White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the U.S. plans to take control of the oil currently on a tanker off the coast of Venezuela that was seized by U.S. forces Wednesday. 

Trump ‘talks a lot about how he thinks the way to bring down prices for everything would be to bring down the cost of energy,’ Fox News Senior White House Correspondent Peter Doocy said Thursday. ‘Would he use this seized Venezuelan oil to try to help Americans with affordability here in the United States?’

Leavitt responded, ‘The vessel will go to a U.S. port, and the United States does intend to seize the oil. However, there is a legal process for the seizure of that oil and that legal process will be followed.’ 

President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that the U.S. had seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, sharply escalating U.S. tensions with the nation. The tanker was seized for allegedly being used to transport sanctioned oil from Venezuela and Iran, according to Attorney General Pam Bondi. 

‘The vessel is currently undergoing a forfeiture process. Right now, the United States currently has a full investigative team on the ground, on the vessel, and individuals on board the vessel are being interviewed, and any relevant evidence is being seized,’ Leavitt continued, adding that the oil on the tanker will go through a legal process before the U.S. claims the energy source. 

The tanker, called the Skipper, loaded an estimated 1.8 million barrels of oil earlier in December, before transferring an estimated 200,000 barrels just before its seizure, Reuters reported.

The oil on the tanker is likely worth $60 million to more than $100 million, based on current average oil prices. Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for any additional comment on the estimated price tag of the oil but did not immediately receive a reply. 

The U.S. military has carried out strikes on suspected drug trafficking boats near Venezuela since September as part of Trump’s mission to end the flow of drugs into the nation. There have been at least 22 strikes on suspected narcotraffickers near Venezuela, killing 87, since September. 

Doocy pressed Leavitt during the press conference on whether the U.S.’ strikes and heightened tensions with Venezuela, dubbed Operation Southern Spear, are ‘about drugs or is it about oil?’

‘The Trump administration is focused on doing many things in the Western Hemisphere,’ Leavitt responded. ‘The president has taken a new approach that has not been taken by any administration for quite some time to actually focus on what’s going on in our own backyard. And there are two things that are very important to this administration.’

The boat strikes are viewed as part of a U.S. pressure campaign on Venezuela likely aimed to not only curb the flow of drugs, but also to oust dictatorial President Nicolás Maduro as leader of the oil-rich nation. 

‘Number one, stopping the flow of illegal drugs into the United States of America, which we know has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans,’ she continued, before adding that Trump is ‘fully committed to effectuating this administration’s sanction policy. And that’s what you saw, and the world saw take place yesterday.’

‘With respect to the oil and what happened yesterday, the Department of Justice requested and was approved for a warrant to seize a vessel because it’s a sanctioned shadow vessel known for carrying black market sanctioned oil to the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps), which, you know, is a sanctioned entity,’ she continued. Venezuela is already subject to extensive U.S. sanctions, but was historically a major crude-oil supplier for the U.S.

Leavitt added that the administration will remain committed to the ‘president’s sanction policies and the sanction policies of the United States.’

‘We’re not going to stand by and watch sanctioned vessels sail the seas with black market oil. The proceeds of which will fuel narco-terrorism of rogue and illegitimate regimes around the world,’ she said. 

Fox News Digital’s Morgan Phillips contributed to this report. 

A lone progressive’s effort to impeach President Donald Trump failed Thursday, with nearly two dozen Democrats joining the House GOP to quash it.

Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, moved to get a vote on two articles of impeachment Wednesday night via a privileged resolution, a mechanism allowing lawmakers to force action on a bill within two legislative days.

Republicans called for a vote to table the measure on Thursday, a move that effectively kills consideration of the bill itself when a privileged resolution is called for.

Twenty-three Democrats joined Republicans in pushing the impeachment aside. A significant number of Democrats also voted ‘present,’ including all three senior leaders — House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., Minority Whip Katherine Clark, D-Mass., and Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar, D-Calif.

‘Impeachment is a sacred constitutional vehicle designed to hold a corrupt executive accountable for abuse of power, breaking the law and violating the public trust. The effort traditionally requires a comprehensive investigative process, the collection and review of thousands of documents, an exacting scrutiny of the facts, the examination of dozens of key witnesses, Congressional hearings, sustained public organizing and the marshaling of the forces of democracy to build a broad national consensus,’ the trio said in a statement explaining their vote.

‘None of that serious work has been done, with the Republican majority focused solely on rubber stamping Donald Trump’s extreme agenda. Accordingly, we will be voting ‘present’ on today’s motion to table the impeachment resolution as we continue our fight to make life more affordable for everyday Americans.’

The final vote fell 237 to 140, with 47 ‘present’ votes.

Among the Democrats who voted to table the measure are Reps. Tom Suozzi, D-N.Y., Josh Riley, D-N.Y., Jared Golden, D-Maine, Jimmy Panetta, D-Calif., Chrissy Houlahan, D-Pa., Maggie Goodlander, D-N.H., Sharice Davids, D-Kan., Don Davis, D-N.C., Shomari Figures, D-Ala., and others.

Green has filed articles of impeachment against Trump several times over the past year and notably was thrown out of the president’s joint address to Congress in March for repeatedly interrupting his speech.

The latest impeachment push includes two articles charging abuse of power, according to legislative text viewed by Fox News Digital.

The first count accuses Trump of calling for the ‘execution’ of six congressional Democrats. It was in response to Trump accusing those Democrats of ‘seditious behavior,’ which he said was ‘punishable by death’ after they posted a video urging military service members to refuse illegal orders by the federal government.

The video caused a firestorm on the right, with the FBI opening an inquiry into those Democrats — who all defended their comments.

Green’s second allegation of abuse of power charges Trump with having ‘fostered a political climate in which lawmakers and judges face threats of political violence and physical assault; and in this climate has made threats and vituperative comments against federal judges, putting at risk their safety and well-being, and undermining the independence of our judiciary.’

But while the vast majority of Democrats have made no secret of their disdain and disagreements with Trump, it appears that few have the appetite to make a largely symbolic gesture toward impeachment.

Even Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., has side-stepped questions on supporting impeachment multiple times this year, including most recently on Dec. 1 when asked about the military’s double-tap strikes on an alleged Venezuelan drug boat in September.

‘Republicans will never allow articles of impeachment to be brought to the floor of the House of Representatives. And we know that’s the case, because Donald Trump will order them not to do it. So what’s on the table is a meaningful investigation, which we can hope would be bipartisan,’ Jeffries said at the time.

Even if the impeachment vote were to move forward, it’s all but certain that the GOP majority in the Senate would quickly dispense of it.

Senate Republicans rallied to block Senate Democrats’ extension of expiring Obamacare subsidies as both sides of the aisle suffer defeats on their proposals to deal with the looming healthcare cliff.

Over the course of the 43-day government shutdown, Senate Democrats made the longest closure in history all about the subsidies, which were passed and enhanced under former President Joe Biden.

They argued that if Congress didn’t act, Americans who rely on the subsidies would be hit with skyrocketing premiums. Their plan, however, was one that was never going to pass muster with the majority of Senate Republicans, who demanded myriad reforms to the program that they charged was rife with fraud.

Only Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, and Josh Hawley, R-Mo., split from their party to support Democrats’ plan on an otherwise party line vote on Thursday, leaving the upper chamber without a solution to the fast-approaching deadline to either extend or replace the subsidies. Still, both sides of the aisle want to tackle rising healthcare costs, they just can’t agree on the best solution.

‘We don’t need to come up with the perfect plan,’ Hawley told Fox News Digital before the vote. ‘We need to say what will help right now to lower healthcare costs? That’s a more achievable goal, and that’s doable, so I am willing to vote for just about anything that has a legitimate shot at lowering healthcare costs right now. So that’s where I’d start.’

Senate Democrats’ plan, in comparison with Republicans’ offering that was blocked minutes before, was a straightforward three-year extension of the expiring enhanced subsidies.

But the plan did not include several reforms Republicans demanded, like measures to prevent fraud, income caps and more stringent enforcement of Hyde Amendment language that would prevent taxpayer dollars from funding abortions.

‘Our bill is the only proposal on either side that has party-wide support on both sides of the Capitol,’ Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., charged that Democrats’ proposal wasn’t based on reality.

‘What [Schumer] is saying about a Democrat plan that will lower healthcare costs is a fantasy,’ Thune said. ‘It just is. It’s a fantasy.’

While neither side can reach a consensus on how to actually move forward on a healthcare plan, both recognize that time is running out to find a fix and that the cost of healthcare is running rampant.

Democrats see the subsidies as a quick fix that can stop the bleeding, while Republicans are looking for broader, immediate reforms that could start putting a dent in healthcare costs.

Bipartisan talks have continued throughout the process, but those too are being hampered by the GOP’s red line on more stringent enforcement of anti-abortion measures on the Obamacare exchange, which is a nonstarter for Democrats.

Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., predicted that both Republicans’ and Democrats’ proposals would fail but that ‘hopefully, that keeps us working on getting something where we provide assistance, but get some reforms.’

‘But we can’t keep just sending the money to insurance companies and continue this runaway medical inflation that just perpetuates the problem,’ Hoeven said.

Senate Democrats banded together to kill Republicans’ plan to replace expiring Obamacare subsidies on Thursday, knocking the first of two proposals down for the count.

Senate Republicans’ plan from Sens. Bill Cassidy, R-La., and Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, the chairs of the Senate health and finance panels, would have abandoned the Obamacare enhanced premium subsidies for health savings accounts (HSAs), along with several reforms that Republicans appeared largely unified behind earlier this week.

Still, not every Senate Republican voted for the bill. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., joined all Senate Democrats in tanking the legislation on a largely party-line vote.

Lawmakers are now set to vote on Senate Democrats’ plan, which would extend the subsidies for another three years. That proposal is also expected to fail, given that Senate Republicans broadly don’t want to extend the subsidies without myriad reforms.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Senate Democrats have pitched their plan as the only option to prevent healthcare premiums from skyrocketing, while Republicans contended that the subsidies are rife with fraud and that the entire Obamacare system was causing premium prices to crank up year after year.

‘The Cassidy-Crapo [plan] is not a healthcare plan,’ Schumer said. ‘It’s not a plan at all. It’s an excuse. It’s a fig leaf. Because Republicans are so divided and can’t come up with a plan that unites them. They propose this fig leaf.’

‘My guess is most Republicans themselves are grimacing that they even have to vote for this thing,’ he continued. ‘How is a one-time check going to help you if you’re paying 1,000 or $2,000 a month more for health insurance?’

Cassidy and Crapo’s plan would have seeded HSAs with $1,000 for people ages 18 to 49 and $1,500 for those 50 to 65 for people earning up to 700% of the poverty level. In order to get the pre-funded HSA, people would have to buy a bronze or catastrophic plan on an Obamacare exchange.

It also included several provisions that didn’t make the cut in President Donald Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill,’ including measures to reduce federal Medicaid funding to states that cover illegal immigrants, requirements that states verify citizenship or eligible immigration status before someone can get Medicaid, a ban on federal Medicaid funding for gender transition services and nixing those services from ‘essential health benefits’ for Obamacare exchange plans.

It also included Hyde Amendment provisions to prevent taxpayer dollars from funding abortions through the new HSAs, a red line for many Senate Republicans that has proven divisive between the aisles.

The deadline to either extend or replace the credits, which were first passed and then enhanced under former President Joe Biden during the COVID-19 pandemic, is at the end of the year.

But whether the Senate acts before the deadline remains in the air, given that next week will be their last working week before leaving Washington, D.C., until the new year. There are several plans still on the table for lawmakers to choose from.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said ahead of the vote that it was clear that Schumer wanted Senate Democrats to fall in line for the upcoming vote but noted that there were still ongoing bipartisan conversations, and he didn’t close the door a possible Obamacare fix with the limited time lawmakers had left before the clock runs out.

‘If there is an interest in solving that, I don’t rule it out,’ Thune said. ‘I mean, obviously we don’t have a lot of time to do this, but I think there are ways in which you could where there’s a will, and if there are two sides willing to come together.’

Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., called on Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to resign Thursday during opening remarks at a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on ‘Worldwide Threats to the Homeland.’

‘You have systematically dismantled the Department of Homeland Security, put your own interests above the department, and violated the law. You are making America less safe,’ said Thompson. ‘So rather than sitting here and wasting your time and ours with more corruption, lies and lawlessness, I call on you to resign. Do a real service to the country and just resign. That is, if President Trump doesn’t fire you first.’

As Noem was giving her opening statement, several protesters against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) interrupted, yelling, ‘Get ICE off our streets,’ and, ‘Stop terrorizing our community.’

The protesters were escorted out by Capitol Police and detained outside the hearing room.

Noem, who was joined at the hearing by National Counterterrorism Center director Joe Kent and Michael Glasheen, the operations director of the National Security Branch of the FBI, said one of her grandchildren, who was in the audience, was crying a little during Thompson’s remarks.

‘I don’t think she agreed with him,’ Noem said jokingly.

She touted the work DHS has done to secure the southern border and protect the U.S.

‘DHS is eradicating transnational organized crime and the stopping of deadly drugs from continuing to be funneled into our communities,’ she told lawmakers. ‘We’re ending illegal immigration, returning sanity back to our immigration system, and we’re defending against cyberattacks against our critical infrastructure.’

The former South Dakota governor, speaking about the global threats facing the country — including those posed by domestic extremists and radical Islamic terrorism — said the U.S. should brace for heightened risks as it prepares to host major events in 2026 such as the World Cup and the nation’s 250th birthday.

‘These large-scale events will be potential targets for a range of bad actors, and they come with an increased level of risk. DHS is using every tool and authority we have to ensure the safety of U.S. citizens, and our visitors can enjoy next year’s events,’ Noem added.

Rumors had swirled in recent days that President Donald Trump was considering replacing her as head of DHS. Trump pushed back on those rumors on Wednesday, telling reporters that Noem has been ‘fantastic.’

Noem also addressed the rumors, speaking to Fox News prior to Thursday’s hearing.

‘Oh, that’s absolutely not true,’ she said. ‘President Trump and I are doing wonderfully. I’m so proud to work for him, and I’m going to continue to serve at his pleasure.’

Fox News’ Bill Melugin contributed to this report.

President Donald Trump on Thursday pressed Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., to dismantle the Senate’s ‘blue slip’ tradition, arguing that the practice has allowed Democrats to block Republican judicial and U.S. attorney nominees.

‘If they say no, then it is OVER for that very well qualified Republican candidate. Only a really far left Democrat can be approved. It is shocking that Republicans, under Senator Chuck G, allow this scam to continue. So unfair to Republicans, and not Constitutional,’ Trump wrote on Truth Social.

‘I am hereby asking Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a fantastic guy, to get something done, ideally the termination of Blue Slips. Too many GREAT REPUBLICANS are being, SENT PACKIN’. None are getting approved!!!’

Trump’s remarks come as courts continue to scrutinize the legality of his U.S. attorney appointments.

Alina Habba announced on Monday that she would be stepping down as the top federal prosecutor in New Jersey after an appeals court ruled she was unlawfully serving in the role.

Trump appointed Lindsey Halligan to serve as interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, after Erik Siebert resigned. A federal judge in November dismissed the indictments of former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, finding that Halligan had been unlawfully appointed and therefore lacked the authority to bring the charges.

Trump is effectively urging the Senate to end the long-standing custom for all judicial nominees. Senators from both parties are reluctant to change the practice, fearing they would lose the ability to stall or block nominees they have concerns about.

Fox News’ Chad Pergram contributed to this report.

MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. – One would think that running a profitable legal marijuana industry would be just about the easiest thing in the world, but don’t tell that to the Democrat leadership of Minnesota, which allowed wokeness and apparent corruption to grind their legalization rollout into dust.

Wherever one lands on the benefits or increasingly evident harms of marijuana legalization, once a state decides to do it, it has a responsibility to do it in a way that most benefits all the citizens. Of course, Gov. Tim Walz and the Minnesota Democrats made it all about social equity.

The 2023 legalization legislation mandated that for a year and a half, only Indian reservations could obtain licenses, a form of reparations similar to when New York mind-numbingly mandated that only people with previous marijuana convictions could open stores.

The upshot is that today, several dispensaries in the state have no product and others have a dwindling supply. One dispensary operator told me with a sigh, ‘We might get a new supply next week.’

And that’s not all, because the state has not approved enough licenses for transporting the product, much of it is sitting at farms, unable to get to market.

But the worst part of this, one very much related to the current scandal over fraud committed by Somali groups supposedly feeding kids, is that the legislation provides millions of dollars in grants and loans to start weed shops based on wokeness and DEI.

For example, the CanStartUp program ‘is a loan program available to new cannabis microbusinesses,’ in which a non-profit hands out the taxpayer cash ‘with priority given to social equity applicants.’

‘Social Equity Applicants,’ can be roughly read to mean no White guys.

Dr. Scott Jensen, one of several Republicans seeking to stop Walz from winning a third term next year, said it is part of a pattern with Walz and his cronies.

‘The Walz team has repeatedly been characterized by a willingness to play political hardball by picking winners and losers, focusing on preserving voting blocks, rewarding loyalty over competence, ignoring employee input, and squashing transparency,’ Jensen told me.

John Nagel, a former state trooper running as a Republican against Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., had a harsher assessment.

‘Minnesota Democrats are recreating the exact conditions that led to the Feeding Our Future scandal, only this time they’re doing it inside the state’s new marijuana industry,’ he said. ‘When you look at the pattern, it’s unmistakable. The same political class that let Feeding Our Future flourish is now designing the cannabis market using the same toolkit—DEI language as political cover, nonprofit intermediaries with insider ties, and almost no accountability.’

He’s got a point. Why does Minnesota need to hand out millions of dollars to nonprofits to teach people how to sell weed? It’s not hard, just hang up a sign and ring up the sales.

This kind of corruption is nothing new. In the 1920s, Democratic Party machines gave out no-show patronage jobs down at the docks. Today, they hand out needless multimillion-dollar DEI contracts. It’s the same game.

The job of the government is to make things run efficiently for all citizens, not to infuse every project or policy with DEI initiatives that are little more than payoffs to loyal voter groups. Nationwide, the amount of money shelled out for this nonsense is in the billions.

In the wake of the Feeding our Future scandal, it is obvious that the nonprofits involved in this DEI weed initiative must be investigated. How can anyone now trust that the money isn’t being abused?

The cherry on top of this abysmal situation is that the inability of legal dispensaries to serve their clientele is driving people back to the black market, which will result in increased marijuana arrests, the very thing this legislation was meant to prevent in the first place.

It’s honestly amazing.

Meanwhile, few people here in the Land of 10,000 Lakes even know any of this is happening, because the local news media, which simply calls this all a ‘logistics problem,’ acts more like accomplices than arbiters of truth.

Walz and the Democrats in Minnesota have no more benefit of the doubt when it comes to shady laws that shower money on DEI-driven nonprofits. It’s time to see where these millions of dollars to train up the next generation of cannabis workers really went.

Perhaps the state can show that spending these millions of dollars had some positive result for Minnesota, but right now, it seems far more likely that the money just went up in smoke.

President Donald Trump pushed back on a rumor that he was looking to replace Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and told reporters that he believes she has been ‘fantastic.’

‘I read a story recently that I’m unhappy with Kristi — I’m so happy with her… We have a border that’s the best border in the history of our country. Why would I be unhappy? She’s fantastic, actually,’ Trump told reporters during a roundtable with business leaders on Wednesday.

The president’s remarks follow a recent report from MS Now stating that a White House official said that Noem was on ‘very thin ice.’ The report claimed that Trump was looking to replace Noem as early as January, and that White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller was leading the push to replace her.

According to the report, Miller and other White House officials were frustrated with Noem because they were displeased with the pace at which she was working to build new detention centers. Additionally, the report claimed that several governors had called Trump to voice complaints about Noem’s handling of FEMA and disaster relief funds.

On Monday, the White House firmly denied the report and accused MS Now of running a false narrative.

‘Everything about this is total Fake News. Secretary Noem is doing a great job implementing the President’s agenda and making America safe again. MS Now continues to beclown themselves by inventing narratives that simply are not true,’ White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement.

DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin also weighed in on the report in an exclusive statement to Fox News Digital, saying, ‘I can’t speak for the president, but I’ve seen more credible reporting on Big Foot.’

During the roundtable on Wednesday, Trump also shut down rumors that he was dissatisfied with War Secretary Pete Hegseth over the controversial U.S. military strikes on alleged drug smuggling boats. Trump said his feelings about Hegseth’s work were ‘very much the opposite’ of what was being reported and he called the war secretary ‘phenomenal.’

Trump joked that he would ‘have to think about’ Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, who was sitting at the table, before going on to praise him. The president similarly praised Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Education Secretary Linda McMahon.

Fox News Digital’s Anders Hagstrom, Preston Mizell and Bonny Chu contributed to this report.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is facing her first major test before the House of Representatives on Thursday.

Noem is appearing before the House Homeland Security Committee for a hearing on worldwide threats, an event that is meant to be annual but has not happened in multiple recent years.

She’s set to testify alongside National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent and Michael Glasheen, Operations Director of the FBI’s National Security Branch.

‘I’m sure she’ll talk about border, I’m sure she’ll talk about drugs, I’m sure she’ll talk about China, hopefully an update on what’s happening with cybersecurity. I mean it’s a very important hearing. I’m glad she’ll be there,’ House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y., told Fox News Digital.

It’s Noem’s first major national security-focused hearing before the House of Representatives since taking charge of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) earlier this year.

It comes as lawmakers on Capitol Hill warn about the potential for hostile countries like Venezuela, Iran and China exploiting U.S. vulnerabilities in national security. 

‘I’m always concerned about that. I’ve been concerned about that for years. I mean, thousands of known and suspected terrorists came across the southern border over the last four years. Luckily, it’s been closed up, but they’re still here,’ Garbarino said.

‘I’m gonna look forward to hearing from the FBI, you know, what’s being done, what they’re doing to track down the people that are already here.’

Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, lawmakers will likely grill Noem about the activities of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents carrying out President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration.

‘We don’t get much information, in the interim, from the administration. You write letters, and what you get back is an acknowledgment of the letter, but very little facts,’ said Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the top Democrat on the committee. ‘Obviously, the administration’s stand on immigration is not one that we agree with, especially how they’re doing it.’

He accused ICE agents of treating people with ‘total disrespect’ because they ‘look Hispanic.’

‘I think that she has to address it,’ Thompson said.

Noem’s appearance comes hours after Axios reported that she and border czar Tom Homan had a falling out behind the scenes, though the outlet also reported that neither are in danger of losing their positions any time soon.

Senate Democrats have tried to tie the looming expiration date for Obamacare subsidies to the affordability issues slamming households, but Senate Republicans argue that their counterparts are manufacturing it to score political points next year.

The phrase ‘sticker shock’ became a common rallying cry from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., during and after the government shutdown that he used to illustrate what Americans could experience if the Biden-era credits were to expire.

‘Our bill is the only bill that will prevent this crisis from happening,’ Schumer said. ‘It’s the last train out of this station. We urge our Republican colleagues, for the sake of the American people, to get on that train.’

But Senate Republicans contend that Democrats’ proposal to extend the subsidies for another three years is designed to fail and provide the party with a political weapon entering into the 2026 midterm election cycle.

‘I think the Democrats politically embrace this affordability issue, and then them asking for a three-year extension does nothing but throw gasoline on the fire of affordability of healthcare,’ Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., told Fox News Digital.

Marshall is one of several Senate Republicans who have put together an alternative plan to Schumer’s strategy. His ‘Marshall Plan’ marries Democrats’ desire to extend the subsidies for a year with Republicans’ demands that the credits be done away with in favor of health savings accounts (HSAs).

Republicans are instead running with a plan from Sens. Bill Cassidy, R-La., and Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, the chairs of the Senate health and finance panels, that would abandon the enhanced subsidies in favor of HSAs. That proposal is also expected to fail, leaving the Senate with little time to move ahead with an alternative before the subsidies expire.

Still, there are ongoing talks between both sides of the aisle to find a compromise. Republicans contend that Schumer is acting as a roadblock to those talks, instead sidelining members reaching across the aisle in favor of a workable solution.

Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., told Fox News Digital that Republicans were equally concerned about ‘sticker shock,’ and he argued that Cassidy and Crapo’s plan would go a long way to keeping prices low for Americans.

But he acknowledged the political reality that Democrats wanted to use healthcare as a cudgel in the coming months.

‘I think that’s the concern that a lot of us have on our side of the aisle, is that there’s a group of Democrats that don’t want to fix this problem, and they want to use it as a political product,’ he said. ‘I think there’s a group of us on our side of the aisle that really would like to fix it, along with some Dems. I just don’t know if there’s enough Dems to come along and to take what we think is a reasonable approach on this.’

Other Republicans told Fox News Digital that the subsidies, which were passed and then enhanced during the COVID-19 pandemic under former President Joe Biden, are just another addition to a 15-year-long affordability crunch brought on by the passage of Obamacare.

Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, R-Wyo., told Fox News Digital that Obamacare has ‘always been pricey,’ and that Democrats were attempting to inject $83 billion in taxpayer money directly to insurance companies with their proposal.

‘Democrats have always tried to hide that fact by sending more and more money to insurance companies during COVID,’ he said. ‘They did it again with these Biden COVID bonus subsidies, and they set an expiration date, which is coming up at the end of this month. That’s what this is all about.’

Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., told Fox News Digital that healthcare ‘has been an ongoing train wreck since Obamacare,’ and that Democrats jammed the subsidies through Congress without Republican input and set up the fast-approaching cliff.

‘I mean, they’re just doubling down on the stupid,’ Schmitt said.