Trump's New Government, Future Of Obamacare, Fired Israeli Minister Slams Netanyahu

0:00The 2024 election is over, and as a new administration prepares for the White House, it's our job across the entire NPR network to report on that transition and to report on what this administration does with its power. That's why we're here, because information is power for you. Your support makes it possible for us to break down big stories, to fact check, and to make sure you understand what's going on. When you donate, you make a difference in our ability to do that work. If you're already a supporter, we're taking this moment to say thank you. And if you're not, go to donate.npr.org to give.

0:36Donate.npr.org. President-elect Trump has begun choosing the people who will make up his new administration. Nikki Haley and Mike Pompeo, who sometimes criticized him, are out. Who else is heading in to work for a president who prizes loyalty? I'm Leila Faldil, that's Steven Skeep, and this is Up First from NPR News. Will the new president take aim at the Affordable Care Act again? Health care professionals think some cuts may be coming. The math is inescapable that Medicaid and ACA cuts will then be on the table. And in Israel, the now-fired defense minister told hostage families that he blames the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for holding up ceasefire talks this summer.

1:19Yoav Galan also said there's nothing left for the Israeli military to do in Gaza. What does his exit mean for that ongoing and deadly war? Stay with us. We'll give you the news you need to start your day.

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2:21Get a new Dell PC at dell.com slash ai dash pc. This message comes from NPR sponsor Odoo. Some describe Odoo like a magic beanstalk because it scales with you and is magically affordable. Odoo, exactly what a business needs. Sign up at odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com. We're in a transition period when the next president of the United States draws overwhelming attention. But a lot depends on the people who surround him. Yeah, President-elect Trump has begun choosing members of his staff and also saying who will not be on board. Aside from that, he doesn't know yet how much power his party will have in Congress.

3:02Republicans will take the Senate and choose their leader this week. They are close to a narrow majority in the House, but that depends on ballots still being counted. NPR political correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben is here with the latest. Good morning, Danielle. Good morning. So some new official election results over the weekend. We now know that Trump won all seven battleground states. He's on track to be the first Republican to win the popular vote in two decades. What do you make of the depths of his win? Well, depths is an interesting way to ask the question because it's certainly a broad win.

3:34I mean, that's for sure. Six of those seven battlegrounds you mentioned, he flipped from Biden in 2020. And like you also noted, it's the first time that Trump won the popular vote. Now, Trump, for his part, has claimed his win is a historic and unprecedented mandate. Now, it is not unprecedented. Many presidents have won the presidency by far more. Right now, Trump is ahead in the popular vote by just shy of two and a half points. But as far as a mandate, yeah, I mean, it appears possible or even likely that voters will have empowered him to pass big parts of his agenda. Republicans have won 53 seats in the Senate.

4:11They're close to winning the House. But to that mandate point, we do have an evenly divided and a deeply divided country. Trump's words and actions on January 6th, his promises for political retribution, those have inspired deep anger and fear among the nearly half who didn't vote for him. So whatever he does try to do, it is going to be met with fierce opposition. So you mentioned Republicans are close to winning the House. How close? How many districts are we waiting on? Well, at latest count, Republicans have 213 seats and you need 218 to win the House. Democrats have 203. So Republicans are closer.

4:48there are still 19 seats left to be called. Now, it could be days until many of those are counted. Half of those House districts, for example, around half are in California. And counting votes just takes a long time there because, first of all, there's just a lot of voters, meaning there are also a lot of same-day and mail-in ballots in that huge state. But as my colleagues Domenico Montanaro and Hillary Fung have recently reported, if the GOP wins the House, it would be with a slim majority. So not a lot of wiggle room for passing those Trump priorities. By the way, we are waiting on one Senate seat as well in Arizona.

5:22As of right now, Democrat Ruben Gallego is leading. Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania, that race has been called for the Republican Dave McCormick, but incumbent Democrat Bob Casey has not conceded. Now, we haven't heard that much from Trump since his speech on election night. What do you know about what's coming next for him? Well, we do know a few people who he will or won't be working with in his White House. Now, overnight, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that he will appoint Tom Homan as his, as he calls it, border czar. And he specified that Homan will be in charge of mass deportations.

5:57And Homan has spoken enthusiastically about those deportations. He has said he will be doing workplace raids. He has also said Susie Wiles will be his chief of staff. She's a longtime veteran of Republican politics. And he will not be having Mike Pompeo or Nikki Haley in his cabinet. He also announced that on Truth Social. those two both served in his last cabinet. NPR's Danielle Kurtzleben. Thank you, Danielle. Thank you.

6:28Okay, so for all the words he spoke while campaigning, it is not entirely clear what the president-elect will do in a second term. To give one example, it's not clear how far he will go to make good on a promise to use federal power to seek retribution from his personal and political enemies. And here's another. The new president's approach to health care is vague. During his first term, Republicans tried and failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but never came up with a replacement. So what now? NPR's Selena Simmons Duffin is here to talk about that. Good morning. Morning, Steve. Okay, what is the law that Trump tried to repeal the first time?

7:05That would be the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. It was passed in 2010, and it transformed lots of aspects of the healthcare system. And for years, Republicans wanted it gone. In Trump's first year as president, Republicans tried many, many times to repeal and replace Obamacare, but they failed to do that in part because they had no clear plan on what to replace it with. This campaign, Trump spoke very differently about the law. Here he is during the presidential debate on ABC in September. I had a choice to make. Do I save it and make it as good as it can be, or do I let it rot and I saved it?

7:42Then moderator Lindsay Davis followed up. So just a yes or no, you still do not have a plan? I have concepts of a plan. Interesting line and interesting that he said that he saved Obamacare when he explicitly called for its repeal, just failed in the Senate by a vote. What about policy once Trump is back in power again? Well, that's really hard to pin down because the signals from Trump and Republican lawmakers have been kind of unclear. It's going to depend a lot on whether Republicans retain control of the House since they've won the presidency and the Senate. It's also going to depend on who Trump chooses to run his health policy team.

8:15But all that said, it seems like the political appetite to go all in again on repeal and replace just isn't there. There still could be changes, though. Larry Levitt of the health research organization KFF said in a press briefing he thinks cuts will be coming to some federal health programs. Trump has said Medicare, Social Security and defense cuts are off the table, with Republicans looking for spending reductions to help pay for tax cuts, the math is inescapable that Medicaid and ACA cuts will then be on the table. What are some of the conservative think tanks and Republican lawmakers, people who think in depth about this, saying about what they want to cut?

8:52I reached out to the Heritage Foundation, but they said they're declining interview requests right now. They did put together the somewhat famous Project 2025 document, and there are also budget priorities from a House GOP committee. Sabrina Corlett, who runs the Georgetown Center on Health Insurance reforms, says it's clear from these documents what Republicans would like to do in this space. They want to lift some of the regulations that govern insurance companies, including some of the protections for people with pre-existing conditions. There is also interest in reducing the amount of federal spending.

9:26Corlett told me even as an academic health insurance expert, she's been getting emails from regular people recently who were worried about these changes. They're petrified. Like, I got an email just earlier today from a guy whose wife has got a serious chronic illness. And he's like, is she going to lose her coverage? What should I do? Well, you can hear there why it is that people do get nervous about changing health care laws, which is what President Obama found out the first time. So how many people would be affected by changing them now? Millions. I mean, more Americans have health insurance at the moment than ever before.

10:00Enrollment in healthcare.gov, those Obamacare health plans, is really high right now at more than 21 million people. That's almost doubled since President Biden took office. And the insurance industry, hospitals, and doctors groups, they all like that. They're going to be very resistant to major changes. And regular people could mobilize again to resist changes to the ACA. So there's a lot to watch in this space. And Pierce, Selena Simmons-Duffin, thanks so much. Thank you.

10:34Israel's ousted defense minister, Yoav Gallant, says there's nothing more for the Israeli military to achieve in Gaza. Gallant also says that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is responsible for holding up a ceasefire deal back in July. That's what Gallant said, a deal that could have ended the war and gotten the remaining hostages home. He told all of that to family members of hostages in a closed-door meeting on his last day in office. NPR's Kat Lonsdorf spoke with one of the family members in that meeting, and she joins us now. Good morning, Kat. Hey, good morning, Mila. So what did you hear about that meeting?

11:09Well, so Galant was fired by Netanyahu on Tuesday of last week and basically given 48 hours to leave the position. So on his last day in office, last Thursday, he invited some of the family members of Israelis who were taken hostage last October by Hamas to meet with him. Galant has been the defense minister during this whole war in Gaza. I spoke with Gil Dickman. He was in that meeting with Galant. Gil's cousin, Karim Elgat, was taken hostage and later killed by Hamas in Gaza in August. Gil has been to many meetings like this that Galant has held, but he told me that this one felt different, that it seemed like Galant was finally able to speak freely.

11:43So he says it felt different. What did Galant actually speak freely about? Well, basically, Galant told them that the Israeli military had accomplished all it can in Gaza. Here's Gil. What he said is that there's so much that you can do with force and they've done it. He says Gallant also told them that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is responsible for holding up a ceasefire deal in July. And this was specifically really heartbreaking for Gil to hear because his cousin Carmel could have still been alive if that ceasefire deal had gone through. We reached out to both Gallant and the prime minister's office for comment on this.

12:19neither responded. But NPR did later obtain a recording of this meeting, and it matched what Gail Dickman told us. You know, I should also point out that since July, thousands of Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military in Gaza, bringing the death toll up to more than 43 ,000, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. And several more Israeli hostages have been confirmed dead, too. Yeah, I mean, the repercussions of continuing this war have been huge. If Gallant wanted to end it, what does it mean now that he's no longer in the government? Many Israelis are worried about just that.

12:52They see Gallant as a big leader in this war. You know, thousands took the streets to protest his firing, demanding a ceasefire. They see this as Netanyahu trying to get rid of anyone who disagrees with him. Many we've talked to feel as if their democracy is at stake. You know, and I want to mention here, too, even though they differ, both Gallant and Netanyahu are wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes in Gaza. Israel has challenged that. Now, over the weekend, Qatar suspended its role as mediator for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, which has been playing for months now, that mediator role.

13:23Does this relate, if at all, to Galant's firing? Well, Qatar says it made this decision about two weeks ago. So these aren't necessarily related. But Qatar said it's done mediating these talks until both sides are willing to come to the table with, quote, the necessary seriousness needed to actually come to an agreement. which kind of goes along with what Gallant said, that Netanyahu is using the war for his political gain and isn't serious about stopping it. You know, Qatar and Egypt have openly blamed Netanyahu and his far-right government before for refusing to commit to talks and changing the terms of agreements that have been reached.

13:58Israel has been blaming Hamas. So talks seem to have stalled pretty significantly right now. And meanwhile, dozens of Palestinians are being killed by Israeli strikes in Gaza every day. and the remaining 101 Israeli hostages, about a third of whom are confirmed to be dead, continue to languish there as well. That's NPR's Kat Lonsdorff in Tel Aviv. Thank you, Kat. Thanks, Leila.

14:23And that's a first for Monday, November 11th. I'm Leila Faldin. And I'm Steve Inskeep. Your next listen is Consider This from NPR News. We learn about the legendary librarian of the financier J.P. Morgan. Listen to Consider This from NPR. Today's episode of Up First was edited by Dana Farrington, Diane Weber, Ryland Barton, Hamad Elberdisi, and Alice Wolfley. It was produced by Ziad Butch, Nia Dumas, and Julie Deppenbrock. We get engineering support from Arthur Laurent, and our technical director is Zach Coleman. Join us again tomorrow.

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