha’s 3-year-old son would chase after women who looked like her on the street, shouting, ‘That’s Mommy!’” Brzezinski said. “That’s the detail I can’t forget. I can’t stop imagining that little boy chasing after strangers on the street. And that story repeats itself.”
You can watch Brzezinski’s full comments in the clip at the top of the page.
Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW. She was previously a segment producer for “AYMAN” and “The Mehdi Hasan Show.”
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