TRUMP-GOP STONEWALLING SHOWS THEY’RE ‘ABSOLUTELY COMMITTED TO RAISING YOUR COSTS,’ SEN. MURPHY SAYS. US Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said the GOP’s rejection of Democrats’ compromise proposal to extend enhanced Affordable Care Act tax credits for a year in exchange for reopening the federal government shows the Republican Party is “absolutely committed to raising your costs.”
“Republicans are refusing to negotiate,” Murphy said in a video posted to social media Nov. 8, arguing that President Donald Trump and the GOP’s continued stonewalling is “further confirmation” that Republicans are uninterested in preventing disastrous premium increases, Jake Johnson noted at Common Dreams (11/8).
“They are willing to keep the government shut down, they are so determined to make you pay more for healthcare,” the senator added.
More than 20 million Americans who purchase health insurance on the ACA marketplace receive enhanced tax credits that are set to expire at the end of the year if Congress doesn’t act. So far, the Republican leadership in the Senate has only offered to hold a vote on the ACA subsidies, with no guarantee of the outcome, in exchange for Democratic votes to reopen the government.
People across the country are already seeing their premiums surge, and if the subsidies are allowed to lapse, costs are expected to rise further and millions will likely go uninsured.
“Clearly, the GOP didn’t learn their lesson after the shellacking they got in Tuesday’s elections,” said Protect Our Care president Brad Woodhouse. “They would rather keep the government shut down, depriving Americans of their paychecks and food assistance, than let working families keep the healthcare tax credits they need to afford lifesaving coverage. Good luck explaining that to the American people.”
In a post to his social media platform on Saturday, Trump made clear that he remains opposed to extending the ACA tax credits, calling on Republicans to instead send money that would have been used for the subsidies “directly to the people so that they can purchase their own, much better healthcare.”
Trump provided no details on how such a plan would work. Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who was at the center of the largest healthcare fraud case in US history, declared that he is “writing the bill now,” suggesting that the funds would go to “HSA-style accounts.”
Democrats immediately panned the idea.
“This is, unsurprisingly, nonsensical,” said Murphy. “Is he suggesting eliminating health insurance and giving people a few thousand dollars instead? And then when they get a cancer diagnosis they just go bankrupt? He is so unserious. That’s why we are shut down and Americans know it.”
Polling data released Thursday by the health policy group KFF showed that nearly three-quarters of the US public wants Congress to extend the ACA subsidies
“More than half (55%) of those who purchase their own health insurance say Democrats should refuse to approve a budget that does not include an extension for ACA subsidies,” KFF found. “Notably, past KFF polls have shown that nearly half of adults enrolled in ACA marketplace plans identify as Republican or lean Republican.”
TRUMP HEALTHCARE PAYMENT PROPOSAL SPARKS FRESH MEDICARE FOR ALL DEMANDS TO FIX ‘BROKEN’ HEALTHCARE SYSTEM. As the government appears poised to reopen, with Republicans having successfully avoided concessions on their goal of eliminating Affordable Care Act tax credits, President Donald Trump has proposed his own solution to the looming explosion in health insurance costs, Stephen Prager noted at Common Dreams (11/10).
By agreeing to reopen the government without a deal, Democrats have given up their main leverage to force Republicans to extend the credits set to expire at the end of the year. If this happens, over 22 million Americans are expected to see their monthly insurance premiums more than double. As enrollment data for next year shows, Americans are already seeing skyrocketing healthcare costs, not just for ACA recipients but for everyone.
While Republicans successfully strong-armed their opposition into caving by using the shutdown to turn the screws on government workers and food stamp recipients, they still have to weather the political fallout of the coming healthcare apocalypse. A poll released Nov. 6 by KFF found that 74% of Americans—half of whom are self-identified Republicans—want to see the credits extended. Three-quarters also say they’d blame either Trump or Republicans in Congress if they weren’t.
On Truth Social Nov. 8, as a shutdown deal appeared likely, Trump proposed his own idea:
“I am recommending to Senate Republicans that the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars currently being sent to money sucking Insurance Companies in order to save the bad Healthcare provided by ObamaCare, BE SENT DIRECTLY TO THE PEOPLE SO THAT THEY CAN PURCHASE THEIR OWN, MUCH BETTER, HEALTHCARE, and have money left over. In other words, take from the BIG, BAD Insurance Companies, give it to the people, and terminate, per Dollar spent, the worst Healthcare anywhere in the World, ObamaCare.”
Trump is correct that under the current scheme, Americans don’t actually receive money directly. But experts warn that while there’s a visceral populist logic to his proposal, the flaws of replacing those annual subsidies with a one-time payment become obvious with the barest of scrutiny, especially when it is paired with a proposal to fully repeal the ACA.
“You have to read between the lines here to imagine what President Trump is proposing,” said Larry Levitt, the executive vice president for health policy at KFF. “It sounds like it could be a plan for health accounts that could be used for insurance that doesn’t cover preexisting conditions, which could create a death spiral in ACA plans that do.”
One of the Senate’s most prominent proponents of eliminating the ACA and other parts of the social safety net, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), said he was “writing the bill right now,” and clarified that it would indeed involve “HSA-style accounts” for Americans in place of subsidized insurance.
On Nov. 9, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) noted that this was just a reheating of the “same old, tired proposal of repealing the Affordable Care Act, giving people a benefit in the form of a health savings account, but allowing insurance companies once again to cancel policies and refuse to write policies for people who have preexisting health conditions.”
HSAs were a key component of the Republicans’ failed 2017 plan to “repeal and replace” the ACA, which many critics pointed out would allow insurers to skyrocket the costs of insurance for those dealing with preexisting conditions.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who sits on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP), called Trump’s new plan “unsurprisingly nonsensical.”
“Is he suggesting eliminating health insurance and giving people a few thousand dollars instead?” Murphy asked. “And then when they get a cancer diagnosis, they just go bankrupt?”
But while many Democrats decried yet another effort to dismantle the ACA, some progressives pointed out that health insurance costs, and healthcare costs more generally, have still exploded under Obamacare, which — despite introducing new guardrails — still leaves profit-driven insurance intact and requires all Americans to purchase it.
“Yes, Mr. President: You’re right. We do have ‘the worst healthcare’ of any major country,” replied Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the HELP committee’s ranking member, who has long decried the profiteering of insurance companies. “Despite spending twice as much per capita, we are the only major country not to guarantee health care to all as a human right. The solution: Medicare for All.”
WORST MASTERMINDS OF TRUMP’S ATTEMPTED COUP GET PARDONS. President Trump preemptively pardoned more than 75 people who helped him try to steal the 2020 election, Emily Singer noted at Daily Kos (11/10). This included disgraced ex-New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and disbarred right-wing lawyer John Eastman—the one who came up with the legal strategy to help Trump overturn the election results.
The 77 pardons — announced by Trump’s moronic and corrupt pardon attorney Ed Martin — were symbolic, as none of the people are facing federal charges for their disgraceful attempt to serve as so-called “alternate electors” to the Electoral College so Trump could steal then-President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.
However, it’s indicative of Trump’s belief that people who support him are above the law—essentially granting them carte blanche to commit crimes as they won’t face punishment for doing so.
Martin announced the pardons by listing then in a thread on X, where he had previously said, “no MAGA left behind.”
Aside from Giuliani and Eastman, the pardons also include:
• Sidney Powell, the lunatic former member of Trump’s legal team who stood alongside Giuliani in an insane news conference after Trump’s 2020 loss in which she claimed a dead Venezuelan dictator conspired with voting machine companies to steal the election from Trump. Her deranged rantings got her sued for millions from the voting machine companies she defamed.
• Mark Meadows, Trump’s former White House chief of staff who helped coordinate the effort to steal the election.
• And Boris Epshteyn, a Trump ally who currently serves as a special adviser to Trump who aided Giuliani in the fake elector scheme.
The pardons are the latest in Trump’s efforts to reward law-breaking and corrupt Republicans.
On Nov. 7, Trump pardoned former Tennessee House Speaker Glen Casada, who was serving 36 months in federal prison on fraud charges. Trump also commuted the sentence of expelled New York GOP Rep. George Santos, releasing the fraudster from prison years before his sentence was set to expire. And he pardoned billionaire crypto Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, who does business with Trump’s sons.
Those are on top of the pardons of hundreds of insurrectionists who either pleaded guilty to, were convicted of, or were set to face trial for their role in the riots at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. A number of those criminals have committed more crimes since Trump’s act of clemency.
An even more horrendous pardon could also be on the way. Congressional Democrats say that convicted felon Ghislaine Maxwell is seeking a commutation of her 20-year prison sentence for her role in Jeffrey Epstein’s sick child sex trafficking operation.
House Judiciary Committee ranking member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) released documents of Maxwell’s commutation application, and warned Trump against granting her clemency, NBC News reported on Monday.
“You should not grant any form of clemency to this convicted and unrepentant sex offender,” Raskin wrote in a letter to Trump, ABC News reported. “Your Administration should not be providing her with room service, with puppies to play with, with federal law enforcement officials waiting on her every need, or with any special treatment or institutional privilege at all.”
HEGSETH SAYS 6 MORE MEN KILLED IN LATEST BOAT BOMBINGS. Six people were killed Nov. 9 in US military strikes on what Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth claimed were boats smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean, bringing the total death toll from all such reported attacks to at least 76 since early September, Brett Wilkins noted at Common Dreams (11/10).
“Yesterday, at the direction of President [Donald] Trump, two lethal kinetic strikes were conducted on two vessels operated by designated terrorist organizations. These vessels were known by our intelligence to be associated with illicit narcotics smuggling, were carrying narcotics, and were transiting along a known narco-trafficking transit route in the eastern Pacific,” Hegseth said Nov. 10 on social media without providing evidence to support his claim.
“Both strikes were conducted in international waters and three male narco-terrorists were aboard each vessel. All six were killed,” he added. “No US forces were harmed. Under President Trump, we are protecting the homeland and killing these cartel terrorists who wish to harm our country and its people.”
The Nov. 9 attacks raised the death toll in the Trump administration’s nine-week campaign to at least 76 people in 19 attacks in the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea. The US strikes have come amid Trump’s deployment of warships and thousands of troops off the coast of Venezuela and follow the president’s approval of covert CIA action and threats to attack inside the oil-rich country.
The previous week, Republicans in the US Senate rejected a bipartisan war powers resolution aimed at stopping the Trump administration from continuing its bombing of alleged drug boats or attacking Venezuela without lawmakers’ assent, as required by law.
Trump administration officials have admitted that they aren’t attempting to identify people aboard boats before or after bombing them. Congresswoman Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) recently told CNN that Pentagon officials briefed her “that they do not need to positively identify individuals on the vessel to do the strikes.”
Jacobs also said that the administration is not making any effort to imprison survivors of the strikes or prosecute them, “because they could not satisfy the evidentiary burden.”
In the past, drug trafficking in the Caribbean and Pacific has been treated by the US government as a law enforcement issue, with the Coast Guard and other agencies sometimes intercepting boats and arresting those on board if evidence was found, granting them a day in court.
Leaders in Venezuela, Colombia, and other nations; United Nations officials; human rights groups; and Democratic US lawmakers are among those who have condemned the boat bombings as extrajudicial assassination, murder, and war crimes.
STARVING THE POOR IS TOO MUCH FUN FOR TRUMP TO GIVE UP. President Trump really doesn’t want poor people to eat, Emily Singer noted at Daily Kos (11/10).
An appeals court on Nov. 10 ruled that even though the government is shut down, Trump and his administration have to pay out Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits—better known as food stamps—to the over 40 million Americans who rely on the program to feed themselves and their families.
But Trump immediately notified the Supreme Court that it would be filing an appeal, hoping to stop benefits from going out to hungry people until the government reopens, which is expected to happen soon.
That comes after the Trump administration told states over the weekend that they had to reverse any attempts to fund SNAP benefits or else risk adverse consequences.
“To the extent States sent full SNAP payment files for November 2025, this was unauthorized. Accordingly, States must immediately undo any steps taken to issue full SNAP benefits for November 2025,” Patrick A. Penn, a deputy undersecretary of the Agriculture Department, wrote in a memo to states. “Failure to comply with this memorandum may result in USDA taking various actions, including cancellation of the Federal share of State administrative costs and holding States liable for any overissuances that result from the noncompliance.”
Obstinately refusing to pay out food stamps is so evil it’s hard to put into words.
“Trump is doing this because he is a bad person,” Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said at a press conference last week when Trump was fighting court orders to pay SNAP benefits. “He’s weaponizing hunger and trying to rip food away from more than 40 million Americans, including 16 million children, for sadistic political leverage. How dare he?”
It’s also politically idiotic.
The courts had given Trump a good out when they ordered him to pay food stamp benefits.
Trump appealing those rulings because he didn’t want to pay SNAP benefits makes him directly responsible for millions of people going hungry—including millions of Trump’s own voters who rely on food stamps.
And it seems the public agrees. Trump’s approval rating has declined dramatically since he began to hold poor people hostage by refusing to fund food stamps until the government reopened.
“It seems very likely that threatening SNAP benefits was the primary cause of the big downshift in Trump’s approval ratings beginning ~3 weeks ago,” polling analyst Nate Silver wrote, referring to the date when Trump’s secretary of agriculture announced the administration would not be funding food stamp benefits during the shutdown.
Trump’s approval rating now stands at a dismal 40.2%, according to FiftyPlusOne’s polling average.
That’s about a 2-percentage-point decline since early October, and such high disapproval of Trump’s agenda could cause an electoral wipeout for Republicans next November—as it did last week in a spate of off-year elections in New Jersey, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and California.
“The Oligarchs Never Change,” progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont wrote in a post on X. “Marie-Antoinette: Let Them Eat Cake. Donald Trump: Let Them Starve.”
TRUMP DOJ GIVES GOOGLE ANTITRUST WIN AFTER TECH GIANT’S BALLROOM DONATION. The US Justice Department has reportedly given the tech behemoth Alphabet a green light to acquire the cybersecurity firm Wiz after it was revealed that the Google parent company donated to President Donald Trump’s $300 million ballroom project, Jake Johnson noted at Common Dreams (11/6)
The merger deal is valued at over $30 billion and would mark Alphabet’s largest acquisition to date, even as the company faces antitrust cases at the state and federal level. Wiz CEO Assaf Rappaport announced the Justice Department’s decision on Nov. 6 at an event hosted by the Wall Street Journal.
The DOJ approval came after Bloomberg reported in June that the Justice Department’s antitrust arm was reviewing whether Alphabet’s acquisition of Wiz would illegally undermine competition. The following month, the Justice Department ousted two of its top antitrust officials amid internal conflict over shady corporate settlement deals.
Lee Hepner, an antitrust attorney and senior legal counsel for the American Economic Liberties Project, called the DOJ’s clearing of Alphabet’s Wiz acquisition “the kind of blunt corruption that most won’t notice.”
Hepner observed that news of the approval came shortly after the White House released a list of individuals and corporations that have pumped money into Trump’s gaudy ballroom project. Google—which also donated to Trump’s inauguration—was one of the prominent names on the list, alongside Amazon, Apple and other major corporations.
Google is reportedly funneling $22 million to the ballroom project.
“These giant corporations aren’t funding the Trump ballroom debacle out of a sense of civic pride,” Robert Weissman, co-president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said earlier in the week. “They have massive interests before the federal government and they undoubtedly hope to curry favor with, and receive favorable treatment from, the Trump administration.”
“Millions to fund Trump’s architectural whims are nothing compared to the billions at stake in procurement, regulatory, and enforcement decisions,” he added.
According to a Public Citizen report published Nov. 2, two-thirds of the 24 known corporate donors to Trump’s ballroom project—including Google—are beneficiaries of recent government contracts.
‘MEGA-LAYOFFS’ UNDER TRUMP AS CORPORATIONS HAVE CUT 1 MILLION JOBS THIS YEAR—MOST SINCE 2003. The US labor market, which in recent months had ground nearly to a halt, now appears to be entering a downward spiral, Brad Reed noted at Common Dreams (11/6).
As reported by the Washington Post on Thursday, new data from corporate outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas found that employers in October announced 153,000 job cuts, which marked the highest number of layoffs in that month since October 2003.
Total announced job cuts in 2025 have now reached 1.1 million, a number that the Post describes as a “recession-like” level comparable to the steep job cuts announced in the wake of the dotcom bust of the early 2000s, the global financial crisis of 2008, and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
John Challenger, the CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, told the Post that the huge number of October layoffs showed the economy was entering “new territory.”
“We haven’t seen mega-layoffs of the size that are being discussed now—48,000 from UPS, potentially 30,000 from Amazon—since 2020 and before that, since the recession of 2009,” he explained. “When you see companies making cuts of this size, it does signal a real shift in direction.”
CNBC noted that the Challenger report found that the tech sector is currently being hardest hit by the layoffs, and it said that the adoption of artificial intelligence was a significant driver of job cuts.
“Some industries are correcting after the hiring boom of the pandemic, but this comes as AI adoption, softening consumer and corporate spending, and rising costs drive belt-tightening and hiring freezes,” the report said. “Those laid off now are finding it harder to quickly secure new roles, which could further loosen the labor market.”
With the backing of Big Tech investors, President Donald Trump has pushed to prevent states from regulating AI, over the objections of labor groups and progressive lawmakers. Last month, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) warned that without strong regulation, tech billionaires’ investments in AI will likely “increase their wealth and power exponentially” while wiping out “tens of millions” of jobs.
According to Bloomberg, however, AI adoption is just one factor in companies’ decision to enact mass layoffs, as some firms have also cited the need to protect their profit margins from the impacts of President Donald Trump’s tariffs, which have raised prices for a wide variety of products and materials.
Democratic lawmakers were quick to seize on the news of mass layoffs as evidence that Trump is sending the US economy into a ditch.
“Trump put billionaires in charge of everything,” remarked Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) in a social media post. “It’s a disaster.”
“Trump inherited the fastest growing economy in the [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development], fastest reduction in inflation, record job creation,” said Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.). “Dumb tariffs, racist immigration policies, attacks on the rule of law and termination of congressionally mandated programs did this.”
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), meanwhile, simply wrote that “Trump’s economy suuuuucks.”