This morning, four vulnerable Republicans signed onto the discharge petition all House Democrats have signed to force Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) to bring a bill to extend the premium tax credits for purchasing healthcare insurance on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) markets to the floor for a vote. The proposal extends the credits for three years.
Republicans who recognize that the American people overwhelmingly want the extensions have been fighting their colleagues who want to get rid of the ACA and slash government spending in general. Instead of extending the credits, House leadership is proposing a package of policies popular among their conference; the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reports that it will drop about 100,000 people a year off health insurance through 2035 but will save the government $35.6 billion.
Without the extension of the premium tax credits, which Republicans permitted to lapse at the end of the year when they passed their July budget reconciliation bill that they call the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” the 24 million Americans who buy insurance on the ACA marketplace will see their insurance premiums skyrocket, and millions will lose their health insurance altogether. And yet, Republicans oppose the extensions, which will cost the government about $350 billion over the next ten years. The Republicans’ extension of the 2017 tax cuts in that same bill will cost about $4 trillion over the same period.
Yesterday, Johnson dismissed the members of his conference who wanted to vote on the extension, saying that “many of them did want a vote on this Obamacare covid-era subsidy the Democrats created. We looked for a way to try to allow for that pressure release valve, and it just was not to be.” Representative Mike Lawler (R-NY) told reporters: “This is absolute bullsh*t.”
When the Republican-controlled House Rules Committee struck down all the Republican attempts to amend the Republican bill by extending the tax credits, four Republicans signed the Democrats’ discharge petition. The four Republicans who signed are Lawler and Brian Fitzpatrick, Rob Bresnahan, and Ryan Mackenzie of Pennsylvania. David G. Valadao of California told Marianna Sotomayor, Kadia Goba, and Riley Beggin of the Washington Post that he would have signed, too.
This evening, the House passed the Republican healthcare measure, which is expected to die in the Senate. The House will vote on extending the premium tax credits in January.
Meryl Kornfield and Hannah Natanson of the Washington Post reported today on a court filing by lawyers for the government that claims it is legal for the administration to distribute federal money only to Republican-dominated states, withholding it from Democratic-dominated states. The government admitted that it withheld grants from the Department of Energy according to “whether a grantee’s address was located in a State that tends to elect and/or has recently elected Democratic candidates in state and national elections (so-called ‘Blue States’).” Without evidence, the government claimed that such discrimination “is constitutionally permissible, including because it can serve as a proxy for legitimate policy considerations.”
Kornfield and Natanson note that this is a “remarkably candid admission” that “echoes…Trump’s frequent vows to punish cities and states that he sees as his enemies, from withholding disaster relief for Southern California to targeting blue cities with National Guard troops.”
Joey Garrison of USA Today reported yesterday that a senior White House official told him the Trump administration is dismantling the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado. Since 1960, NCAR scientists have studied Earth’s atmosphere, meteorology, climate science, the Sun, and the impacts of weather and climate on the environment and society. Climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe wrote that “[d]ismantling NCAR is like taking a sledgehammer to the keystone holding up our scientific understanding of the planet.”
Director of the Office of Management and Budget Russell Vought told Garrison that the center is “one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country” and that the government will break it up, moving what he called “any vital activities such as weather research” to “another entity or location.” Earlier that day, Garrison notes, the administration cancelled $109 million in grants to Colorado.
Colorado governor Jared Polis said he had not heard the news about NCAR but that “[i]f true, public safety is at risk and science is being attacked. Climate change is real, but the work of NCAR goes far beyond climate science. NCAR delivers data around severe weather events like fires and floods that help our country save lives and property, and prevent devastation for families. If these cuts move forward, we will lose our competitive advantage against foreign powers and adversaries in the pursuit of scientific discovery.”
Trump has repeatedly attacked Polis, a Democrat, since his refusal to pardon former Colorado election official Tina Peters, convicted by a jury for state crimes in facilitating a data breach in her quest to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Peters is serving a nine-year prison sentence. On December 11, Trump granted Peters a “full pardon,” but since presidents cannot issue pardons for state crimes, that means little unless Polis also pardons her.
Matt Cohen of Democracy Docket reported yesterday on escalating calls for violence to free Peters coming from prominent right-wing figures. Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo posted after the threat to close NCAR that he was “[h]earing this is payback for Colorado not honoring Trump/Peters ‘pardon.’”
Former special counsel Jack Smith testified today behind closed doors before the House Judiciary Committee about his investigation into Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. According to Ryan J. Reilly of NBC News, who obtained portions of Smith’s opening statement, Smith told the committee that he and his team found “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” that Trump engaged in a “criminal scheme” to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) subpoenaed Smith earlier this month, rejecting Smith’s offer to testify in public. Jordan was among those claiming to be outraged at the news that Smith had obtained the call records of nine congressional Republicans related to the president’s attempt to overturn the results of the election. Those records listed who was called and the time, date, and length of the call, without information about the content of it.
In 2022 the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol revealed that Trump and Jordan had a ten-minute phone call on the morning of January 6. That afternoon, Jordan objected to the counting of the votes that would certify Democrat Joe Biden as president. Jordan refused to cooperate with the committee when it asked for more information.
Smith told the committee that the phone records “were lawfully subpoenaed and were relevant to complete a comprehensive” investigation. He continued: “January 6 was an attack on the structure of our democracy in which over 100 heroic law enforcement officers were assaulted. Over 160 individuals later pled guilty to assaulting police officers that day. Exploiting that violence, President Trump and his associates tried to call Members of Congress in furtherance of their criminal scheme, urging them to further delay certification of the 2020 election.”
“I didn’t choose those Members,” Smith said, “President Trump did.”
Republicans were hoping to undermine Smith and to portray him as part of a Department of Justice weaponized under the Biden administration. “Jack Smith should be in jail—if not prison,” Representative Troy Nehls (R-TX), a member of the Judiciary Committee, told Hailey Fuchs and Kyle Cheney of Politico. “He’s a crook. Jack Smith is a crook, and he needs to be held accountable for all his games that he played.”
After Smith testified, ranking member of the Judiciary Committee Jamie Raskin (D-MD) said Jordan “made an excellent decision in not allowing Jack Smith to testify publicly, because had he done so, it would have been absolutely devastating to the president and all the president’s men involved in the insurrectionary activities of January 6.”
Today, news broke that Trump has added plaques to the hall of portraits of former presidents hanging in the White House. A plaque under the photo of President Barack Obama says he “was one of the most divisive political figures in American History,” who “passed the highly ineffective ‘Unaffordable’ Care Act.”
Under a photograph of an autopen, with which Trump replaced the portrait of Biden, the plaque begins: “Sleepy Joe Biden was, by far, the worst President in American History. Taking office as a result of the most corrupt Election ever seen in the United States, Biden oversaw a series of unprecedented disasters that brought our Nation to the brink of destruction….”
—
Notes:
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.286703/gov.uscourts.dcd.286703.17.0_8.pdf
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/12/17/blue-state-cuts-trump-grants/
https://bipartisanpolicy.org/article/the-new-cost-for-2025-tax-cut-extensions-4-trillion/
https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-grants-tina-peters-a-full-pardon-what-we-know-11199083
https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/12/16/congress/mike-lawler-obamacare-lapse-00692577
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/12/17/house-republicans-aca-subsidies-vote/
https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/04/politics/jim-jordan-trump-january-6
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/12/17/jack-smith-trump-congress-investigations-00693884
Bluesky:
joshtpm.bsky.social/post/3ma5v4g2efs2w
rpsagainsttrump.bsky.social/post/3ma7ctae7c225
katharinehayhoe.com/post/3ma5o6aldq22w
By Heather Cox Richardson