Tuesday, October 7, 2025
■ Today's Top News
"I live in fear of whether or not I will be able to afford my life saving treatment," one woman told Sanders' office.
By Brad Reed
As the federal government shutdown continued on Tuesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders released a report documenting Americans’ fears about the impact of Republicans’ healthcare policies will have on them in the coming months if the changes being demanded by Democrats are not implemented.
The report begins by discussing the impact of the Republican-passed cuts to Medicaid in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act earlier this year, as well as the expiring enhanced subsidies for people who buy health insurance through the Affordable Care Act, would have on Americans’ ability to access healthcare.
“Starting this month, millions of Americans are going to get a letter from their insurance companies telling them that their premiums will double, on average,” Sanders explains in the report’s foreword. “Unless we reverse course, the Republican budget will throw 15 million Americans off of Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act (ACA).”
The Sanders report goes beyond listing numbers and statistics, however, and features personal stories from hundreds of Americans across the country detailing their anxieties on how GOP healthcare policy would affect them and their families.
“I live in fear of whether or not I will be able to afford my life saving treatment,” explained a Wisconsin woman named Laura. “I have a rare kidney disease that requires immunotherapy every nine months. I’m terrified I’ll die.”
A Texas woman named Bobbi, who is currently being treated for lung cancer, told Sanders’ office that she likely won’t be able to afford to keep her insurance coverage if ACA enhanced credits aren’t renewed.
A Florida woman named Hayat said that she expects to suffer from painful migraines if she gets priced out of being able to afford insurance.
“If my health insurance costs go up, I won’t be able to have health insurance at all,” she said. “I’m a widow with 3 children and I work 48 hours per week. I suffer from migraines, and my health insurance was covering the $1040 per month cost for medication. I won’t be able to get my medication any longer and will suffer.”
Khorie, a woman from Texas, laid out just how much any further increase in insurance costs would upend her entire family.
“We struggle so much financially but yet make too much to receive any type of SNAP [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] or other government benefits,” she said. “I have medication for my ulcerative colitis that cost $8,000 without insurance and even with insurance it’s $1,500 and the only way I’m able to afford it is due to a copay assistance from the company itself. My daughter has braces, glasses, ADHD, and asthma, and my son also has asthma and I’m so worried if insurance becomes so unaffordable myself and my husband will have to suffer for the sake of my children’s well being.”
The report also detailed how the increased health insurance costs would have ripple effects that will hurt Americans’ ability to afford food and housing.
“We will not be able to eat consistently,” said an Illinois woman named Larissa, speaking of the prospect of having to pay nearly double for health insurance. “This will cut out more than 60% of our food budget for the month.”
A California woman named Aisha also said that a spike in health insurance would put her in a position where she would have to choose between having access to healthcare and paying her mortgage.
“I think that will be a no-brainer because I need a roof over my head,” she said. “That also means my child and I will be left without any healthcare and more than likely unable to survive.”
With the stalemate in Washington, DC heading into its second week, Sanders said lawmakers in Congress must come together to solve the crisis and rescue American families like the ones detailed in the report from the suffering and death that Republican policies are set to unleash.
“No, I will not vote for a budget that doubles premiums, throws 15 million people off health care, and causes 50,000 preventable deaths every year,” Sanders said in a statement. “Democrats, Republicans, and independents must come together to protect health care for every American—not just the profits of the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.”
The Sanders report concludes by not only vowing to reverse the Republican healthcare cuts, but to “work to end the international embarrassment of the United States being the only major country on earth that does not guarantee health care for all.”
"The livelihoods of the patriotic Americans serving their country in the federal government are not bargaining chips in a political game," said the president of the country's largest union of federal employees.
By Stephen Prager
The American labor movement erupted in outrage Tuesday after President Donald Trump appeared to go back on the government’s promises to provide back pay to all of the estimated 750,000 furloughed federal workers when the government shutdown ends.
Last month, as a shutdown loomed, the US Office of Personnel Management, an independent government agency that oversees the country’s civil service, published guidance for federal agencies stating definitively that “after the lapse in appropriations has ended, employees who were furloughed as a result of the lapse will receive retroactive pay for those furlough periods.”
This follows a federal law, the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act signed by Trump during the last shutdown in 2019, which requires that furloughed employees “shall be paid for the period of the lapse in appropriations.”
But the Trump administration has begun to walk back that promise. A memo from the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) obtained by Axios on Tuesday stated that the administration’s position was that employees were not all entitled to back pay, and that the money would have to be specifically appropriated by Congress.
”Does this law cover all these furloughed employees automatically? The conventional wisdom is: Yes, it does. Our view is: No, it doesn’t,“ a senior White House official said, adding that despite what guidance other agencies may have given, ”OMB is in charge.“
When asked by reporters Tuesday if furloughed employees would all be paid, Trump seemed to confirm the OMB position, saying that ”it depends on who we’re talking about.”
“For the most part, we’re going to take care of our people,“ he said. “There are some people that really don’t deserve to be taken care of, and we’ll take care of them in a different way.”
When asked why some workers would not get back pay, Trump told reporters to “ask the Democrats that question.”
The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), a union representing over 820,000 federal workers, argued that by denying back pay to furloughed employees, the Trump administration was contradicting both the law and its own assurances to employees.
“The frivolous argument that federal employees are not guaranteed backpay under the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act is an obvious misinterpretation of the law,“ said Everett Kelley, the AFGE’s national president. ”It is also inconsistent with the Trump administration’s own guidance from mere days ago, which clearly and correctly states that furloughed employees will receive retroactive pay for the time they were out of work as quickly as possible once the shutdown is over.“
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the top Democrat on the chamber’s Appropriations Committee, said on social media that the White House memo was “another baseless attempt to try and scare and intimidate workers by an administration run by crooks and cowards.”
“The letter of the law is as plain as can be,“ Murray said. ”Federal workers, including furloughed workers, are entitled to their back pay following a shutdown.“
The National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE), which represents about 110,000 employees, also chimed in with outrage over the decision by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to send members of Congress home last week as shutdown negotiations stalled. Johnson has maintained that he will not negotiate on Democrats’ demands to reverse cuts to a critical health insurance subsidy unless they agree to fund the government first.
”Congressional leaders should come back to Washington to negotiate an end to this shutdown immediately. Federal employees, our men and women in uniform, and the American people are all suffering. Skipping town in the middle of a crisis is unconscionable,“ said NFFE’s national president Randy Erwin. ”At this point, House Republicans have refused any meaningful negotiations. It appears to me that Speaker Johnson and his colleagues have no intention of ending this shutdown anytime soon. It seems they would rather sit back and play the blame game than undertake the necessary work to pass bipartisan spending legislation.“
Last week, Trump suggested that, alongside OMB Director Russell Vought, he would use the government shutdown to set about ”laying off a lot of people that are going to be very affected, and they’re Democrats. They’re gonna be Democrats.”
Trump added Tuesday that if the shutdown continues much longer, many government jobs would be on the chopping block “in four or five days“ and that ”a lot of those jobs will never come back.“
On NBC‘s ”Meet the Press“ Sunday, Johnson has described the potential layoffs of thousands of workers as ”regrettable,“ adding that it was ”not a job that [Vought] relishes... But he’s being required to do it by [Senate Minority Leader] Chuck Schumer (D-NY).”
On Thursday, however, Trump had described the shutdown as an “unprecedented opportunity” to carry out Vought’s proposals for cuts to programs and employees across federal agencies.
“The livelihoods of the patriotic Americans serving their country in the federal government are not bargaining chips in a political game,” Kelley said. “It’s long past time for these attacks on federal employees to stop and for Congress to come together, resolve their differences, and end this shutdown.”
"Not a single Republican in leadership... has given us a plan to help Americans deal with their health insurance premiums DOUBLING!!!" wrote MAGA firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene.
By Stephen Prager
Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Greg Casar said Tuesday that “reality” was finally starting to hit some Republicans in Congress about the catastrophic results of reopening the government without a plan to extend tax credits that help tens of millions of Americans afford healthcare.
The government shut down this past Wednesday after Democrats refused to vote for a GOP funding bill that did not extend Biden-era subsidies for the more than 24 million Americans who purchase health insurance on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace.
Republicans did not vote to extend the subsidies in July’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). And if they are allowed to expire at the end of 2025, KFF estimates that the average recipient’s insurance premiums will more than double, from $888 to $1,906 per year, which will result in about 4 million people losing their insurance due to unaffordability, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
This is on top of the roughly 10 million expected to lose insurance coverage due to the GOP’s massive cuts to Medicaid and other ACA marketplace spending in the Republican budget law.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) have maintained that they would not negotiate on extending the subsidies unless Democrats vote to reopen the government, thereby sacrificing their main point of leverage.
But while many Republicans have hoped to divert attention from the wildly unpopular subsidy cuts to instead push the false narrative that Democrats are pushing for “free healthcare for illegal aliens,” one of the most outspoken members of the MAGA coalition put her own party’s leaders on blast Monday for their apparent willingness to let millions face higher healthcare costs.
In a blistering post on X, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said that while she was “not a fan” of the ACA and blamed it for “skyrocketing premiums,” she was “going to go against everyone on this issue because when the tax credits expire this year my own adult children’s insurance premiums for 2026 are going to DOUBLE, along with all the wonderful families and hardworking people in my district.”
“No, I’m not [toeing] the party line on this, or playing loyalty games,” Greene continued. “I’m carving my own lane. And I’m absolutely disgusted that health insurance premiums will DOUBLE if the tax credits expire this year.”
Greene lamented that “not a single Republican in leadership talked to us about this or has given us a plan to help Americans deal with their health insurance premiums DOUBLING!!!”
She then turned her attention to the tens of billions of dollars worth of military aid sent to Israel and Ukraine in recent years: “All our country does is fund foreign countries and foreign wars, and never does anything to help the American people!!!”
Johnson brushed off Greene’s attack, noting that she “does not serve on the committees of jurisdiction to deal with those specialized issues, and she’s probably not read that in on some of that, because it’s still been sort of in their silos of the people who specialize in those issues.”
But Casar described Greene’s post as evidence that Republicans were beginning to recognize the hardship their policy may have wrought.
“Mike Johnson hasn’t picked a fight with Democrats—he’s picked a fight with reality,” Casar said. “Here’s reality breaking through.”
While hardly toning down her conspiracy theorizing or her attacks on immigrants and transgender people, Greene has taken some notable stands against her party, as well as President Donald Trump, on some key issues in recent months. These have included opposing additional weapons aid for Israel’s war in Gaza, which she has described as a “genocide,” and the full release of the Epstein files, which Trump and other Republicans have seemed intent on burying.
But she may not be the only Republican for whom the reality of the GOP’s healthcare cuts is “breaking through.” On Monday, Trump told reporters gathered at the Oval Office: “We have a negotiation going on with the Democrats that could lead to good things... And I’m talking about good things with regard to healthcare.”
Asked if he’d be willing to extend the expiring subsidies, Trump said: “If we made the right deal, I’d make a deal. Sure,” adding that “we’re talking to the Democrats.”
The top House and Senate Democrats denied talking to Trump, and the president did not specify which party members he’s allegedly talking to. But it nevertheless marked a notable shift in tone from the week before, when Trump responded to Democrats’ healthcare demands with derisive, artificially generated sombrero memes and top congressional Republicans swore off any negotiations unless Democrats agreed to fund the government first.
Other Republicans have joined calls for the subsidies to be extended, including Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who told reporters: “You’ve got to do something to make sure the premiums don’t essentially double, which they will in my state for private insurance. I mean, we just can’t allow that to happen. That’s a lot of Missourians who will not be able to afford healthcare.”
Hawley notably raised similar concerns about the OBBBA’s cuts to Medicaid earlier this year but ultimately voted for the legislation.
Nevertheless, the rhetorical change from some Republicans may have something to do with public opinion on the tax credits.
A poll released Friday by KFF found that 78% of Americans want Congress to extend the credits, compared to just 22% of Americans who want to let the credits expire. These majorities extend across the political spectrum, including 92% of Democrats, 82% of independents, and even 57% of Republicans who identify themselves as part of Trump’s MAGA movement.
The same poll found that if the tax credits are not extended, about 4 in 10 adults would blame Trump, while another 4 in 10 would blame Republicans in Congress. Just 2 in 10 would blame Democrats.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said Tuesday that waiting to extend the subsidies until after the shutdown ends is not an option.
“Mike Johnson wants to kick the can down the road when it comes to addressing skyrocketing premiums—but this is a crisis right now,” Jayapal said. “Now is the time to negotiate to lower costs—not after millions have been kicked off their healthcare.”
The two Democratic leaders have strongly condemned "Operation Midway Blitz," in which immigration agents have violently raided homes and cracked down on peaceful protests.
By Julia Conley
Merely by describing the recent actions of federal immigration agents in Chicago, one Republican senator claimed at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday, the city’s mayor and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, both Democrats, were “inciting violence.”
At the hearing, where Attorney General Pam Bondi testified on her leadership of the US Department of Justice since she was appointed by President Donald Trump, Sen. Ashley Moody (R-Fla.) recited a list of recent statements by Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson, both of whom have expressed strong opposition to “Operation Midway Blitz.”
The campaign has involved the deployment of more than 200 US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and other federal immigration authorities who have officially been directed to arrest undocumented immigrants with violent criminal records. More than 1,000 people have been arrested since ICE arrived in the nation’s third-largest city in September. Nationally, the libertarian CATO Institute found in June that about 65% of people detained by ICE this year have not had any criminal conviction.
In Chicago over the past month, US citizens, immigrants with legal status, and children have been swept up in raids and violence. ICE agents have been filmed throwing a congressional candidate to the ground at a protest; a journalist reported being attacked with a pepper ball by a masked agent “absolutely unprovoked” outside a detention facility where she was covering protests; and body camera footage has cast doubt on the Department of Homeland Security’s justification for the fatal shooting of Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez.
In her comments on Tuesday, Moody claimed to be concerned about violence in Chicago—but as with Trump’s signing of a presidential memo last month that mandates a “national strategy” to allow law enforcement to clamp down on left-wing organizers before they can commit “violent political acts,” the senator reserved her alarm for violence that she claimed Pritzker and Johnson were inciting by talking about ICE.
Moody condemned Pritzker’s description of “militarized [Customs and Border Protection] and ICE agents to the streets of Chicago” and his statement that “people are getting detained, they’re getting arrested.” She placed special emphasis on the words “US citizens,” apparently to suggest the governor should not speak about the fact that citizens, including residents of an apartment complex where ICE agents broke down doors and dragged people out onto the street one night last week, have been detained.
Moody also denounced Johnson’s comments on “a rogue, reckless group of heavily armed, masked individuals roaming throughout our city” and for saying that the city “will use this as an opportunity to build greater resistance.”
The senator appeared to suggest that, were it not for Johnson and Pritzker’s expressions of outrage over Trump’s deployment of federal agents and the National Guard in Chicago, residents would not be alarmed about Operation Midway Blitz.
“I am wondering if Pritzker and Johnson understand that there are federal laws that criminalize inciting violence,” said Moody. “Any time you start pitting your own people against their own government, a government that’s only there at its core to protect rights and the safety of its people, that is incredibly dangerous.”
Without being pushed by Pritzker and Johnson, Chicago residents have engaged in nonviolent protests against Trump’s anti-immigration agenda in recent weeks, with thousands marching in solidarity with immigrant communities before the deployment of ICE agents began.
Despite US backsliding, solar and wind generated more electricity than coal worldwide for the first time this year.
By Brett Wilkins
Led by Chinese expansion, global adoption of renewable energy is accelerating, with the world’s wind and solar farms generating more electricity than coal for the first time this year—however, the US embrace of fossil fuels under President Donald Trump is proving a drag on humanity’s transition to clean power.
The climate think tank Ember on Tuesday published its Global Electricity Mid-Year Insights report, which found that solar and wind outpaced demand growth in the first half of 2025. Solar generation grew by a record 306 terawatt-hours (TWh)—a 31% increase—with China accounting for more than half the world’s increase.
In a major milestone, solar and wind overtook coal electricity generation for the first time ever, as renewables grew by 363 TWh (+7.7%) to reach 5,072 TWh, while coal generation decreased by 31 TWh to 4,896 TWh.
“This analysis confirms what we are witnessing on the ground: Solar and wind are no longer marginal technologies—they are driving the global power system forward,” Global Solar Council CEO Sonia Dunlop said in a statement Tuesday.
“The fact that renewables have overtaken coal for the first time marks a historic shift,” Dunlop added. “But to lock in this progress, governments and industry must accelerate investment in solar, wind, and battery storage, ensuring that clean, affordable, and reliable electricity reaches communities everywhere.”
Two years after agreeing at the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP28, in Dubai to triple global renewable energy capacity by 2030, many key nations have failed to make significant progress toward that goal. Chief among these countries is the United States, where the return of Trump and his “drill, baby, drill” policies has resulted in the International Energy Agency (IEA) revising the country’s renewables growth outlook for 2030 downward by a staggering 45%.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed into law by Trump on July 4 includes billions of dollars in handouts for the fossil fuel industry, boosts drilling on millions of acres of public lands, mandates oil and gas lease sales, and imposes new fees on renewable development.
Additionally, the US Department of Energy recently announced a $625 million investment “to expand and reinvigorate America’s coal industry.“ This, as the DOE dramatically slashes funding for clean energy projects. Other federal agencies have similarly turned their backs on renewable development under Trump.
The good news is that despite backsliding by countries including the US and Japan, the IEA says that global renewable generation could double by the end of the decade, with 80% of new clean energy capacity expected to come from the sun.
Even in the United States, the combination of all renewables—wind, solar, hydropower, biomass, and geothermal—produced 9.9% more electricity during the first half of 2025 than it did a year ago, providing more than a quarter of all US electricity generation.
”Notwithstanding enactment of the anti-renewables provisions in the Trump megabill, solar and wind continue to power ahead,“ noted SUN DAY Campaign executive director Ken Bossong. ”Meanwhile the electrical output [year-to-date] by the Republicans’ preferred technologies—nuclear power and natural gas—has actually fallen.“
Climate campaigners hailed the continued growth of clean energy.
“Renewables overtaking coal for the very first time is a sign of how the economics of power generation have been transformed,” Julia Skorupska, head of secretariat at the Powering Past Coal Alliance, said in a statement Monday.
“There is a clear economic case for replacing coal with renewables, which are now the cheapest forms of energy in most of the world,” Skorupska continued. “The transition from coal to renewables underpins competitiveness, enables energy security, creates good jobs, and lowers electricity prices and air pollution risks for citizens.”
“With COP30 around the corner, countries have the opportunity to work together to accelerate this shift,“ she added, referring to next month’s UN climate summit in Belém, Brazil. ”We need genuine partnerships that enable coal-dependent countries to speed up their coal-to-clean transition, placing them right at the cutting edge of the energy revolution.“
“Our research highlights numbers, but we must never lose sight of this key fact: What we’re talking about is human suffering."
By Julia Conley
