By MARY CLARE JALONICK, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Now that the government shutdown is over, House and Senate Republicans say they will negotiate with Democrats on whether to extend COVID-era tax credits that help tens of millions of Americans afford their health care premiums. But finding bipartisan agreement could be difficult, if not impossible, before the subsidies expire at the end of the year.

The shutdown ended this week after a small group of Democrats made a deal with Republicans senators who promised a vote by mid-December on extending the Affordable Care Act subsidies. But there is no guaranteed outcome, and many Republicans have made clear they want the credits to expire.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., called the subsidies a “boondoggle” immediately after the House voted Wednesday to end the shutdown, and President Donald Trump said the Obama-era health overhaul was “disaster” as he signed the reopening bill into law.

It is far from the outcome that Democrats had hoped for as they kept the government closed for 43 days, demanding that Republicans negotiate with them on an extension before premiums sharply increase. But they say they will try again as the expiration date approaches.

“It remains to be seen if they are serious,” said House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York. But he said Democrats “are just getting started.”

Republicans have been meeting privately to discuss the issue. Some want to extend the subsidies, with changes, to avoid the widespread increases in premiums. Others, like Johnson and Trump, want to start a new conversation about overhauling “Obamacare” entirely — a redo after a similar effort in 2017 failed.

Democrats push for extension

Health care has long been one of the most difficult issues on Capitol Hill, marked by deep ideological and political divides. Partisan disagreement over 2010 law has persisted for more than a decade, and relationships are already strained from weeks of partisan tensions over the shutdown.

Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said that while Republicans have promised negotiations and a Senate vote, Democrats are wary. She noted that Johnson has not committed to anything in the House.

“Do I trust any of them? Hell no,” DeLauro said.

If the two sides cannot agree, as many as 24 million people who get their health care from the exchanges created by the law could see their premiums go up Jan. 1. New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, one of the Democrats who struck a deal with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., to reopen the government, said she thinks an agreement on the tax credits is possible.

During the talks that led to the shutdown’s end, Shaheen said she and other moderate Democrats sat across from Thune and “looked him eye to eye” as he committed to a serious effort.

“We’re going to have a chance to vote on a bill that we will write by mid-December, in a way that gives us a chance to build — hopefully build — bipartisan support to get that through,” Shaheen said.

While Democrats would like to see a permanent extension of the tax credits, most realize that is unlikely. Just before the shutdown ended, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York proposed a one-year extension and a bipartisan committee to address Republican demands for changes to the ACA. But Thune said that was a “nonstarter” as the government remained shut down.

In the House, Democrats have proposed a three-year extension.

What Republicans want

While Republicans have long sought to scrap Obamacare, they have had challenges over the years in figuring out what would replace it. That problem plagued the 2017 effort, when then-Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., cast the deciding vote to kill a bill on the Senate floor that was short on detail.

Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, chairman of the Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee, and Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., have proposed overhauling the law to create accounts that would direct the money to individuals instead of insurance companies. Those are ideas that Trump echoed as he signed the funding bill Wednesday evening.

“I want the money to go directly to you, the people,” Trump said.

It is unclear exactly how that would work, and scrapping the law in its current form would take months, if not years, to negotiate, even if Republicans could find the votes to do it.

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Slow start to negotiations

Some moderate Republicans in the House have said they want to work with Democrats to extend the subsidies before the deadline, which is only weeks away. In a letter to Thune and Schumer on Wednesday, Pennsylvania Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, the Republican co-chair of the Bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, encouraged negotiations.

“Our sense of urgency cannot be greater,” Fitzpatrick wrote. “Our willingness to cooperate has no limits.”

So far, though, Senate Republicans have been meeting on their own to figure out their own differences.

“Right now, it’s just getting consensus among ourselves,” Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said Monday after GOP members of the Senate Finance Committee met to discuss possible ways forward.

Tillis is supportive of extending the tax credits, but said lawmakers also need to find a way to reduce costs. If the two sides cannot eventually agree, Tillis said, Republicans may have to try and figure out a way to do it on their own, potentially using budget maneuvers that enabled them to pass Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” this summer without any Democratic votes.

“We should have that in our back pocket too,” Tillis said.

Another shutdown?

Some House Democrats have raised the possibility that there could be another shutdown if they are unable to win concessions on health care. The bill signed by Trump will fully fund some parts of the government, but others run out of money again at the end of January if Congress does not act.

“I think it depends on the vulnerable House Republicans who are not going to be able to go back to their constituents without telling them that they’ve done something on health care,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash.

“We’ll just have to see” if there could be another shutdown, said Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif.

Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said he is “not going to vote to endorse their cruelty” if Republicans do not extend the subsidies.

DeLauro said that Republicans have wanted to repeal the ACA since it was first enacted. “That’s where they’re trying to go,” she said.

“When it comes to January 30 we’ll see what progress has been made,” she said.

“Real families were counting on that money, because the QueensWay is desperately needed in our community. It would provide a green space for kids in 28 schools—many of which, like the school where I work, have very little outdoor space, and most of it covered in asphalt.”

City officials announcing funding for the QueensWay proposal in 2022. (Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)

Have you ever made a promise to a child and taken it back? How about 100,000 children?

That’s exactly what the federal government has done in Queens. They made a promise to fund the new QueensWay, a project to transform 47 forgotten acres—a railway that hasn’t been used in 60 years, a public eyesore and dumping ground—into a lush greenway running through the middle of Queens.

The QueensWay would serve 245,000 people, a vibrant system of parks and trails that would make it safer for kids to get to school and easier for adults to get to work. It would create jobs and expand tourism dollars in Queens, and would provide desperately needed green space for tens of thousands of children.

The U.S. Department of Transportation awarded the city $117 million to make this dream project into a reality. And then Congress took it back.

I’m a community school director at a public school here in Queens, which means I work to connect students, parents and teachers with community groups and government agencies to give our kids the resources they need for the best possible chance of success.

The QueensWay project came about in exactly the same way: 20 years of local advocacy, hundreds of meetings with community stakeholders, and a decade of thoughtful design and planning to create a greenway that will best serve the people of Queens: Our quality of life. Our health. Our economy.

Twenty years of hard work paid off. But using the so-called “clawback” provisions of President Donald Trump’s new spending bill, Congress rescinded the funding this past summer, leaving Queens in the lurch.

Real families were counting on that money, because the QueensWay is desperately needed in our community. It would provide a green space for kids in 28 schools—many of which, like the school where I work, have very little outdoor space, and most of it covered in asphalt.

This is no coincidence: Public schools in Queens lack resources that schools in other boroughs have, because Queens gets the least public investment per child of any borough in New York City. In Queens, our kids grow up with fewer safe parks, hotter asphalt schoolyards, and riskier walks to green space—while children in other boroughs benefit from billions more in new amenities and safer access.

I’m a mom of two young children, so this funding clawback affects my kids too. I don’t want my children to have to walk across a highway to get to a park, or be forced to play in areas that feel unsafe. I work hard every day to help my own children and the kids at my school have their most basic needs met, like food, dental care, and eye exams. These kids need and deserve a beautiful place to play, just as parents like me need and deserve a safe place to bring our kids.

Here’s the good news: New Yorkers know how to fight, and our battle for the QueensWay is far from over. If Queens were its own city, it would be the fifth largest in America, and there’s a lot of power in numbers. Just as we fought to win this grant in the first place, now we must fight to win back the funding that was promised.

So if you’re reading this, send an email to Mayor Eric Adams—and your city councilperson, your state representatives, your members of Congress, and Gov. Kathy Hochul while you’re at it. Tell them that we care about the QueensWay, and we need our leaders to fight for our kids just as hard as we do.

Because here in Queens, we keep our promises. And we demand that the government keep its promise to us.

Amy Kui is Forest Hills resident and and Community School Director (CSD) for United Community Schools at PS65Q The Raymond York Elementary School.

The post Opinion: Fighting for the QueensWay We Were Promised appeared first on City Limits.

By RUSS BYNUM, Associated Press

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — Two months after 300 South Korean nationals were detained and left the U.S. following in an immigration raid at Hyundai’s electric vehicle manufacturing site in Georgia, some of those workers have returned to America to resume those jobs, their employer said Thursday.

The September raid shut down work on a battery plant under construction at the sprawling site near Savannah where Hyundai Motor Group began producing electric vehicles last year. Most of the 475 workers detained were South Korean nationals. U.S. immigration officials said they entered the U.S. with visas that had expired or with visa waivers that prohibited them from working.

The battery plant’s operator, HL-GA Battery Co., said in a statement Thursday that construction has resumed with a mix of new and returning workers. The company thanked the U.S. and South Korean governments, as well as Georgia officials, “for their collaboration in supporting a smooth and timely return.”

FILE – The Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America is seen, March 26, 2025, in Ellabell, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart, File)

“We remain on track to start production in the first half of next year and continue to actively hire local positions to operate the facility,” the battery company’s statement said.

An HL-GA Battery spokesperson, Mary Beth Kennedy, confirmed to The Associated Press that some of the returning workers were among the South Korean nationals detained in September. Kennedy said she did not know how many.

More than 300 South Korean workers were detained in an immigration raid Sept. 4 at the sprawling site where the Hyundai Motor Group produces electric vehicles near Savannah. The workers spent a week at a Georgia detention center before the South Korean government negotiated their release and flew them home.

The roundup by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which released video showing some of the detained workers shackled in chains, sparked outrage and feelings of betrayal in South Korea, a key U.S. ally that has pledged hundreds of billions of dollars in American investments.

The Georgia raid targeted one of the state’s largest and most high-profile manufacturing sites, where Hyundai produces electric vehicles at a $7.6 billion plant. The 475 people detained all worked at the battery plant, which will produce batteries to power Hyundai EVs. It is operated by HL-GA Battery, a joint venture by Hyundai and LG Energy Solution.

The South Korean nationals detained in Georgia were largely engineers and other highly skilled workers who came to the U.S. temporarily to install equipment and perform other specialized work to get the battery plant up and running.

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It is unclear how many of the formerly detained workers are coming back. Jongwon Lee, an attorney in metro Atlanta, said he has firsthand knowledge of two Korean nationals who plan to return after the U.S. State Department confirmed that their B-1 business visitor visas were still valid.

But Kihwan Kim, president of the Federation of Korean Associations for the Southeast U.S., said some of the workers snared in the raid are hesitant to return to the U.S.

“They don’t have to come to the United States to work after that kind of humiliation,” Kim said. “They can go to other countries.”

South Korea’s government demanded improvements to the U.S. visa system for skilled Korean workers. Last month, the South Korean Foreign Ministry announced that U.S. officials had agreed to allow South Korean workers on short-term visas or a visa waiver program to help build industrial sites in America

President Donald Trump initially defended the immigration raid in Georgia, saying in September that the detained workers “were here illegally,” When asked about those workers again during an October visit to Seoul, Trump said: “I was opposed to getting them out.”

New Twins manager Derek Shelton, in Las Vegas this week for baseball’s general managers meetings, is adding to his coaching staff, according to reports from multiple outlets.

A source with knowledge of the process has confirmed that former all-star outfielder Grady Sizemore will join the staff as the first base coach and work with the outfielders and baserunners.

Several of the coaches on Rocco Baldelli’s staff have been retained by Shelton, including pitching coach Pete Maki, pitching coach and assistant hitting coaches Rayden Sierra and Luis Ramirez.

Ramon Borrego,who served as first base coach last season, will stay and become the third base coach. The Athletic has reported that Baldelli’s third base coach, Tommy Watkins, is taking a job with the Atlanta Braves.

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