Week in politics: Minneapolis ICE shooting and congressional Republicans defect
The NPR Politics Podcast
NPR
4.5 • 24.9K Ratings
🗓️ 9 January 2026
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode: senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith, congressional correspondent Claudia Grisales, Minnesota Public Radio host Clay Masters, and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.
This podcast was produced by Casey Morell and Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye.
Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Support for NPR comes from NPR member stations and Eric and Wendy Schmidt through the Schmidt Family Foundation, working toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all. On the web at theshmit.org. |
| 0:18.5 | Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast for Friday, January 9th, 2026. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. |
| 0:27.0 | I'm Claudia Grisales. I cover Congress. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. |
| 0:31.9 | And we are recording this at 12.50 p.m. And we wanted to check in on what's happening in Congress, where 17 House |
| 0:40.6 | Republicans joined Democrats this week on a vote to extend health care subsidies that had expired |
| 0:46.7 | at the end of 2025. Claudia, remind us about these subsidies and what happened here. |
| 0:52.6 | Right. These were part of a pandemic era law to make the |
| 0:57.6 | Affordable Care Act program more affordable. And as costs have skyrocketed for health care, |
| 1:03.7 | these subsidies have become that much more critical for millions of Americans who, because these |
| 1:09.3 | expired in December, they're facing premiums that |
| 1:12.3 | have doubled or more. And so there is this core group of Republicans. As you mentioned, the 17, |
| 1:20.4 | mostly moderate Republicans who joined Democrats, not only did they force this vote on the floor |
| 1:25.7 | because they had been asking for this vote, |
| 1:28.4 | but House Speaker Mike Johnson had been rejecting that plan, but they used a discharge petition and maneuver to get around him and force that vote. |
| 1:35.5 | But then we saw those 17 House Republicans defect. |
| 1:39.0 | It's a really big statement against President Trump that they want to see something get done here. |
| 1:43.7 | Yeah. And just a reminder, |
| 1:44.8 | these subsidies were what Democrats held up as the reason they were shutting down the government |
| 1:50.4 | last October. And that was the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. It really raised |
| 1:56.8 | the profile of these subsidies that are meant to make Affordable Care Act plans affordable. |
| 2:03.8 | And, you know, we had reporting on our air today with people talking about either having to |
| 2:08.7 | drop insurance or they're looking for jobs. They'd been self-employed, but they can't afford to be |
... |
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