Health Care Subsidies, Flooding In Washington, DOJ Under President Trump

0:28Hey, Rob. How you doing?

0:34Health care subsidies are set to expire at the end of the year. Millions of Americans face dramatic price hikes. But can Congress reach a deal to alleviate the pain? I'm Aisha Roscoe. And I'm Rob Schmitz. And this is Up First from NPR News. Historic flooding in parts of the Pacific Northwest. Several rivers are at record highs. This is something that the people of the state of Washington have not faced before. This level of flooding. Governor Bob Ferguson calls on people to follow evacuation orders. We'll have all the latest. Plus, we take a look at the Department of Justice under President Trump and how it's going after some of his most vocal critics.

1:12So stay with us. We have the news you need to start your weekend.

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2:47Get what you're craving. Try fresh, great tasting meal delivery made by your favorite celebrity chefs. Go to cookunity.com slash public media or enter code public media before checkout for free premium meals for life. Terms and conditions apply. Go to cookunity.com for details. Health care premiums are likely to rise for millions of Americans early next year after the Senate rejected two dueling health care bills. And President Trump faces pushback from within his own party on redistricting and strikes against alleged drug votes. To discuss all this, we're joined now by NPR's national political correspondent, Don Gagne.

3:29Thanks for being here. It's a pleasure. Sure. So Don, on health care, these enhanced subsidies are broadly popular, according to polls. Why is it so hard to agree on a fix? Well, the Affordable Care Act has always been a place where Democrats and Republicans butt heads. It's been that way since the law was passed in Obama's first term. But this current fight over whether to extend existing subsidies gets to the core of differences, and it will have a great impact on how much health insurance costs Americans who rely on the ACA. So Republicans would rather have health savings accounts or give money directly to individuals to use on the health care of their choice.

4:12We're just at an impasse. Last night, House Speaker Mike Johnson unveiled a last-minute Republican plan. It would enhance employer-sponsored health care plans. Democrats, skeptical. Minority leader Hakeem Jeffries called it completely unserious. But I guarantee you, Democrats will keep this issue front and center in the midterms. Now, President Trump, in an interview with Politico this week, graded his own performance on the economy. A+++++. That's good grade. And then at a rally in Pennsylvania, he said Americans can, quote, give up certain products. We can get by with fewer pencils and dolls.

4:53Those are two consumer products I would not have thought to put together. Don, is this messaging working? Well, poll after poll shows Americans are worried about inflation and affordability. As a result, Trump's approval ratings on the economy give him very low scores in that area. People are unhappy about the cost of a grocery store visit, about affording daycare, and on and on, and they see inflation as a big worry. But the president is, as we heard, taking a hard line, denying that affordability is anything other than a hoax that Democrats are pushing as a political issue. So he describes one economy, Americans describe a completely different place.

5:35The House passed a$900 billion defense policy bill this week. Tucked inside this bipartisan legislation is a provision that would require the Pentagon to share with lawmakers unedited video of the strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific. Now, do you think Congress is starting to show some willingness to push back against this administration? It is on certain issues, including this one. Many questions have been raised regarding these strikes on alleged drug boats off the coast of Venezuela, particularly the one in September where a second strike killed two survivors of the initial attack.

6:14It's still just a small number of Republicans pushing back and demanding more answers. But still, there are some, and I should underscore here that these requirements now to share the video recordings were actually just one piece of that major defense funding bill. And that bill passed by a wide margin. Let's go on to redistricting. Indiana Republicans voted down a gerrymandered map favored by Trump despite threats from the president. Does this say something about Trump's hold on the party or is it more specific to that state? We've seen some GOP pushback on redistricting elsewhere as well, but this is a deep red state.

6:53Republicans hold seven of the state's nine congressional seats. The president wanted them to redraw the district lines to set up a potential clean sweep of all nine in next year's elections. But lawmakers looked at the map and said, look, we just did this four years ago, so it is a setback for the president. NPR is Don Gagne. Don, thanks. All right. It's my pleasure.

7:25Washington state is under a state of emergency after torrential rain caused historic flooding. Rivers north of Seattle, such as the Skagit River, were at their highest levels ever recorded. Hundreds of people have been rescued from their homes, while evacuation orders are affecting thousands of others. K-U-O-W Scott Greenstone joins us now from Burlington, Washington. Thanks for being with us. Hey, thanks, Rob. So Scott, you're in a town where people were told to evacuate yesterday. Did they? Some did. You know, some did not. The river here is still really high. I saw a barn half submerged in it yesterday and a piece of like barn siding floating by in the river.

8:06But the water levels have begun to recede in the neighborhoods. And so some people are, you know, returning to check on the damage, even, you know, just just to see if they can come back to their homes. I went down one street and I met a woman named Jocelyn Alm who was standing outside her totally flooded out home. And there was a crowd gathered and someone had waited in to look in the windows and told her this. He goes, all your couches are floating. All your stuff is just floating. He goes, your bananas are floating. And I said, oh, well, God, if we lost our bananas, we lost everything. We had in this back bedroom there was pictures that we had forever.

8:47And that's her husband, Kenneth. So they were worrying about family pictures. They had put them up high. And, you know, they're just kind of considering, are those totally gone? Yeah, that's tough. I mean, you've got the Washington National Guard there. And now there's been a declaration of an emergency. Federal resources like FEMA can help. What are officials saying about the damage so far? They are saying it's still a little early to tell or give many numbers. And it could be, unfortunately, that more damage is coming because right now with all the deeply saturated earth from all this rainfall, right, there's a high risk of landslides across the region.

9:24A couple of landslides have already closed some regional highways for periods of time. Wow. I mean, Washington is a state that is, of course, known for its rain. What makes these storms unusual? You know, it's a common misconception. I think the Seattle area has many drizzly days, but is not so used to a big dumping of water during these so-called atmospheric rivers that we are experiencing multiple of right now. So people around here, you know, many of them have never seen anything like this, even in 1990 when we set the previous records that were now breaking. So I talked to Pedro Cortez, who's worked in farms and flower fields here in Skagit County his whole life.

10:04Since 1966, he's lived here, never evacuated. He looked out the window Thursday night at 10 p.m. and saw police lights. I wonder where they pulled over. But he was, see, he got out of the car, came in to my house and knocked my door. You guys had to move out because the water's coming pretty fast. And he and his wife had less than an hour to get out of their home. That is KUOW Scott Greenstone. Thank you, Scott. Thanks for having me.

10:41The U.S. Justice Department is an institution in turmoil. This year, federal prosecutors have followed the president's lead to pursue criminal charges against some of his most vocal critics. NPR's Carrie Johnson has been covering the Justice Department for nearly two decades, and she joins us now. Thanks for being here, Carrie. Oh, happy to do it. Now, Carrie, in your reporting since President Trump took office this year, you've talked about the brain drain at the DOJ. Give us a sense of the scale of that. More than 5 ,000 workers have left the Justice Department this year by some estimates. That includes the acting director of the FBI and many of the other top FBI officials.

11:20At the Justice Department, the pardon attorney is gone. The ethics advisor is gone. Most of the prosecutors who took on public corruption are gone, as well as people who worked on cases involving the Capitol riot nearly five years ago. And at the Civil Rights Division, nearly three out of four lawyers are gone. Wow. And how is all of that turnover impacting the work of the Justice Department? The first thing to say is that there have been a lot of mistakes, misstatements of law, like in a big Texas redistricting case. A Trump-appointed judge says the DOJ civil rights letter in that case contains so many factual, legal, and typographical errors that even lawyers working for the Texas Attorney General, allies of President Trump, called the letter legally unsound, ham-fisted, and a mess.

12:10Then there are these alleged misrepresentations to courts in deportation cases. In D.C., Judge Jeb Boesberg is demanding to hear from the Justice Department about whether lawyers intentionally flouted his order this year to turn planes around carrying Venezuelan migrants. Erez Riveni spent 15 years at the DOJ. He later blew the whistle on what he saw as misconduct in immigration cases. Here's what he told me this year. The political leadership in charge of the DOJ didn't care one bit about our oaths to the courts. They had one and only one goal, put those people on planes, get them out of the country ASAP.

12:47The attorney general has called Rouveney, a disgruntled employee and a leaguer. So Carrie, what is the cost of all of this turmoil? People who've worked at the DOJ and the FBI really worry it's making the country less safe. The former acting director of the FBI and two other top officials there say they were fired for improper political reasons this year. Chris Maddy's a lawyer for some of those fired officials. When you kneecap an organization by getting rid of its leaders, you really compromise the FBI's ability to carry out its mission. Then another bunch of FBI agents who had nearly 200 years of experience got fired for taking a knee during racial justice protests five years ago.

13:33So, Kerry, the Supreme Court said in an immunity case last year that a president has absolute control over the Justice Department. How is President Trump using some of that newfound authority? President Trump has been pretty clear about his intentions. He's been angry ever since the Biden DOJ charged him with federal crimes and cases that wound up being dropped after the election. Here's Trump delivering a major speech at the Justice Department headquarters in March. Our predecessors turned this Department of Justice into the Department of Injustice, but I stand before you today to declare that those days are over and they are never going to come back.

14:14They're never coming back. There's now a pattern of the Justice Department going out of its way to help allies of the president and other people accused of political corruption. For instance, the president has granted clemency to several members of Congress, George Santos of New York, Henry Cueher of Texas among them. He's also issued pardons of the former president of Honduras and other convicted drug kingpins. That undid a lot of work by federal prosecutors and agents. And at the same time, the Justice Department seems to be targeting Trump's political opponents, people like the former FBI Director Jim Comey, New York Attorney General Tish James, and California Democratic Senator Adam Schiff.

14:51So Carrie, there's just so much to cover here. What are you going to be following in the weeks to come? The Senate still has advise and consent power and some oversight power if the Republicans in charge now want to use that power. And there are some signs of infighting between DOJ leaders and the people at the top of the FBI. FBI Director Cash Patel, his deputy Dan Bongino, that could produce some turnover in the coming weeks or months. And some nonprofit groups suggest accountability for now may be simply documenting all the unusual and possibly unlawful things happening at the Justice Department.

15:26That is NPR's Kerry Johnson, busy as ever. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me.

15:40And that's up first for Saturday, December 13th, 2025. I'm Aisha Roscoe. And I'm Rob Schmitz. Fernando Naro produced today's podcast along with Andy Craig and Gabe O 'Connor. It was edited by Jacob Finston, Anna Yukonanoff, Ravenna Koenig, Jerry Holmes, and Martin Patience. Michael Radcliffe is our patient and fearless director. And our technical director was David Greenberg with engineering support from Nisha Hines, Zovan Ginhoven, and Ted Meebane. Our senior supervising editor is Shannon Rhodes. Evie Stone is our executive producer. And Jim Kane is our deputy managing editor. Tomorrow on the Sunday Story, what is the biggest change you've had this year?

16:26Well, Aisha here bought a house with her best friend. meaning there are now five kids under one roof. But it gives us a chance to revisit Aisha's conversation with NPR producer and editor Raina Cohen. She wrote a book, The Other Significant Others, reimagining life with friendship at the center. In the book, Cohen shares stories about friends who own homes together, raise kids with each other, and care for one another in old age. You know, that's a great story. And for all the other news you need and the stories you had no idea that you needed, tune into NPR find your local station at stations.npr.org and you know just listen, I think it's good for you It is, it's very good for you It is!

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