Health Care-apalooza

Today’s notice: Inside a very big day in Congress. Republicans quietly grumble about Trump’s pardons. What Stephen Miller made last year. The DNC’s first 2026 Senate ads. And: Why Trump’s economic messaging problem is different from those of other presidents.

THE LATEST

Health care day on the Hill is here. And it’s going to be what anyone who has experienced health care policy in Congress would expect it to be.

Senate Democrats will get a vote on Affordable Care Act subsidy extensions they won in the shutdown negotiations. They will lose the vote.

Senate Republicans, as we reported yesterday, have a bunch of plans kicking around. Some extend ACA subsidies, and some don’t, but Majority Leader John Thune has settled on the Cassidy-Crapo bill as the GOP’s legislation of choice to get a vote today, which does not extend those subsidies. (They will also lose this vote, bringing us back to…where we started.)

The House, well… it’s doing its own thing. Mike Johnson presented Republicans with a long list of policy options yesterday designed to lower health care costs for Americans. Some were kind of vague, like “Innovation.” Some were more in line with GOP talking points, like “Health Savings Accounts.” None of them were extending the ACA subsidies.

And so the discharge petition thing is happening again. There are two competing proposals: a bipartisan effort led by Reps. Jen Kiggans and Josh Gottheimer that would extend the subsidies for one year, and another led by Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick to extend them for two years. Both would implement income caps and other reforms.

Ever the optimist: Fitzpatrick said there are “a lot” of House Republicans “who have represented a lot of lower to middle income earning constituents who are quietly very supportive of this.”

The question is: How loud will they get? There were a little more than a dozen signatures on Fitzpatrick’s petition as of last night, but as the chaos of health care day unfolds, could more Republicans and Democrats sign on?

Open Tabs U.S. Seizes Tanker Off the Coast of Venezuela (NOTUS); Trump Administration Opens Applications for Million-Dollar Visas (NYT); Trump’s ‘chilling’ social media snooping rule imperils World Cup, critics warn (Politico); House overwhelmingly passes $900B annual defense bill (The Hill)

From the Hill

“I wouldn’t have pardoned those people,” Rep. James Comer, chair of the Oversight Committee, told NOTUS’ Riley Rogerson yesterday. He was referring specifically to Trump’s pardons of former Rep. George Santos and current Rep. Henry Cuellar, but Riley found a general discomfort among Republicans as the pardons rack up. It was hard to find a full-throated endorsement.

“There’s nothing I can do about it,” Sen. John Kennedy said. “The people are already pardoned. I’m trying to spend my time on things I can do something about.”

This strange presidential power is usually not a year-round topic. “At least he’s doing it up front and during the presidency as opposed to waiting and granting thousands of pardons at the very end of his presidency,” said Sen. Ron Johnson.

There’s also work going on to undo the last president’s pardons — specifically, those Joe Biden signed via autopen. “I’ve always been an advocate for pardon reform,” Comer said.

From the White House

America Fir$t Legal: The MAGA policy nonprofit paid Stephen Miller a $75,000 bonus in 2024, plus a $100,000 “adjustment” for his previous three years of work at the think tank, according to previously unreported tax documents obtained by NOTUS’ Taylor Giorno. His total compensation for the year was more than $567,000.

Nice work if you can get it, but is it legal? “These facts raise questions about whether these payments were a so-called ‘golden parachute,’ meaning bonuses paid on the basis of a person entering government service,” Brendan Fischer of the Campaign Legal Center told Taylor.

Trump removed Biden-era ethics rules barring golden parachute payments, “but even under existing law, an official who receives a golden parachute is supposed to recuse themselves for two years from matters involving their former employer,” Fischer added.

America First Legal and Miller’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

From the campaign trail

Exclusive: The DNC’s first Senate ads are targeting Sen. Susan Collins over Affordable Care Act subsidies. The four-figure ad buy, first reported by NOTUS’ Torrie Herrington, urges her to vote to extend the ACA subsidies.

The ads come ahead of today’s Senate votes on health care.

THE BIG ONE

Is this Trump’s toughest sell? Many are comparing Trump’s economic rhetoric at a Pennsylvania casino Tuesday night to the ill-fated Bidenomics push of the last administration. The reasons are obvious: Here we have another president trying to insist that the economic angst is just vibes. “They always have a hoax,” is how Trump put it.

But there’s a key difference with Trump. This president has plenty of reason to believe that when he says the economy is “A+++++,” he can count on a large group of Americans to not turn on him.

“Eighty percent of the base will buy whatever he is selling. If he says ‘the sky is pink,’ they’ll believe it,” Republican strategist Liz Mair told Emily. “If he can get the number above 80% it’ll help. And he could!”

Recent public polling is showing a slight but growing dip in the president’s approval rating. A New York Times analysis showed the slide coming from independent voters — worrisome for any candidate. Republican support remained in the 90%+ range.

The dilemma: The affordability “hoax” stuff is so far not helping win back the parts of the coalition Trump seems to be alienating.

Though the president is describing the Democratic messaging — and media coverage — around the affordability issue, a former Trump official told Jasmine, “I don’t believe voters connect the dots in the same way as the President. This is when the Comms staff needs to step in, take the bumps and help get him back on message.”

“I see the president building a ballroom when there’s people that can’t feed their families,” a Michigan woman described as a “weak Democrat” (the kind of person who helped Trump win the state in 2024) recently told a focus group run by Democratic messaging firm Navigator.

NEW ON NOTUS

D.C.’s best rental deal: $1 is how much Trump’s nominee for the Tennessee Valley Authority board, Lee Beaman, is renting his Capitol Hill townhomes for. An evangelical nonprofit snagged that deal and is renting out rooms to prominent lawmakers like Mike Johnson and Rep. Andy Ogles.

Beaman’s confirmation vote out of committee was delayed yesterday (because lawmakers had more questions, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said). But NOTUS’ Anna Kramer got a look at what Beaman, who has no energy or utility experience, has disclosed to senators.

Lobbying for a ZIP code: Hochatown, Oklahoma, is on Choctaw Nation land and has been an established community since the Trail of Tears in the 1830s. It was incorporated into a municipality in 2022, and its leaders have been trying to get it a ZIP code since. Why it’s taken so long is a mystery to even the lawmakers trying to make it happen.

“It’s a longer story than I can go into now, but we are interested in it,” Sen. Rand Paul, the chair of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, told NOTUS’ Adora Brown about the fight.

More: House Democrats Say They Could Undo a Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery Deal, by Amelia Benavides-Colón

Nearly a Year After Trump’s ‘Mount McKinley’ Name Change, Alaska Republicans Are Still Fighting for ‘Denali’, by Em Luetkemeyer

NOT US

• Marjorie Taylor Greene’s boyfriend has had a weird month, by Kara Voght for The Washington Post
  
• This might be the defining issue in the race to succeed Nancy Pelosi, by J.D. Morris, Alexei Koseff for the San Francisco Chronicle
  
• John Roberts’s Dream Is Finally Coming True, by David Daley for The Atlantic

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