House Democrats will start their majority focused on boosting healthcare and ending the Iran war

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Democratic leaders are placing an early emphasis on healthcare as they discuss their immediate priorities upon the swearing-in of the new Congress on Jan. 3.

Early votes in the House next year are expected to focus on boosting Medicaid and restoring an enhanced tax subsidy that is designed to lower the cost of Affordable Care Act health plans for millions of enrollees.

Democrats are also promising swift action on legislation to stop the war with Iran and to reverse some of President Donald Trump'strade tariffs.

“We’re going to get out of the gate fast,” said New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader who is in line to become the next House speaker.

The legislative flurry carries enormous stakes for Democrats as they seek to translate their sweeping victories in the midterms — their numbers will exceed 250 in the 435-member House — into achievements that deliver on their promises to lower the cost of living.

Passing those bills should not be a problem with such a large Democratic House majority. Getting them signed into law most certainly could be.

A 60-vote threshold in the Senate looms for the legislation, as does a potential presidential veto. Trump on election night posted a photo on his social media site of a red hat with a simple message on it: “VETO”.

Following those early votes, Jeffries said five working groups are developing plans to put forward bills that would lower costs in areas such as housing, energy, groceries and caregiving.

Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., said Democrats will at some point take up legislation dealing with artificial intelligence and data centers. He is part of a group of lawmakers working on a document that will lay out some of the priorities for Jeffries to consider.

“House Republicans last year made a conscious decision to let the AI industry run wild, and that was a bad decision politically and a bad decision on policy,” Lieu said. “Two things will change next term. We will hold public hearings on AI. We will pass legislation, reasonable guardrails on AI, and specifically data centers.”

Democrats are trying to reverse Medicaid changes that are expected to cut more than $900 billion from the program over a decade. The Republican-approved cuts helped offset some of the costs of Trump's big tax and spending cut bill that was signed into law last year. The Medicaid changes in the bill imposed new administrative requirements and added conditions for eligibility, including work requirements.

Some of the most substantial changes have yet to take effect. Still, enrollment in Medicaid has dropped by about 5 million, or about 7% since July 2025, when the bill was signed into law, according to KFF, a health policy research and news organization.

Reversing those cuts would likely require Trump and the Republicans to abandon the hard-fought changes they made to cut entitlement spending in their signature tax bill. It's an unlikely proposition.

The effort to extend enhanced tax subsidies for certain enrollees in ACA plans has also been debated and voted on in the current Congress. The measure passed the House with some Republican support but stalled in the Senate.

There also have been numerous war powers votes regarding Iran — 14 in the Senate and six in the House.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said going into the election that a Democratic majority in the next Congress would amount to “two years of paralysis.”

“I don’t think that’s good for anybody,” Thune said.

But Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York is insisting that Democrats will push their agenda with or without the Republican president's help.

“If he vetoes it, it will show the divisions. As much as we didn’t want to shut down, when we shut down the government for a month over healthcare, people knew we were on their side,” Schumer said in an interview with The New York Times' podcast “The Daily.”

Schumer said he believes Democrats can gain some Republican votes on restoring the enhanced subsidies for ACA plans. When asked if he was hearing from Republicans expressing a willingness to work with him on legislation, he replied: “They’re never so definitive but, yes, I am getting initial signs that way on certain issues, not on every issue.”

While the prospects for getting any of the early priority bills over the finish line are uncertain, the votes in Congress will help frame the choices voters will face during a presidential election in 2028.

Progressive groups call the agenda outlined by Jeffries a good early start, but they have much greater expectations for Democrats this Congress.

“It's perfectly fine if the Senate and the House are unified and Donald Trump is standing in the way because that sets up another tidal wave election in 2028,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a Democratic-aligned group that backs progressive candidates and policies.

At the same time, he said Schumer cannot be content to let bills die in the Senate because of the 60-vote threshold.

“It will require the Democrats to get rid of the filibuster,” Green said. “There's no doubt about it.”

He said there's a disparity because Republicans' top priorities — tax cuts and Supreme Court justices — can get through with simple majorities. But the Democratic Party's top priorities require 60 votes to overcome a filibuster.

“The only question is will the American public trust Democrats enough to keep giving us more power or will this week's gains whittle away because we do nothing? That's why the filibuster is a threshold question," Green said.

Schumer in an interview with The Associated Press this week would not say whether he would try and eliminate the filibuster.

“The focus has got to be on getting things done,” Schumer said. “That’s all I am saying.”

In a memo to fellow members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Rep. Greg Casar, D-Texas, said Democrats also need to target what he called “powerful forces outside of government.” Examples he cited were corporations using Americans’ private data to adjust their pricing based on a consumer's personal data and AI companies that he says are putting jobs and lives at risk.

"By focusing not just on the Trump administration but also on big corporations and billionaires, we will show the American people we are not just anti-Trump but also pro-worker and pro-consumer," Casar said.

Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.

Demonstrators chant slogans as one holds a portrait of the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei during a pro-government gathering in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

The Capitol is seen under gray skies after American voters this week flipped control of both chambers of Congress from Republican control to the Democrats, in Washington, Friday, Nov. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Pages from the U.S. Affordable Care Act health insurance website healthcare.gov are seen on a computer screen in Williamsburg, Va., Oct. 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Wayne Partlow)

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., speaks during a election night event at a hotel on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Missile attacks struck across Ukraine on Saturday, wounding at least nine people, as Kyiv and Moscow prepared for new talks next week with the United States.

Negotiators from Russia, Ukraine and the U.S. are to meet on Tuesday in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, for talks aimed at ending the war. The new round of negotiations would be the fourth brokered by the Trump administration, the most recent having been in Geneva in February.

Western governments backing the peace initiative are seeking a new formula to break the impasse while acknowledging that territorial and security questions remain unresolved.

The Russian missiles that hit overnight across the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, damaged homes and commercial properties, triggering new power and water outages, national and city authorities said.

Kateryna Korniichuk, 64, was at home with her granddaughter when an attack hit.

“The first blast wave threw us against that wall and then against the other wall, because we were in the corridor. It’s very hard. No sleep, no peace — nothing. The children aren’t sleeping, and neither are we," she told The Associated Press. “I’m old, I can handle it, but what have the children done wrong?”

Strikes also prompted officials to close Kyiv's 816-meter-long (892-yard-long) Northern Bridge, a major route connecting the city with large residential areas on the east bank of the Dnipro River.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said that work was already underway to repair the city's Northern Bridge and that water pressure in Kyiv had been stabilized. Earlier Saturday, he had described the city's energy situation as "extremely difficult, affecting the city’s heating and water supply systems.”

In a statement Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia was preparing for trilateral talks by “launching ballistic missiles at Ukraine’s critical infrastructure.”

The Ukrainian leader said that Russia fired 36 ballistic missiles at Kyiv and the surrounding region overnight. The barrage also involved 172 drones over Kyiv and 12 other regions, wounding nine people, including a child, he said.

“When Russia tries to plunge Kyiv — a city of millions — and the entire country into a blackout, Ukraine must not be left to face this alone,” Zelenskyy said. He urged greater U.S. support and attention from Congress, calling for bipartisan backing for Ukraine and stronger sanctions on Russia.

Ukraine’s Energy Ministry said Saturday’s missile attacks damaged networks that carry electricity from nuclear power plants to Kyiv and central regions, as well as multiple other power facilities. It said outages were most widespread in the Kyiv and central Zhytomyr regions, as well as in the eastern regions of Kharkiv, Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk.

The outages were separate from scheduled rolling blackouts imposed to protect the grid, which remain in effect across much of Ukraine.

Russia’s Ministry of Defense confirmed Saturday that it had targeted the Northern Bridge, saying that it facilitated the transport of weaponry, military hardware and specialist equipment for Ukraine’s armed forces.

It also said that it had targeted an industrial facility in the capital producing Flamingo missiles, as well as a power station, an electrical substation, and a plant producing ammunition, explosives and gunpowder in the wider Kyiv region. It also confirmed striking an electrical substation in the Zhytomyr region.

Meanwhile, in southern Ukraine, a recovery operation continued into its sixth day in the village of Komyshuvakha, devastated on Monday when multiple Russian guided bombs slammed into a former school and nearby shelter as residents waited for humanitarian aid.

Emergency services said they had recovered nine more bodies in the previous 24 hours, bringing the death toll early Saturday morning to 55. Dozens of people remain missing.

Village resident Mykola Krasnov, 72, said he was still looking for his wife but had heard no word from rescuers.

“She went to get humanitarian aid, and a three-ton bomb was dropped there. Where is she?” he said. “She didn’t come home, and they didn’t find her body there. She isn’t in the morgue, and she isn’t here alive.”

The village of Komyshuvakha is located near the front line in the Zaporizhzhia region.

A Ukrainian attack killed one person in Russia’s Belgorod region when a drone hit a private home in the town of Grayvoron, local officials said Saturday.

Russia’s Ministry of Defense said its forces shot down 411 Ukrainian drones overnight over 10 Russian regions, including Belgorod. Drones were also destroyed over the annexed Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea and the Black and Azov Seas, it said.

The head of Russia’s southwestern Saratov region, Gov. Roman Busargin, wrote on social media that a drone attack damaged “civilian infrastructure” and several residential buildings in the area. Russian media outlets later reported that the Saratov Oil Refinery had been hit and shared images of plumes of smoke over the city.

The head of Russia’s Oryol region, Gov. Andrey Klychkov, also said Saturday that a Ukrainian attack had damaged commercial warehouse and production sites in the regional capital, as cited by state media.

Russian media outlets reported that a Ukrainian attack sparked a blaze at Oryol’s Proton-Electrotex plant, which produces components for military equipment.

Dmytro Zhyhinas and Dan Bashakov in Kyiv, Ukraine, Vasilisa Stepanenko in Komyshuvakha, Ukraine, and Katie Marie Davies in Manchester, England, contributed to this report.

Follow the AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

A children's playground structure stands amid debris in front of a heavily damaged kindergarten building following a missile strike on a residential area in Kyiv, Ukraine, Saturday, Nov. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Dan Bashakov)

An elderly man carrying a bag walks past a heavily damaged kindergarten building and a debris-strewn courtyard following a missile attack on a residential area in Kyiv, Saturday, Nov. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Dan Bashakov)

Kindergarten personnel cleaning debris inside a heavily damaged class following a missile attack on a residential area in Kyiv, Saturday, Nov. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Dan Bashakov)

Oleksander Haiovyi, 20, looks at his car which is buried in dirt and debris following a strike on a residential area in Kyiv, Saturday Nov 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Dan Bashakov)

A view through the destroyed walls of a kindergarten shows a large bomb crater and a damaged residential apartment building following a missile attack in Kyiv, Saturday, Nov. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Dan Bashakov)

Rescue workers clear rubble to recover bodies from an underground school destroyed in a Russian airstrike in Komyshuvakha, Zaporizhzhia region, Ukraine, Friday, Nov. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)