Discharge petition? Senate vote? Centrist deal? Congress enters crunch time on ACA extension
Plus: Jasmine Crockett sounds like she’s running for Senate, a preview of the TN-07 special election and everything you need to know about this year’s White House Christmas theme.
First Things First
👋🏾 Hi, hey, hello! Welcome back to Congress Nerd, Once Upon a Hill’s premium flagship evening newsletter about all things Congress—written by someone who still believes in it. I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving break and the final month of the year is off to a fantastic start.
Today is World AIDS Day, an annual global day of remembrance and action that honors those lost to HIV/AIDS, supports people living with the virus, and renews the international community’s commitment to prevention, treatment and ending the epidemic. Today also marks 70 years since Rosa Parks’ arrest, a reminder of how one woman’s refusal to give up her seat sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott and helped launch the modern civil rights movement.
Congress returned this evening after the holiday break to a three-week sprint—13 legislative days in the House, 12 in the Senate, if you’re counting—to close the year. Two big-ticket items remain: Enacting the National Defense Authorization Act, the annual must-pass bill that sets the rules and budget for the U.S. military and figuring out an off-ramp to the looming Affordable Care Act subsidy cliff if lawmakers fail to extend the law’s COVID-era premium tax credits.
Fresh reporting on the ACA situation features prominently in the section below.
But let’s turn our attention to west-central Tennessee, also known as the center of the political universe … at least for tomorrow. The state will hold a special election in its 7th congressional district to fill the seat vacated by former House Homeland Security Committee Chair Mark Green’s resignation earlier this year. It pits Trump-endorsed Republican Matt Van Epps against Democrat Aftyn Behn in a race that could test whether Democrats can compete in a reliably red district.
In case you missed it on Saturday, I scooped that the political arm of the Congressional Black Caucus endorsed Behn in the contest in what I’m told was a late signal that Black voters may be able to power her campaign to victory in what would be a massive upset in a seat President Donald Trump won by 22 points in 2022.
Democrats hope to ride the momentum from last month’s off-year elections, where candidates overperformed across the country, ahead of next year’s midterms, where they’ll look to flip the House and break the GOP’s unified control of the federal government.
Behn is currently holding a virtual get-out-the-vote rally with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Emerita Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), former Vice President and Tennessee Sen. Al Gore and Black Voters Matter co-founder LaTosha Brown. (FWIW, BVM played a key role in voter registration and GOTV efforts in the 2017 Senate special election Doug Jones won in Alabama and the 2021 Georgia Senate runoffs that Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff won to give Democrats the governing trifecta they used to pass much of former President Joe Biden’s legislative agenda.
Despite the public displays of confidence, Democrats have spent the day quietly managing expectations, going so far as to pitch a single-digit Behn loss as a silver lining in what is unmistakably Trump country, since her momentum has forced national Republicans and Trump allies to spend heavily in what should be safe territory.
One more thing: I caught up with Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) during House votes to get the tea on whether she plans to run for the U.S. Senate. She held court for a dozen minutes—an eternity for a hallway chat!—and I’m still making my way through the transcript in between finishing this edition of the newsletter.
There’s a lot to unpack, but a bit of news: She told me she spoke to the other leading Democratic candidates—former Rep. Colin Allred and state Rep. James Talarico—about the polling data she received on her electability. She declined to disclose the specific numbers but indicated nothing in the data has made her less likely to run.
Ultimately, she said her decision comes down to execution.
“It’s got to be more than numbers,” she said. It’s got to be like, how do you actually make it a reality?”
I’ll have much more later this week.
Today in Congress
Democrats emerged from the recess united around the goal of extending the ACA premium tax credits before they expire in 30 days. As for the most effective legislative mechanism to achieve it? That’s another story.