 | BY ALICE MIRANDA OLLSTEIN | Presented by the Financial Services Forum | | 
Former President Barack Obama (L) and U.S. President Joe Biden shake hands during an event to mark the 2010 passage of the Affordable Care Act in the East Room of the White House on April 05, 2022 in Washington, DC. | Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images | STILL A BFD — Republicans spent nearly a decade successfully channeling conservative rage against Obamacare into electoral victories. Now, though, with the law more popular than ever , Democrats are trying to turn the tables. President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign is prepping a blitz of events this weekend to mark the 14th anniversary of the signing of the Affordable Care Act — including a virtual rally Saturday with former President Barack Obama and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and satellite events in the swing states Biden needs to win in November: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Hampshire, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. It’s the latest sign that Biden sees his work on health care — both as president and vice president — as one of his strongest arguments for another term and a potent line of attack against his presumptive opponent Donald Trump, who suggested last year that Republicans take another run at repealing Obamacare. With polls showing Biden facing wide deficits when it comes to his handling of immigration, the economy, crime and other issues, both he and down-ballot Democrats are keen to campaign on their health care records, as polling also shows voters trust the party far more than Republicans on the issue. Biden — hoping for a repeat of progressive mobilization that saved the law in 2017 and fueled Democrats’ takeover of the House in 2018 — is especially eager to remind voters that he signed beefed-up Affordable Care Act subsidies into law during his first year in office, which made plans cheaper for millions and contributed to the record-high Obamacare enrollment the country reached in January. “I remember when [Obamacare] went through in 2009 and 2010,” Biden campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon told POLITICO, recalling the initial conservative backlash to the law. “But now people have lived through this. They’ve seen the benefit. And they don’t want Trump to take it away.” Enrollment in the Affordable Care Act is 50 percent higher today than it was when Republicans last tried to repeal it in 2017 — with some of the biggest gains in Florida and other red states. Nine more red and purple states have also expanded Medicaid under the law since then, which even GOP lawmakers who oppose Obamacare acknowledge makes repeal even more politically dicey. HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra — a frequent Biden surrogate who travels the country plugging the administration’s health care accomplishments — even argued at POLITICO’s health care summit last week that the program is now as untouchable as Medicare itself. “When 21 million-plus Americans count on the marketplace for their health care cover, and can’t be denied care because of a preexisting condition, and can keep their child under 26 on their health insurance coverage, and have access to free preventive care services, and women can get free contraceptive services without a copay, I wouldn’t be surprised if you have millions of American see Congress thinking of repealing it and say, ‘Keep your stinking hands off of our marketplace coverage,’” he said. And an Obamacare-centric message may resonate more with Democratic voters than the Medicare drug price negotiations and other policies Biden plans to talk about on the campaign trail. Most people won’t see lower medication costs until at least 2026 and the cap on out-of-pocket costs for Medicare patients won’t kick in until 2025. Recent polling by KFF shows only a quarter of voters are aware that those policies to lower drug costs even exist, while the AARP found that even a majority of seniors — the population set to benefit the most — don’t know Biden signed such provisions into law. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s author at aollstein@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @AliceOllstein .
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| | A message from the Financial Services Forum: Americans, especially low- and moderate-income consumers, will bear the brunt of Basel III Endgame. The new requirements would make borrowing more expensive, making it harder for Americans to take out a mortgage, buy a car, or secure a small business loan. Learn more. | | | | | — Fed forecasts rate cuts this year but sees economic strength: Federal Reserve officials expect to cut borrowing costs three times in 2024 but signaled Wednesday that interest rates won’t drop as aggressively over the next three years , in an endorsement of the strength of the U.S. economy. The central bank held rates steady after meetings this week and released new quarterly economic projections showing that policymakers project that prices will rise 2.4 percent this year — just above their target of 2 percent inflation. — Biden’s regulators issue long-awaited rule meant to drive electric car sales: The Biden administration on Wednesday issued one of its most ambitious climate rules, a push that could cause electric cars to make up the majority of U.S. auto sales eight years from now. The final version of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Cars rule is the strictest federal climate regulation ever issued for passenger cars and trucks — even though it offers manufacturers a slightly slower phase-in of pollution limits than the EPA had first proposed last spring. — DOJ escalates price-fixing probe on housing market : The Justice Department is expanding its probe of the rental housing market, opening a criminal investigation of a top developer of property pricing software and some of its customers , according to four people with knowledge of the matter. The DOJ is looking into the possibility that RealPage is facilitating price-fixing among some of the large residential property owners and management firms that use the company’s product, according to the people, who were granted anonymity to discuss a confidential matter.
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| | JOIN US ON 3/21 FOR A TALK ON FINANCIAL LITERACY: Americans from all communities should be able to save, build wealth, and escape generational poverty, but doing so requires financial literacy. How can government and industry ensure access to digital financial tools to help all Americans achieve this? Join POLITICO on March 21 as we explore how Congress, regulators, financial institutions and nonprofits are working to improve financial literacy education for all. REGISTER HERE . | | | | | | | BIDEN’S CAMELOT — For President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s independent candidacy looms as a potential political spoiler, writes NBC News. But for members of the extended Kennedy family, the possibility that one of their own could tip the race for presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump poses a different risk — spoiling a legacy. Some members of the extended Kennedy clan already have issued statements making clear they stand with Biden this fall. But a gathering of dozens of Kennedys at the White House last weekend marked the beginning of a more active effort by the family to boost Biden’s reelection effort, and push back against one of their own . RAISING ARIZONA — President Joe Biden traveled to Arizona Wednesday to announce that chipmaking giant Intel would be getting billions of dollars as part of a landmark industrial policy that he’s hoping will help pave the way for his reelection , POLITICO reports. But while the visit to the company’s campus outside Phoenix reflected the central political bet Biden is making — that domestic spending and jobs promises will capture more voters — it also underscored how difficult it’s been to pull it off. The grant is the largest award to be made from the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, which directed $39 billion in subsidies to boost U.S. competitiveness in semiconductors.
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Then-French Education and Youth Minister Gabriel Attal watches President Emmanuel Macron talking to the press in Arras, France, on Oct. 13, 2023. | Ludovic Marin, Pool via AP | OVERSEAS CAMPUS WARS — The heightened tensions on U.S. campuses between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel student factions following the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7 and the subsequent war in Gaza have made their way across the Atlantic — landing at one of France’s elite universities: Sciences Po , reports POLITICO Europe. Accusations of antisemitism surfaced last week at Sciences Po, French President Emmanuel Macron’s alma mater, during a Palestinian solidarity event on its Paris campus. A Jewish student said she was refused access to a protest staged by pro-Palestinian students after being called a “zionist” — a claim which the protesting students vigorously pushed back against. The French government was quick to react, stressing the gravity of the incident, but it has since been accused of having hastily reacted to a murky situation and of having breached academic independence. Less than 24 hours after the alleged antisemitic incident, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal showed up unannounced at a board of directors meeting for the National Foundation of Political Science (FNSP), which handles Sciences Po’s administrative and financial strategy, and said that the university’s leadership would need to implement measures to counter an “active and dangerous minority.” The university’s deans and research center heads subsequently spoke out against the prime minister’s surprise visit, expressing “in the strongest terms (their) indignation” in a statement published on Monday, saying that “no political figure should take actions that undermine the principles of academic independence and freedom.” Fears of importing American-style campus wars, complete with political proxy fights stemming from the Israel-Hamas war, appear to have fueled the government’s speedy intervention. “I will never let a French university become the mouthpiece for a North American ideology which, under the guise of modernity, promotes intolerance, rejects debate, and curbs freedom of expression,” Attal, also a graduate of Sciences Po, said Tuesday during a question period in parliament. THE NEXT HUNGARY — Prime Minister Robert Fico is becoming a problem. From attempts to control the public media to the abolition of a special prosecutor’s office and parroting Russian propaganda, Slovakia’s ruling coalition is taking pages out of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s playbook when it comes to illiberal views , POLITICO Europe reports. On Wednesday, a special prosecutor’s office that dealt with serious corruption cases — many of which involved Fico’s own MPs or close business allies — will be shut down, on the prime minister’s orders. The move caused outrage in Brussels with senior EU officials voicing their concerns about these rule of law violations.
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| | | CITIES OF GOD — The Census Bureau is prohibited from asking questions about religion on the decennial Census. But it has rolled out a new instrument this year called the Household Pulse Survey, which features a question about religious attendance. Ryan Burge, an associate professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University and the author of four books on religion and politics, has crunched those numbers and offers some insights into the religiosity of major metropolitan areas in his Substack, Graphs About Religion . The two least religious cities? We’ll give you a hint: they’re both located on the West Coast.
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On this date in 1995: Wearing cloth masks, subway employees stand outside Kasumigaseki Station, after they were evacuated from the underground station where toxic fumes spread in downtown Tokyo. Fourteen people were killed in a sarin gas attack perpetrated by the cult movement Aum Shinrikyo. | Koji Sasahara/AP | Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here .
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| | A message from the Financial Services Forum: State pension fund management systems like CalPERS have warned that regulators' current proposal is likely to reduce returns for people saving for retirement. With Americans still recovering from steep prices for gas and groceries, now is not the time to raise costs further.
It's no wonder a bipartisan group of lawmakers, former policymakers, business groups, academics, and nonprofit leaders have raised concerns over the proposal's potential impacts. See the cost. | | | | |
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