This is an adapted excerpt from the Sept. 30 episode of “The Briefing with Jen Psaki.”
The United States government has officially shut down. Millions of seniors on Medicare will no longer be able to access health care via telehealth. The Food and Drug Administration will no longer be able to monitor the use of new ingredients in animal food, and thus, as NBC News reports, will “not be able to ensure that meat, milk and eggs of livestock are safe for the public to eat.” And at the Federal Aviation Administration, about a quarter of the staff will be furloughed, while the rest of the staff, including our nation’s 13,000 air traffic controllers, will be forced to work without pay.
While Democrats in Washington were sounding the alarm about just how much a needless government shutdown would hurt the American people, Donald Trump’s focus was elsewhere. Hours before that shutdown took effect, the president held a bizarre, highly politicized meeting of America’s top military leaders.
Hundreds of generals and admirals were all called in from around the world to gather in one room and hear Trump deliver a meandering speech, during which he aired his familiar grievances about his political enemies and the 2020 election. The president also took time to tell leaders he wasn’t happy with the boats being used by the U.S. Navy. “I’m a very aesthetic — I’m a very aesthetic person, and I don’t like some of the ships you’re doing aesthetically,” Trump said.
In the midst of all of Trump’s nonsensical babble, some of what the president said to our nation’s military leaders was also incredibly alarming. During his speech, Trump said America was “under invasion from within.”
“[It’s] no different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways, because they don’t wear uniforms. At least when they’re wearing a uniform, you can take them out,” he added. “These people don’t have uniforms.”
Trump also said he told Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that the military should use “dangerous” Democratic cities as “training grounds.”
So, in addition to griping about the aesthetics of our ships, the president also told our top military leaders that he wants to use our armed forces to go after people on American soil.
It’s also worth noting what Trump didn’t mention in that — like the fact that, starting Wednesday, huge swaths of men and women in the armed forces will be forced to work without pay.
All active-duty military personnel, including the National Guard members whom Trump has deployed to places like D.C. and Portland, Oregon, will be forced to work during the shutdown but will not get paid until it’s over. And hundreds of thousands of the military’s civilian employees will be furloughed without pay. But that didn’t seem to be of concern to Trump.
At the core of the fight over the shutdown right now is one wonky but deeply important issue: health insurance subsidies. Back in 2021, the Biden administration passed a Covid relief bill that, among many other things, expanded access to health care plans under the Affordable Care Act and provided tax credits to make health care premiums more affordable for tens of millions of Americans.
Right now, about 22 million Americans rely on those subsidies, but they are set to disappear at the end of the year if Congress does not act. That would mean insurance premiums for tens of millions of Americans could skyrocket.
For a lot of American families, that increase isn’t just painful — it’s something they can’t afford. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that without those subsidies, more than 4 million Americans would lose their insurance in the next decade.
Democrats want subsidies funded by the federal government. They want to prevent millions of Americans from being tossed off their health care. That is the holdup. And right now, Trump and Republicans would rather shut down the federal government and force millions of Americans to suffer than budge on that issue.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
