Congress
Republicans in the dark on White House plan for Obamacare abortion restrictions
The White House’s silence on how its health care plan deals with abortion is causing a headache for Republicans on Capitol Hill.
For many GOP members, an expansion of abortion restrictions in Obamacare is a must-have. But the White House’s decision to leave the issue out of its tentative framework caught Republicans off guard, leaving them in the dark about whether the president would ultimately stake out a position publicly, according to two aides granted anonymity to disclose private discussions.
The fight over the Hyde amendment, which bars federal funding for abortion, is just one of many landmines that need to be cleared before any health care deal to extend expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies can be reached. It also comes on top of GOP backlash to other aspects of the White House’s health policy framework that leaked Sunday.
“No Republican has voted for Obamacare or an Obamacare extension or expansion,” said a senior Senate Republican aide, granted anonymity to speak candidly. “Asking members to do that and not including Hyde would be impossible for many.”
The White House did not respond to requests for comment on the president’s stance.
The proposal the administration had planned to roll out this week consisted of a two-year extension of the ACA’s enhanced subsidies with new limitations favored by conservatives, such as a cutoff for people with higher incomes and a requirement that everyone pay a minimum monthly premium. But the White House gave no indication of whether it endorsed GOP lawmakers’ demand to also prohibit any insurance plan that receives a federal subsidy from covering abortion services.
Gavin Oxley, a spokesperson with Americans United for Life, said it would be helpful for the White House to publicly lay out its position on the Hyde question to give lawmakers an idea of how to proceed.
Not weighing in now, or proceeding with a plan without abortion restrictions, “would ultimately fracture the wide-reaching coalition that got President Trump re-elected,” Oxley said.
“We believe the Administration and pro-life leaders in Congress will come to the table in good faith with a plan that includes Hyde,” he continued. “But should it not, we will be prepared to reject such a plan.”
House and Senate Republicans, as well as dozens of anti-abortion groups that havespent months lobbying Congress and the White House, oppose any extension of the subsidies that doesn’t bar all insurance plans in the individual market from covering abortion. One of the people granted anonymity to speak candidly said that including the abortion funding restrictions was a “red line” for a broad swath of Republicans.
“We don’t have any details on this plan, but Senator Young supports Hyde protections and believes they should apply to any taxpayer funded health care spending,” said Leah Selk, spokesperson for Republican Sen. Todd Young of Indiana.
The hard line for Republicans creates a narrow window for bipartisan agreement, if any, before the end of the year, when the subsidies are set to expire and cause premiums to skyrocket. Democrats, whose votes are needed to clear the filibuster in the Senate to advance most legislation, have declared that abortion restrictions would be a non-starter in ongoing negotiations.
“Instead of working with Democrats to fix the health care crisis they created, Republicans now want to hold women’s health care hostage and force their radical agenda on the American people,” said Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the Finance Committee that has jurisdiction over much of the sprawling U.S. health system, in a recent floor speech. “I have one thing to say to that: not on my watch.”
Likely cognizant of this political reality, the White House’s decision to sidestep the abortion question was intended to allow the administration to avoid drawing attention to an issue that could have immediately jeopardized the plan’s viability, said a Republican aide with knowledge of the discussions – even if its silence has actually had the opposite effect.
“Look, it’s no secret that this administration is not rushing to put a lot of political capital on the issue of abortion if they can avoid it,” said Patrick Brown, a fellow with the conservative think tank Ethics and Public Policy Center, which has been part of the roiling debate over abortion restrictions in Obamacare. “It’s not something I think they have any interest in highlighting.”
The abortion standoff is just one of many factors complicating a proposed deal to extend insurance subsidies. Deep divisions remain around who should qualify for such subsidies, how generous they should be, and what kind of health services are covered.
Any agreement would need Trump’s blessing, giving Republicans political cover to vote for an extension of the health reform law they have raged against for more than a decade. But given this difficult landscape, conservative lobbyists are skeptical that passage is possible even if Trump endorsed abortion restrictions. Those in close contact with lawmakers say it’s unlikely an extension of the subsidies could win 60 votes in the Senate — or even 50.
“It’d be very difficult, even if they do it through reconciliation,” said Tom McClusky, the director of government affairs for Catholic Vote. “On the subsidies alone, I think you have a large enough contingent on the Republican side that don’t want them renewed at all — regardless of if you can somehow miraculously figure out the protections of Hyde.”
Since its inception more than a decade ago, the Affordable Care Act has barred federal subsidies from paying for abortions, but left it up to states whether health insurance plans in the individual market could cover abortion using other funding.
Half of states have opted to ban all coverage of abortion on their Obamacare markets, including some where abortion itself is legal, like Pennsylvania and Arizona. In the remaining 25 states, abortion coverage through Obamacare is either allowed or required, though any claims paid out involving the termination of a pregnancy come from a separate account that doesn’t use any federal subsidies.
If Congress passes an Obamacare subsidy extension that includes the abortion restrictions conservatives are demanding, it would force roughly a dozen states where abortion coverage is mandatory to make a tough decision: change their laws or risk losing billions of dollars. In the states where abortion coverage is allowed but not required, it would be up to individual insurance plans whether to lose federal funding or drop abortion coverage.
After nearly a year of the Trump administration clawing power away from Capitol Hill and dictating everything from spending to military action, some anti-abortion advocates are baffled by the lack of a firm message on how the Hyde amendment’s ban on abortion funding applies to Obamacare.
“It’s in tension with this administration’s broader approach to dealing with Congress, which has been very heavy handed — sort of, ‘We are calling the shots. Sit back and let us drive,’” said Brown. “But it would be their preference to sit in the back seat on that issue specifically.”
Benjamin Guggenheim contributed to this report.
A top pollster for President Donald Trump is pushing back on recent public polling showing Republican Mike Rogers trailing progressive Abdul El-Sayed in the marquee Michigan Senate race.
Tony Fabrizio, who is conducting polling for Rogers, says the polls released this month are over-sampling Democratic-leaning voters, specifically college-educated and Black voters, according to an internal memo obtained by Blue Light News. A Susquehanna poll released this month showed El-Sayed leading by seven points and a TIPP poll showed him leading by four points.
El-Sayed’s lead in those polls is a “fake narrative,” Fabrizio wrote. His polling for AARP — conducted alongside Democratic firm Impact Research — showed the race essentially tied.
The warning follows huge polling misses in the Democratic primaries in the Michigan, Wisconsin and Florida, which he wrote were “some of the most egregious examples of public polling failures in recent memory.” It’s also a sign that Republicans are wary of the string of bad polling numbers for Rogers in the race, which is crucial for determining control of the chamber.
Jim Lee, CEO of Susquehanna Polling and Research, told Blue Light News that the firm did not oversample any demographics. “I think their head is in the sand,” Lee said, noting in part what he said was a gap in enthusiasm between Democratic and Republican voters this cycle.
TIPP didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Fabrizio, in the memo, argued on the Susquehanna poll: “50% of the sample in this survey is college-educated – making them massively overrepresented to what they should be. We took a look at 2022 and 2024 Exit Polls and VoteCast data and, as shown below, there is no indication that the Michigan electorate will be anywhere near 50% college-educated. In fact, it is unlikely they will be even 40% college-educated.”
He also noted “a huge gap” between college-educated and non-college educated voters.
“This was the driving issue of the public polling misses for President Trump in 2016 and 2024, especially in the Upper Midwest states of Michigan and Wisconsin,” Fabrizio added. “By increasing college-educated voters by 10+ points, and thus decreasing non-college educated voters by the same, we can pretty much guarantee this poll is significantly overestimating El-Sayed’s vote share.”
President Donald Trump and hemp industry lobbyists are hoping to win a final vote on Capitol Hill next week to skirt a ban on intoxicating products — with shutdown politics as leverage.
Nine months ago, Congress cleared a bill to close a loophole created in 2018 that allowed the sale of some hemp-derived products containing types of THC colloquially known as “diet weed.” That ban is supposed to take effect in mid-November, or roughly 11 weeks, to limit overall THC levels in hemp products that can get people high — including gummies, canned drinks, pills and vapes.
But Trump and industry leaders successfully lobbied Senate leaders to add language to a government funding patch earlier this month to delay the ban until mid-December, with the administration promising instead to finalize regulations cracking down on how the products are made and sold.
Now House Republican leaders are aiming to clear that bill for Trump’s signature early next week, according to three people granted anonymity to disclose private discussions. And many GOP lawmakers are not pleased at the prospect of being rolled.
Rep. Riley Moore (R-W.Va.) told reporters last week that he expected House lawmakers would “iron out” some “sticking points” with the Senate-passed funding bill, “particularly the hemp issue,” rather than pass the legislation without changes — which appears to be GOP leadership’s current plan.
Sen. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) was more blunt: “it is morally reprehensible to threaten a shutdown over a loophole Congress agreed to close to less than a year ago,” he said in a statement Thursday.
Yet despite fierce pushback from lawmakers warning that the intoxicating products are harming Americans, hemp industry leaders are preparing for a victory, betting members of Congress ultimately care more about swiftly passing legislation to avert a Sept. 30 government shutdown before the midterms.
“Any effort to try to shut down the government — over a one-month delay on a hemp issue — I don’t think is going to fly well with most members of Congress,” Jonathan Miller, a top lawyer for the U.S. Hemp Roundtable advocacy group, said in an interview this week.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment about its plans for imposing new rules on hemp products in the coming months. But the Trump administration is expected to need more time than mid-December to finalize regulations, so hemp industry representatives are discussing a “regulatory bridge” that would impose temporary rules while continuing to avoid a full ban, according to Miller.
That could include restricting purchase to adults age 21 and older, blocking imports from China, mandating certain manufacturing practices, cracking down on copycat products that look like popular candy or potato chips and requiring transparency in product labeling.
While lawmakers have been back home over their summer break, hemp industry leaders have fanned out across the country to make their case for this plan. “The hemp industry does not have an August recess,” Christopher Lackner, head of the Hemp Beverage Alliance, said in an interview this month of the group’s work to facilitate passage of the Senate-passed funding bill.
Trump administration officials have also been telling reluctant lawmakers they will use the one-month delay to work on regulations. “The White House has committed to me that they’re committed to regulate the industry,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) said in an interview this month.
Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.), who fought in the Senate to retain the ban as originally intended, said White House officials have said “they don’t want another extension, and I agree with that.”
In a statement, Ricketts said that “manufactured high-THC products like gummies and drinks are putting our kids in the hospital” and need to be taken “off our shelves.”
Some supporters of the ban say the White House and industry are just employing delay tactics to get to December, when lawmakers will face another pressure campaign to delay the ban while they are motivated to avert a shutdown before leaving town for the holidays.
“What they’re really after is to try to jam this on some must-pass, end-of-the-year funding,” Budd told reporters earlier this month. “That’s really what this is about.”
Budd fought to block the delay in the Senate as part of the government funding measure, but his amendment to that end was shot down 61-32 before the chamberpassed the legislation, sending it on for House action.
Trump personally called Budd after the senator filed the amendment and talked about creating federal regulations for hemp products, according to a Senate aide granted anonymity to describe the private discussion.
Days later, Budd demanded a vote on the amendment anyway and continues to slam the hemp industry.
“It is clear that businesses that sell unregulated, intoxicating products will stop at nothing to protect their bottom line, even at the expense of children’s health and safety,” he said in a statement this week.
Besides lawmakers fighting to ban intoxicating hemp products, others are pushing alongside the White House and industry for federal regulations.
Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-W.Va.) has crafted legislation that would direct the Food and Drug Administration to create federal rules for intoxicating hemp products and wants to see mandates for third-party testing, as well as new THC limits per serving.
Griffith told reporters Thursday the “deadline push” in the Senate-passed government funding measure “is not long enough” to finalize necessary regulations.
Since state limits for THC vary widely throughout the country and the federal government has taken years to step in since the hemp loophole was created in 2018, Griffith argued it makes more sense to regulate the intoxicating products than to enact a federal ban.
“That horse is out of the barn,” he said. “What we need to do is corral it.”
Kelsey Brugger, Amanda Friedman and Rachel Shin contributed to this report.
President Donald Trump’s $400-million super PAC is taking its first steps into the general election: hosting a public event in battleground Michigan, headlined by Vice President JD Vance.
Battleground Republicans have been clamoring for Trump’s MAGA Inc. to spend in competitive races. The Michigan event is an early indicator of how the massive group might seek to use its funds to help the party keep control of Washington.
Vance will be joined in Sterling, Michigan, on Monday by GOP Senate nominee Mike Rogers, 10th District nominee Mike Bouchard Jr. and gubernatorial nominee John James, along with several other Michigan Republicans, according to an event advisory from MAGA Inc.
The GOP sees Michigan’s open seat as its best Senate pickup target this fall as Rogers faces former public health leader and progressive Abdul El-Sayed, who emerged from a grueling primary earlier this month.
“MAGA Inc. will be hosting events throughout the nation to ensure that Republicans retain control of Congress in order to finish cleaning up the mess the Biden-Harris-Pelosi-Schumer Democrats left,” said Alex Pfeiffer, spokesperson for MAGA Inc. “We’re not going back to their record inflation, open borders, and surging crime.”
MAGA Inc. is sitting on more funds than any other super PAC, and Republican donors and battleground candidates have been hoping it will unleash that money to help the party keep control of the House and Senate.
So far, the group has only spent only a few million dollars out of its massive fundraising haul, and its funds have largely gone to competitive Republican primaries. Most recently, it spent $827,000 on phone calls and text messages to boost Sen. Darline Graham (R-S.C.) in the state’s special primary.
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