The News
Republicans have settled on their message for the government shutdown: A noun, a verb, and “illegal aliens.”
As most Democrats withhold their votes to reopen the government, seeking a deal with the GOP on more health care funding, the president’s party is wielding their support for two kinds of benefits that can go to non-citizens.
The first is emergency room care that’s given to patients regardless of legal status, mandated by a 39-year old law. The second: Affordable Care Act benefits that can be claimed by non-citizens with temporary legal status to be in the US.
But Republicans did not fully roll back the health care laws they’re now criticizing; they reduced the scope of the resulting benefits in July, through their party-line “big, beautiful” bill. Now they argue that Democrats, by seeking to reverse those changes, want to provide health care to people who aren’t legally in the country.
“They have made a decision that they would rather give taxpayer-funded benefits to illegal aliens than keep the doors open for the American people,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said at a Thursday morning press conference with fellow GOP leaders, where they denounced care for “illegals” 23 times.
With both sides dug into their shutdown positions, both parties are running out of new things to talk about. So they’re litigating a Democratic proposal that has no hope of passing but includes just enough ammunition to fuel Republican outrage. At the core of the GOP’s shutdown argument is painting a grim picture of any non-citizen receiving any government benefit.
That’s a stumbling block for Democrats, who tend to respond by repeating in front of every microphone and TV camera available that undocumented immigrants can’t access federal health care programs and they aren’t going to change that.
Vice President JD Vance suggested on Wednesday that Reagan-era emergency care standards should be revisited, telling reporters that many Americans had been to an emergency room where “an illegal alien, very often a person can’t speak English” was getting helped before an American.
“We are willing to pass anything in law that says people in this country illegally should not be receiving any benefits, subsidies, anything,” Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., told Semafor.
“But who do you think the emergency room is going to end up denying care to if people show up passed out and can’t show IDs? It’s going to be Latino-looking people, Asian-looking people.”
Know More
Many Democrats have supported access to federal health care funds for undocumented immigrants, which is a component of the Medicare-for-All bill backed by most progressives in Congress.
But that bill is not among the party’s demands in the shutdown fight, and Democrats have scoffed at Republicans who portray emergency room care or benefits for migrants with legal status as giveaways to the undocumented.
“That is a big lie,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., told reporters earlier this week of the GOP’s argument. “And you are losing when you’re lying.”
Republicans haven’t backed down, confident that Democrats will give damaging soundbites by defending their policy on an issue where President Donald Trump holds a dominant polling advantage.
On Tuesday, after House Democrats gathered on the Capitol steps to oppose a funding bill without health insurance subsidies, a reporter for conservative Lindell TV asked Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., if her party was “demanding health care for illegal aliens.”
Waters briefly entertained the question: “Democrats are demanding health care for everybody,” she said. “We want to save lives. We want to make sure that health care is available to those who would die but [for] having the help of their government.”
The first part of her answer went viral, with a nudge from the Trump administration’s social media accounts. By Wednesday morning, House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., said that “one of the Democrat leaders confirmed” the party was focused on “health care for illegal aliens” (he was referring to Waters, who holds a top committee post but not a leadership post).
That messaging quickly made it into Republican advertising. The National Republican Senatorial Committee bought digital spots that accused Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., of favoring “free health care for illegals” over veterans’ benefits. Outside of DC, incumbent Republicans worked the message into their talking points, plowing past interviewers who said that fact-checkers had debunked the line.
“Every time criminal illegal immigrants come up, they’re paralyzed with no answer, no defense, no plan,” said National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Mike Marinella. “That leaves them flat-footed, and we’re going to keep hammering that advantage through the midterms, because Democrats are too afraid to cross their radical base.”
The View From Democrats
Democrats contend that the GOP has over-leveraged on a topic that it’s comfortable talking about — but doesn’t get it out of a jam on health care benefits for Americans.
“The Republican message only works until November 1,” said Gallego. “Then, they have to explain why people’s open enrollment cost is going to be higher.”
Room for Disagreement
Some Democratic allies warn that the party is underestimating how weak it is on immigration and how ready voters are to buy Trump’s argument that they care more about non-citizens than citizens.
At a gathering this week of Democratic pollsters and strategists, The Bulwark founder Sarah Longwell said it was dangerous for progressives to come up with numbers that said Trump was on the ropes on the border.
“If you keep believing in polling that tells you ‘no, no, Americans are really upset about Donald Trump and the way he’s handling immigration,’ that’s not true,” Longwell said.
David’s view
Vance and the Democrats are looking to 2028 — and to 2020.
During their last open primary, Democrats debated whether government-run health insurance should cover non-citizens. That idea stuck to Kamala Harris, fueling Trump 2024 ads that accused her of being ready to harm American citizens in order to give benefits to “illegals.”
“The 2020 Democratic presidential primary apology tour needed to start five years ago, but the next best day is today,” said Liam Kerr, the co-founder of the centrist Democratic group Welcome PAC. “It’s hard to get the country to stop believing things your leaders said on video when you aren’t explicitly saying you don’t want to do those things.”
Democrats’ caution now should be read in the context of their lurch leftward during the 2020 primary: They now want voters to know that they do not want Medicare, Medicaid, or ACA plans covering non-citizens with no legal status.
And they’re comfortable saying that Trump and Republicans are flat-out lying when they say otherwise. This is their post-2024 safe space.
What’s new is Vance’s sure-footed denunciation of emergency room services for non-citizens, and his argument — made in the 2024 campaign — that migrants who got temporary legal status under a Biden “amnesty” are not truly legal immigrants.
Democrats are not going to argue that non-citizens who show up in emergency rooms should be denied care, or that people who got refugee status but have not become citizens don’t deserve access to ACA plans.
Vance is making a zero-sum argument that Democrats see as abhorrent: Every dollar spent on a non-citizen was effectively taken from a US citizen.
This is why he expects no effective pushback. Neither does his party.
Notable
- Semafor’s Eleanor Mueller, Burgess Everett, and Shelby Talcott report on whether the administration’s shutdown layoffs could lead to a “DOGE 2.0” scenario, with voters blaming Republicans for any damage.
- In Politico, Adam Wren watched and recapped the House Democrats’ shutdown livestream. “The camera feed switches to a different location, where we watch four members of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus sitting around a table featuring a pineapple centerpiece and what appears to be a Labubu.”