Congress

Republicans are ready to revive stalled health care legislation. Dems want the GOP to pay a price.

Published

11 months ago

July 21, 2025

Republicans are eyeing an opportunity to enact a bipartisan health package by the end of the year, but Democrats aren’t exactly in a deal-making mood.

With the dust barely settled after enacting their party-line domestic policy megabill, GOP lawmakers on the Senate Finance, House Ways and Means and House Energy and Commerce committees are hoping they’ll have another shot this year at making policy changes to drug pricing long sought by both parties.

It will be a litmus test for whether lawmakers can come together during President Donald Trump’s polarizing second term — and in the aftermath of the enactment of the Republican megabill, which included the steepest cuts to Medicaid in the program’s history.

Democrats are already suggesting Republicans may have poisoned the well and are countering by playing hardball. One particular demand they’re making as a condition of engagement: a costly extension of expanded tax credits for Affordable Care Act insurance premiums that are set to expire at the end of the year.

The tax credits, which Democrats enacted over Republican objections during the Biden administration, reduced the cost of insurance on the 2010 health law exchanges for millions of middle- and upper-income people for the first time. Extending them will will be a tough pill to swallow for Republicans now, too — particularly in the House, where Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith of Missouri recently suggested it could be a nonstarter for his conference.

In an interview, Smith said there are “opportunities to do several bipartisan items in health care and tax and in trade” following the passage of Trump’s megabill. But, he added, extending the enhanced tax credits would be “a big problem for a lot of my members.”

Smith went on to blame Democrats for failing to move forward on bipartisan health policies.

“PBMs have always been bipartisan,” said Smith, referring pharmaceutical benefit managers and proposals to overhaul how they negotiate drug prices with manufacturers on behalf of health plans.

“The cancer screen has always been bipartisan, the weight loss stuff has been bipartisan,” he continued. “There’s a lot of bipartisan provisions that have always failed because the Democrats have failed to come to the table.”

Smith’s Democratic counterpart on the House tax-writing committee, ranking member Richard Neal of Massachusetts, said in an interview Thursday he’d be willing to restart negotiations — but only if an extension of the ACA subsidies is part of the equation.

Asked if it had to be included in any larger bipartisan health package, Neal said, “It has to be.”

He added: “I also think it’s a reminder of how [Republicans are] filing legislation to undo what they did three weeks ago. What’s hilarious is they are either saying they didn’t know what was in their own legislation or now they want to get away from what they voted for in their own legislation.”

Neal was referring to legislation from Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) that would roll back major changes to Medicaid — which he just voted for as part of the megabill.

There’s been chatter for months about reviving a sweeping bipartisan health care package that was on track for passage last December as part of a larger government funding bill, but House GOP leaders dropped the health care provisions after Trump and Elon Musk said that funding bill was overly broad and threatened to tank it. A major part of the health package included proposals to crack down on PBMs, who critics accuse of charging higher prices for medications to health plans than the reimbursements they send to pharmacies, among other things.

As Smith alluded to, the Ways and Means Committee is also eyeing legislation from Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) for inclusion in the new health package. Kelly’s bill, which was marked up and approved by the panel last summer, would allow weight loss drugs for treatment of obesity, like Wegovy and Zepbound, to qualify for Medicare coverage. Federal law currently bans Medicare from covering drugs for weight loss, even though Medicare covers pharmaceuticals for other conditions such as heart disease.

The drugs are expensive and a Biden administration plan to increase coverage of them, which Trump shelved in April, would have cost $25 billion over ten years, according to the agency that runs Medicare.

Another bill sponsored by Sens. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) — which would reauthorize a partnership between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and state health programs to offer free breast cancer screenings to low-income, uninsured and underinsured women — is also under consideration for that package.

But Democrats are furious with Republicans for first plowing through Medicaid changes in the megabill, then passing $9 billion in funding cuts across an array of federal programs, including those related to global health initiatives.

“If we keep making progress on [appropriations] … there is a chance we can do the health care package,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) said Thursday following the Senate’s vote on Trump’s rescissions request. “But that chance got worse overnight.”

Coons has previously co-sponsored legislation with Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) to change how PBMs calculate health insurance deductibles. Marshall said last week that coming back to the table on bipartisan PBM legislation was “a top priority.”

But Democrats are also pointing out that Republicans are looking at policies that would reduce drug costs, and expand federal health insurance coverage of drugs, right after they stripped hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicaid.

“When you make changes in Medicaid, that’s going to ripple through the rest of the health care system,” said the top Democrat on the Finance Committee, Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon. “As far as I can tell, that’s just a pipe dream, because what [Republicans] want to do is pass another partisan reconciliation bill.”

A senior Senate Democratic aide, granted anonymity to speak candidly, added: “Democrats will not be a part of any effort to selectively dismantle the American health care system after Republicans put it on life support.”

At the same time, Democrats need Republicans to help them extend the enhanced ACA tax credits they enacted as part of President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act, and then continued through 2025 in the Inflation Reduction Act. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a progressive philanthropy, found that health care premiums for people at or near the federal poverty line would skyrocket as a result of the credits’ expiration. People at the poverty line could see monthly premiums grow from $1 to $24, the foundation said.

Oneestimate from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that the number of uninsured people would rise by an average of 3.8 million every year between 2026 and 2034 if the credits expire.

“It’s a hugely important priority for working families. Health costs have gone through the stratosphere,” said Wyden.

House conservatives have balked, though, at the cost of extending them. According to another CBO analysis requested by Smith and House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), a permanent extension of the enhanced ACA subsidies would cost $383 billion. Republicans have argued that a chunk of the increased benefits go to higher-earners and that the subsidies artificially inflate premiums charged by health plans.

What remains to be seen, though, is whether Republicans want a PBM overhaul badly enough to trade an extension of the subsidies.

When asked whether he could tolerate such a deal, Senate Finance member Todd Young (R-Ind.) said in an interview Thursday that he would have to “think about it.”

Another Finance Republican, Sen. Steve Daines of Montana, appeared more receptive, saying his party “need[s] to” enact a PBM package this Congress.

“I think that is something that is going to have to be part of the discussion here to get to 60 votes,” Daines said.

Robert King, Jennifer Scholtes and Josh Siegel contributed to this report.

Congress

Mamdani-backed socialist ousts Espaillat in NY-13

Published

8 hours ago

June 24, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

NEW YORK — Darializa Avila Chevalier has ousted five-term House member Rep. Adriano Espaillat, the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, in a massive victory for the Democratic Socialists of America.

Her win marks another rebuke of the Democratic establishment in New York following Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral election last year, cementing the DSA as one of the city’s most potent political forces. The upset reflects a political climate in which voters have become increasingly willing to cast aside longtime incumbents in favor of outsiders promising change.

Avila Chevalier focused much of her campaign on attacking Espaillat for accepting donations from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and real estate interests during his career.

“I really feel that this is a fight to make sure that we are representing working-class New Yorkers who have been left behind by a politics that only serves the interests of corporations, of corporate landlords, of special interest groups that are making life in New York deeply unaffordable for so many,” Avila Chevalier said last month, during an appearance with Mamdani on MS NOW where the mayor endorsed her campaign.

Espaillat, who is the first formerly undocumented person to serve in Congress, came up short despite having the support of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Gov. Kathy Hochul, New York Attorney General Letitia James and New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin.

Avila Chevalier, 32, was a leading organizer in the pro-Palestinian encampment at Columbia University in 2024 and is a sociology Ph.D. student at the CUNY Graduate Center. She has served as an investigator for a public defender’s office and is originally from South Florida.

For most of the race, Espaillat was widely viewed as the favorite, but Mamdani’s late May endorsement of Avila Chevalier jolted a contest that began to show signs it was tightening. An April poll from Avila Chevalier’s campaign showed her down 14 points.

Her victory came despite intense outside spending in support of Espaillat, including from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’ campaign arm.

Avila Chevalier’s election to New York’s 13th district also shows a changing of the guard in Upper Manhattan and parts of the Bronx. Espaillat has served at the helm of a political alliance, known as the “Squadriano,” that has ruled over those areas of the city, home to large Dominican American and African American populations.

At times during the race, Espaillat and his supporters sought to frame the primary battle as a contest between gentrifiers and long-term residents.

“Those that choose or want to parachute in, after the men and women of this city, the working men and women of the city, have built our neighborhood, we’re gonna send them back home packing wherever they came from,” the 71-year-old member of Congress said last month.

The story of his political ascendance and reign in Upper Manhattan has also been characterized by an intense rivalry with Manhattan Democratic Party Chair Keith Wright, an ally of the late Rep. Charles Rangel, whom Espaillat challenged for Congress in 2012 and 2014.

But this year’s primary seems to have calmed the bitter rivalry between Espaillat and Wright amid the encroachment of the Democratic Socialists of America on disputed turf. Earlier this month, Espaillat endorsed Wright’s son , state Assemblymember Jordan Wright, who was also facing a DSA-backed challenger.

The peace pact wasn’t enough to fend off the challenge from Avila Chevalier, who seized on a progressive swing in the district ever since Mamdani handily beat former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the mayoral primary there.

“We have come a long way from where we used to be as a party,” Mamdani said in the interview where he announced his endorsement of Avila Chevalier. “It’s time we have a new generation that not only takes us back to that ambition, but takes us forward to the tomorrow that so many New Yorkers are waiting for.”

Congress

Former Utah Rep. Ben McAdams is on track to return to Congress

Published

8 hours ago

June 24, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Former Rep. Ben McAdams won his primary Tuesday, paving the way for his return to Congress.

McAdams, a moderate, staved off a roster of progressive challengers in Utah’s newly redrawn 1st District, a rare deep-blue Salt Lake City district in a deep-red state that came as a result of a messy, decadelong redistricting saga.

McAdams will enter November as the heavy favorite in a district former Vice President Kamala Harris won by nearly 24 points in 2024.

McAdams won a GOP-leaning seat in the 2018 Democratic wave and governed as a centrist, Blue Dog Democrat who pushed for a balanced budget amendment — but he lost his reelection bid in 2020. He was one of the first Democrats to signal interest in running in the new 1st District and quickly garnered support from Utah elected officials and national centrist Democrats.

His progressive opponents attempted to paint him as too conservative, pointing to his previous mixed record on abortion. One opponent, state Sen. Nate Blouin, called on the other candidates to consolidate their support behind one person to avoid splitting the progressive vote. None agreed, and McAdams — who raised more money than the three other Democrats combined — prevailed.

Congress

Trump’s preferred candidate wins primary to succeed Elise Stefanik

Published

8 hours ago

June 24, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

ALBANY, New York — President Donald Trump’s preferred candidate to succeed Rep. Elise Stefanik cruised to victory in his Republican primary Tuesday evening.

Anthony Constantino, the CEO of custom sticker company Sticker Mule, defeated Assemblymember Robert Smullen, a retired Marine colonel, for the nomination in a deep red upstate New York House district.

Trump, along with MAGA figures Roger Stone and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, backed Constantino’s bid, casting aside Smullen’s endorsement from the New York Republican Committee.

Constantino’s victory underscores the power of Trump’s endorsement in a district he has won during each of his three presidential campaigns. His win also highlights how a candidate who’s fashioned himself in a MAGA mold can continue to resonate in a largely rural and predominantly white district that has struggled economically for decades.

A former boxer, Constantino has dabbled in music, producing songs that praise Trump. He initially drew Stone’s attention after erecting a large “Vote for Trump” sign on a building in Amsterdam, N.Y., a city less than an hour west of Albany. Constantino also gifted Trump a bronze statue in the president’s likeness.

The circus-like primary became a bruising battle between a first-time candidate who channeled Trump-style promotion and attacks against an establishment favorite with a long, accomplished resume.

Constantino referred to Smullen as “Slime Bob” and called him “evil” in a text message to his rival. Smullen, in turn, called Constantino “unfit” and knocked his prior enrollment as a Democrat.

The race became so bitter that Smullen refused to shake Constantino’s hand at the conclusion of their only televised debate.

Constantino poured $10 million of his own money into the race and spent more than $3.8 million on TV ads, saturating upstate media market airwaves. Smullen’s campaign spent a fraction of that amount, more than $500,000 in ad spending, according to the tracking firm AdImpact.

The sticker impresario also displayed a marketing flare, printing t-shirts that touted his Trump endorsement.

Smullen leaned heavily on his biography and background as a combat Marine. But he often found himself responding — sometimes angrily — to Constantino’s barrage of attacks.

Constantino will now have to make peace with some New York power brokers as he pivots to the general election. Smullen is set to remain on the November ballot with the backing of the state Conservative Party’s ballot line. Constantino is being sued for defamation by that party’s leader, Jerry Kassar.

The House seat opened after Stefanik, who has represented the area for more than a decade, announced she would leave Congress after scuttling her gubernatorial campaign. Stefanik was previously Trump’s nominee for United Nations ambassador, but that was yanked amid concerns her vacancy would complicate the House Republicans’ narrow majority.

Stefanik did not endorse in the race to replace her.