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mike johnson
Dems Say They'll Stand Firm Against Budget Deal Unless GOP Halts Attack on Healthcare
Health insurance premiums are expected to rise significantly for approximately 22 million Americans after Republicans ended a tax credit for those enrolled in programs under the Affordable Care Act.
Sep 11, 2025
Democratic leaders said Thursday that they plan to hold up negotiations on a potential government shutdown unless Republicans agree to forfeit a policy change that is expected to dramatically raise health insurance premiums for millions of Americans.
Health insurance premiums are expected to rise significantly for approximately 22 million Americans enrolled in Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace plans after Republicans refused to extend enhanced tax credits when passing Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" in July.
In remarks on Capitol Hill Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he and Democratic House Leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.) were in total agreement not to negotiate unless Republicans agree to extend the tax credits.
“On this issue, we’re totally united. The Republicans have to come to meet with us in a true bipartisan negotiation to satisfy the American people’s needs on healthcare, or they won't get our votes, plain and simple,” Schumer warned at a press conference.
"We will not support a partisan spending agreement that continues to rip away healthcare from the American people. Period. Full stop,” Jeffries said.
The enhanced tax credits, which were created in 2021 under the American Rescue Plan Act and later extended through the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, are credited with reducing the insurance premiums of millions of people who purchase health insurance through government exchanges.
The tax credits have reduced insurance premiums by 44% on average—over $700 per enrollee—and have contributed to the number of people purchasing insurance on the exchanges more than doubling to over 24 million in 2025.
According to a report released Wednesday by KFF:
Nine in 10 enrollees (92%) receive some amount of premium tax credit. If these enhanced tax credits expire at the end of 2025, out-of-pocket premiums would rise by over 75% on average for the vast majority of individuals and families buying coverage through the Affordable Care Act (ACA) Marketplaces.
The increases come as insurance companies, citing "slumping share prices," per the Financial Times, are planning the largest hike to premiums in 15 years, including an 18% increase for those buying from ACA exchanges.
These increases will come on top of those already expected as a result of a Trump administration rule passed in June, which increased the maximum percentages of income and raw dollar amounts that insurance plans could charge patients out-of-pocket for care.
According to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, these changes "will make coverage less affordable for millions of people." The CBPP estimates that "a family of four making $85,000 will have to pay an additional $197 in premiums for coverage in 2026" while a "family of two or more people on the same plan could face an additional $900 in medical bills if a family member is seriously ill or injured in 2026, and an individual enrolled in self-only coverage could face an additional $450 in medical bills."
In all, the Congressional Budget Office estimated in May that as a result of these mounting costs, over 5 million people will no longer be able to afford their health insurance plans.
"The death star of American healthcare, the insurance companies are preparing to blow up the lives of millions of middle-class families," warned journalist David Sirota in a podcast for The Lever.
Republicans in Congress are facing mounting pressure to extend the tax credits and stave off the premium hikes. Last week, 11 Republicans in Congress signed onto a bill that would extend the credits through 2026, allowing them to avoid the issue until after the midterm elections.
A survey conducted in July by two of Trump's most trusted pollsters, Tony Fabrizio and Bob Ward, found that for Republicans in the most competitive districts, "a 3-point deficit becomes a 15-point deficit" against the generic Democrat if they allow the healthcare premium tax credit to expire.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has stayed coy about whether he and the Republican caucus plan to support extending the credits.
"I'm not going to forecast that right now," Johnson told reporters earlier this week, while also saying, "There's a lot of opposition to it as well."
Democrats, meanwhile, have proposed a competing bill to make the subsidies permanent and are hoping to use this month's budget showdown to force Republicans to make concessions on the issue.
As David Dayen wrote Monday for the American Prospect, it sets up a challenging strategic and moral dilemma for Democrats:
On the one hand, Democrats fighting for healthcare benefits speaks to an issue where they have the highest level of support from the public. They would credibly be able to tell voters that they fought for lower costs during an affordability crisis and won, and that more of that will happen if they are given power in the midterms.
On the other hand, Republicans willingly drove the healthcare system toward the point of oblivion, and some may question why Democrats would offer a lifeline to bail them out. In this reading, relieving Republicans of the consequences of their health care plans would be harmful to Democratic midterm chances; Trump would take credit for keeping health care costs low.
What's clear, Dayen said, is that "unless action is taken, it will be an enormous example of Trump's failure to rein in the runaway cost of living."
Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen, urged Democrats to stand firm as the fight over a potential government shutdown heats up.
"If Republicans refuse to negotiate and move away from their cost-increasing agenda, then it is Republicans who will be forcing a government-wide shutdown," Gilbert said. "There should be no deal without assurances that the budget will be honored and not impounded, and one that returns care to the American people.”
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From Minnesota to the US Capitol: Tracing the Threat of Christian Nationalism
It’s safe to say that Vance Boelter’s actions were at least partially motivated by sycophants and political figures who twisted the Gospel and scripture for their benefit.
Aug 17, 2025
It’s easy to look at Vance Boelter, who pleaded not guilty to federal charges for murdering a Minnesota state representative and her husband, and think of him as a deeply unwell individual who took out his personal anger and frustration on civil servants. But there’s more at play here.
The ideology reported to have likely contributed to Boelter’s violence is the same set of beliefs espoused by elected officials across the country, including US House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who flies a flag symbolic of those beliefs outside his office.
Boelter graduated from Christ for the Nations Institute, a nonaccredited Bible college in Texas, that is reported to be a “stronghold of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), the charismatic movement that teaches that Christians are called to take over the US government.” Adherents are taught “to see themselves as agents of the supernatural”—a belief Boelter seems to hold about himself based on correspondence with the New York Times. Notable alumni of the Institute include Lance Wallnau and Dutch Sheets. In addition to their roles as self-appointed NAR prophets, both are influential within MAGA circles and were big proponents of the Big Lie, preaching violence to win power.
The NAR, and the related Seven Mountain Mandate theology championed by Wallnau in particular, is a push for total control of society through any means necessary. The Appeal to Heaven flag, propped up by Sheets and associated with the movement, was proudly flown on January 6, 2021 by insurrectionists storming the Capitol building and infamously outside the home of US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. Its presence outside the speaker’s office makes a clear declaration about Christian nationalism and the dangerous NAR as ever-present forces in the highest offices of power, shaping policies that impact the lives of millions of Americans.
Always painting political opponents as enemies of God and your work as God’s will, and calling on adherents to take up arms—even if the intent is metaphorical—leads adherents to being more open to violence.
Wallnau regularly appeared on Christian media outlets and platforms to prop US President Donald Trump up as a holy savior and has called for “spiritual warfare” and expressed support for political violence in support of Trump. Meanwhile, Sheets’ daily YouTube broadcasts reached more than 200,000 views a day to spread the Big Lie. In fact, Matthew D. Taylor, religious studies scholar and Christian nationalism expert, writes, “No Christian leader did more to mobilize Christians to be in DC on January 6 than Dutch Sheets.”
Though we don’t know how closely Boelter followed Wallnau and Sheets, it’s safe to say that his actions were at least partially motivated by sycophants and political figures who twisted the Gospel and scripture for their benefit.
Certainly, neither of these men told Boelter or anyone else to assassinate anyone or take violent action. However, always painting political opponents as enemies of God and your work as God’s will, and calling on adherents to take up arms—even if the intent is metaphorical—leads adherents to being more open to violence. Nonpartisan research organization PRRI, finds that support for Christian nationalism and adherence to right-wing authoritarian views correlate with acceptance of political violence.
For years, men like Wallnau and Sheets have joined the likes of Michael Flynn, David Barton, Sean Feucht, Charlie Kirk, Lara Locke, Alex Jones, Mike Lindell, Jackson Lahmeyer, current Federal Bureau of Investigations Director Kash Patel, and sitting elected officials, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), touring the country through events like ReAwaken America and the Courage Tour. At each stop, they’ve framed their work as a “holy war,” offering speeches steeped in hateful, harmful rhetoric that created a permission structure for violence.
In the immediate aftermath of a tragedy, as happened in Minnesota, when we rush to characterize the perpetrator as a lone wolf, as crazy, we miss the forest for the trees. We begin to normalize the ideologies and conditions that contributed to the violence, risking more harm as they seep more deeply into our culture.
For example, proud evangelical and self-proclaimed “amateur historian” David Barton once called “the most influential evangelist you’ve never heard of,” has secured the ear of lawmakers, both local and national, and has had his fingerprints on “28 bills that have cropped up before 18 states this year,” including my home state of Oklahoma. He’s also one of the leading voices behind the movement to dismantle the US Department of Education—an initiative straight from the pages of Project 2025, which has become the Trump administration’s policy roadmap.
I’ve watched first hand as Oklahoma became a testing ground for Project 2025 and our schools dropped to among the worst in the nation. State Superintendent Ryan Walters has pushed for legislation requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in every classroom. Walters even went so far as to buy Bibles branded with Trump’s name, which he intended to place in every classroom in the state, while seeking to force teachers to teach liturgy instead of literacy.
We cannot, therefore, divorce what happened in Minnesota from the actions on Capitol Hill, in state legislatures, or at school board meetings across the country, for they are bound by an ideology that preaches power by any means necessary.
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Speaker Johnson Calls Illegally Occupied West Bank 'Integral Part' of Israel
"International law is completely unambiguous on this question," said one critic. "What settlers call 'Judea and Samaria' is the legal property of the Palestinians—Israel has zero legal claim to the land."
Aug 04, 2025
House Speaker Mike Johnson on Monday led a high-level Republican delegation on a visit to the occupied West Bank, where the second-in-line to the U.S. presidency told a rapt audience in an illegal Jewish settler colony that they are the rightful owners of the Palestinian territory.
"The mountains of Judea and Samaria are the rightful property of the Jewish people," Johnson (R-La.) said in Ariel, using the biblical name for the West Bank, which includes East Jerusalem. Ariel was built on land stolen from the Palestinian towns of Salfit, Marda, and Iskaka after Israeli forces conquered the West Bank in a 1967 war waged on false pretense of an imminent threat of Egyptian and Syrian attack.
"Judea and Samaria are the front line of the state of Israel and must remain an integral part of it," Johnson added.
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry condemned Johnson's visit, calling his endorsement of Israeli annexation a "blatant violation of international law."
"All settlement activity is illegal and void," the ministry stressed, adding that Johnson's stance "undermines Arab and American efforts to stop the war and cycle of violence, while flagrantly contradicting the declared U.S. position on settlements and settler violence."
According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, at least 1,013 Palestinians, including 214 children, have been killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers in the occupied West Bank since October 2023. Settlers, often protected and sometimes joined by Israeli troops, have launched numerous deadly pogroms and other attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank in what critics say is a bid to finish what Israel started in 1948—the total conquest of Palestine, the ethnic cleansing of its Arab population, and Israeli annexation.
Johnson, who is reportedly the highest-ranking American official to visit an Israeli settlement, was accompanied by U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee—who while running for president in 2008 denied the very existence of the Palestinian people—as well as Reps. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), Nathaniel Moran (R-Texas), Michael Cloud (R-Texas), and Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.).
Tenney leads the congressional Friends of Judea and Samaria Caucus, which supports Israeli annexation of what it calls the "biblical heartland of Israel."
Last month, all 15 Israeli government ministers from Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party urged the prime minister to annex the West Bank. On July 23, members of the Knesset, Israel's Parliament, voted 71-13 in favor of a symbolic measure declaring "Judea and Samaria" to be "an inseparable part of the Land of Israel, the historical, cultural, and spiritual homeland of the Jewish people" and asserting that "Israel has the natural, historical, and legal right to all of the territories of the Land of Israel."
Netanyahu has repeatedly displayed maps showing the Middle East without Palestine, all of whose territory is shown as part of Israel. Following U.S President Donald Trump's reelection last November, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a member of the far-right Religious Zionist party, said that "the year 2025 will be, with God's help, the year of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria."
The Israeli government has repeatedly approved construction and expansion of settlements in a bid to establish irreversible "facts on the ground" that will survive developments in international law and moves by an increasing number of nations to formally recognize Palestinian statehood.
Around 150 U.N. member states currently recognize or plan to recognize Palestine. Recently, France became the first Group of Seven member to announce it will officially recognize Palestine. Last week, Canada said it would also do so, with conditions attached, and the United Kingdom threatened recognition of Palestine if Israel does not take "substantive steps" to end its annihilation of Gaza, where Israeli forces have killed or wounded more than 200,000 people since October 2023.
Last year, the International Court of Justice—which is also weighing a Gaza genocide case against Israel—found that the occupation is an illegal form of apartheid that must end as soon as possible. Both Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and Article 8(2) the International Criminal Court Rome Statute prohibit settlement activity.
Construction of Ariel began in 1978, the same year the U.S. State Department first adopted the official position that Israeli settlements are "inconsistent with international law." That position stood until then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reversed it during the first Trump administration. Biden-era Secretary of State Antony Blinken restored the long-standing State Department position in 2024.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has signaled support for reverting to the first Trump administration's position, and the State Department has lifted sanctions imposed on some extremist settlers during the Biden administration. Last week, one of those settlers, Yinon Levy, allegedly murdered Palestinian peace activist Awda Hathaleen in Umm al-Kheir after the latter was denied entry into the United States to take part in an interfaith speaking tour.
Approximately 750,000 Israelis currently reside in more than 250 illegal settler colonies in the West Bank. While Israel grants every Jew in the world the right to settle in Israel, it has refused to allow the approximately five million Palestinian refugees—people ethnically cleansed from Palestine during the foundation of Israel in 1948 and their descendants—to exercise their legal right of return to their homeland.
The Republicans' visit to the West Bank followed last week's tour by Huckabee and Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff of a Gaza aid distribution center run by a U.S.-backed group condemned for its role in Israeli forces' massacres of desperate people seeking food and other lifesaving aid—a visit denounced by one critic as a "blatant theatrical display."
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