Slingshot News: ‘We’re Running Out Of Resources’: Mike Johnson Lies For His Master, Claims Trump Is ‘Bent Over Backwards’ Finding Money To Keep Government Funded [Video]
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ABC News: ‘It’s very much a worry’: Some Americans fear high premiums if ACA subsidies expire
ACA enhanced premium tax credits are set to expire at the end of the year.
As the federal government shutdown enters its third week, some Americans are worried about the future of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies.
The subsidies, or premium tax credits, help lower or eliminate the out-of-pocket cost of monthly premiums for those who purchase insurance through the health insurance marketplace.
They were enhanced during the COVID-19 pandemic and are currently set to expire at the end of 2025.
Democrats have been demanding that Republicans pass extensions of the subsidies before the government is reopened, while the GOP says it won’t negotiate until a clean funding bill passes and the government reopens.
Mediaite: Fox News Butts Clip of Mike Johnson Citing ‘Hate America’ Rally With Smiling Protesters Waving American Flags
Fox News drew the attention of CNN media reporter Brian Stelter on Saturday when it butted clips of House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) attacking the “hate America” No Kings rallies in with peaceful protesters waving American flags.
Stelter posted to X, “Fox News just did this, BTW. As people walked by waving American flags, a Fox reporter in Atlanta tossed to a clip of Johnson’s “hate America” venom, along with a Hakeem Jeffries sound bite, then back live to normal people protesting in a local park.”
Sure enough, Fox News reporter Madison Scarpino showed video of peaceful, smiling protesters at the rally in Atlanta, while saying “millions of Americans” were expected to come out across the country.
Fox News Butts Clip of Mike Johnson Citing ‘Hate America’ Rally With Smiling Protesters Waving American Flags
Fox News drew the attention of Brian Stelter when it butted clips of Mike Johnson attacking the “hate America” rallies with peaceful protesters waving flags.
Mirror US: Trump admin will ‘incite’ violence during No Kings protest, ex-GOP warns
Around 2,700 No Kings protests are expected to sweep across the nation on Saturday, making it the largest peaceful protest in American history.
“What my former party is scared to death of – and some have told me this privately – is mammoth peaceful protests,” said Walsh, who quit the GOP in 2013. “That’s what scares the heck out of them. What they want is violence, what they want is division – they don’t want millions and millions of Americans united in defending democracy.”
Trump admin will ‘incite’ violence during No Kings protest, ex-GOP warns
Around 2,700 No Kings protests are expected to sweep across the nation on Saturday, making it the largest peaceful protest in American history.
https://www.themirror.com/news/politics/trump-admin-incite-violence-during-1453143
MSNBC: Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva: ‘Speaker Johnson is trolling me’ [Video]
Democrats escalate their pressure on House Speaker Mike Johnson to seat Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva as Arizona’s attorney general threatens legal action and Hakeem Jeffries vows a swift response for failing to swear her in. Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz) joins The Weeknight to speak out.
Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva: ‘Speaker Johnson is trolling me’
Democrats escalate their pressure on House Speaker Mike Johnson to seat Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva as Arizona’s attorney general threatens legal action and Hakeem Jeffries vows a swift response for failing to swear her in. Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz) joins The Weeknight to speak out.
Slingshot News: ‘AOC Engaged In A Political Stunt’: Mike Johnson Blows A Fuse, Gets Worked Up Over AOC Calling Her Out During CNN Town Hall
In an appearance on CNN’s “The Lead” with Jake Tapper, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) gets worked up over Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) calling her out during yesterday’s town hall hosted by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins.
‘AOC Engaged In A Political Stunt’: Mike Johnson Blows A Fuse, Gets Worked Up Over AOC Calling Her Out During CNN Town Hall
In an appearance on CNN’s “The Lead” with Jake Tapper, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) gets worked up over Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) calling her out during yesterday’s town hall hosted by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins.
Newsweek: Yosemite National Park hit with wave of illegal activity during shutdown
Yosemite National Park hit with wave of illegal activity during shutdown
People have entered sections of the park without a permit, camped illegally and taken part in unpermitted BASE jumping as lawmakers’ standoff over policy and funding enters its third week.
https://www.newsweek.com/yosemite-national-park-illegal-activity-shutdown-10875770
NBC News: Mike Johnson calls Obamacare funds a ‘boondoggle’ as shutdown drags on
Johnson also addressed conservative calls to repeal Obamacare, whose enhanced tax credits form the main dispute between the two parties that led to the funding impasse.
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., slammed the expiring Obamacare subsidies at the center of the government funding standoff a “boondoggle” as the shutdown approaches the two-week mark with no end in sight.
“The Covid-era Obamacare subsidy that they’re all talking about that’s supposedly the issue of the day doesn’t expire until the end of December. And by the way, it is the Democrats who created that subsidy, who put the expiration date on it,” he told reporters at a press conference on Monday, the 13th day of the shutdown.
“They put an end date on it because they knew it was supposed to be related to Covid, and it’s become a boondoggle,” Johnson added. “When you subsidize the health care system and you pay insurance companies more, the prices increase.”
Johnson’s comments escalate the battle one day before the Senate is slated to return to Washington, albeit with no clear path to end the shutdown. It will test the patience and resolve of both parties as federal employees — including law enforcement, air traffic controllers and TSA staff — are slated to miss paychecks
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has maintained that Democrats won’t relent and support a short-term GOP funding bill through Nov. 21 unless it includes their priorities, most notably an extension of the health care funds. The money in question, first passed in 2021, limits premiums of a benchmark insurance plan to 8.5% of the buyer’s income.
“Speaker Johnson chose vacation over fixing this healthcare crisis,” Schumer recently wrote on X. “In his own state, 85,000 Louisianans will lose their health insurance and thousands will see their premiums skyrocket. But he’s keeping the government shut down instead of fixing this.”
Johnson has kept the Republican-led House out of session since Sept. 19, and he is continuing the recess through this week, drawing heavy criticism from Democrats and even some Republicans who say they want to return to work.
The speaker said Monday that at a minimum, “If indeed the subsidy is going to be continued, it needs real reform. But there’s a lot of ideas on the table to do that.”
He didn’t get specific, but Republicans have discussed a range of ideas such as an income cap for eligibility, a requirement that every Obamacare enrollee pays something into the system, a phase-out after two or three years, and stricter abortion limits.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., the author of a bill to extend the Obamacare, or Affordable Care Act, funds permanently, said she’s open to a negotiation on the details.
“There are a number of changes that can be made to the program to address some of the concerns,” she said. “One of the things, though, I think we need to be very thoughtful about is where you start to make changes that show a dramatic drop off in numbers of people who are helped. And that needs to be a longer discussion that people need to really look at some data and get the information before making decisions about that.”
But Shaheen flatly ruled out stricter abortion restrictions, saying existing law already blocks Obamacare funding for abortion — despite some conservatives wanting to make it more stringent.
“That’s a nonstarter,” Shaheen said. “It’s not an issue. We already dealt with that issue.”
Shaheen, a longtime critic of shutdowns who is standing with Schumer in opposition to the GOP bill, said it’s not viable to wait until the end of the year to act on the Obamacare funding, as insurers are setting rates for 2026 now.
“People are getting their premium increases right now, and it’s one more thing on top of the cost of food and electricity and rent and child care and all the other expenses that people are incurring,” Shaheen told NBC News.
Republicans control the Senate by a margin of 53-47, but they need 60 votes to break a filibuster and pass a funding bill. They are currently five Democratic votes short, and have seen no movement since the shutdown began on Oct. 1.
In response to Republicans branding it the “Schumer shutdown,” the Democratic leader replied, “Republicans control the Senate, the House, and the White House.”
Implied in Schumer’s comments is that Republicans can abolish the 60-vote threshold in order to re-open the government if they refuse to negotiate to get Democratic votes. But GOP party leaders are deeply reluctant to use the “nuclear option” on the legislative filibuster, as that would permanently change the Senate and set a precedent conservatives fear they’ll regret when Democrats return to power.
“The super-majority requirement is something that makes the Senate the Senate,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters on Friday. “And honestly, if we had done that, there’s a whole lot of bad things that could have been done by the other side.”
“If the Democrats had won the majority, they probably would have tried to nuke the filibuster, and then you’d have four new United States senators from Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia. You’d have a packed Supreme Court,” Thune said. “You’d have abortion on demand.”
Johnson also weighed in on growing calls on the right to repeal Obamacare, a longstanding goal of conservatives, and said in a lengthy answer to NBC News that “Obamacare failed the American people” and that the system needs “dramatic reform.”
“Can we completely repeal and replace Obamacare? Many of us are skeptical about that now, because the roots are so deep. It was really sinister, the way, in my view, the way it was created,” he said on Monday. “I believe Obamacare was created to implode upon itself, to collapse upon itself.”
His response came one day after House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., posted on X: “House Republicans are now scheming to repeal the Affordable Care Act. And take away healthcare from tens of millions of Americans. How did that work out for the extremists the last time they tried it?”
Mike Johnson slams Obamacare funds as a ‘boondoggle’ as shutdown drags on
Johnson also addressed conservative calls to repeal Obamacare, whose enhanced tax credits form the main dispute between the two parties that led to the funding impasse.
The Republicans — led by fascist asshole Mike Johnson — want to double healthcare costs for millions of families.
Fuck you and rot in Hell, Mike Johnson, you fascist piece of shit!
Guardian: Why is the US House speaker refusing to seat an elected Democrat?
Adelita Grijalva won a landslide election for her Arizona seat. But Mike Johnson is defying the will of the voters
The people of Arizona’s seventh congressional district – a vast territory extending across the state’s south, along the Mexican border – have been denied representation in Congress for weeks. That’s because Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, has refused to swear in Adelita Grijalva, their representative-elect, who won a special election to fill the seat vacated by her father, the late Raúl Grijalva, in a landslide late last month. Grijalva, a Democrat, has been largely ignored by the speaker. Unlike sworn representatives, she has to go around the Capitol with an escort. There’s an office with her name on the door, but she hasn’t been allowed inside, and has worked instead out of a conference room on another floor.
It is an unprecedented abuse of procedural power on the part of the speaker, one that has had the effect of silencing a political opponent and denying representation to the citizens of her district. In refusing to seat Grijalva, Johnson has defied the will of Arizona’s voters, and effectively nullified, at least for the time being, a legitimate congressional election. He has persisted in this even in defiance of his own promises, after saying on Friday he would seat her this week once the House returned to session – and then telling lawmakers they wouldn’t reconvene this week after all. Last week, Grijalva showed up to a three-and-a-half-minute pro forma session, hoping to be sworn in then. (Johnson has sworn in other representatives at pro forma sessions in the past.) But the Republican presiding over the session, Morgan Griffith, ignored the effort. On a weekend talkshow, Grijalva said she had heard “absolutely nothing” from the speaker about the timing of her swearing in.
Grijalva thinks she knows why. There is no political calculation that could justify Mike Johnson’s refusal to seat a duly elected member of the House: Grijalva won her race, and both his oath to the constitution and his responsibilities to the body that he leads require Johnson to seat her. But in lieu of deference to these higher aims, Grijalva suspects that Johnson is pursuing a much more cynical one: in refusing to swear her in and allow her to take up the office to which she has been elected, Johnson, Grijalva thinks, is aiming to stop her becoming the final member of Congress whose signature is needed to force a vote on the release of confidential files related to Jeffrey Epstein. Currently, the petition has 217 signatures; it needs only 218. Grijalva has pledged to support it. “Why the rules are different for me – the only thing that I can think of is the Epstein files,” Grijalva told the New York Times.
The Epstein scandal, and the ensuing fallout from new and resurfaced revelations about Donald Trump’s deep and longstanding friendship with the deceased child sex trafficker and financier, has long plagued the Trump administration. One of the few genuine threats to Trump’s grip over his coalition came a few months ago, when his justice department refused to release files relating to the case, causing outrage among a group of rightwing podcasters, media personalities and conspiracy theorists who had long traded on speculation about the case and accusations that powerful Democrats were involved in a cover-up.
The discharge petition, if passed, would not be likely to result in the actual release of the documents. The move has little support in the Republican-backed Senate; there is no chance that Donald Trump, who has opposed the release of the Epstein files, calling them a “waste” of “time and energy”, would sign a bill into law making them public. But what the move would accomplish is forcing a full chamber vote on the matter, requiring every member of the Republican caucus to go on the record either endorsing the release of the files – and thereby displeasing Trump – or opposing it – thereby displeasing their voters. The Times has reported that Johnson’s delay is giving the White House more time to pressure Republicans who have already signed on to the discharge petition to remove their signatures before the Grijalva is sworn in.
And so it seems that Johnson is ignoring the constitution and subverting the will of the voters in order to buy time, in an effort to spare his party embarrassment over their president’s one-time close confidence with a pedophile.
But the refusal to seat Grijalva has broader implications. In using his procedural control over the functioning of Congress to deny a seat to an elected Democrat, Johnson is setting a dangerous precedent and raising questions about future transfers of power. If a Democratic majority is elected in 2026, will the outgoing Republican speaker duly swear in its members? Or will he use his procedural powers to delay one, several or many of them from taking their oaths of office – either under the pretext of election fraud or personal ineligibility, or out of sheer, bald unwillingness to hand over power to members of a party that the president and his allies have repeatedly described as illegitimate?
These are no longer fanciful questions; they are ones that must be asked. The Republicans who refused to subvert the law for Trump’s benefit on January 6 are now largely gone; the ones who have replaced them appear much more willing to place party before country. Every day that Grijalva is not sworn in, the shadow they cast over 2026 darkens.
Sacramento Bee: Multiple Republicans Join Democrats on Immigration Bill
Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL) and other Republican lawmakers have backed the Dignity Act, a bipartisan bill aimed at overhauling the immigration system. The legislation aims to provide legal status for undocumented immigrants, bolster border security, and reform visa policies. If passed, the act would lead to significant changes to current immigration laws, reflecting a push for comprehensive reform.
Salazar said, “It takes a lot of courage to step up and say that you might be part of the solution.” She added, “They did break the law. They are illegals or undocumented.”
Salazar stated, “But they have been in the country for more than five years, contributing to the economy. Those people, someone gave them a job, and they are needed because we need hands in order to continue being the number one economy in the world.”
The Dignity Act grants legal status to undocumented immigrants, reforms asylum screening for better legal access, sets up Latin American processing centers to reduce risky migration, creates STEM PhD work visas, and boosts ICE accountability.
The Dignity Act has received backing from several Republican lawmakers. It also gained support from Democrats like Veronica Escobar (D-TX) and Adriano Espaillat (D-NY).Escobar (D-TX) said, “I have seen firsthand the devastating consequences of our broken immigration system, and as a member of Congress, I take seriously my obligation to propose a solution. Realistic, common-sense compromise is achievable, and is especially important given the urgency of this moment. I consider the Dignity Act of 2025 a critical first step to overhauling this broken system.”
Immigration attorney Rosanna Berardi questioned the bill’s viability, citing conflicts with enforcement policies under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Critics argued it could undermine efforts to curb unauthorized migration.
Immigration attorney Rosanna Berardi said, “Without congressional action to roll back many of the core immigration elements of H.R. 1—especially the funding and restrictions around detention, deportations, and parole—there’s really no practical space for the Dignity Act’s approach. However, I do think this framework could help create bipartisan conversations focused on creating easier work-visa access and temporary status for migrant workers in industries like agriculture, hospitality, health care and manufacturing.”
Salazar emphasized the need for a comprehensive strategy to meet labor demands and maintain economic stability. If enacted, the legislation would likely spark a reevaluation of national immigration policies.