Letter From An American by Heather Cox Richardson

December 3, 2025 (Wednesday)

Republican Matt Van Epps won yesterday’s special election in Tennessee’s seventh congressional district, but Republicans aren’t celebrating triumphantly. Van Epps beat out Democrat Aftyn Behn by about 9 points in a district Donald Trump and Republican senator Marsha Blackburn each won in 2024 by 22 points. Yesterday’s vote shows a 13-point shift toward the Democrats in about a year. 

Aaron Pellish and Meredith Lee Hill of Politico reported the comment of a House Republican after officials called the election: “Tonight is a sign that 2026 is going to be a b*tch of an election cycle. Republicans can survive if we play team and the Trump administration officials play smart. Neither is certain.”

As G. Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers noted, “[t]he fact that a rural Tennessee district ended up just a high-single-digits win for Republicans should be a five-alarm fire for the party ahead of the 2026 midterms.” Morris explains that congressional special elections have swung 17 points on average toward the Democrats, while special elections for seats in state legislatures have swung toward the Democrats by about 11 points. Morris combines these results with turnout differences in special, midterm, and presidential elections, to estimate that—as of right now—the 2026 midterms can be expected to see a swing of 7 to 8 points toward the Democrats. These numbers would give Democrats control of the House of Representatives and put the Senate into play as well. 

It is safe to assume, Morris says, “that something big has shifted in the national environment.” He adds that the Republican Party “will likely find itself defending an unusually wide array of seats next year, even in districts previously thought to be immune to national swings.”

Democrats and many Republicans think that shift has come about in large part over the issue of affordability, the rising costs of food, housing, energy, gasoline, and healthcare that are squeezing most Americans. Trump insisted yesterday that “affordability” doesn’t mean anything to anybody,” but most Americans would disagree. According to Morris of Strength in Numbers, the word “affordability” appears to mean not just the pressure of higher prices, but also frustration at economic stagnation, the unfair way in which the economic system operates, the idea of being stuck and unable to rise, the current illusiveness of the American dream.    

After the voters rejected Republican candidates in the early November elections, Republicans vowed they would address affordability issues. Trump initially moved in that direction but now is rejecting the idea that his economic policies have caused hardship, although news dropped today from Automatic Data Processing (ADP), a private human resources management company, that the U.S. lost about 32,000 jobs last month. The losses were primarily in small businesses, which are often considered a bellwether for the rest of the economy. 

The secretary of commerce, billionaire Howard Lutnick, admitted to CNBC that Trump’s policies have caused disruption, but promised they would start to build the economy in 2026. "Remember,” he said, “as you deport people, that's going to suppress private job numbers of small businesses. But they'll rebalance and they’ll regrow. So I think this is just a near-term event and you’ll see as the numbers come through over the next couple of months, you’ll see that all pass, and next year the numbers are going to be fantastic."

On the table more immediately are the rising costs of health insurance premiums. The Republicans’ budget reconciliation bill of July extended tax cuts for the wealthy and for corporations but neglected to extend the premium tax credits that supported the purchase of healthcare insurance on the Affordable Care Act insurance markets. The loss of those credits will throw at least two million people off healthcare insurance while driving up healthcare costs for millions more. This will undermine the Affordable Care Act, a goal many Republicans have held since the measure became law about fifteen years ago. But in September, close to 80% of Americans wanted the credits extended; as the issue became politicized, some Republicans withdrew their support so the number dropped to about 75%.  

In October, Senate Democrats refused to agree to vote in favor of a continuing resolution to fund the government unless the Republicans extended that premium tax credit, but after weeks of party members calling attention to the issue, seven Democrats and one Independent voted in November to end the shutdown in exchange for a Senate vote on a measure to extend the tax credits.

That bill is now coming due, trapping Republicans between their ideology, which calls for slashing all government programs, and voters, who overwhelmingly want the credits extended. 

Trump said he was going to produce a healthcare plan that would extend the premium tax credit for two years, along with new restrictions on who could use the credits, by last Monday but postponed the announcement after Republican lawmakers demanded the extension include a nationwide abortion ban. The White House has not indicated when a new plan might appear. On Air Force One, Trump told reporters he doesn’t actually want to extend the tax credits. “I’d rather not extend them at all,” he said. “It may be, some kind of an extension may be necessary to get something else done, because the Unaffordable Care Act has been a disaster.” 

Kaia Hubbard of CBS News notes that any plan Senate Democrats come up with will need the support of 13 Republicans to pass the 60-vote Senate filibuster threshold. So far, though, Republican senators seem inclined not to extend the credits as they currently exist, but to try to force through a partisan measure that Democrats will not support. Republican senators are proposing different options, but say there is no point in figuring out their own position until Trump tells them what he is willing to sign.

In the House, Republicans in safe districts don’t want to extend the credits, saying that an end to support for the system will make it easier to kill the law they insist is a disaster. According to Alice Miranda Ollstein and Robert King of Politico, some Republican strategists think that voters won’t care about healthcare costs by the time of the midterm elections, especially if Republican policies bring down the costs of housing, energy, food, and gas. They think voters will be angrier at support for the Affordable Care Act than at higher healthcare costs.

Vulnerable Republicans disagree. They are calling for a temporary extension of the credits to help lower costs again before the midterms. 

Meanwhile, House Democrats have announced they have 214 signatures on a discharge petition to force a vote on extending the tax credits and invited Republicans to join them to bring the measure to the floor. Today, Democratic caucus chair Pete Aguilar (D-CA) told reporters: “Republicans have said that they want an extension, that they support the Affordable Care Act tax credits. We're giving them an opportunity to do that. That's what this discharge petition is about. As Leader [Hakeem] Jeffries has said for months, Democrats will go anywhere and have any discussion with our Republican colleagues about addressing the Affordable Care Act tax credits or the affordability crisis. If Republicans want to have a conversation about solutions, we're all ears.” 

The declining fortunes of MAGA Republicans are widening the rifts in the party. Annie Karni of the New York Times reported today on House Republicans’ anger at Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), who has defended the priorities of President Donald J. Trump at the expense of the interests of Republican lawmakers. Johnson’s letting Trump call the shots means the House has accomplished very little apart from passing the budget reconciliation bill Republicans call the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a law the American people appear to hate. 

Although Republicans hold the majority in the House, Johnson has kept the members subservient to Trump’s demands. He kept them out of session for almost eight weeks during the government shutdown, for example, to try to jam the Senate into either accepting the House version of a continuing resolution to fund the government or ending the filibuster to enable Trump to force through his unpopular policies. Now, angry that they will have to run in 2026 with little to show for their House majority, House members are talking to the media about their frustration with Johnson. 

The Republicans have other concerns as well. Today House Judiciary Committee chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) subpoenaed former special counsel Jack Smith to testify in private, rejecting Smith’s offer to testify in public. Smith wanted to testify in public to prevent committee members from leaking his comments selectively to the press, spinning them to mislead Trump loyalists. But public testimony could expose some of the evidence Smith gathered about President Trump’s participation in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and retention of classified documents. 

In a statement, Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the top-ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, asked:  “What are our colleagues so afraid of, that they won’t let the American people hear directly from the Special Counsel?... The American people deserve to hear the full unvarnished truth about Special Counsel Smith’s years-long effort to investigate and prosecute the crimes committed by Donald Trump and his co-conspirators.”

Also today, Senators Ben Ray Luján (D-NM), Jeffrey Merkley (D-OR), and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), along with Representatives Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Thomas Massie (R-KY), wrote a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi asking for a briefing no later than Friday on what she has claimed is “new” material in the Epstein files that she said on November 14 had caused her to initiate investigations into connections between Jeffrey Epstein and former president Bill Clinton, former treasury secretary Larry Summers, and investor Reid Hoffman. On July 7, an FBI memo said there was no new evidence to open new investigations “against uncharged third parties.” 

Now the bipartisan lead sponsors of the Epstein Files Transparency Act from both chambers of Congress are calling out what looks to be Bondi’s attempt to shield Trump, first by saying that there was no information in the files that would warrant an investigation of “uncharged third parties” and then by opening such investigations on Democrats to muddy the waters and possibly claim that she could not release the files because of ongoing investigations. 

The lawmakers noted they “are particularly focused on understanding the contents of any new evidence, information or procedural hurdles that could interfere with the Department’s ability [to] meet [the] statutory deadline” of December 19, and expressed their interest in making sure “the law is fully implemented.”