Moderate House Republicans concerned about re-election next year have been pushing for a vote to extend the Obamacare premium subsidies, but Speaker Mike Johnson is strongly opposed. House Democrats need only four Republicans to cross the aisle and sign their discharge petition, which would force a vote on the House floor — and Democrats may get exactly what they want.

That’s according to Punchbowl News and its co-founder, Jake Sherman.

“This week,” Sherman wrote, “was designed to give House Republicans a way to push back on Democratic attacks that they’re indifferent to skyrocketing health care costs hitting millions of Americans. Instead, the House GOP leadership has facilitated an untimely — and particularly nasty — intraparty brawl, pitting moderates against Republican Party leaders and further strengthening Democrats’ political hand as the Obamacare cliff looms.”

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Speaker Johnson is “pushing” moderate Republicans “into the arms of Democrats,” Sherman added, “as the House Republican leadership refuses to allow the centrists a vote on extending the enhanced Obamacare premium subsidies.”

One moderate Republican, Sherman also reported, U.S. Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) “stood up in a House Republican Conference meeting and said that not having an up-or-down vote on extending the enhanced Obamacare subsidies is malpractice.”

He also reported that many moderate Republicans “share this sentiment.”

“They feel like they have to have a vote and the conference won’t give it to them. Driving them into the arms of democrats.”

Sherman explained that by refusing to allow the vote, Republicans have delivered a “political advantage” to the Democrats. If just four House Republicans sign Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ discharge petition, “Democrats have exacted the precise policy win they’ve been seeking, even if that never becomes law.”

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The November unemployment rate jumped to 4.6%, a four-year high, according to the Trump administration’s delayed jobs report released on Tuesday. It is the highest unemployment rate since September 2021. Employers added 64,000 jobs in November, after a sharp loss of 105,000 jobs in October, a month for which the administration did not release a report.

In what is being seen as a clear sign that hiring is slowing, the October loss “marked the third time in six months that payrolls saw a net negative level,” according to CNBC.

The New York Times called the jump in the unemployment rate “a warning sign for the economy.”

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Experts are expressing concern.

“There have been almost no job gains since April,” warned Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal. She added that the “US would have LOST JOBS in the past 6 months if it weren’t for healthcare.”

Long concluded, “The US economy is in a hiring recession.”

Professor of economics and frequent cable news guest Justin Wolfers has repeatedly warned about possible stagflation.

On Tuesday, he called private sector hiring “weak,” and said it “may have stalled totally.”

“All told, the headline numbers suggest VIRTUALLY NO EMPLOYMENT GROWTH since April (‘Liberation day”),” Wolfers wrote, referring to the day President Donald Trump’s tariffs began.

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Wolfers also offered some concerning news: “Are we in a recession? Perhaps. Maybe. Hard to tell.”

“I just realized…the unemployment rate rising to 4.6% has taken us back to February 2017…the first month of Trump’s first term,” noted Martha Gimbel, a former senior advisor at the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

“The unemployment rate for Black Americans rose to 8.3% in November, the highest level since 2021 and a 2.1 percentage point increase from the start of this year,” noted Joey Politano, who writes about economics at Apricitas Economics.

Kevin Gordon of the Schwab Center for Financial Research summed up Tuesday’s report: “The simplicity of today is that the unemployment rate continues to move higher.”

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A New York Times opinion columnist is taking President Donald Trump and his team to task for what he described as having not only “normalized bragging,” but “fetishized it.”

“It’s a naughtiness they allow themselves, a perk they accord themselves, a rite by which they identify themselves to one another as birds of a feather — peacocks, in this case,” observed Frank Bruni. “It’s a competition: My superlatives are bigger than yours.”

Declaring that “Trump and his team exuberantly violate just about every precept of character that I was ever taught, and so it goes with moderation and humility,” Bruni reported on Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s recent comments.

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“It has been a historic year at the Department of War,” the Secretary said.

“He added that ‘the spirit in our ranks’ was ‘unprecedented’ and that recruitment and retention were ‘at the most historic levels our country has ever seen.’ Not just historic — most historic.”

Trump “can’t find enough hours in the conventional workday to proclaim his glory adequately, so he has been known to spend the wee hours strutting on Truth Social, as he did from 9 p.m. to midnight on the first day of December, in a narcissistic meltdown of more than 150 posts.”

“Me, me, me. Best, best, best,” Bruni recorded.

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After pointing out Trump’s recent self-congratulatory “A+++++” claim on how he is handling the economy, Bruni offered some perspective.

“That’s five pluses, for those of you too nonplused to pause and count. I assume he stopped there only because he was winded. He’s not the cyclone of energy he used to be. He’s more an erratic breeze.”

“As for the economy,” the columnist continued, “all the pluses in the world may not persuade voters of their good fortune. An AP-NORC poll released on Thursday showed that just 31 percent of Americans — a new low in that survey — approve of how Trump is handling economic issues.”

Bruni concluded, “That’s an F with minus upon minus in tow.”

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