The Hill
Tossing Speaker Johnson would be a huge mistake
As 2025 begins, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) faces a perilous challenge to retain his gavel. When the House votes on Friday, Johnson can only afford to lose one Republican representative.
The problem? Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) has already vowed to oppose him, likening Trump’s endorsement of Johnson to his controversial backing of former Speaker Paul Ryan. Meanwhile, others, like Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), remain undecided. To say that Johnson is teetering on the ed...
In shift, Trump downgrades soaring rhetoric on campaign promises
President-elect Trump on the campaign trail made grandiose promises to voters to bring down costs quickly, to end the war in Ukraine before he even took office and to use tariffs to bolster the U.S. economy and manufacturing.
Since winning November’s election, Trump has indicated delivering on those promises may not be as simple as advertised.
Trump in a recent “Meet the Press” interview said he could not guarantee tariffs would not lead to higher consumer prices.
Don’t blame insurers for what doctor and hospital cartels did to US health care
The murder of the UnitedHealthcare CEO has touched off a wave of anger that’s easy to understand. “Deny, delay, depose” comes from the lived experiences of thousands of Americans. But how much does health insurance actually cost us? According to the American Medical Association, it’s just 6 percent of health care spending.
In other words, if insurers were to donate every cent of profit they made, your health care would become just 3 percent&...
Fiscal concerns should not hold up tax cuts
When Republican lawmakers check in with the small businesses in their districts during the Christmas recess, they will likely hear one overriding message: Pass tax cuts now. According to Job Creators Network's new national poll, small businesses support extending the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which took effect in 2018 and expires next year, by a 5-to-1 margin.
These tax cuts have been a lifeline for small businesses nationwide that have dealt with four years of challeng...
Biden administration withdraws birth control rules
The Biden administration is withdrawing a set of proposed rules aimed at expanding access to contraception that would have made it more difficult for employer-sponsored health plans and insurers to exclude coverage of birth control.
The move, announced late Monday in a Federal Register notice, will leave in place Trump-era rules allowing employers to cite "non-religious moral objections" to the Affordable Care Act's requirement to cover contraception.
The Depart...
Biden ‘AWOL’ amid shutdown fight: ‘He’s completely disappeared’
President Biden and his administration were largely absent from the onerous negotiations on government funding that gripped Capitol Hill this week.
Instead, President-elect Trump and his allies were the ones wrestling with lawmakers over a continuing resolution as a government shutdown appeared increasingly inevitable.
The White House on Friday blew off a host of questioning over Biden’s absence from the talks, insisting they were staying out of it in part because it...
Shutdown chaos has Republicans worried about moving Trump agenda
Republican lawmakers say Congress’s near brush with a government shutdown shows that House Republicans do not have a functional majority, giving them a bad feeling about how difficult it will be to pass President-elect Trump's agenda in 2025.
While Republicans in both chambers broadly agree on the need to secure the border and extend Trump’s expiring tax cuts, GOP senators fear that passing legislation to accomplish those goals, as well as raising the debt limit and cutting fe...
ACA enrollment marks another record year
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The GOP’s little House of horrors
Can the fragile GOP majority in the U.S. House Of Representatives bear the weight of Donald Trump’s ambitious legislative agenda? Will this version of Republican control of the peoples’ House be even more ineffectual and unstable than it was in the last two years? The early returns are not favorable for the future of the second Trump administration.
Trump doesn’t need a mandate because he has the power if he keeps Congress and the Supreme Court in line. But that’s a b...