Lee Ann Anderson explains why “Why Florida is ground zero for coming ObamaCare storm” at The Hill: “Florida will be hit harder than any other state if ObamaCare subsidies expire at the end of the year, which is looking increasingly likely as Republicans in Congress struggle to unite behind a plan to extend the tax credits…More than 1.5 million Floridians could lose health care as monthly payments skyrocket. Average premium costs could shoot up by 132 percent, or by $521 annually, for Floridians who currently receive enhanced ObamaCare subsidies, according to the Center for American Progress… Florida leads the country in the number of individuals enrolled in an Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace plan, with 1 out of 5 Floridians, or 4.7 million people, benefiting from subsidized health insurance, according to KFF, a nonprofit organization focused on health policy…The Sunshine State’s relatively large number of small-business owners and hospitality workers account for the particularly high reliance on ACA plans, said Erica Li, a health policy analyst at Florida Policy Institute…“We’re going to see, unfortunately, a rise in the amount of people who are uninsured. And that’s unfortunate, because even if a person is young and chooses to forgo health insurance because they may be healthier, you never know if you’ll have an accident or diagnosis that will require health care coverage and continual care,” Li said.” More here.

From “Barack Obama tells House Democrats that party should focus on the midterms, not ideological divides” by Oren Oppenheimer at abcnews.go.com: “Former President Barack Obama told House Democrats at an event on Sunday in Los Angeles that as they focus on trying to win control of the House of Representatives, they should not get caught up in ideological differences within the party and can “sort through” them later, according to excerpts of his comments provided to ABC News…Ideological arguments within the Democratic Party between its progressive and moderate wings came into sharp focus during 2025’s key elections — particularly in New York City, as Democrats debated over the candidacy of democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani. This past year, Obama campaigned on the ground for the Democratic Party’s Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial candidates and spoke with Mamdani ahead of Election Day…The party has also been divided over how to handle government funding and the expiration of Affordable Care Act subsidies. Eight Senators who caucus with Democrats voted in November to end a government shutdown without an extension of the subsidies, sparking criticism from other Democrats who felt they should not have voted to reopen the government without an extension. House Democrats have since shown a largely united front, signing onto a discharge petition led by Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to force a vote on extending the subsidies for three years…Obama told the lawmakers to “focus” on winning back the Republican-controlled House in the 2026 midterm elections, indicating that after that the party could work more through those ideological divisions…”Because I promise, when that gets done, we have enormous talent, and we are then going to be in a position, as the next presidential campaign ramps up, to sort through some of the differences,” Obama said, according to excerpts of his remarks obtained by ABC News.”

An excerpt from “Trump is betting his presidency on AI. Can he sell it?” by Ben Smith at Semafor: “The great mystery of the Trump administration is: When did he decide to become the AI president?…Trump barely mentioned AI on the campaign trail. His deepest engagement on the subject seems to have been, believe it or not, a lucid 2024 conversation with the YouTuber Logan Paul. Trump mused about the “dangerous” capacity of deepfakes to start a nuclear war, but concluded that AI is “going to happen — and if it’s going to happen, we have to take the lead over China.”…“We have to be very careful with it,” he said…That was pretty much it. The real campaign was immigration, prices, culture wars…And yet, the day after his second inauguration, Trump stood in the Roosevelt Room with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman for a $500 billion investment announcement. The single most consequential decision of his presidency may turn out to be putting the full weight of the American state behind the AI hyperscalers and working overtime to block state and federal efforts to restrain them. David Sacks, his AI czar, has emerged as a central, effective Washington figure…It’s still early days, and the political battle over AI is just being joined. Recent history has shown that, to the frustration of labor unions and consumer advocates, voters tend to side with what they see as technological progress and generally like the consumer tech products they use. Older voters and women tend in recent polling to be more hostile to AI; some younger voters, especially men, tend to be excited about it…A vast middle sees both sides. It is waiting to be persuaded.”

“The last time a Democrat was elected as mayor of Miami, Bill Clinton was president,” John Nichols writes in “Trump Is Dragging Republicans to Crushing Defeat After Crushing Defeat: The president is deeply unpopular, his policies are failing, and Republicans are losing—everywhere.” at The Nation. “Over the ensuing decades, Miami became such a consistently Republican town that outgoing Mayor Francis Suarez—who was reelected in 2021 with almost 80 percent of the vote—briefly sought the party’s 2024 presidential nomination…But on Tuesday, Miami voters replaced Suarez with Democrat Eileen Higgins,a Peace Corps alumnus, former foreign service officer in Latin America, and Miami-Dade County commissioner with a track record of championing affordable housing, mass transit expansion, and environmental initiatives…It wasn’t even close. Higgins won 59.5 percent of the vote, to just 40.5 percent for Republican Emilio González, a former Miami city manager who served as President George W. Bush’s director of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services and under secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, and also as director of WesternHemisphere Affairs at the National Security Council…Running with ardent support from President Trump—who declared before the vote, “Miami’s Mayor Race is Tuesday. It is a big and important race!!! Vote for Republican Gonzalez”—as well as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Florida Senator Rick Scott, González had all the pieces in place for a win. But he couldn’t overcome the fundamental reality of 2025…Americans are now so soured on Trump (whose economic mismanagement, chaotic governance, and authoritarian overreach have dropped his approval rating as low as 36 percent in a late-November Gallup survey) and the GOP brand that they are turning out anywhere and everywhere to vote for Democrats…That was the case in Miami, a city with a large Latino population that not long ago was seen as an emerging base for the Republicans. Now CNN data analyst Harry Enten notes,“Latinos have shifted heavily against Trump (with a drop of 36 points in net approval).”…In a broader sense, says Enten, “Trump’s absolute kryptonite to the GOP in big cities.”…But this is about much more than big cities…Democrats are breaking through all over, showing strength even in Republican regions where maps are gerrymandered to favor the GOP…Last week’s returns from a Tennessee special election for an open US House seat show that Democrat Aftyn Behn’s strong run produced a 13-point shift away from the GOP in a normally safe Republican district. A 13-point shift nationally in 2026—or anything akin to that level of movement—would flip dozens of Republican House seats and give Democrats clear control of the chamber for the last two years of Trump’s presidency.”