Rookie Rising Star Tight End Jackson Hawes agrees – Buffalo You are the best fans in the world! 🔵🔴

An analyst warns Thursday that GOP lawmakers "drunk with power" have made a major stumble amid the ongoing government shutdown, unleashing "Republicans' worst nightmare."

Salon columnist Heather Digby Parton writes about how Obamacare premiums are set to soar — something President Donald Trump had promised to replace — and now "appears to be one step too far" for Americans.

"Ten years of similar promises have shown that replacing the Affordable Care Act wasn’t so easy after all — and that the only health care plan the GOP ever truly wanted was one called 'you’re on your own,'" Digby Parton writes.

Republicans haven't introduced any alternatives, instead people are receiving notices that their healthcare premiums are set to rise, while they cut Medicaid and close a number of rural hospitals, add work requirements and deny care to millions. And although they've pointed to Project 2025, aiming to force people into a privatized version of Medicaid and "plan to open up the market to sell junk insurance plans which are worth virtually nothing," it's still a half-baked policy, the writer argues.

"But the GOP’s lack of strategy and success makes it clear the party is as flummoxed on this issue as they’ve always been, and they know it’s a loser for them," she writes.

Healthcare matters for Americans because it's something that effects their daily lives, she adds, and "it’s now on the front lines of this massive war against our social safety net."

As the Trump administration works to defund scientific research and following "the government's shambolic response during the first year of the pandemic and the damage being done every day by the administration to our scientific research community, I suspect a lot of people are feeling insecure about their actual health care these days."

That could leave room for Democrats to step in and hold the line.

"If Democrats can find the fortitude to hold out for their demands, they will have taken the first step in reining in this lawless administration and given the American people something to hold onto in these dark days," Digby Parton writes.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) made a horrific apparent gaffe when discussing a swastika spotted in a Republican congressman's office.

U.S. Capitol Police were called to investigate a display of an American flag altered to show the Nazi symbol pinned to a wall in a cubicle used by Angelo Elia, a staffer for Rep. Dave Taylor (R-OH), and the GOP speaker attempted to distance the party from fascist ideology.

"With regard to the swastika thing, this happened last night, a Republican congressman, allegedly, one of his staffers had something in the background, something in a Zoom, that's what I heard this morning," Johnson told reporters. "He says that that's not his and there was a proper investigation ongoing, and the congressman did exactly what he should have done, and that is report it. It's under investigation, and I can't comment on it any further until that's done."

The swastika display was noticed a day after Politico reported on a Young Republican group chat where organization leaders used racial slurs, joked about the Holocaust, celebrated slavery and rape, and praised Adolf Hitler.

"But I will say, obviously, that is not the principles of the Republican Party," Johnson said. "We stand for the founding principles of America – want me to articulate them for you right now? Individual freedom, limited government, the rule of law, peace through strength, fiscal responsibility, free markets, human dignity – the things that lead to human flourishing."

"We have stood against that, we have fought against the Nazis," Johnson added, and then apparently misspoke before insisting Nazi sympathies were a problem in both parties. "We defended that evil ideology. We roundly condemn it, and anybody in any party who espouses it, we're opposing that."

Epic Freudian slip

"We fought the Nazis, we defended that evil ideology" -Mike Johnson pic.twitter.com/uvVcUtNBJT
— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) October 16, 2025