Friday, October 30, 2026. Chump ends his DESPERTION TOUR today cancelling planned weekend appearances due to sluggish turnout and no improvements in the polls, ICE takes it upon themselves to vandalize US citizen's parked vehicles, Epstein remains an influence in the midterms, Priss Pot Pete fires another military official, Senator Patty Murray calls out the damage Chump has done to health care, and much more.
NBC News Chief White House Correspondent Garrett Haake, who has covered “dozens if not hundreds” of President Donald Trump’s rallies, expressed surprise at the size of the venue selected for the president’s latest campaign event, saying he couldn’t recall ever seeing the president speak in such a small space.
[. . .]
According to Haake, though, the size of Wednesday’s rally venue is raising some eyebrows.
“I’ve covered dozens if not hundreds of Trump rallies and I can’t recall him ever holding one in a room as small as this arena in Chillicothe, Ohio,” the chief White House correspondent wrote on social media. “It’ll be packed and loud — but maybe 1000 people will fit.”
And despite it being so small, Chump still couldn't fill it. The sparse attendance, Chump's weird noises he's been making from the stage, his homoerotic commentary on various men, his lies about the economy having recovered, it's just not selling. Which may explain why Alex Woodward (INDEPENDENT) is reporting:
President Donald Trump has canceled his Saturday appearance at a Kansas rally, his only scheduled campaign-trail appearance the weekend before Election Day.
The president will instead participate in a series of virtual rallies. It’s unclear whether he will reschedule the Kansas event.
Trump was scheduled to appear at Salina Regional Airport to support embattled Republican incumbent Sen. Roger Marshall, who is polling closely in a race for re-election against Democratic candidate and pastor Adam Hamilton. The last time voters in the state elected a Democratic U.S. senator was in 1939.
He will instead be doing 'telerallies' which seems as though he's packing in the live band to do a hologram performance and it will, no doubt, pack in just as many people as The Ronnie James Dio Hologram Tour' DIO RETURNS.
President Donald Trump went on an eyebrow-raising riff about Jeffrey Epstein while stumping for Republicans in Ohio ahead of Tuesday midterm elections.
Trump remained tight-lipped about the late convicted sex offender and wealthy financier as his administration faced backlash last year over its handling of government files relating to its federal sex trafficking case against Epstein. The heat on Trump was turned up when The Wall Street Journal released an article in July 2025 about a bawdy birthday letter Trump reportedly wrote to Epstein in 2003, that read: “May every day be another wonderful secret.”
In a rare remark about Epstein, who ran in the same social circles as Trump decades ago, the president said Wednesday night that he threw him the “hell out of Mar-a-Lago.”
His throwing Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago is actually disputed.
Video posted on X by Robert Potylo, who goes by Robby Roadsteamer on social media, shows him starting a heckle shortly after the president began speaking at the rally in Chillicothe, south of Columbus.
"Trump went on the Jeffrey Epstein plane! Trump went on the Jeffrey Epstein plane!” Potylo sang as the crowd booed.
Moments later, the video appears to show him being escorted out of the rally while the crowd chants “USA! USA!”
[. . .]
The rally protest comes days after House Judiciary Committee Democrats released a report calling for an independent special counsel to investigate Trump’s relationship with Epstein, arguing that accounts from women and records released in the Epstein case warrant further investigation into whether Trump committed wrongdoing. The allegations are disputed and have not resulted in any criminal findings against Trump.
He’s the subject of scores of midterm campaign ads, each more lurid than the last. A second bill mandating the release of the Epstein files is currently kicking around Congress. And on Monday, House Democrats released a new report alleging that the Justice Department helped cover up details of Epstein’s relationship with President Donald Trump, calling — very aspirationally! — for an independent criminal investigation.
Of course, no one really expects Trump’s attorney general to name a special counsel to investigate the Trump administration. In a statement, one White House spokesperson panned the report as “a desperate attempt by crazed Democrats to distract Americans.” (The timing, just one week before the midterms, does seem pretty fortuitous.)
The document, which runs to 50 pages, draws on public accounts and staff interviews with an unspecified number of survivors, including a former pageant queen who alleges that Trump raped her in 1993. The woman had previously accused Trump of groping her, which a Trump spokesperson dismissed at the time as “fake.”
When it comes to Epstein, however, Democrats don’t need a lot of new material to damage Trump. The scandal, and his administration’s handling of it, continue to cast a long, dark shadow over Republicans.
That’s surprising to me, candidly, because the decades-old dealings of even a very despicable sex offender don’t have any bearing on Americans’ day-to-day costs or experiences. And Trump has been able to brush off a lot of other unsavory behavior and associations.
But the Epstein story has lodged in the brains of some voters who helped elect Trump — including young voters whose growing disillusionment could make a big difference in next week’s elections.
Many of these young voters “resent the fact that Trump’s basically become part of the establishment” and see the Epstein files as evidence of that, the political analyst Rachel Janfaza recently told Vox. Some also feel burned by Trump’s campaign promise to release the government’s investigative files on Epstein…and his about-face once in office.
US House Rep Ro Khana discusses how Epstein is on voters' minds.
The Trump regime just suffered another courtroom defeat in its battle over the release of Jeffrey Epstein-related documents, and this time, it came at the hands of a federal appeals court.
On Wednesday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected an emergency request from Attorney General Todd Blanche to pause a review of foreign-language documents under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, delivering a significant victory to attorney and MeidasTouch host Katie Phang.
The ruling, issued by Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan and Circuit Judges Cornelia Pillard and Florence Pan, denied the Justice Department’s motion for a stay pending appeal, finding that the government failed to meet the stringent legal requirements necessary to justify halting the process.
In particular, the judges rejected the administration’s argument that it would suffer irreparable harm simply by beginning to review documents that may be subject to disclosure under federal law.
“The government has failed to show that it is irreparably harmed by merely initiating review of foreign-language documents under the Epstein Files Transparency Act,” the court wrote.
On the one hand, the October headline inflation forecast, courtesy of the Cleveland Fed's Inflation Nowcasting tool, moderated slightly from the previous update to 3.75% from 3.77%. Unfortunately, the Fed's preferred inflation gauge, Core Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE), is headed in the wrong direction.
Core PCE excludes volatile food and energy costs, providing economists with a clearer picture of long-term price trends. After three consecutive months at 3%, forecasts call for Core PCE to climb to 3.05% in September and 3.13% in October.
Though these increases are modest, they signal an evolution of Trumpflation. In other words, we're likely seeing Iran-war-driven inflation reaching the broader economy. This means everything from altered shipping routes to higher input costs for petroleum-based products (e.g., plastics) is hitting consumers' wallets.
The more Trumpflation evolves and becomes entrenched in the U.S. economy, the more likely it is that the Fed will get more aggressive with interest rate hikes. This is a potential worst-case scenario for a historically expensive stock market driven by debt financing amid the AI data center build-out.
Lauren Aratani (GUARDIAN) adds, "The US economy grew faster than expected in the third quarter while inflation accelerated in September, according to new commerce department data released on Thursday, less than a week before the midterm elections that will determine control of Congress. [. . .] New data from the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index, the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation, showed that prices increased 0.5% for the month in September and the annualized inflation rate rose to 3.6%. In August, the PCE’s inflation rate was 3.4%." Tony Romm (NEW YORK TIMES) explains:
The concern among Republicans has been evident as Mr. Trump crisscrosses the country in an 11th-hour campaign sprint. He has tried to present the economy as strong, growing and rife with new investment, while downplaying the fact that inflation has clearly worsened under his party’s stewardship.
Offering a final snapshot on the state of the economy before Election Day, a set of government reports on Thursday confirmed some of Mr. Trump’s claims and undercut others. The data showed that the economy was indeed expanding at a faster clip, with a key measure of its total output increasing at a 3.4 percent annual rate this summer. But prices also accelerated, rising more rapidly in September compared with a year earlier, and continuing to outpace wage gains.
As a result, Mr. Trump’s message contrasted with the experience of voters, who see the harsh realities of a high-cost economy every day — when they fill up their gas tanks, shop for groceries, pay their health insurance premiums, receive their credit card bills and confront the difficulties of homeownership.
Having weathered almost two years of high tariffs, geopolitical discord and other economic shocks, voters seem inclined to exact another round of political vengeance at the ballot box, or so the latest polls suggest. Depending on the extent of that rebuke, it could strip Republicans of their congressional majority and curtail Mr. Trump’s economic ambitions for the rest of his presidency.
Samuel Sey spent the past two years telling American Christians that the Bible demands what Immigration and Customs Enforcement does. “Christian ethics do not denounce deportations,” the conservative Christian blogger and podcaster wrote in Feb. 2025. “They demand it.” Immigration was a privilege and not a right, he argued, and America “doesn’t owe anything to people born outside of the country -- including me.” Should his own residency ever be ended, he allowed, that would be “inconvenient — not unjust.”
Now Sey, who is originally from Ghana and grew up in Canada, has found himself swept up in the very deportation apparatus he spent years cheering on.
The resulting uproar has exposed a particularly ugly contradiction in the MAGA movement: Its most enthusiastic defenders of mass deportation suddenly understand the human cost of immigration enforcement when the person facing removal belongs to their own. On Oct. 21 federal agents arrested Sey at the Columbus airport. He now sits in the Butler County Jail on an ICE hold. The Department of Homeland Security says he entered the country legally in 2022 but overstayed by more than four years, that he has no pending applications and that he accepted voluntary departure. Sey’s wife -- who was born in the U.S., as were the couple’s three children was born in the U.S. -- says he entered legally and has spent years working with a lawyer to secure permanent status. His friends call the whole thing a clerical error. The conservative movement that amplified him is tearing itself apart over what to feel about his detention, because the answer exposes what its immigration politics were always made of.
“This has been probably the darkest 24 hours I’ve ever experienced on social media,” wrote Joel Berry, the former Babylon Bee managing editor who calls himself a right-wing Protestant evangelical Trump supporter. “There is a segment of the so-called ‘Christian’ nationalist crowd that has given itself completely over to Satan.”
For a political coalition that has built its entire identity around the demonization of undocumented immigrants and the ruthless execution of mass removals, the detention of one of their own foot soldiers has triggered a profound internal fracture. Christian conservative influencers like The Blaze’s Allie Beth Stuckey and The Daily Wire’s Megan Basham immediately flooded social media to sound the alarm and rally support for their fallen comrade. Berry rushed to set up a GiveSendGo crowdfunding campaign that quickly hauled in more than $30,000 to cover legal fees. The right-wing influencers rallying around Sey have suddenly discovered that an immigrant can be a good person, that the government’s account might be incomplete and that separating a father from his children can be devastating.
As Salon’s Amanda Marcotte has extensively documented, Stuckey has built a lucrative career railing against what she dismissively derides as toxic empathy whenever progressives advocate for basic human decency toward migrants and asylum seekers. Being so empathetic toward one set of people that you are blinded to everyone else, she has written, “isn’t just misguided, it’s evil.” Yet when Sey was taken, Stuckey asked her followers to empathize with his family. “As you can imagine, his wife, who’s at home with their 3 babies, is devastated and also trusting the Lord to help them find a resolution quickly. Please pray for all of the Seys,” she wrote on X. Berry, who produces the Jeremy Boreing podcast, which Sey was traveling to record when he was arrested, once declared that “the only due process owed to an illegal alien is deportation.” Now he says that Sey “is in my tribe, and he is my brother” and “would make an excellent American.”
But the reactions from the broader MAGA grassroots suggest that despite Sey’s relentless pandering to white Christian nationalists, he was never truly seen as an equal member of the tribe. “Lord, we thank you sincerely. We thank you for the arrest of Samuel Sey,” Joel Webbon, a prominent Texas pastor, said following the podcaster’s detention. “We thank you for shutting his mouth from spewing out more lies and slander against your servants and your church here in these United States of America.” Webbon described Sey as an “illegal alien wrongfully in our country” who lectures Americans about their heritage.
And Sey learns that his 'friends' are largely not his friends as they rush to demonize him and to call for him to be deported. A small number of his friends have remained supporters. The article notes, "In its recent American Values Survey, PRRI found that 47% of white evangelical Protestants back identifying and deporting undocumented immigrants, down from a peak of 53% in 2024." About six percent have changed their minds since 2024. A small number but an important number. Tim Sullivan and Nicholas Riccardi (AP) report:
While Trump maintains some support for his handling of the border, polling shows voters disapprove of his approach to immigration, a striking turnaround that could undermine Republican attempts to maintain control of Congress in the midterms.
“The American people supported strong border security,” said Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat who has become a prominent critic of the administration’s policies. “What they got instead was shredding the Constitution, mass deportations and killing American citizens on the streets of Minneapolis.”
[. . .]
The early face of the Trump crackdown was top Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino, who swaggered through raids in tactical gear and deployed forces to Los Angeles and Chicago, where he led a helicopter raid on an apartment building.
But Minneapolis was the turning point. More than 2,000 federal officers were sent to the city, and scenes of masked agents spilling from convoys of unmarked vehicles became commonplace. Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets.
Two U.S. citizens -- Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both 37 -- were killed during confrontations with agents. In the weeks that followed, the White House pushed aside Bovino and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
Michael Pretti, Alex's father, said this week that the family is still troubled by the bystander videos of the shooting. He had a holstered gun that he was legally allowed to carry, and none of the footage shows him brandishing the weapon or attacking federal agents in the moments before he was killed.
“I think it haunts many Americans to see a U.S. citizen who was peaceful and in his community shot multiple times on the back, in the back, while on the ground,” he told reporters.
And the violence against immigrants also has impacted the enthusiasm for Chump's war. When ICE agents are using cars to run over a man in a parking lot to break his leg, they are out of control, barbaric and acting illegally whether the Supreme Court wishes to recognize that at this time or not. C.J. Ciaramella (REASON) reports on more crimes carried out by ICE:
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents slashed the tires of a couple who were recording the agents in an incident near Portland, Oregon, earlier this month. The agents then drove away without arresting or talking to the couple, video footage shows.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which released the footage today, says it is yet another example of ICE agents retaliating against people for protected First Amendment activity. In an administrative complaint on behalf of the anonymous couple, the ACLU and the ACLU of Oregon are demanding an investigation and answers from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) about why agents tailed, boxed in, and "vandalized" the vehicle of a U.S. citizen.
The stunning video does not resemble any sort of normal law enforcement:
"What happened to us is not unique, and that is what is so terrifying," A.P. and M.P., the unnamed husband and wife, said in a statement provided by the ACLU. "We observe and record public ICE activity in order to shine a light on their abusive behavior and to create a record of what our government is up to. Because of that, they are terrorizing us and anyone else who dares to exercise their First Amendment right to hold our government accountable. We hope that sharing our story will bring attention to their reckless and unconstitutional attacks on our communities."
ICE is not a legitimate force because there are no safeguards and no oversight. They are a band of outlaws who shoot, kill, run over and destroy. And they are never punished.
If any of you met me and enjoyed our time together, know that this administration and their policy goals are targeting me specifically. I am a part of every single group they’ve singled out to hate. If you need a face to put to this issue, maybe it can be mine. It’s always easier to make sense of something when you have a personal connection to it.
Cosplayer Clara Tan was on her way home to the state of New York from an event in California when she was aggressively taken into ICE custody at the Frederick Douglass Greater Rochester International Airport without being shown the warrant. After a suspected broken foot with no medical care and 18 hours in ICE custody in a male-only facility, Tan was released with an ankle monitor only because her detainers learned she had undergone bottom surgery.
“As I was exiting the terminal and heading towards the taxi stand, I was accosted by four men who called me by my name,” Tan wrote in her Facebook post. “I turned, and did not recognize a single one of them. The tallest, a pipe-cleaner looking fellow with a mildly Snidely Whiplash-esque mustache and some of the deadest eyes I’d ever seen, tells me, ‘We’re with ICE, and we have a warrant for your arrest.’”
Tan quickly asked to see the warrant they claimed to have, as well as some identification for the four unknown men who were trying to take her out to their car and drive her away. She says they told her, “We can show it to you in the car, just come peacefully.”
To make sure someone would know what was happening, she tried to call someone. This, she says, prompted all four 220+ pound men to tackle her to the floor, potentially breaking her foot in the process.
“I eat pavement,” she writes in a Facebook post about the experience. “At the same time, I hear a godawful crack, and there’s suddenly a very familiar pain in the left ball of my foot, while they’re cuffing me behind my back.
Tan says she was then driven at high speeds to the Batavia Detention Center. While being taken in, she asked for a lawyer and was dismissively told: “You’ll get your phone call.”
Her foot in extreme pain, Tan says she was then “thrown into a metal box, not larger than 6×10, with a toilet bowl in the corner and absolutely no privacy.” While she tried to sleep, she was kept awake by what she described as “the sound of raucous laughter and the exchange of racist jokes. A couple of times, I attempt to ask for my phone call, but both times, I’m told to shut the f**k up and go to sleep.”
Pete Hegseth has canned a top U.S. Army general who was targeted by Trump whisperer Laura Loomer in a social media ragepost.
The defense secretary fired Lt. Gen. Brett Sylvia from the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff earlier this week, The Atlantic reports.
Loomer had targeted Sylvia in an online tirade against his son Gavin’s response to the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk at a Utah campus event in September 2025.
She called on then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to dismiss Gavin from his post as a data analyst at the DHS’s Federal Emergency Management Agency and urged Hegseth to also “review the employment of Gavin’s father.”
“These people hate us,” Loomer wrote on X. “They don’t belong near the levers of our National Power.”
The conspiracy theorist and longtime Trump supporter’s rage posts have preceded the dismissal of dozens of officials throughout the president’s second term.
The defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive personnel matters, said there is no immediate replacement for Sylvia and no reason has been given for the firing. The move was reported earlier by The Atlantic.
A spokesperson for the Joint Staff said “the Chairman, the Joint Staff, and the Joint Force extend our deepest gratitude to Lt. Gen. Brett Sylvia and his family for their 32 years of distinguished service to our nation” and they "wish him and his family the best.”
Typically, the J5 director and their staff are responsible for generating and coordinating military plans with both the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the president. Sylvia's firing comes as Trump has repeatedly floated starting new military operations against Iran.
Donald Trump has been left red-faced after mistaking a male Army general for a woman while defending Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s latest military shake-up.
[. . .]
However, asked on Thursday about the firing of “Lt. Gen. Sylvia,” Trump appeared to assume he was female as he threatened consequences against Pentagon leakers.
“She’s got problems,” the 80-year-old president told reporters, and no one corrected him.
“She’s gonna have big problems. We’re very much looking for leakers.”
The position requires coordinating military plans with the president and the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and yet Chump, after nearly two years back in office, didn't know enough about the person in the position to know whether the person was male or female? Is this road fatigue? Is this him delegating tasks that he should be carrying out? Or is another sign of his increased dementia?
This summer, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth asked a Republican lawmaker what he thought the odds were that Congress would pass the Trump administration’s record $1.5 trillion defense budget request.
The chances, the lawmaker responded, were about the same as Hegseth getting confirmed again by the Senate.
“You have a problem, and you need to increase the amount and the quality of the communication” with Congress, the Republican lawmaker recounted in an interview, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe the private exchange.
Months later, members of both parties said the Pentagon has not changed course.
Let's wind down with this from Senator Patty Murray's office:
ICYMI: Senator Murray Responds to 22.2% Rate Increase for Washington’s 2027 Exchange Health Insurance Market
Washington, D.C. — Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), a senior member and former Chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, held a roundtable discussion in Seattle with patients, small business owners, and health care providers to discuss how Republicans’ sabotage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace have sent premiums skyrocketing and have created a health care crisis for families, businesses, and communities as open enrollment season has begun. Senator Murray highlighted how Republicans’ nearly $1 trillion cut to Medicaid is costing millions their health care, forcing hospital layoffs, and worse.
Window shopping for families who shop for health care on the Washington Health Benefit Exchange has already begun and open enrollment will begin on November 1, 2026.
Joining Senator Murray at the roundtable were: Patty Kuderer, Washington State Insurance Commissioner; Dr. Matt Logalbo, MD; Alicia Anderson Pieri, a small business owner from Seattle who has seen premium costs skyrocket for her employees; and Jon Kiehnau, Co-Owner of Don & Joe’s Meats, Pike Place Market.
“Republican policies are driving health care costs higher and higher every year, from expiring tax credits to Medicaid cuts, drug tariffs, and more. Families need to know when they see their premium go up, when they see their Medicaid ripped away, when their local hospital closes or cuts services—it’s not because our government can’t afford to help families with health care. It is because those are choices that Republicans made,” said Senator Murray. “Republicans are ready to spend trillions on Trump’s wars. And they moved heaven and earth to give billionaires a giant tax cut last year. But when it came to helping working families by extending the health care tax credits—Republicans literally shut down the government to avoid working with Democrats. But Democrats won’t let Republicans ignore the damage they caused. We want to restore the health care tax credits, reverse the Medicaid cuts, and undo all the damage we can right now. And long term, I believe we need to go bolder and chart a path to universal health care coverage.”
Last year, Republicans passed the single largest cut to health care in our country’s history, and they blocked every Democratic effort to extend the ACA tax credits—causing massive premium hikes for families in Washington state and rising uncompensated care for hospitals and clinics. And in September, the Office of the Insurance Commissioner of Washington State announced that a 22.2% average rate increase was approved for insurance providers who will sell individual health plans on the Washington Health Benefit Exchange in 2027. Hospitals and clinics in Washington state are facing a $160 million loss in funding, a 5.6% spike in uncompensated care, and are expected to lose between $31 billion and $51 billion over the next decade due to Republicans’ health care cuts. So far 37 hospitals, clinics, and nursing homes in Washington state are at-risk, have announced cuts to services, are closing, or have closed.
“Today, many people are feeling the sticker shock of rising premiums,” said Insurance Commissioner Patty Kuderer. “The individual market has always been the most vulnerable, but actions by the other Washington have inflicted unnecessary harm and are part of what’s driving up these costs.”
“Our patients are worried about losing access to the insurance they rely on for essential health care and life-saving medications,” says Matthew Logalbo, MD, Medical Director at Seattle Roots Community Health. “We provide care regardless of ability to pay, but when our patients lose coverage, it hurts their ability to access necessary care beyond our walls, and our ability to fund the services they count on within.”
In August, a new report was released detailing how the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA)—which cut over $1 trillion from health care to fund tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires—has caused 50,545 Washingtonians to lose their Medicaid, CHIP, or ACA coverage they relied on to receive health care. Republicans also refused to extend the ACA enhanced premium tax credits, which caused premiums to double for 226,813 people across Washington state and which the Washington State Insurance Commissioner cites as a primary reason driving the rate increase for 2027. For 2026, rates for plans on the Washington Health Benefit Exchange increased by 21%, which had direct impacts on families. This year, a family of four in Washington state who makes $130,000 a year saw their average annual premium rise by $12,392—costing them a total of $23,442.
ABOUT GOP REFUSAL TO EXTEND ACA TAX CREDITS:
Senator Murray forced the issue of the ACA tax credits at every opportunity before Republicans ultimately refused to take any action, speakingoutnonstop about the urgent need to save health care and calling on Republicans to come to the negotiating table to work out a bipartisan deal to extend the ACA tax credits. She took to the Senate floor in November 2025 with her Democratic colleagues to call for a clean one-year extension of the ACA tax credits, and held numerous virtualpressconferences with Washingtonians, as well as residents of neighboring states Idaho and Montana, about the exploding health care premiums that Americans would see due to the expiration of the tax credits. As the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, Senator Murray led legislation supported by the Democratic caucus that would have addressed the health care crisis during the government shutdown last fall. Senator Murray has also cosponsored multiple pieces of legislation over the past year—the Health Care Affordability Act and the Protecting Health Care and Lowering Costs Act—that would make the ACA tax credits permanent.
As then-chair of the Senate Health Committee, Senator Murray played a critical role in passing the ACA enhanced premium tax credits into law in the American Rescue Plan Act in 2021 and extending them in the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022.
ABOUT TRUMP’S MEDICAID CUTS:
Nationwide, the Republican health care cuts represent a more than $400 billion hit to America’s hospitals—with one estimate finding that over 170 rural hospitals will likely be forced to close or scale back their services, which will force more Americans to travel further for maternity care and emergency room visits, and face longer wait times. Washington state is one of the states most at-risk, with 22 hospitals at-risk of closing or reducing services. An estimated 477,000 health workers will lose their jobs as a result of the Republican cuts to Medicaid. Senator Murray has consistently advocated for rural health care access across the state, hosting numerousevents to emphasize the importance of investment into rural communities.
Hospitals in Washington state could lose at least $662 million in Medicaid revenue every year under OBBBA—forcing hospitals to lay off staff, cut services, or close their doors entirely. Overall, Washington state is expected to lose between $31 billion and $51 billion in federal Medicaid dollars over the next decade. In 2024, Washington had an uninsured rate of 4.8 percent—the lowest in the country—but the Republican bill is expected to balloon that number into the double digits.
In Washington state, nearly 2 million people—roughly 1 in 5—are enrolled in Apple Health, the state’s Medicaid program.
