Democrats are standing up for you and your family’s health care

It happened. The federal government is shut down. Trump and Republicans have shut down the government because they want to continue to attack health care for people across America.

Republicans’ refusal to extend the tax credits that help people afford health care will cause a massive increase in health care costs for Americans.

According to the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation, on average, they're expecting premium payments for people who don't get health insurance through their job or a public program like Medicare or Medicaid — which is millions of Americans — to increase by 114% if Republicans refuse to extend these credits.

This has huge impacts:

• Working people will have to make impossible choices between affording health care or putting food on the table
• People will avoid getting care, and small problems will become big problems
• Health care will overall become more expensive for every American

And that's not all. In January 2027 — so Republicans can avoid any electoral consequences in the 2026 midterms — the devastating Medicaid cuts from Republicans' One Big Beautiful Betrayal start. Millions of Americans will lose their health coverage.

To add fuel to this fire, Trump's team doesn't respect the rule of law. They're canceling contracts, slow walking or freezing funds, defunding programs they don't like, and blatantly ignoring the Constitution.

SCOTUS has clearly said a line-item veto is a violation of the Constitution. These funding actions essentially achieve the same strategy, giving the president the power to pick and choose. This is all part of Trump's plan to consolidate and shift power from legislators to the president.

And that's why any funding bill we pass has to have safeguards that tell the president that laws are not suggestions.

This is a monumentally important fight. There is an authoritarian takeover, and the president is grabbing the power of the purse at the same time.

Trump's attacks have included:

• Stifling free speech
• Weaponizing the Department of Justice
• Blackmailing universities and law firms to alter their advocacy in a free society
• And now, he's making the military accustomed to depressing dissent in U.S. cities, which violates the law that only allows the military to be deployed domestically in an invasion or rebellion — setting the stage to allow future use of military force, including perhaps, during protests related to the next election

This fight is incredibly important, and the time to fight is now. We need to give the people someone or something to rally around.

In this critical moment, I need your backing. Please generously help everyone who is willing to stand up, fight back against the authoritarian takeover, and fight for the fundamentals families need to thrive.

Onward,

Jeff