Politics and views in the United States.

House Democrats gain support for forcing a vote on extending ACA subsidies. Trump addresses first-year wins and future success and the FCC Chairman is grilled by a Senate committee.

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to 2025 Talks.

We're following our democracy in historic times.

We are now at 218.

What that means is that it sets in place a process that will allow us to vote on a clean extension.

And we have 218 people who will vote for it, which means we will pass it.

Massachusetts Democratic Representative Jim McGovern is backing a discharge petition, which now has enough signatures to force a vote next month on a clean three-year extension of expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies.

Should the extension pass in the House, it will arrival in the Senate where similar legislation just failed.

House Republicans passed a health care plan without an extension, which faces an equally dim future in the upper chamber.

With coverage for millions of Americans at risk, the cost of insurance continues to animate fierce politics, as it has since the end of the shutdown.

But working families also face deep cuts to Medicaid from the Republican budget mega-bill.

Sam Burgess with the New Hampshire non-profit New Futures says they and their peers in other states expect more than 10 million people to be kicked off government health care or priced out of coverage in the next decade. says it's going to be part of the ongoing affordability crisis.

This is going to force families to choose between putting food on the table, paying rent, and then when you add in the premium, it adds a further strain.

A new NPR poll says slightly more than a third of Americans approve of the job President Donald Trump is doing on the economy.

With unemployment and inflation both creeping up, Trump used an unusual primetime televised address to say his trade and budget policies will help nervous consumers and workers, but he made inaccurate claims about prices.

When I took office, inflation was the worst in 48 years, and some would say in the history of our country, which caused prices to be higher than ever before, making life unaffordable for millions and millions of Americans.

The president's handling of the economy will be key to how next year's midterms go, and his eroding polls may help explain why House Republicans are starting to rebel, with members signing two discharge petitions opposed by their leadership.

And the Senate has approved a National Defense Authorization Act with a provision requiring the Pentagon to release more information about airstrikes on alleged drug boats from Venezuela.

Republicans in the chamber did block a Democratic move to force the release of the full video of a September airstrike where two survivors were killed while clinging to burning wreckage.

Oklahoma Republican Mark Wayne Mullen calls it "raw partisanship."

This is all about politics.

That's what this is about.

Why are we protecting the ones that are poisoning our streets?

Shouldn't we be trying to protect the ones that are on our streets?

Senators on both sides of the aisle want to see the unedited video or have it released.

However, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says only a handful will get to.

Tension ran high as FCC Chairman Brendan Carr testified before the Senate Commerce Committee his first oversight hearing since publicly pressuring Disney to fire late night comic Jimmy Kimmel for comments about the death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

Texas Republican Ted Cruz agrees with Carr that Kimmel's comments were tasteless, but says censoring them is a serious mistake.

What government cannot do is force private entities to take actions the government cannot take directly.

Officials threatening adverse consequences for disfavored content is an unconstitutional coercion that chills protected speech.