A top pollster for President Donald Trump advised a group of House Republicans on how to defend against Democrats’ attacks over expiring Obamacare tax credits: focus on reducing drug prices instead.

Tony Fabrizio showed new polling to members of the Republican Study Committee in a closed-door meeting held a few blocks from the Capitol Wednesday. He argued the most effective way for Republicans to counter Democrats’ health care messaging is to change the subject and pivot to reducing drug prices in tandem with Trump.

The presentation was described by a House Republican aide and two people in the room who were granted anonymity to discuss the closed-door event. Speaker Mike Johnson, an RSC member, attended the briefing. Fabrizio did not return a request for comment.

Notably, the House GOP aide said Fabrizio did not recommend any extension of the insurance subsidies, something he has advocated for in the past. The Trump administration has recently refocused attention on drug pricing, a topic the president tends to return to when Democrats try to hammer him on health care.

Trump has tried to pressure House Republican leaders to address drug prices before, with little luck. He wanted to add a most favored nation provision to the GOP megabill in the final hours before its passage this summer, a policy opposed by the drug industry and GOP leaders themselves, along with some other Republicans. Speaker Mike Johnson said at the time he was “not a big fan” of the policy.

Fabrizio also spoke extensively about housing as a key area of potential focus for Republicans as high home prices and interest rates weigh on voters. The RSC itself is pushing housing policy as a key focus for a potential party-line bill the GOP could pass ahead of the midterms.

Notably, Fabrizio encouraged House Republicans to work on advancing so-called portable mortgages, an idea some Trump officials have been mulling. That would allow homeowners to essentially take their mortgage rate with them when they move.

He also gave a postmortem rundown on the results from Tuesday’s Tennessee special election, where Republicans held onto the safe red seat albeit by a single-digit margin — raising concerns for the GOP ahead of next year’s midterms.

Fabrizio argued it was a closer race than Republicans would have liked because they weren’t talking enough about affordability issues facing voters. He told the group to “stay the course and talk about the realities of the economy,” one House Republican present said.

The Trump administration is sending its top military official to brief senior lawmakers on Thursday about a missile strike that reportedly killed survivors of an earlier attack in the Caribbean.

Gen. Dan Caine, the Joint Chiefs chair, will accompany Adm. Mitch Bradley to Capitol Hill on Thursday for a rare, high-stakes closed-door meeting with the top four Republicans and Democrats on the House and Senate Armed Services Committees.

Senior lawmakers in both parties have said they plan to investigate the Sept. 2 operation after the Washington Post reported that the first strike on a suspected drug-smuggling boat left survivors clinging to wreckage and that U.S. forces killed them in a second strike. Some Democrats and legal experts have said that, if confirmed, the attack could constitute a war crime.

“We are going to have the admiral who was in charge of the operation as well as the chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff to join us, and we’re going to go into detail as precisely what happened, particularly with the second strike,” Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), the Senate Armed Services Committee’s ranking member, told the journalist Aaron Parnas in a video clip posted Wednesday.

Lawmakers are also set to view unedited video of the strikes, according to one person familiar with the sensitive matter who was granted anonymity to discuss it.

President Donald Trump said Wednesday he’s open to releasing the video footage.

Lawmakers also want to see the intelligence that led the military to label the vessel a legitimate target, the rules of engagement in place at the time, the casualty assessments and criteria used to distinguish combatants from civilians and the legal rationale behind the operation, Reed said Wednesday in a floor speech.

Lawmakers say the briefings mark the start of a bipartisan inquiry, which delves into one of the most contentious national security controversies of the Trump administration.

Lawmakers from both parties are expected to use the meeting to seek a detailed accounting of the timeline, the decisions involved, the chain of command and whether U.S. forces saw or should have seen survivors in the water before the second strike took place — and, if so, whether a rescue was possible.

Caine has already spoken with the lawmakers who Bradley will brief on Thursday, according to a Pentagon readout. But the classified session is expected to yield the first comprehensive reconstruction of the events directly from Bradley, who was then running Joint Special Operations Command and has since been promoted to the chief of U.S. Special Operations Command.

Reed, in a floor speech on Wednesday, signaled the depth of concern, citing the report that survivors were killed.

“Multiple legal experts, including former judge advocate generals, have stated that if this reporting is accurate, this strike appears to constitute a war crime,” Reed said. “Indeed, many of my Republican colleagues have joined Democrats in recognizing that the reported facts of this strike would be clearly illegal.”

The White House has defended the operation, with press secretary Karoline Leavitt saying this week that Bradley acted “within his authority and the law.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday he “did not personally see survivors” and that Bradley made a “correct decision” to sink the boat “a couple of hours later.”

Congressional leaders, including Republicans, say they want unfiltered answers. Senate Armed Services Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) has pledged “a full investigation,” while House Armed Services Chair Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) said lawmakers will seek “complete clarity about what did and did not happen.”

Senate Democrats will propose a three-year extension of soon-to-expire Affordable Care Act subsidies for an expected floor vote next week, according to two people granted anonymity to discuss caucus strategy.

Democrats get to decide what proposal the Senate votes on as part of a deal struck with Senate Majority Leader John Thune last month to end the government shutdown. The Senate is expected to hold that vote Dec. 11.

The strategy likely helps Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer keep his caucus unified on the vote, and it aligns his caucus with House Democrats’ plan to try to force a vote on a three-year extension through a discharge petition.

But it will also limit any chance they would be able to peel off more than a couple of Republicans. Thune said in an interview Wednesday that pitching a clean three-year extension is “designed to fail.”

To get a deal on the subsidies through the Senate, it would need 60 votes to advance. Some GOP senators, including Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, have backed a two-year extension but have acknowledged there would need to be income caps and other restrictions to pick up more GOP support. Whether or not to include abortion funding restrictions is also a major sticking point.

Spokespeople for Schumer didn’t immediately respond to a question about the plan. Schumer declined to tip his hand earlier Wednesday when asked after a meeting with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries if Senate Democrats would offer a three-year extension.

“Stay tuned,” he told reporters.

Some of his members want Democrats to put up a more sweeping health care proposal, while others have been discussing a potential compromise with Republicans that would extend the subsidies but with new restrictions.

Senate Republicans need to decide whether they will offer their own counterproposal for a vote next week. Senate Finance Chair Mike Crapo and Senate HELP Chair Bill Cassidy talked through their ideas, along with other GOP senators, at a closed-door Tuesday lunch.

Thune on Wednesday evening said they had not yet made a “final decision” on whether they would put a proposal up for a vote next week.

“We’ll kind of see what the temperature of our members is,” Thune said.

Mia McCarthy contributed to this report.

The White House is backing an effort to attach most of a Senate-approved housing package to a must-pass annual defense bill, according to three people with knowledge of the matter who were granted anonymity to discuss private talks.

The administration’s support could breathe new life into the push to include the ROAD to Housing package in the National Defense Authorization Act at the eleventh hour. Both Senate leaders are also backing the push, the people said.

A White House official who was granted anonymity to relay the administration’s position said: “We’re open to seeing this moving forward.”

The ROAD package, backed by Senate Banking Chair Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and ranking member Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), includes an array of legislation aimed at boosting housing supply. The Banking panel approved the measure unanimously in July.

Scott and Warren have pushed to include most of the package in the NDAA, but House Financial Services Chair French Hill (R-Ark.) has pushed back. Hill said in a statement that “any housing package must have the buy-in from the House Financial Services Committee.”

“Given our Conference has not seen........

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