Trump’s tax, trade and health care policies

Wyden and Neal set sights on Trump’s tax, trade and health care policies following Democrats’ midterm sweep

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), set to return as the panel’s chair, laid out his plans for how it will engage with the White House on tax, trade and health care.

Danny Nguyen

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) is getting back his gavel on the Senate Finance Committee, and he made his plans known Wednesday morning, previewing an agenda for the panel’s role in crafting tax, trade and health care policy.

The Senate Finance Committee, which Wyden will lead in the next Congress after Democrats’ sweeping midterm victories, will look to advance taxes on the wealthy and crack down on what he described as unfair dealings facilitated by the Trump administration, he said in a press release.

Wyden’s statement signals that Democrats are hoping to unwind some of the most controversial components of President Donald Trump’s agenda, including tax breaks the party believes had outsize benefits for wealthy individuals and large corporations.

“The committee will redouble its efforts to ensure billionaires pay their fair share and hold tax cheats accountable,” Wyden said. “Democrats will spearhead a tax agenda that puts American families first and requires the ultra-rich and corporations to pay their fair share.”

Wyden also previewed how the Finance Committee would approach its health care and trade portfolios.

He said Democrats would look to institute health care reforms that “guarantees health care for all, gives Americans cheaper and better health care, and ends the corporate chokehold on our nation’s health care system.”

And amid bitter trade wars Trump launched against China, Mexico and Canada, among other countries, Wyden said he would use his perch to “reassert congressional authority over our country’s trade policy to bring down costs, end Trump’s disastrous and corrupt tariffs, reestablish critical trade partnerships, and hold trade cheats accountable.”

In a victory lap on social media platform Bluesky on Tuesday night, Wyden posted, “Subpoenas.” The Senate Finance Committee’s account reposted it minutes later, adding, “Let’s f*cking go.”

Wyden’s statement Wednesday morning got more specific. He said he would bring executives of major financial institutions, insurers and pharmaceutical companies before his committee to probe how they’ve “worked hand-in-hand with Trump to rip off American families for the last year” and enabled what he described as the president’s “corruption.” Wyden and other Democrats have spent the past year skewering Trump for issuing seemingly self-serving deals, including one between himself and his administration that exempts his family from tax audits.

Concedes.......

NRCC Chair Richard Hudson concedes his race for reelection in North Carolina

By Meredith Lee Hill and Andrew Howard

Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.), the chair of the GOP’s House campaign arm, conceded his race for reelection, he confirmed in a statement shortly after POLITICO reported the decision.

The AP has not yet called the race. But the decision is a stark sign of just how far the country shifted left: The person responsible for getting House Republicans elected this cycle is accepting defeat in a district President Donald Trump carried by almost 16 points just two years ago.

He called Democrat Richard Ojeda to concede, Hudson said in the statement, which thanked his staff, constituents and family.

“Last night, the voters of North Carolina’s 9th District made their choice, and I respect it,” Hudson wrote. “God is sovereign over my life, and He has a plan for all of us.”

“America is the greatest country, and I believe more than ever in the principles that make us great,” Hudson continued. “Whatever the future holds, I will keep fighting for those principles and for the people who believe in commonsense, conservative policies that will save our country and make the lives of the American people better.”

This would be the first time ever a chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee has lost in a general election. In 1992, the NRCC chair lost in a primary. North Carolina Republicans felt the pressure leading up to Election Day, with worries about a massive win by Roy Cooper in the Senate race likely endangering a slew of once safely red House seats like Hudson’s and others.

Ojeda, a veteran who lost a Senate race in West Virginia in 2020, was drastically outspent by Hudson. But in a sign that Democrats thought they could flip the seat, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee threw $130,000 behind Ojeda last week.

Democrats’ deluge

Latest called races extend Democrats’ deluge

Democrats have secured another cache of wins, including key flips in Michigan.

Casey He

Winners have been called in several remaining races as the historic blue wave continues to help Democrats make gains across the country.

In Michigan’s 4th District, Democratic state Sen. Sean McCann succeeded in his challenge to Republican Rep. Bill Huizenga. The eight-term GOP representative fought an uphill battle in the Kalamazoo-based district that he won by 12 points in 2024.

Democrat Christina Hines beat out Republican Michael Bouchard in a seat occupied by Rep. John James, the GOP gubernatorial candidate. James won the 10th District, which covers Detroit’s northern suburbs, by 6 points in 2024.

Democrat William Lawrence defeated freshman Republican Rep. Tom Barrett in Michigan’s 7th District. Barrett won the Lansing-based district, formerly held by Sen. Elissa Slotkin, by 4 points in 2024.

Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a moderate Democrat known for breaking with the party on key issues, won reelection for a third term in Washington’s 3rd District. She fended off a challenge from Republican state Senate Minority Leader John Braun in a traditionally right-leaning district that went for President Donald Trump by 3 points in 2024.

In Texas’ 9th District, Democrat Leticia Gutierrez won over Republican Alex Mealer to succeed Democratic Rep. Al Green, who unsuccessfully ran for a different seat after state Republicans redrew maps last year in hopes of bolstering Republicans’ advantage there. The Houston-area district was a target of the redistricting plan, and the result was another blow to the state GOP as Democrats swept statewide races in the Lone Star State.

In California’s 13th District, Democrat Adam Gray, who won his seat by 187 votes in 2024, handily secured reelection over Republican Kevin Lincoln. The district shifted to be friendlier to Democrats following California Democrats’ redistricting push last year.

In California’s 22nd District, progressive Democrat Randy Villegas, who was among Sen. Bernie Sanders’ handful of House endorsements, ousted Republican Rep. David Valadao in another newly drawn district where 2 out of 3 voters are Hispanic.

In California’s 34th District, democratic socialist Angela Gonzales‑Torres beat her incumbent opponent, fellow Democrat Jimmy Gomez. Gomez is facing a House Ethics Committee investigation after a former congressional staffer accused him of sexual misconduct. He has denied any wrongdoing.

New York Democratic Reps. Tom Suozzi and Laura Gillen both fended off their Republican challengers in the state’s 3rd and 4th districts, respectively.

House Appropriations Committee

DeLauro makes official bid to return to the top job on the House Appropriations Committee

In a pitch to Democratic colleagues, she touted her revival of earmarks and relentless pushback against the Trump administration

By Katherine Tully-McManus and Jennifer Scholtes

Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut officially launched her bid to chair the House Appropriations Committee for the second time after Democrats clinched control of the House in Tuesday’s midterm election.

DeLauro, who is 83 and has served in the House since 1991, is currently the panel’s top Democrat and is expected to easily win the gavel for the 120th Congress.

“If re-elected as chair, I intend to use the gavel to further increase domestic investments in health care, education, job training, housing, transportation, energy, protecting the environment, economic development, consumer protection, and cutting-edge research all of which will help bring down costs and ease the strain on working families,” she wrote in a letter Wednesday to Democratic colleagues.

She touted her record as chair in 2021 and 2022, when she restored lawmakers’ ability to secure earmarks, or “Community Project Funding,” for projects in their districts and states. DeLauro also announced plans this time around to “claw back billions of dollars Republicans unilaterally provided to Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Pentagon through budget reconciliation in an end run outside of the Appropriations Committee.”

Democrats will be running up against a Republican White House the next two years, where President Donald Trump could threaten to veto legislation he doesn’t like. They also won’t have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate to advance legislation along party lines.

But DeLauro and her counterpart, top Senate Appropriations Democrat Patty Murray of Washington, have been leading the charge against the Trump administration’s attempts to exert greater executive branch control over federal spending decisions, including its withholding of funding previously approved by Congress, including through “pocket rescissions.”

DeLauro on Wednesday pledged to hold the Trump administration to account for these sorts of funding freezes, transfers and diversions that Democrats allege broke the law.

“Mark my words: if re-elected as chair, wherever and whenever this administration has violated the law with regard to the use of federal funds, I will hold them accountable,” DeLauro wrote.

House Budget panel

Boyle passes on Senate bid to lead House Budget panel

The Pennsylvania Democrat says he can make a bigger impact on public policy in the House.

Katherine Tully-McManus

Rep. Brendan Boyle will forgo a Senate run in 2028 in favor of leading the House Budget Committee, according to a statement the Pennsylvania Democrat issued Wednesday.

Boyle said he had been urged by supporters to run for Senate in two years — including in a primary against Sen. John Fetterman, who has alienated broad swaths of the party’s base — but was convinced to stay in the House after Tuesday night’s wave election.

“It is quite obvious that I will have a much bigger impact on policy as Budget Committee Chairman rather than as a freshman member of the Senate,” he said in the statement. “Therefore, I will not be running for the Senate.”

Boyle, who is 49 and has served in the House since 2015, is currently the Budget Committee’s top Democrat. He was widely expected to wield the gavel in the 120th Congress, and his statement Wednesday confirms his intentions.

“I look forward to utilizing my position as Budget Committee Chairman to finally get this nation’s fiscal health back on track, and bring more resources back home to our community,” he said.

NO! Not him... He is in the pocket of corporations......

Hakeem Jeffries announces run for speaker, promising ‘dramatic change’

With a huge majority and no expected competition, he is likely to cruise to the speakership.

Riley Rogerson

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is running for speaker, he announced in a letter to colleagues Wednesday.

Democrats have long considered the New Yorker — who has served two terms as minority leader — the heir apparent to longtime leader Nancy Pelosi. If he wins the Jan. 3 floor vote, he would become the House’s first Black speaker.

“Against all odds, House Democrats were consistently successful in the minority,” Jeffries wrote in the letter. “We must now deliver the dramatic change the American people are demanding in the majority.”

Jeffries is well-positioned to lead House Democrats next term. Although an incoming crop of hard-left members has not committed to backing him for speaker, no alternative candidate has emerged, and the size of the Democratic majority appears likely to make a small group of holdouts irrelevant.

In his role leading the caucus, Jeffries has built a reputation as a measured, deliberative leader with strong allies in the Congressional Black Caucus and centrist New Democrat Coalition. His left flank has signaled that they will push him on key priorities like Medicare for All and Israel aid.

In the letter, Jeffries touted his efforts to oppose President Donald Trump’s policies and personnel and working to overcome the “Republican gerrymandering scheme” by helping to organize counterefforts in California and elsewhere.

Jeffries emphasized on the campaign trail that he wants to tackle cost-lowering policies that could win broad support in the caucus. In particular, he previewed early votes on ending the Trump administration’s tariffs, clawing back Republican-led Medicaid cuts and restoring expired Affordable Care Act tax credits.

He also vowed an aggressive oversight agenda that includes probes into Trump, his family, his administration and his corporate allies.

A great line, ‘extinction-level event for Republicans’

DeSantis calls midterm bloodbath an ‘extinction-level event for Republicans’

Florida Republicans fended off a blue wave yesterday, while Democrats across the country flipped long-held red seats and seized control of Congress.

By Andrew Atterbury and Riya Misra

Gov. Ron DeSantis eviscerated the state of Republican politics Wednesday after the party’s devastating midterm losses, blaming everything from the Epstein files to members of Congress trading stocks.

The GOP governor maintained the Democratic wins in his state and beyond were more about voters rejecting Republicans in Washington than supporting liberal policies. And while the elections were “close to an extinction-level event for Republicans,” DeSantis took a proud victory lap on how the GOP performed in his state, where they swept state Cabinet races and staved off defeats like those suffered in conservative strongholds like Iowa, Kansas and Texas.

“To call it a wave, I don’t think would be fully accurate,” DeSantis said during a press conference in Tallahassee. “It’s the political equivalent of a meteor strike that went all around the United States, blue states, red states, everything in between. And the one state that was able to hold the line and withstand that is right here in the free state of Florida.”

DeSantis, who is term-limited and set to leave office in January, slammed how Republicans attacked this election cycle by focusing heavily on transgender issues instead of other policies, like responding to the booming growth of artificial intelligence. He contended Democrats outflanked the GOP on regulating AI and big tech, winning rural voters by pushing to slow down data center development on their turf.

Although DeSantis led the charge in passing legislation to ban transgender athletes participating in women’s sports five years ago, the governor argued that wasn’t a priority this cycle, as voters stressed about the economy, job market and war with Iran.

“That was not the issue motivating voters. It was kind of like an attempt to just scare Republicans to vote,” DeSantis said. “Now, the issues are different, and Republicans, it seemed like in some of the ads I was seeing, with how much money they were spending, they really were fighting yesterday’s battle.”

At the same time, DeSantis claimed Republicans were hurt by key decisions in Washington, such as voting against releasing the Epstein files, which was something they ran on just two years ago. He noted how President Donald Trump’s former Attorney General Pam Bondi fed into the voter outrage when she last year said the client list of deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was sitting on her desk.

“That’s a bad vote,” DeSantis said.

“You actually have people in Congress voting against release, when the attorney general said she had all this horrific stuff on her desk, and that people would be held accountable,” the governor added.

DeSantis also took aim at lawmakers failing to ban congressional stock trading, which he said “would be a breath of fresh air for everybody.” But he downplayed the role immigration enforcement might have played in the election, saying he didn’t think it was the “driving factor” for many voters.

Despite Republicans getting shut down in many states and even taking a hit in Florida, DeSantis pointed to voters backing conservative ballot measures, such as a major property tax cut in his state, as evidence Democrats didn’t run on a “positive agenda.”

“Democrats are unpopular,” DeSantis said. “They were able to win based off the sentiment that exists in the country right now. They did not earn a mandate to indulge all their left-wing fantasies.”

And when it came to the early parlor game around 2028 candidates, DeSantis was mum and left the door open to future decisions: “We’ll talk about anything I’m doing on the other side of this. I still got more work to do.”

Presidential Map Just Blew Up

Republicans’ 2028 Presidential Map Just Blew Up

The Democratic wave reached deep into Republican territory, reshaping the map and raising new questions about the GOP’s path to the White House.

By Jonathan Martin

The Democratic landslide Tuesday was not just a rebuke of President Donald Trump but a political earthquake that could fundamentally transform the country’s electoral map.

Suddenly, the Republican path to 270 electoral votes appears considerably narrower. But that’s not all. The red-and-blue presidential map as we know it is crumbling.

“After a generation, it looks ossified — there’s just more swing states now,” said Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa), the incoming House Budget Chair and student of political history. “We had the same map for a quarter-century but that’s changed.”

The transition starts in Texas, where after more than a decade of rosy predictions of blue, the GOP Alamo finally fell.

Democrats’ success there was stunning. Not only did they flip a Senate seat with a double-digit win, they claimed nearly every statewide office and took control of the state House. It’s plain as day: the GOP’s largest presidential prize is now an unambiguous swing state. And if they can’t retain Texas’s 40 electoral votes, Republicans have virtually no path to the presidency.

Yet that’s only the beginning of the cold new reality Republicans face as they climb out of the political wreckage of a historically bruising midterm and contemplate how they’ll retain the White House in 2028.

Democrats are effectively forming a pincer maneuver, meeting from east and west toward Texas and squeezing Republicans from either coast inward.

The Democratic hold along the Pacific remains impregnable and they showed renewed strength in the interior west on Tuesday, easily retaining governorships in Arizona and New Mexico while reclaiming it in Nevada. Arizona — the state of Barry Goldwater, John McCain and Jon Kyl — just reelected somebody derided four years ago as an accidental governor with a 13-point margin.

Colorado hasn’t been truly at risk for over two decades and only continues to grow a deeper shade of blue, light years from the conservatism that prevailed there for so much of the 20th century. Gov.-elect Phil Weiser won by nearly 30 points against an extremist Republican Tuesday. And now Kansas appears to be closer to its western neighbor than its Plains cousins. Adam Hamilton didn’t just win a Senate seat, he defeated an incumbent by five points and appeared to help Democrats prevail in a governor’s race there was still too close to call well after Midnight there. While Kansas Democrats have won four governors races this century, neither party has won a third consecutive gubernatorial term there since the state moved to four-year terms. With the booming growth in the Kansas City suburbs, Kansas could become the battleground state that Missouri was for so many years.

Moving north, Iowa, which Trump carried three times, showed unmistakable signs of returning to the battleground it was for decades. Democrat Rob Sand won the governorship by 10 points, a remarkable margin in a red-tinted state; Josh Turek won the Senate race by about four and Democrats picked up three House seats in a state that only has four altogether.

Democrats handily retained governorships in the so-called blue wall states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and won the governorship and a Senate seat in Ohio, which some in the party were convinced had become a hopelessly red state.

The Midwest hasn’t looked this much of a bluish shade of purple since, well, 2006 when Democrats won the governorships in each of these states (yes, including Kansas and Iowa). And 2006 was the dawn that presaged the day that was 2008, the best Democratic presidential performance this century.

This doesn’t necessarily mean 2028 will be a repeat of 2008, but to move east and south is to find only more devastation for Republicans. Their only real footholds in the Northeast are the governorships of New Hampshire and Vermont — and Pennsylvania Sen. David McCormick, who may be a presidential candidate perhaps sooner than planned. With Sen. Susan Collins’s defeat in Maine, Republicans have no senators in New England for the first time since the founding of the GOP.

This is a long way of saying, Republicans almost certainly won’t be finding electoral votes in the Northeast. Headed South, Virginia is an Atlantic cousin of Colorado, a suburbs-heavy state that is thoroughly Democratic now. And North Carolina looked a lot like Virginia Tuesday, electing Roy Cooper as senator with a staggering 20 point margin and turning out a handful of GOP House members.

In the past, the Deep South grew safer for Republicans, but South Carolina elected Annie Andrews — its first Democratic senator since 1998 on Tuesday. And Georgia demonstrated that it has firmly become a Democratic-leaning swing state now, closer to a Midwestern Blue Wall state than its Southern neighbors. The first Black woman to become governor in American history? Keisha Lance Bottoms did it with ease, winning by six points. Sen. Jon Ossoff won by an extraordinary 18 points and, in fact, Georgia Democrats won every state office and took back the state House for the first time since 2002.

So where are there any glimmers of light for Republicans on an otherwise dark Tuesday? Well, they did retain the governorship and a Senate seat in Florida, now the last bulwark of big-state Republicanism. But they barely held on, winning by less than three points in each race after years of demographic changes had made the state more Republican.

Yes, Republicans remained in control across much of the rest of the South, but the “Blacklash” nearly cost the GOP a Senate seat in Louisiana and it may yet in Mississippi, the most heavily Black state in America.

So where on the map do Republicans put together 270 electoral votes?

Just six reliably blue states — New York, New Jersey, Illinois and the three West Coast states — hand Democrats 135 electoral votes, getting them halfway there.

If the Sun Belt, including Texas and Florida, is up for grabs there is no obvious path for Republicans even in a slightly better political environment — one where Gov. Greg Abbott loses by, say, four rather than seven.

It seems dire in the wake of day for the GOP.

But, to be fair this could be a low ebb for the party: a historically bad midterm driven by an increasingly despised president, unpopular war and the high gas prices it wrought. But will the demographic challenges Republicans faced with Hispanics, Black voters and suburban white voters on Tuesday be appreciably different in two years, should President Trump still retain his grip on the party?

Put more directly, would Vice-President JD Vance fare better than Tuesday’s GOP candidates in Georgia, Texas, Wisconsin, Michigan and Nevada? It’s hard to see.

Now, he, or whoever the nominee is, won’t be running against a generic Democrat. And presidential races are different from statewide campaigns.

Tuesday shows, however, that political coalitions today can quickly shift — and the so-called red states Republicans thought they could count may be as elusive in 2028 as they were in 2026.

Georgia and Arizona will become what Virginia and Colorado are today if Republicans don’t pursue a post-Trump reformation and find a way to appeal to educated and more diverse voters.

“There are no permanent majorities in American politics,” said Boyle, reviving a truism as glaring and hard to miss as Texas going blue.

Not hard to do..........

‘Skip the TED talk’: Iran trolls Vance over midterm defeat analysis

The speaker of Tehran’s parliament jabbed the U.S. vice president for his 614-word missive on X.

By Marie Thirion

A senior Iranian official mocked JD Vance on Thursday for a lengthy social media post in which the U.S. vice president conceded that the American-Israeli war on Iran caused the Republican Party’s midterm election meltdown this week.

“Losing gambler energy, can’t walk away from the table. Boss is prepping the next war phase while America teeters on an Israel-First cliff. Skip the TED talk. Why not say this to your boss?” Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s parliament, shot back at Vance.

In his screed on X, published less than 24 hours after the Republicans suffered an election wipeout, Vance pointed to four things that needed to happen for voters to return to the party in future ballots.

“1) End the war. 2) Focus on cost of living/inflation. 3) Put America First. 4) Change our relationship to Israel,” Vance argued, in a missive that he personally drafted and which marked his first post-election attempt to distance himself from a war that U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly defended.

The U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28 this year, decapitating much of its top leadership. But the Tehran regime retaliated by attacking U.S. targets in the Middle East and closing off the Strait of Hormuz — a vital maritime chokepoint for the supply of oil and gas — by threatening ships attempting to traverse the waterway.

The standoff drove up the price of fuels and fertilizer, which raised the cost-of-living in the U.S. and contributed to a brutal electoral environment for the Republicans, who suffered a generational defeat on Tuesday night.

While Vance stated that “the reason we lost is the war,” Trump has been insistent that the conflict is necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

Potent legacy.... Being a stupid shithead.......

The end of Trump’s most potent legacy

Democrats’ romp wiped away the president’s chance at muscling through many more judicial nominees.

By Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney

Democrats’ sweeping victories Tuesday night will soon bring to a halt one of President Donald Trump’s most important achievements: remaking the federal judiciary.

Democrats may even have some hope of chipping away at the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority, depending on the number of Senate seats they ultimately pick up and whether a vacancy arises.

Trump has already, over the course of his two terms, appointed nearly 300 judges who, collectively, will pull the federal bench to the right for a generation. His second-term judges, in particular, have often proven to be outliers even among the conservative judiciary.

But the lame-duck president will be able to confirm few, if any, new judges once Democrats formally take over the Senate in January.

“Trump will not be able to appoint any justices or judges during his last two years in office (absent one-sided deal in favor of Dems),” veteran conservative courtwatcher Ed Whelan wrote on X Wednesday.

In addition, Democrats’ Senate gains — particularly in longtime conservative strongholds — could impact the judiciary there for decades.

Assuming the Senate maintains its longstanding “blue slip” rule giving senators veto power over judicial nominees in their state, newly elected Democrats will have the ability to block appointments in states like Texas, Kansas and South Carolina until 2033 — even if the GOP manages to regain control of the chamber and a Republican keeps the White House in 2029.

Ironically, it was an unreturned Republican “blue slip” that may have helped contribute to the party’s midterm losses. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) is narrowly trailing in her too-close-to-call race against Scott Colom, a Democrat she blocked from the bench in 2023 after his nomination by President Joe Biden.

The likely logjam has sparked another round of speculation that a conservative Supreme Court justice might resign in the coming days to allow a lame-duck confirmation. But the two oldest justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, have signaled that they don’t plan to step down now.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis predicted Tuesday that after the lame-duck period ends, Republicans “probably” won’t have the numbers to confirm a conservative justice until at least 2033, given the daunting math the party faces for retaking the upper chamber.

“Chance of confirming a worthy successor to Justice Thomas and/or Alito during President Trump’s term: Zero,” he said.

However, Republicans are hoping to jam through a handful of judicial nominees before the end of the year, two of whom played controversial roles in targeting Trump nemesis and former FBI Director James Comey. The Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to hold at least two hearings this month in a bid to get more Trump appointees confirmed before Democrats take control early next year.

On the House side, the looming Democratic takeover means an abrupt end to the half dozen attempts conservative members made to impeach judges who ruled against the Trump administration in various court fights since Trump returned to office last year.

GOP leaders never seriously entertained those impeachment calls, despite vocal support from Trump and prominent allies like Elon Musk.