Republicans ‘AstroTurf’ for Crockett

Today’s notice: Mo’ health care plans, mo’ problems. How Republicans say they convinced Jasmine Crockett to run for Senate. Trump’s big cost-of-living message. And: Contractors have concerns about a new ICE detention facility in Oregon.

THE LATEST

Senate Republicans have a Willy Wonka situation on their hands. They used to complain they had too few serious health care policy plans. Like some kind of ironic chocolate factory twist, the problem now is that they have too many.

As in, at least five. NOTUS’ Ursula Perano breaks it down:

• Sen. Roger Marshall has a plan to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies by a year (in addition to other stuff).
  

• Sen. Jon Husted’s would extend them by two years, alongside reforms to the ACA.
  

• Sens. Susan Collins and Bernie Moreno also have a two-year extension plan, but theirs does different reforms.
  

• Sen. Rick Scott has a plan to eliminate the ACA subsidies and create health savings accounts instead.
  

• Sens. Bill Cassidy and Mike Crapo also have an HSA plan, but it works differently than Scott’s.
  

Why this is an issue: Democrats are set to get their ACA subsidies vote — which they won in exchange for ending the government shutdown — this week. The whole thing is expected to go nowhere because Republicans won’t vote for it. So that puts the ball back in Republicans’ court, with really just days to go until the subsidies expire and premiums are expected to rise dramatically.

“The problem is we have differing policy baselines, and we’ve got about eight days,” Sen. Thom Tillis said. Republicans need to rally around something, so they can start trying to find the seven Democratic votes they’ll need to pass it. And they’ll need to do it quickly.

How’s that going? “I’m for whatever we can get the votes on,” Sen. Markwayne Mullin said.

Open tabs: Police investigation faults Nancy Mace for profanity-laced airport tirade (WaPo); Paramount chief promised Trump ‘sweeping changes’ at CNN after WBD deal (The Independent); Miami Elects First Democratic Mayor in Nearly 30 Years (NOTUS); Georgia Democrat flips state House seat in district Trump won by double digits (CNN)

From the campaign trail

The NRSC takes credit for Democrats’ chaotic Senate primary in Texas: “That was really a sustained effort that we orchestrated across the ecosystem for several months,” a Republican operative with knowledge of the GOP’s efforts to draw Rep. Jasmine Crockett into the Senate race told NOTUS’ Reese Gorman.

Republicans want to run against Crockett, and Reese’s sources explained how they actively pushed polls showing her popularity with the base into her field of view and pumped them up in progressive digital spaces, part of what they proudly admitted was an “AstroTurf recruitment process.”

What’s next: Now that Crockett is running, Republicans are planning to use independent spending groups to bolster her Democratic primary campaign against state Rep. James Talarico.

This is a time-honored part of campaigning. Democrats routinely try to help whomever they see as the weakest Republican candidate win primaries, too. There is a catch, though: Sometimes these schemes end in embarrassment.

Boomer power: “I feel pretty confident in saying I believe that it is the most important demographic in this election,” Jordan Wood, a candidate in the Democratic primary to replace Rep. Jared Golden, told NOTUS’ Christa Dutton for a story about the outsized power retirees could have next year. The race Wood is running in takes place, of course, in Maine, the state with the highest percentage of its population over 65.

From the White House

The economy is doing great, thank you very much. That was the main message Donald Trump sought to convey last night when he hit the road for a rally in Pennsylvania to tout his administration’s economic achievements. Any cost-of-living crisis, Trump said repeatedly, was both a “hoax” cooked up by his political opponents and the fault of his predecessor, Joe Biden.

“That’s their only word. They say ‘affordability.’ And everyone says, ‘Oh, that must mean Trump has high prices.’ No, our prices are coming down tremendously,” Trump said. “They always have a hoax.”

From the Supreme Court

“At least somewhat skeptical” was the read from NOTUS’ Taylor Giorno after the Supreme Court yesterday considered a major change to campaign spending limits last upheld in 2001 — aka before Citizens United and the court’s ideological shift away from upholding campaign spending limits.

NOTUS INVESTIGATION

Cramped ICE detention center: “There’s no way they can meet their own standards of care given the space they’ve made available,” a contractor who has reviewed the secretive plans for a new 200-person detention center north of Portland in Newport, Oregon, told Taylor and NOTUS’ Jackie Llanos.

They obtained unreported federal contracting documents showing builders sharing concerns with ICE that the agency’s plan for the detention center is simply not large enough to detain people and comply with federal rules on humane treatment. Transcripts of an Oct. 31 site visit contained within the documents included one unnamed contractor looking at the facility site and saying that “there’s not enough square footage” for legal detention of the numbers of people ICE is looking for.

Federal officials told the contractors some rules could be waived to keep the project on track. A legally required 3,000-square-foot recreation area for 200 detainees could be nixed, one official in the document suggested. Officials have indicated publicly that detainees would only be at the facility for 72 hours or less, which means some rules concerning humane detention would not apply.

But in the new documents, officials tell contractors that some detainees could remain on-site for up to 10 days. ICE’s vision for the site is temporary structures for detainees, and officials told contractors that soft-sided tents would be acceptable.

“This is a new realm we are in,” an unnamed government official said during a site tour, according to the transcript.

NEW ON NOTUS

Project 2025 has a sequel: “Over the next two years, we will engage in Washington to dismantle the deep state and in the states to restore the family, rebuild American institutions, and restore opportunity for all.”

That’s how The Heritage Foundation is pitching its new plan for 2026, following up on the controversial, headline-grabbing policy agenda that dominated the 2024 presidential race.

More: Pritzker Signs Bill to Restrict Immigration Arrests Outside State Courthouses, by Amelia Benavides-Colón

Republican Governor Calls Out Trump Over Cuts to Wind Energy Projects, by Amelia Benavides-Colón

NOT US

• These Health Centers Are Supposed to Make Care Affordable. One Has Sued Patients for as Little as $59 in Unpaid Bills. By Aliyya Swaby for ProPublica
  
• The DC Restaurant Trump Slump, by Jessica Sidman for Washingtonian
  
• Artifice in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, by Adam M. Lowenstein for The American Prospect

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