Trying to make it as disgusting as his shithole floridaaaaa turd pit.....

The many ways Trump wants to change D.C., from buildings to statues to parks

By Rachel Treisman

President Trump is looking to make his mark on the White House and Washington, D.C., and not just politically.

The longtime real estate developer has either announced or embarked on a number of construction and renovation projects across the nation's capital.

"I have two jobs," Trump said in late 2025, the presidency being just one of them. "I have a construction job, which is really like relaxation for me because I have been doing it my entire life."

Some of those changes are seemingly temporary, like the huge banners of Trump's face hanging from the Justice Department, Department of Agriculture and other federal buildings. Several concern the decor and aesthetics of the White House, like the paved-over Rose Garden and gilded Oval Office. Others are matters of nomenclature, like the addition of Trump's name to the signs on the Kennedy Center and U.S. Institute of Peace buildings.

But many of the efforts in progress could reshape D.C.'s architectural landscape for decades to come.

Neil Flanagan, an architect and public historian in D.C., says while Trump had aesthetic ambitions during his first term, his "insistence on making it so much about his own style and his own brand and wearing this glory of America's past is distinct to this term." Many of his initiatives are connected to the country's upcoming 250th anniversary in July.

"They all sort of declare the glory of America rather than actually building any kind of growth or future for America," Flanagan says. "If you're trying to slash the science budget … at the same [as you're] building these grand monuments, you're not building a creative America, you're wearing a great American past as a costume."

Flanagan says that compared to previous presidents, Trump is displaying less "deference to producing an outcome that matched with … previous plans and then also some level of subjective expertise."

Many of Trump's proposals have sparked backlash and legal challenges, even as federal planning agencies packed with administration allies move them forward. Congress could intervene, Flanagan says, but is unlikely to do so as long as both chambers are controlled by Republicans.

Reflecting pool  

Trump is resurfacing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, coating its gray bottom with a shade he described to reporters as "American flag blue."

The 2,030-foot-long reflecting pool has been the backdrop of marches, speeches and inaugurations for a century.

It last underwent a major renovation from 2010 to 2012, both for structural fixes (to address decades of leaking and sinking) and aesthetic improvements (it was intentionally made shallower). But the Department of Interior says the wrong-size pipes were installed, resulting in the continued need for expensive refills (71 million additional gallons, exceeding $1 million, in 2019 alone).

Trump has been talking publicly about fixing the pool since at least November 2025, but ramped up his efforts in April after what he described as complaints about the state of the landmark. He told reporters that he is working with one of his best "pool builders" from his real estate days, who talked him out of a turquoise shade "like in the Bahamas."

Flanagan says Trump is treating the pool, and the city itself, "like it's his personal country club."

"You get some pool guys and then they refinish it in a way that is more suitable to, basically, a swimming pool at Mar-a-Lago," he adds.

Trump said the project would cost less than $2 million — a fraction of what he said he had been quoted previously — and take one to two weeks. But the Department of the Interior told NPR it expects work to be completed "by the end of May."

Golf courses

The Trump administration is also fighting to take control of the district's three public golf courses, with a particular focus on the busiest one: East Potomac Golf Links in East Potomac Park.

Trump has floated the idea of redoing the courses to bring them up to championship level, telling the Wall Street Journal in December that "if we do them, we'll do it really beautifully." That's worrying local golfers, some of whom sued the administration in February. The Interior Department has told NPR that Trump is committed to keeping the course accessible, and affordability remains a priority.

All three municipal courses had been managed by the nonprofit National Links Trust. The Department of the Interior terminated the trust's 50-year lease in December, accusing the nonprofit of failing to fulfill all the terms of its lease, which it denies.

"Our commitment remains unchanged and we will continue to pursue our mission with the support of our community for as long as we are allowed," National Links Trust said at the time. "While the golf courses will remain open for now, unfortunately our long-term renovation projects will cease."

National

In the months since, White House ballroom crews have proceeded to dump dirt at the nearby century-old East Potomac Park course, piled high enough that it now obstructs views of the Washington Monument.

Over the weekend, the political publication NOTUS reported, citing unnamed sources, that the Trump administration planned to officially take over the East Potomac course on Sunday and begin renovations — including tree-clearing and landscaping — that could potentially shut it down.

National Links Trust said in a statement that the report "was a complete surprise to us," adding that it hadn't heard from the Department of the Interior or the National Park Service to that effect. The course appeared to be open on Monday morning.

A fundraising brochure from an entity called the "National Garden of American Heroes Foundation," obtained by the Washington Post and Democracy Forward over the weekend, says the foundation will lead "the comprehensive redevelopment and restoration" of East Potomac, "reimagining it as a world-class public asset."

Citing that document and NOTUS' reporting, the nonprofit legal organization Democracy Forward filed an emergency request on Sunday for a court to block the administration from closing East Potomac or "undertaking any steps toward implementing the plan other than routine maintenance, and from dumping any additional fill from the East Wing project within East Potomac Park."

NPR has reached out to the Department of the Interior and White House for more information, but did not hear back in time for publication.

National Garden of American Heroes

Trump first proposed the idea of a sculpture garden to "depict historically significant Americans" during a campaign rally at Mount Rushmore in July 2020, during the height of the widespread protests against racial injustice.

Those protests ushered in the removal of Confederate monuments across the country, something Trump pushed back against from the White House.

"When the forces of anti-Americanism have sought to burn, tear down, and destroy, patriots have built, rebuilt, and lifted up," read Trump's original executive order, which targeted a public opening date of July 4, 2026.

Just two days before leaving office in 2021, Trump released a list of nearly 250 names for inclusion, spanning a wide range of politicians, philosophers, musicians, artists, astronauts, movie stars, athletes and other historical figures. Among them: Kobe Bryant, Andrew Carnegie, Julia Child, Walt Disney, Frederick Douglass, Amelia Earhart, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Whitney Houston, Ronald Reagan, Paul Revere, and Alex Trebek.

Artists wanted for Trump's National Garden of American Heroes 

But Trump's first term ended without any congressional funding for the garden, and President Joe Biden quickly rescinded his orders.

Trump resurrected the project when he returned to office, though his January 2025 executive order changes its deadline from the U.S. semiquincentennial to "as expeditiously as possible." It's not clear when or where the garden will be erected, though signs point to the National Mall. The White House and Department of the Interior did not respond to a request for comment about its status.

South Dakota Republican Gov. Larry Rhoden offered Trump a plot of land last March within sight of Mount Rushmore. But Trump told the New York Times earlier this year that he was eyeing a spot in D.C., "right on the Potomac River … touching the golf course."

And the National Garden of American Heroes Foundation document obtained in early May says the garden will be located at West Potomac Park. It connects the golf course renovation and sculpture garden, calling them a pair of "landmark initiatives that embody its mission to honor America's 250th anniversary through lasting national investment."

The status of the statues themselves is also unclear. In April 2025, the National Endowment for the Humanities announced a grant program for sculptors totaling $30 million for some 150 recipients.

"Recipients will create lifelike statues in marble, granite, bronze, copper, or brass depicting specific historical figures tied to the accomplishments of the United States," the application reads. It says statues must be delivered by June 1, 2026, giving artists less than a year to finish.

Controversial statues

Trump has already added some new statues to D.C., honoring historical figures with controversial legacies.

A renovated statue of the Confederate Gen. Albert Pike was reinstalled in D.C.'s Judiciary Square in October, years after it was toppled during 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. His statue — the only outdoor monument honoring a Confederate general in D.C. — debuted in 1901 and has been contentious for years: D.C. Council members have called for its removal since 1992.

The National Park Service had previously announced plans to bring back the statue in line with Trump's 2025 executive order on "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History." Among other things, it tasked the Department of the Interior with reinstating monuments that it found had been improperly removed since 2020 and making sure their descriptions do not "inappropriately disparage Americans past or living."

Pike, who was pardoned by President Andrew Johnson, has been identified by historians as possibly having been involved with the development of the Ku Klux Klan in the period after the Civil War. The plaque on the new statue doesn't mention that or even his military history, instead calling him an "author, poet, scholar, soldier, jurist, orator, philanthropist and philosopher."

In March, the Trump administration added a statue of Christopher Columbus to White House grounds, just outside the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. It's Trump's latest effort to honor the 15th-century explorer, whose legacy has tarnished due to the colonization, enslavement and violence against Indigenous people associated with his arrival in the Americas.

"In this White House, Christopher Columbus is a hero, and President Trump will ensure he's honored as such for generations to come," White House spokesperson Davis Ingle told NPR at the time. The statue is on loan to the White House through the end of Trump's term.

In late April, a statue of a man riding a horse, which had sat in storage in Delaware for years, appeared near the White House in Freedom Plaza.

That man is Caesar Rodney, a Delaware statesman best known for riding nearly 80 miles overnight, through thunderstorms, from Dover to Philadelphia on July 1, 1776, to cast a tie-breaking vote in favor of signing the Declaration of Independence. He did so despite being "gravely ill with a long-standing cancerous condition affecting his face and jaw that caused him chronic pain," according to the National Park Service.

"Rodney's journey has long stood as a symbol of personal sacrifice in service to the ideals of liberty," it says.

But Rodney's legacy is sullied by the fact that he enslaved more than 200 people on his family's plantation (though the National Park Service said he took "public action to abolish slave trading" within Delaware and freed some in his will). That's why his century-old statue was removed from downtown Wilmington, Del., in 2020.

The Washington Post reports his statue will remain on display for up to six months as part of the country's 250th birthday celebrations. When asked to confirm that timeline, a spokesperson for the Department of the Interior told NPR that "as we approach America's 250th anniversary, the Trump administration has been committed to celebrating and acknowledging the full breadth of our nation's history, including the story of Caesar Rodney and his pivotal ride in July 1776."

Triumphal arch

Trump is also moving ahead with plans for a 250-foot "victory arch" — in honor of the nation's 250th birthday — directly across the Potomac River from the Lincoln Memorial (of which it is more than double the height).

Renderings of the white-and-gold structure bear a striking resemblance to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, if it were 100 feet taller and topped with two golden eagles and a winged, crowned figure.

Flanagan says the arch would be equivalent to 19 stories tall, whereas the typical building in D.C. is about 13 stories (federal law limits the height of buildings in the city in part to maintain the prominence of national monuments).

"And when you add the big statue on top, I think it's actually very difficult to understand just how enormous that thing will be, and very heavy," he says.

The Commission of Fine Arts, the federal agency packed with Trump allies, approved the plan earlier this month. Construction costs and timelines have not been publicized. But Flanagan says the enormity of the arch requires "very complex foundations" that alone will take significant time.

The arch has been met with opposition from some corners, including nearly all of the 1,000 public comments submitted prior to the commission's vote. The structure, which would be near the entrance to Arlington National Cemetery, is also the subject of a lawsuit by a group of Vietnam War veterans who argue it disrespects those buried there and requires congressional approval to proceed.

The White House says the towering arch will "enhance the visitor experience" at the cemetery, "serving as a visual reminder of the noble sacrifices borne by so many American heroes throughout our 250-year history so we can enjoy our freedoms today."

White House ballroom

Trump demolished the entire East Wing of the White House in October to make way for the ballroom he has dreamt of for over a decade.

The administration says the new 90,000-square-foot structure will increase capacity for guests at state dinners and other events, to the tune of at least $300 million. It has said that construction will be completed in 2028, but legal challenges have proven a roadblock so far.

The project drew ire from architecture and historical preservation groups, one of which sued the administration to prevent construction. That sparked an escalating legal battle, which has seen a federal judge twice order construction to stop unless authorized by Congress.

The judge did make an exception for infrastructure related to national security. That's a nod to the mysterious bunker beneath the East Wing that the Trump administration says is getting an upgrade, one of its main arguments in favor of continuing construction.

"The military is building a big complex under the ballroom, which has come out recently because of a stupid lawsuit that was filed," Trump told reporters in late March, adding that the ballroom "essentially becomes a shed for what's being built under."

The National Capitol Planning Commission approved Trump's ballroom plans even amidst the legal battle. As part of that process, it solicited feedback from members of the public — and got more than 30,000 written comments, largely in opposition.

"It's pretty rare that the National [Capitol] Planning Commission receives ten comments on a project," Flanagan said. "So to get that number and to get them almost overwhelmingly negative, I think, is a sign that at the very least, these things no longer represent Americans."

Kennedy Center renovations

Trump has swiftly and systematically asserted control of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts since taking office.

Last February he replaced its board members with his own allies, who promptly elected him board chair — prompting scores of artists to cancel planned performances in protest. Trump has been critical of the center, lamenting its physical disrepair, deriding its programming choices as "woke" and suggesting "maybe we close up some of the work that's been done … because it was done terribly."

In March, the Kennedy Center announced it would close in July for approximately two years to undergo a "comprehensive revitalization project." It said Trump had secured $257 million from Congress "to address decades of deferred maintenance."

Kennedy Center leaders offer behind-the-scenes tour to explain need for closure

A group of eight architecture and cultural organizations then sued the center, hoping to force it to comply with historic preservation laws and get congressional approval first. (The White House said in response it looks forward "to ultimate victory on the issue".)

Architectural plans have not yet been released. Trump has posted about turning the Kennedy Center into a "new and spectacular Entertainment Complex" and "World Class Bastion of Arts, Music, and Entertainment."

But others involved have described the renovation as a matter of infrastructure repairs. Kennedy Center officials led members of Congress and reporters on tours of the building in April to show water damage, outdated electrical equipment and other issues that they say justify the prolonged closure.

Eisenhower Executive Office Building

The Eisenhower Executive Office Building (EEOB) is the iconic French Second Empire-style building next door to the White House, containing office spaces for various parts of the president's team.

It was constructed in the 1870s and 1880s to house the growing staffs of the State, War, and Navy Departments. Its distinctive mansard roof, cast-iron details and granite columns reflected the optimism of the post-Civil War era, and stand out next to its neighboring neoclassical buildings.

That Maine granite has always been grey. Architecture groups say that was a deliberate design choice to highlight the stark white of the White House, which first got its lime-based whitewash in 1798 to protect its sandstone exterior during winter.

The Trump administration wants to paint the EEOB white, too.

'Fool me once…' Lawyers argue Kennedy Center should not meet same fate as the East Wing

"The color, design, and massing of the existing structure does not align visually with the surrounding architecture and lacks any symbolic cohesion with the White House," the Executive Office of the President wrote in a proposal to the National Capital Planning Commission for consideration at its May 7 meeting.

The Trump administration says the building's exterior has been stained by soot and grime, and has undergone only minor repairs, most recently in the early 2000s. Painting the facade, it says, will help with maintenance because it is "repeatable."

"The inability to bring the stone facade back to a baseline color has plagued the maintenance of the EEOB in the past, and will continue to plague it if not addressed," the proposal reads.

Preservation groups disagree — one of them, Cultural Heritage Partners, filed a lawsuit in November to try to halt the project. Nevertheless, the Trump administration presented its plan to the Commission of Fine Arts in April.

Around that time, the National Trust for Historic Preservation said in a letter to the Commission of Fine Arts that painting the building would irreversibly harm the landmark — by trapping moisture within the masonry — and likely require continued reapplication and cleaning, possibly on taxpayers' dime. It also says that, as a National Historic Landmark, the building's defining characteristics should be protected.

Trump makes over the Rose Garden, Mar-a-Lago style

"The historic EEOB has been preserved, un-painted, since its completion in 1888," it said. "Painting the exterior now would obscure the EEOB's historic appearance, undermine its character-defining features, and accelerate the building's deterioration."

The Trump administration has said the specific kind of mineral silicate-based masonry paint it hopes to use — which Trump has called "magic paint" — would strengthen the stone and be easy to reapply, which dozens of preservation experts have disputed. Flanagan said that type of paint, which is really more of a stain, actually doesn't stick well on granite — "it would just come off."

"So they have to use some kind of epoxy or acrylic binder on it and they're going to have to sand or sandblast … the surface," he said. "I think that could honestly be one of those devastating cultural hits that this administration could do."

Lafayette Square

Lafayette Square, a 7-acre public park directly north of the White House, has been fenced off since January. The park is normally a high-traffic area for tourists snapping White House pictures, and a popular site for local protests — including the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests after the murder of George Floyd.

But much of the area is closed off for what the National Park Service calls "construction and turf renovation related to a major rehabilitation of Lafayette Park for America's semiquincentennial."

The park service says the project is slated to end on May 31 and involves installing irrigation lines, repairing historic fountains, installing new pumping systems and fountain vaults, replacing trees and turf, replacing benches and installing hardscape (like walkways) in some areas.

Trump told the New York Times earlier this year that he planned to replace Lafayette Square's brick walkways with granite, in part because of concerns that bricks could be thrown during demonstrations. He estimated the project would cost about $10 million, which he said would come from his own pocket.

The park service stresses that the closures are temporary, but necessary due to "concerns about security for construction equipment and prior vandalism associated with public protests in recent years."

Federal architecture

Trump has repeatedly signed orders promoting neoclassical architecture as the official style for federal buildings, during his first term and, after Biden revoked them, again in 2025.

On the very first day of his second term, Trump issued a memorandum directing the General Services Administration to "advance policies that ensure federal public buildings "respect regional, traditional, and classical architectural heritage in order to uplift and beautify public spaces and ennoble the United States and our system of self-government."

A few months later, he signed the "Making Federal Architecture Beautiful Again" executive order mandating that in D.C., "classical architecture shall be the preferred and default architecture for Federal public buildings absent exceptional factors necessitating another kind of architecture."

It defines classical architecture as encompassing the styles of neoclassical, Georgian, federal, Greek revival, beaux arts and art deco.

That's a shift from the brutalist and modernist designs of the mid-20th century, seen in federal buildings like the '70s-era FBI headquarters, which in 2023 topped a survey of ugliest buildings in the U.S. (FBI Director Kash Patel announced in December that the J. Edgar Hoover building will close permanently and the bureau will move to a more modern facility in D.C.)

Trump's architectural preferences are evident in the designs his administration has submitted for new projects like the triumphal arch and White House ballroom. But how his executive order will translate into renovations of existing federal buildings remains to be seen.

Flanagan says that such orders can easily be reversed by a future president, as they have been already: "The question is, will this discredit classical architecture for a generation?"

Flanagan says that within the architecture community, Trump's actions seem to have "reaffirmed the sense that classical architecture is associated with right-wing individuals," but he believes that everyday Americans have their own thoughts on D.C.'s aesthetics.

"It's some place that they were figuring themselves out in eighth grade [when] they came on a school trip, and it struck them and gave them certain thoughts about America or the sense … that this was connected to something," he adds. "People may have different views about what it is that is so offensive about Trump's changes."

A March 2025 executive order called "Making the District of Columbia Safe and Beautiful" aims to do so by creating a task force of federal agency officials aimed at "preventing crime, punishing criminals, preserving order, protecting our revered American monuments, and promoting beautification and the preservation of our history and heritage."

The order was the basis for Trump's federal law enforcement surge, including the ongoing deployment of National Guard troops to D.C. Other priorities include increased collaboration with immigration officials, restoring memorials, clearing homeless encampments and cleaning up parks.

Trump's proposed 2027 fiscal year budget, unveiled this month, includes a $10 billion "Presidential Capital Stewardship Program" for beautification and construction projects around the city, led by the National Park Service.

The federal government has already tackled some such projects, closing parts of some green spaces for things like grass restoration and fountain repairs. While some of those projects have been welcomed by residents, some have gotten pushback for making beloved city parks inaccessible for much of the spring and summer.

Went up more than 30 cents a gallon

Gas prices went up more than 30 cents a gallon last week. How high could they go?

By Chandelis Duster

Gas prices in the U.S. have gone up more than 30 cents a gallon in the last week and are slated to continue rising as the Strait of Hormuz remains closed amid the Iran war.

The cost for regular gas as of Sunday is an average $4.446 — a week ago it was $4.099, according to AAA's fuel site. U.S. gas prices were an average $2.98 on Feb. 26 — two days before the war in Iran began — and a year ago, the average price of gas was $3.171, according to data from AAA.

Gas prices in the U.S. are the highest they have been since late July 2022, said the automotive group.

President Trump has promised that when the war in Iran ends, that gas prices will "drop like a rock." It is unclear when the war will end, but even when it does and the Strait of Hormuz is reopened, gas prices could still remain high, according to experts.

And prices could go up higher the longer the strait, which is a crucial route for oil and natural gas trade, stays closed, said Kevin Book, co-founder of ClearView Energy Partners, a research firm.

"When inventories are low and you can't get oil out of the ground or out of the strait, you should expect prices to keep rising at least until demand capitulates and starts to contract," Book told NPR's Ayesha Rascoe on Weekend Edition on Sunday. "So, we may be weeks or even months, depending on how long the strait stays closed, from the peak of prices from this crisis."

Book added that it could take months for ships trapped in the Strait of Hormuz to get through, damaged facilities to be repaired, and inventories to be replenished before gas prices return to what is considered normal. And even if gas prices were to fall fast and quickly, Book predicted that the reason would "probably be a bad one, not a good one."

"It would probably be recession, undercutting demand, knocking the knees out from under the market," he said.

Between the weeks of March 20 and April 24, the Department of Energy released 17.5 million barrels of crude oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve in an effort to curb high fuel prices stemming from the war, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Seven countries within the OPEC+ group on Sunday announced they agreed to increase production by 188,000 barrels per day starting in June as a commitment to "market stability."

Higher prices at the gas pump are also impacting Americans' wallets amid a weakened U.S. dollar. The U.S. dollar depreciated about 10% from early January 2025 to the end of April 2026 — with losses in the first half of 2025 being the biggest since 1973, according to an analysis by Morgan Stanley.

A weakened dollar could make it more expensive for Americans to travel abroad and increase the price of imported goods — while American exporters could see a financial boost, according to financial analysts.

Can't win a fare fight so trying to steal an election......

Trump and GOP push for aggressive voter roll purges up until Election Day, testing precedent

By Tierney Sneed

For decades, it’s generally been assumed that any mass purges of voter rolls had to be completed at least 90 days out from an election.

But Republicans and the Trump administration are now testing the scope of the federal law that imposes that ban on “systematic” removal programs within three months of an election, as President Donald Trump pushes for more aggressive reviews of voter rolls for non-citizens and other ineligible voters.

The Justice Department has launched a sprawling effort to obtain nearly every state’s voter registration file and to review those files for suspected non-citizens. For its review, the DOJ is using a federal immigration database tool known as SAVE – or the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements – which has shown itself prone to produce false positives.

Some state election officials have indicated they want the freedom to remove names in the months or weeks before an election, but other election officials – along with voter advocates – are concerned that eligible voters are at risk of being disenfranchised with the ramp up in the purge programs, especially as Trump tries to get more involved. They say that the so-called “quiet period” is needed to give eligible voters who are mistakenly caught up in such removals adequate time to get back on the rolls.

Trump and top officials in his administration been relentless in their claims that a flood of foreigners on the voter rolls have polluted elections, even though studies have shown non-citizen voting to be very rare.

That the Trump administration is attempting to insert the federal government more directly in the voting process makes the Republicans’ legal arguments about the quiet period “more concerning,” said Brent Ferguson, the senior director of strategic litigation at Campaign Legal Center, which has successfully sued states for violating the National Voter Registration Act’s 90-day “quiet period.”

“It sets up a situation where the federal government itself is the actor trying to purge voters from the rolls in the days before the election, which is clearly illegal,” Ferguson said.

An appeals court ruled in 2014 that Florida could not use the SAVE data system to purge its rolls within 90 days of the election because of the quiet period provision in the NVRA.

The Trump administration and Republicans argue that the ban does not apply to purges aimed at non-citizens and other people who should have never been registered in the first place.

Another appeals court rejected that argument when it was made by Republican state officials in Virginia. But the Supreme Court in 2024 issued an emergency order in that case that let then-Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin restart a voter removal program just days before the election that used state records to identify alleged non-citizens. (Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger formally ended the program when she took office this year and the lawsuit was settled.)

Now the Republican National Committee is asking the Supreme Court to take up the question on the merits in a case arising from Arizona. The Justice Department has claimed in the litigation over its demands for state registration files that the quiet period doesn’t apply to voter roll review it is undertaking. And in Ohio, Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose is making similar arguments to defend his list maintenance programs that use SAVE and state DMV data.

Advocates for more aggressive list maintenance programs say that there are fail-safes in place to protect against disenfranchisement.

“The argument that states – and especially election officials – shouldn’t do their jobs or maintain accurate voter rolls because of a technicality is absurd,” RNC spokesperson Zach Parkinson told CNN.

Parkinson said he rejects the idea that “we can’t have election integrity because an imagery person might be disenfranchised.”

Flawed data-matching programs

Already, Republican election officials have embraced more aggressive voter list maintenance programs, with several states taking advantage of the overhaul Trump did to SAVE to expand the federal databases it draws upon, and to make it easier for states to use. But those officials have found that a significant number of the people that SAVE has flagged as likely non-citizens in the comparison are in fact citizens.

For instance, an Idaho review of its voter rolls last year using the SAVE system initially found 760 potential noncitizens among its nearly 1.1 million registered voters.

But after further investigation, only about three dozen were referred to law enforcement to be probed for non-citizen registration or voting activity, Idaho Secretary of State Phil McGrane told CNN.

In the meantime, local election clerks have complained that they’ve received little or no guidance from their state election chiefs who have passed along lists of people SAVE has tagged as likely non-citizens.

According to a lawsuit challenging Texas’ use of SAVE, what local officials do with those lists varies greatly county-by-county. Some counties do additional investigations into those matches – using state records that document citizenship records – to narrow the pool of voters who are then notified they will have their registrations cancelled unless they show proof of citizenship. Other counties are sending notices to every voter identified by SAVE as a suspected non-citizen.

Conservatives stress that there are backup options to protect eligible voters who miss the notice from their election officials that their registrations are being cancelled unless they provide proof they’re citizens.

In the Virginia case, for instance, the state argued at the time that any citizen who was wrongly removed could re-register when they showed up at the polls, under the state’s same day registration laws. In states without same day registration, such voters would have access to provisional voting, which allows voters to cast ballots that are set aside and only counted once the eligibility issues are resolved on the back end.

The Department of Homeland Security told CNN earlier last month that as part of its revamp of the SAVE program, it’s tasked 150 employees to conduct “manual checks” of the matches produced by the program for “inconsistencies” before sending those results to the state.

As of early April, DHS had identified 21,000 individuals as a potential non-citizens on the voter rolls out of 60 million cases submitted – a rate of 0.035%. However, a larger share – about 3% of all comparisons – have come back as inconclusive, according to Wren Orey, the director of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Elections Project.

“When you’re doing that within that 90-day period, that risk is just higher that those voters won’t have adequate time or notice to be able to provide the documents that they’ll need ahead of the election,” Orey told CNN. “Maybe their birth certificate doesn’t meet the requirements. Maybe they don’t have one handy, maybe they don’t have a passport. That could take months to get.”

In addition, ending the quiet period for those types of purges could “dump” more work on election officials who will have to investigate whether the data matches are accurate while they’re in the final sprint to prepare for an election, said Charles Stewart, an MIT professor who studies election systems.

“There is a reason why you do these investigations away from the election,” Stewart said.

The bubbling legal fight

The Arizona case asking the Supreme Court to resolve the scope of the NVRA’s quiet period is unlikely to be resolved before the midterm elections. But it’s possible that emergency litigation could force courts to weigh in on any removal programs conducted weeks or days before November’s vote, as was the case with lawsuits challenging Virginia’s and Alabama’s efforts to remove voters just before the 2024 election.

As Trump’s national citizenship voter verification bill has floundered in Congress, states have passed laws requiring regular checks of the voter rolls against SAVE, setting up the potential that the issue will be back on the Supreme Court’s emergency docket this fall.

Why fucking pray, it doesn't do a fucking thing....

Mass shooting at Oklahoma lake party injures 13 – the latest in a rash of shootings involving youth parties

By Hanna Park, Holly Yan

At least 13 people were hospitalized after gunfire erupted at an Oklahoma lake party – the latest in a trio of shootings involving teens or young adults over the weekend across the US.

The chaos unfolded around 9 p.m. local time at a campground near Arcadia Lake, about 13 miles north of Oklahoma City, Edmond police spokesperson Emily Ward said.

No suspects are in custody, but police believe there is no ongoing threat to the public, Ward told CNN.

“This is obviously a very terrifying situation, and we understand the concern from the public and those involved,” she told reporters at the scene. “We are working extremely hard to find these suspects and help these victims.”

The attack is among more than 130 US mass shootings with four or more victims this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. Gunfire has killed at least 278 youths ages 12 to 17 so far this year, with another 796 injured, according to GVA.

The pandemonium in Oklahoma happened hours after a shooting at a post-prom party in Indianapolis left one woman dead and at least two others wounded, CNN affiliate WTHR reported.

Just a day earlier, two people were killed and at least 10 others were injured Saturday at a Texas party involving “juveniles and young adults,” the Amarillo Police Department said.

As temperatures rise, so does the likelihood of violence, studies suggest.

Suspects who wore ski masks are still on the loose

In Oklahoma, the circumstances surrounding the mass shooting remain unclear. “We’re kind of all over the metro speaking with victims and witnesses,” Ward said at a late-night news conference.

Police initially reported at least 10 victims were taken to hospitals in “various conditions,” but noted that number would likely rise because some people drove themselves to hospitals.

Three people were being treated at Integris Health Edmond Hospital, and 10 were at Integris Health Baptist Medical Center in Oklahoma City, a spokesperson for the hospital system told the Associated Press. CNN has reached out to Integris Health and police for more details.

Authorities did not reveal the age range of the victims. But Ward described the gathering as a “large party,” and many of those present appeared to be “young adults.”

Arcadia Lake is a popular destination for picnicking, camping, fishing and water sports. Edmond has about 100,000 residents.

A flyer seen on social media suggested an event called Sunday Funday had been scheduled near the lake Sunday evening.

“Please send prayers our way and we do apologize to everyone,” the organizers said in a separate post.

The oil ran dry..........

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani in hospital in critical condition, spokesperson says

By Elise Hammond

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani is in critical but stable condition in the hospital, his spokesperson said Sunday.

“Mayor Giuliani is a fighter who has faced every challenge in his life with unwavering strength, and he’s fighting with that same level of strength as we speak,” spokesperson Ted Goodman said in a statement on X.

The statement does not say why the 81-year-old is in the hospital.

Giuliani told viewers Friday on his X show “America’s Mayor Live” that his “voice is a little under the weather, so I won’t be able to speak as loudly as I usually do.” He’s seen coughing a few times on the streamed program.

The most recent episode of “The Rudy Giuliani Show,” streamed on LindellTV, is from Wednesday. Giuliani missed several episodes in April but worked Monday through Friday as recently as March.

Former New York Mayor Eric Adams, who left office last year, wished Giuliani “strength, good health, and a full recovery,” his spokesperson Todd Shapiro said in a statement on his behalf, adding the “moment rises above politics.”

“From his years as a federal prosecutor to leading New York City through its darkest day on 9/11, he stood with this city when it needed him most,” the statement said. “Public service at that level demands sacrifice, resilience, and an unwavering commitment to the people you serve.”

President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that Giuliani is a “True Warrior and the Best Mayor in the History of New York City.”

“What a tragedy that he was treated so badly by the Radical Left Lunatics, Democrats ALL — AND HE WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING! They cheated on the Elections, fabricated hundreds of stories, did anything possible to destroy our Nation, and now, look at Rudy. So sad!” Trump said in the post about Giuliani being hospitalized.

Giuliani, Trump’s former personal attorney whose leadership of New York in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks earned him the nickname “America’s mayor,” has faced a slew of legal and financial troubles since the 2020 election.

He has pleaded not guilty to state criminal charges against him related to the election subversion scheme in Arizona. Prosecutors dropped a similiar case against Giuliani and others in Georgia last year. The two former Georgia election workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, also obtained a $148 million defamation judgment against him for false allegations he made about them after the 2020 election.

He was disbarred in July 2024 in New York over his efforts to challenge the 2020 election results.

Still, he has been receiving support from Trump, with the president appointing him to an advisory council inside the Department of Homeland Security last June.

Giuliani was hospitalized in August after he was injured in a car accident in New Hampshire, his head of security and the New Hampshire State Police said. Three people, including Giuliani, were taken to the hospital by ambulance with “non-life threatening injuries,” the police said.

In 2020, the former mayor spent four days in the hospital battling coronavirus.

So brain damaged....

Trump denied he made this remark about Iran. He made it on camera one day earlier

By Daniel Dale

On Saturday, President Donald Trump told reporters that he was “looking at” a new Iranian peace proposal. Then a reporter reminded Trump that he had said the previous night that the US might be better off not making a deal with Iran.

“Well, I wouldn’t have to. I didn’t say that,” Trump responded. “I said that if we left right now, it would take them 20 years to rebuild. But we’re not leaving right now. We’re gonna do it so nobody has to go back in two years or five years.”

In reality, Trump did say — on camera — what the reporter told him he said. His denial was yet another case in which the president wrongly asserted he hadn’t said something he had said in a public forum.

Trump made the remark about Iran during a Friday speech to the Forum Club of the Palm Beaches in South Florida. After mentioning that one of his golf clubs is hosting a PGA Tour tournament, he said: “Yesterday, somebody came up, said, ‘Sir, the tournament is great.’ I said, ‘What tournament are you talking about? I’m so busy with the Iranians calling trying to make a good deal, and we’re not gonna let that happen.’ But … they’ve gotta make a bad deal. But — if they make a deal at all. Because frankly, maybe we’re better off not making a deal at all, do you want to know the truth. Because we can’t let this thing go on.”

Trump did say at a different point of the Friday speech that “if we left right now, it would take them 20 years, 25 years, to rebuild the place.” But that clearly doesn’t negate the existence of his “maybe we’re better off not making a deal at all” remark.

A history of denying remarks he made on camera

It’s one thing for the president to try to deny having made a remark someone claimed he made in a private meeting. For years, Trump has attempted something more brazen: denying he ever made remarks the public saw him make.

In December 2025, for example, when an ABC News reporter asked Trump on camera whether he would release the video of the US military’s controversial follow-up strike on an alleged drug-trafficking boat in the Caribbean, Trump said, “I don’t know what they have, but whatever they have we’d certainly release, no problem.” But when another ABC News reporter reminded him five days later that he said he would have no problem releasing the video, Trump falsely claimed, “I didn’t say that. That’s — you said that, I didn’t say that. This is ABC fake news.”

During his 2024 campaign, Trump falsely denied he had said “lock her up” about his 2016 election opponent, Hillary Clinton, though he had done so on multiple occasions at televised rallies attended by thousands of people. During the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, he denied having made two remarks he had made on camera the previous week.

Trump has also tried to inaccurately portray the nature of some of his previous public remarks. In an interview with Time magazine in April 2025, he wrongly claimed he had “obviously” been speaking “in jest” and exaggerating when he promised during his 2024 campaign to immediately end the war in Ukraine if he was elected again — though he publicly made the promise on more than 50 occasions in an entirely serious manner.

Interstellar mountains

Dust pillars are like iInterstellar mountains. They survive because they are more dense than their surroundings, but they are slowly being eroded away by a hostile environment. Visible in the featured picture by the Hubble Space Telescope is the end of a huge gas and dust pillar in the Trifid Nebula (M20), punctuated by a smaller pillar pointing up and an unusual jet pointing to the upper left. Many of the bright dots are newly formed stars. A star near the small pillar's end is slowly being stripped of its accreting gas by radiation from a tremendously brighter star situated off the top of the image. The jet extends nearly a light-year and would not be visible without external illumination. As gas and dust evaporate from the pillars, the hidden stellar source of this jet will likely be uncovered, possibly over the next 20,000 years.

Work requirements for the poor...

Medicaid work requirements give red states a chance to turn back clock

States where voters bypassed officials to expand Medicaid are opting for stricter implementation of new requirements.

By Alice Miranda Ollstein

Voters in seven states bucked their conservative leaders to expand Medicaid at the ballot box.

Now officials in six of them are deploying tactics to make the upcoming implementation of work requirements especially strict, which could dramatically reduce the number of people covered.

A survey of Medicaid officials in all of the states that expanded the program, released this week by the health care think tank KFF, found that a minority of states are eschewing measures most jurisdictions are using to keep people from falling off the rolls. These states, most of them run by conservative Republicans, are instead adding hurdles: requiring low-income patients to provide more documentation more frequently in order to stay enrolled, offering fewer exemptions, and starting enforcement far earlier than required by federal law.

States that used ballot initiatives to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act to able-bodied adults slightly over the federal poverty line are overrepresented in that group.

“For every Massachusetts that is bending over backwards to try to make sure there are no barriers to getting onto the program, you’ve got your Nebraskas and other states that are going to take a very different approach to helping people get on the program and keep their coverage,” said Sara Rosenbaum, an emeritus professor of health law at George Washington University’s School of Public Health.

Since the Supreme Court’s 2012 ruling made Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion optional, the vast majority of states — roughly half of which voted for President Donald Trump in 2024 and half for Kamala Harris — have collectively extended coverage to tens of millions of previously ineligible low-income residents.

Ten states still have yet to fully expand, while seven did so only after voters forced a referendum on the issue: Idaho, Maine, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Utah.

Despite the expansion’s popularity, many state and federal GOP officials have worked to hamper it ever since, by limiting eligibility, slashing funding for outreach, imposing “trigger” laws that would do away with the expansion should federal funding for it ever decrease, and — in 2025’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act — applying work requirements only to the expansion population.

Some conservatives argue that Medicaid was never intended to cover the population enrolled in the expansion — nondisabled adults without children whose income puts them just above the federal poverty line — and see that coverage as a threat to services for those in “traditional” Medicaid, including pregnant women, children, people with disabilities, and parents below the poverty line. Others say states can’t afford to keep funding the program at a time of severe budget crunches, although the federal government picks up 90 percent of the tab.

Starting in 2027 — or in a handful of places, months earlier — many states aim to save money and crack down on what they say is widespread fraud by dropping tens of thousands of people from their insurance rolls who fail to prove that they are either working, going to school, volunteering, or caring for a loved one at least 80 hours per month. The Urban Institute, a center-left think tank, estimates that between 3 and 7 million Medicaid expansion enrollees will lose coverage due to the work requirements alone, with millions more impacted by the other provisions in the GOP megabill.

Now, in six of the seven ballot measure expansion states, the advent of work requirements offers the biggest opportunity yet for politicians to chip away at a program they have long opposed. (The exception is Maine, which flipped politically after its ballot initiative passed in 2017, and now has a pro-Medicaid-expansion Democratic governor who is seeking a softer implementation of the work rules.)

Idaho, which expanded Medicaid by ballot initiative in 2018, is one of just two states along with Indiana that plans to make low-income residents prove they’ve been working, volunteering, studying or caregiving at least 80 hours a month for three months in order to apply to Medicaid — more than the one month “look-back” required by Congress.

Oklahoma and Missouri, which both expanded Medicaid by ballot initiative in 2020, are two of just four states, along with Indiana and Iowa, that will not grant exemptions to people living in counties with high rates of unemployment. Oklahoma is also one of three, along with Indiana and Iowa, to not exempt residents of areas where there was a natural disaster.

Oklahoma and Missouri are also among a tiny minority of states that plan to outsource some enforcement tasks to artificial intelligence, a choice other state Medicaid officials told KFF they are worried will lead to errors.

“Focus group participants said they were eager for tools to assist with implementation, but they expressed reservations about adopting untested products,” Jennifer Tolbert, KFF’s deputy director of the Program on Medicaid and the Uninsured, told reporters on a Thursday call. “They noted that, if adopted, these tools might not function as intended, or may take too many resources.”

Nebraska and Utah, where voters approved expansion in 2018, and South Dakota, which passed a ballot measure in 2022, are not planning to hire any new staff, bring on contractors, or borrow workers from other agencies to manage the implementation.

Nebraska also started enforcement of the new rules this Friday, eight months earlier than the federal deadline.

Nebraska’s Medicaid director Drew Gonshorowski told POLITICO that the state is confident its existing staff can handle the early enforcement.

“In Nebraska, compared to a lot of states, our enrollment and eligibility system is a state-owned system, so we’re just able to sort of deploy and implement work requirements uniquely more quickly than other states,” he said. “We really do believe that this is a great opportunity.”

Officials in the other five states did not respond to questions about their implementation choices.

Ballot initiative expansion states have “ranted and raved for years now about the undeserving poor,” said Rosenbaum. “But when you look at the 55-year-old farmers, the hourly workers, and other people who are going to lose their coverage, they’re going to see that they are not, as they insisted over and over again, all 24-year-olds playing video games.”

The ballot measure states and a handful of others are opting for the strictest version of the rules with the fewest exemptions, which the Urban Institute projects will trigger a purge of between 37 and 68 percent of Medicaid enrollees.

Most states are trying to soften the blow. Twenty nine states, for example, are exempting people facing various financial and medical hardships from the work requirements, while 36 states are requiring people to provide just one month of work records when they apply for Medicaid or renew it.

But even states that are trying to protect as many people as possible could see a lot of people fall through the cracks — with Urban Institute estimating 18 to 33 percent losing insurance.

“There are meaningful state choices that can be made that will mitigate coverage losses, but no state is going to be able to fully protect people’s coverage. It’s just not possible,” said Hannah Katch, a former senior adviser for the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services under President Joe Biden and former leader of California’s Medicaid program. “This policy was designed to cut eligible people off of Medicaid. That’s why Congress used it as a pay-for for tax cuts: because it reduces federal expenditures on Medicaid.”

Katch and other experts are most worried about Nebraska, which is starting enforcement of the rules on Friday for the roughly 70,000 people enrolled in its Medicaid expansion.

The state rolled out a media campaign to make people aware of the rules less than a month before their launch, and just days before the start date, officials released a nearly 300-page document listing all of the medical diagnosis codes that would qualify someone for an exemption from the rules — something hospitals in the state had been requesting for months.

“This is just bad policy,” said Sarah Maresh, the program director for health care access at the nonprofit Nebraska Appleseed. “A vast majority of Nebraskans are working or would count as an exemption, but it is the red tape that causes the problems and really causes people to lose coverage. People don’t know what’s coming, and they don’t know it applies to them, and they’re just, frankly, unable to understand this really complicated system.”

KFF’s survey found, however, that even states that are waiting until the January deadline to implement the rules are worried about people getting lost in the shuffle. Issues Medicaid officials raised in this week’s report include the difficulty of doing outreach to the thousands of Medicaid expansion enrollees who are homeless and don’t have a fixed address, access to email, or a steady medical provider. They also highlighted the challenge of determining whether someone enrolling in Medicaid for the first time, who doesn’t have a documented medical history, has a condition that exempts them from the rules.

“What keeps me up at night is that this is too much too soon,” said Tricia Brooks, a research professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families. “An 18 month timeline for implementation of this kind of a major policy leaves states in the lurch.”

Future of health insurance

Republicans see high-risk plans as the future of health insurance

More than 40 million Americans are already opting to take on the cost of sick visits, drugs and surgeries to get lower premiums and tax savings.

By Kelly Hooper

Hundreds of thousands of Americans have switched to health insurance that covers a lot less of their care this year.

Republicans hope a lot more will follow them.

The shift since January was driven by GOP lawmakers’ decision at the end of December to reduce the help the government provides to people who don’t get insurance through work, but instead buy it in the Obamacare marketplace. The reduction in those subsidies sent Obamacare customers searching for plans that cost less.

There’s a catch: The cheaper plans don’t cover the first several thousand dollars in sick visits, drugs and surgeries a patient needs. Nearly 4 in 10 Obamacare enrollees are in these “high-deductible” plans now, compared to 3 in 10 a year ago.

President Donald Trump and GOP senators want to encourage more to go that route by shifting remaining Obamacare subsidies, which are now used to reduce monthly premiums, into tax-advantaged savings accounts that come with the high-deductible plans. That would be very good for some — affluent people in good health who use the savings accounts to accrue wealth — but not so much for others: sicker and poorer people who incur medical bills they can’t afford.

For many Republicans, that’s a worthwhile trade-off, considering the plans also reduce overuse of the health care system and put downward pressure on prices. “The president clearly has said we need to send money to patients rather than insurers in the system, and building out policies that are consistent with that is important,” said Brian Blase, president of the right-leaning Paragon Health Institute and an adviser to Trump in his first term.

But the inequitable outcomes for patients trouble others.

Many high-deductible customers are “chasing after that lower premium, but they actually do need to use care on an ongoing basis, and then they end up with a lot of debt or being terrified to use their insurance or seek care and ignoring symptoms,” said Katherine Hempstead, senior policy adviser at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a progressive health care-focused philanthropy.

The president touted his “Great Health Care Plan” at a Turning Point USA event two weeks ago, promising “to get it done one way or the other.”

Among Republicans on Capitol Hill, both Trump allies, like Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, and adversaries, such as Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, are trying to help.

Cassidy told POLITICO he thought most people would come out ahead given the lower premiums and tax savings. “Your total cost of being insured is less,” he said. (Trump and Cassidy are still at odds over Cassidy’s 2021 vote to convict Trump of inciting that Jan. 6’s riot at the Capitol.)

For Scott, it’s about giving patients greater control. The change would “radically re-empower the American people and let them dictate more of where their money goes,” he said.

The shift in Obamacare coincides with one in the employer-provided insurance market, where now 40 million Americans are enrolled in high-deductible plans. The percentage of people opting for the plans has nearly quadrupled, to more than 40 percent, in the last two decades.

For healthy people with disposable income who’ve joined the plans, it’s worked out. The amount people have banked in health savings accounts has grown from $3.4 billion in 2007 to an estimated $189 billion now. The money goes in, and comes out, tax-free to pay health care bills. The money can be invested in stocks and bonds. When owners of the accounts turn 65, they can use the money for anything if they pay tax on the growth.

But many people opting for the plans do so because the cheaper premiums are the only way they can stay insured, and the average amount enrollees are spending out of pocket on health care has ticked up as the plans gained popularity.

That’s likely to be the case for Obamacare enrollees going with high-deductible “bronze” plans this year. In 2026, the average out-of-pocket deductible payment for a bronze plan is over $7,000. Studies have shown that people with chronic diseases who are enrolled in the plans often skip necessary care or struggle to afford medical services.

A mass shift to high-deductible plans could leave millions of Americans who recently lost access to Obamacare subsidies vulnerable to unexpectedly high costs, health policy experts said. And Republicans’ push to expand access to nontraditional health plans on the ACA marketplace might create confusion for consumers shopping for the most affordable coverage options.

“You’re going to have parallel-marketed plans — next to comprehensive ACA plans — that are loosely regulated, that may look attractive at first because they they appear to have lower premiums, but then you come to find out when you actually need to use the plan you’re stuck with much higher out-of-pocket costs and fewer consumer protections,” said Michelle Long, a senior policy manager for the Program on Patient and Consumer Protections at KFF, a health policy research organization.

The GOP health insurance blueprint

Republicans are eager to move ahead anyway.

Cassidy, the Health Committee chair, is leading a bill with the Finance chair, Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), that would direct federal funds used for Obamacare subsidies instead to individuals’ HSA accounts when they enroll in low-premium, high-deductible plans. Cassidy unveiled a health care agenda in April outlining a similar plan, which he told POLITICO he’s in the process of drafting legislation on and “should be something which has bipartisan support.”

Despite the higher deductibles people would face on the bronze plans, Cassidy said the policy would limit Americans’ out-of-pocket exposure, noting deductibles for the more expensive silver plans are also high. An average silver-plan deductible on the ACA in 2026 was about $5,000, though low-income enrollees who qualify for cost-sharing reductions would pay much less before coverage kicks in, sometimes as little as $100.

If the government were to put $2,000 into enrollees’ health savings accounts, Cassidy said, that would cover the annual medical expenses of the average American.

Patients with higher bills aren’t better off in silver plans, he said.

Scott said his proposal would do more to lower costs by allowing people to save in new Trump Health Freedom Accounts in any type of insurance plan. Currently, only people in high-deductible plans can open HSAs.

Scott’s plan would also let states waive certain ACA requirements, including coverage of essential health benefits, to lower premiums. That could leave enrollees who get sick on the hook for unexpected bills.

The plan is consistent with Trump’s efforts to offer more choices for Obamacare enrollees outside traditional ACA plans, including expanding short-term health plans, which Democrats have derided as “junk insurance.”

The Trump administration has also proposed a marketplace rule that would crack down on fraudulent ACA enrollments and expand several alternative plan options, including catastrophic plans — lower-premium plans that cover Obamacare’s essential health benefits but come with a more than $10,000 deductible for an individual in 2026. Trump also proposes allowing the sale of so-called non-network plans on the ACA marketplace, which typically come with high deductibles but have no networks of doctors or providers, an option some employers currently offer.

The proposals are roiling major players across the health industry, as insurers and some providers have spoken out against the GOP’s strategy. They argue consumers will be confused and could end up without the coverage they need.

“This model assumes a level of medical and insurance literacy that would be exceptionally challenging for Marketplace consumers and represents a fundamentally different experience from the one Exchange enrollees navigate today,” AHIP, a trade group representing health insurers, wrote in its comment letter on the proposed rule.

If insurers take a financial hit as a result of the policies, they might hike premiums across the market, raising costs for large swaths of Obamacare enrollees regardless of what plans they’re in.

“You’re certainly further fragmenting an already pretty fragile, fragmented health insurance market in this country,” Long said.

The cost of more coverage options

People who qualify for Obamacare subsidies, with incomes between 100 and 400 percent of the federal poverty level, will likely continue to opt for traditional marketplace coverage — like bronze, silver, gold or platinum plans — because of lower costs and more robust benefits, said Matt Mize, a member of the Individual and Small Group Markets Committee at the American Academy of Actuaries.

But the millions of people who no longer qualify for subsidies might be attracted to newer options like non-network plans and expanded catastrophic coverage or short-term insurance — “lower-cost products that may also have lower benefits,” he said.

Those plans might work well for healthy people who rarely seek medical care, and having some form of coverage is better than going uninsured, said Hempstead. An estimated 4 million people are expected to lose their health insurance coverage in 2026 with the lapse of the enhanced subsidies. So far, federal data shows about 1 million people have dropped off Obamacare this year.

But the plans might not provide much protection for an unexpected medical event.

Disrupting industry standards

Blase thwarted arguments that Republicans’ proposals, like shifting people onto plans with HSAs or allowing non-network plans to be sold on the Obamacare marketplace, would make health care more expensive for consumers. He said there’s demand for more alternatives as ACA premiums have skyrocketed this year, and “people should be able to finance their health care in the way that makes the most sense for them.”

He added that opposition from insurers and providers to some of the GOP’s proposed expansions is a good sign that the ideas will “break the mold or put additional pressure” on the health care industry to lower pricing.

“When the industry opposes something, it’s generally a pretty good sign that whatever they’re opposing is going to lower the amount, which is going to make health care more affordable,” he said.

Insurers and providers have raised concerns about the Trump administration’s non-network plan proposals because those plans would make it difficult to satisfy the ACA requirement that they provide a “sufficient choice of providers.” They also argued that adding the plans to the exchanges would destabilize the ACA marketplace, prompting young, healthy Americans to leave the risk pool and raising costs for remaining enrollees.

But Blase and Sidecar Health, a benefits company that administers non-network plans for employees, said the companies are crying wolf. Blase is an adviser for Sidecar.

Insurers and providers argue the plans would leave consumers vulnerable to high out-of-pocket costs. Sidecar Health CEO Patrick Quigley said while he can’t speak for all non-network plans, under his company’s model, consumers often have no deductibles and greater access to providers than many ACA plans, which have narrow networks. Enrollees in the plans are allowed benefit amounts based on the median price of care in a given market, and they can shop around to choose doctors based on their budget.

Transparent health care prices create competition, ultimately lowering the cost of care, Quigley said.

But health policy experts aren’t sold on non-network plans or the other alternatives, like expanding HSA accounts, that Republicans are proposing. Hempstead said she welcomes new ideas that disrupt the status quo in health care — as prices are skyrocketing — but it’s “fantastical” to think that ACA consumers would be market movers just because they’re armed with pricing data.

“What you might see instead is somebody who gets duped into thinking it’d be better to have a lower-tier plan and $2,000. That could be a really terrible trade-off for them, because that $2,000 won’t last long if something really happens, and they’re just going to have a way more exposure to debt,” she said.

The next guys trying to buy the election...

How Xavier Becerra became the Joe Biden of California’s governor race

He is defying conventional wisdom about what Democratic voters want and is surpassing flashier, more progressive opponents pledging to upend the status quo.

By Blake Jones

Xavier Becerra is becoming the Joe Biden of California’s gubernatorial campaign.

Like the former president before his South Carolina revival in 2020, Becerra had been languishing for months before shooting to the top tier of his primary. Like Biden, he had little money. And he is now defying conventional wisdom about what Democratic voters want and is surpassing flashier, more progressive opponents pledging to upend the status quo.

And he has done it with overlapping appeal, promising stability brought by decades in governance amid remarkable political upheaval. (For Biden, the contrast was against a president who he said “sows chaos.” For Becerra, it is that plus the opening that Eric Swalwell’s implosion provided — Becerra’s own South Carolina — and the lesson from Swalwell’s campaign of the risk that a lesser-known quantity can pose.)

“In comparison, Tio Joe, and in this case, Tio Becerra, both give you stability — somebody who you’ve known, who you’ve seen, who’s been around national and state politics,” said Assemblymember Mark Gonzalez, Biden’s 2020 California director. “It’s about somebody who’s stable and ready to lead on day one.”

Both men are “name brand” Democrats who appeal to high-propensity voters, said Danielle Cendejas, a Democratic consultant who works for progressive candidates in California.

“Even with the 2020-esque ‘we want big changes,’ we still ended up with Biden,” said Cendejas. “We saw it in 2016, too. Hillary did very well in that primary when people thought the energy was going toward Bernie Sanders. It’s the ideology of the Democratic Party.”

Ron Klain, Biden’s former chief of staff, was an early donor to Becerra’s campaign.

Becerra, like Biden, came to the race with baggage. But much of it had been aired years earlier since both have had such long careers in politics — whether it was Biden’s plagiarism of a speech or Becerra’s response to a migrant child crisis and the coronavirus pandemic. A notable exception is KQED’s reporting Friday that Becerra backpedaled from his support for single-payer health care during his successful bid for the California Medical Association’s endorsement.

Becerra’s trajectory is hardly identical to Biden’s. Biden benefitted in 2020 from the support of national Democratic Party power players. Becerra, conversely, drew limited third-house support before Swalwell’s collapse, and he was widely seen as a target of the California Democratic Party’s calls for non-viable candidates to drop out of the race.

“There’s no real party machinist here,” said Gonzalez, who has known Becerra since volunteering for his Los Angeles mayoral campaign in 2001 but hasn’t endorsed anyone in the field. “No one cleared the field for Xavier. Remember, there were calls for him to drop out, and so I think voters gravitated toward him on their own.”

It also helped that Becerra drained down his campaign account in early April, just before sexual assault allegations against Swalwell broke and toppled his candidacy. The share of undecided voters has shrunk drastically in polls conducted since then, suggesting some of Becerra’s new supporters had not been engaged until recently.

“The idea had always been to try to understand what the best timing would be, when voters would begin to start to pay attention, and that helped drive the secretary and the campaign’s thinking in terms of when to best put our money out there,” said Michael Bustamante, a Becerra campaign spokesperson. “The idea is to position yourself best to be able to capitalize on any eventuality.”

But Becerra’s shock surge last month only placed him into a statistical tie for the lead among Democrats. Now, as with Biden, institutional players in Democratic politics are working to push him over the top. The CMA, the insider of insiders, the Latino Legislative Caucus, dozens of members of the state Legislature — and as of this morning, the United Food & Commercial Workers Western States Council — have endorsed Becerra since his rise in polls. (He may need their help; many recent surveys showing him at the top of the Democratic pack were conducted before Tom Steyer began spending millions of dollars attacking Becerra.)

For now, though, polls suggest Latino voters are beginning to coalesce around Becerra — a demographic that could power him much the way Black voters lent key support to Biden.

“The validating piece that Biden had was being Obama’s VP and what that meant for the Black community,” said Cendejas. “For Becerra, he’s got roots that people find familiar at a time when we still have ICE presence in our state.”