West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey (R) said Saturday that National Guard troops from his state would aid the Trump administration’s federal police takeover in Washington to help “make D.C. safe and beautiful.”

Morrisey announced the Mountain State would deploy “300-400 skilled personnel” to serve in the nation’s capital at the Trump administration’s request.

“West Virginia is proud to stand with President Trump in his effort to restore pride and beauty to our nation’s capital,” the governor said in a press release. “The men and women of our National Guard represent the best of our state, and this mission reflects our shared commitment to a strong and secure America.”

Trump earlier this week invoked a provision in Washington’s Home Rule Act to launch a crackdown on crime in the district, deploying more than 800 National Guard soldiers and federal officers to patrol the streets of D.C.

West Virginia Maj. Gen. James Seward told The Hill’s sister network NewsNation that the mission “aligns with our values of service and dedication to our communities.”

“We stand ready to support our partners in the National Capital Region and contribute to the collective effort of making our nation’s capital a clean and safe environment,” Seward continued. “The National Guard’s unique capabilities and preparedness make it an invaluable partner in this important undertaking.”

The White House also celebrated the addition of troops.

“The National Guard will protect federal assets, create a safe environment for law enforcement officials to carry out their duties when required, and provide a visible presence to deter crime,” a White House senior official said of the West Virginia National Guard deployment, per NewsNation.

Trump administration officials touted in recent days that hundreds have been arrested, and dozens of firearms seized since the federal takeover.

The Justice Department’s (DOJ) decision to name Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) chief Terry Cole as the Metropolitan Police Department’s (MPD) “emergency police commissioner” was also heavily criticized as an overreach of the law. DOJ has since walked back the designation after D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb sued the administration.

Trump told reporters earlier this week that he hopes to ramp up operations in the district and announced plans to work with Congress to extend the 30-day takeover allotted in the standing law.

Amid the controversy, D.C. Mayor Bowser (D) has sought to calm tensions among local residents, who have protested the administration’s show of force.

“It has been an unsettling and unprecedented week in our city. Over the course of a week, the surge in federal law enforcement across DC has created waves of anxiety,” she wrote in an open letter. “I was born one year before Home Rule became law, and while our autonomy has been challenged before, our limited self-government has never faced the type of test we are facing right now.”

“My jobs are many right now. Part of my job is just managing us through this crisis and making sure that our government continues to operate in a way that makes DC residents proud,” she added.

With states now fighting over redistricting maps, America’s two political parties will need an opportunity to work together again. Permitting reform is one issue that is just right for this, even amidst an apparent trifecta. Strengthening American energy production has long been a bipartisan issue, as it fosters economic growth, protects national security, and increases the energy supply to drive down or stabilize utility costs for U.S. households in the face of growing demand.

There has never been a better time for it. Done right, it secures American global leadership for another century. While recent debates around tax credits have made this issue seem increasingly partisan, reforming our existing energy permitting process is something on which lawmakers on both sides of the aisle largely already agree. Congress should capitalize on consensus to pass comprehensive permitting reform legislation.

Debates surrounding energy tax credits in the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act, in particular, brought energy production back into the spotlight this year. Reconciliation can leave bitter feelings, but permitting reform has a chance to offer both parties something they dearly want — energy dominance, reduced emissions, fewer arcane rules, and less back and forth political games undermining the development of new energy projects. All energy production would benefit from permitting reform.

America’s permitting system should be a gateway for energy projects. Right now, it’s a bottleneck. Unpredictable processes and delays in approval are bringing new developments to a grinding halt. With the rise of AI and a digital world that increasingly relies on data centers, global energy demand has spiked.

Congress is now tasked with ensuring that American energy production can keep pace with this demand and not fall behind foreign adversaries vying for our position as the global leader in innovation and technology.

But as of late, lawmakers have remained stagnant on addressing permitting reform. Yet, while demand for all energy production is on the rise, Democrats have a lot less to fear from loosening rules than they may think. The vast majority of projects stuck in grid connection queues are renewable — over 95 percent of proposed new generation capacity is solar or wind. Much-needed reform to the approval process could free up all new projects, strengthen American energy dominance and unleash clean energy all at once.

Permitting reform has long been a bipartisan issue. Last year, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), then-ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and then-Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.), introduced the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024 aimed at streamlining and expediting the approvals process. While this legislation was not ultimately passed, it is a prime example of members reaching across the aisle to drive movement on this front.

Most recently, a bipartisan group of governors made an urgent call for permitting reform. “It shouldn’t take longer to approve a project than it takes to build it,” said Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R). He also highlighted the bipartisan nature of the issue, “Democrats and Republicans alike recognize permitting delays weaken U.S. economic growth, security and competitiveness. Governors from both parties are working together to inject some common sense into our permitting process.”

Voters in both parties agree. Recent polling conducted by Cygnal found that two-thirds of respondents agree that Congress should modernize permitting rules to accelerate completion of energy projects and reduce long-term cost pressures.

Some conservative stalwarts will never support anything they see as helping clean energy, while some environmental activists are more concerned with punishing fossil fuel companies than they are with actually addressing climate change. These short-sighted visions represent the horseshoe of scarcity, decline and pessimism that has plagued American energy politics for decades.

They believe we can succeed only by taking from the other side. America cannot afford delay. A dangerous world requires energy dominance in all industries, including new ones like clean energy. Moreover, Americans deserve to know that they will have reliable, accessible energy needed to power their businesses and residences. Permitting reform will make energy access more reliable, more abundant, cheaper and much cleaner. All Americans, and our planet, will win. The only losers will be those profiteering from political polarization.

With some energy tax credits phasing out sooner than originally planned, many energy producers want to act swiftly to get new projects up and running. The permitting process, as it stands, is their biggest obstacle. As we head into the fall, our lawmakers should keep the cross-partisan opportunity on permitting reform top of mind.

Liam deClive-Lowe is the co-founder of American Policy Ventures, an organization that builds projects to help policymakers collaborate and get things done.

The controversy over the 2010 Affordable Care Act dominated Barack Obama’s presidency. The implementation of ObamaCare caused health insurance premiums to soar and nearly collapsed the market entirely. The Biden administration responded by flooding the system with expanded federal subsidies, which are set to expire at the end of 2025.

To stop premiums for older workers with pre-existing conditions from suddenly leaping by $10,000, Republicans will need to extend part of this additional funding. But in return, they should insist on reforms to allow healthy Americans to purchase better value insurance with their own money.

The Affordable Care Act required health insurers to cover individuals with pre-existing conditions at the same price as enrollees who signed up before they got sick. As a result, premiums more than doubled, millions of healthy enrollees dropped coverage and many insurers abandoned the market.   

The Affordable Care Act kept the individual health insurance market from falling apart completely by providing subsidies to low-income enrollees. But individuals earning more than $62,600 in 2025 would have faced full premiums without any assistance. 

Those unsubsidized enrollees felt the full pain of the Affordable Care Act’s premium hikes. The legislation allows insurers to charge older enrollees up to three times what they do the youngest, and so unsubsidized premiums for near-retirees can be huge. This year, the benchmark unsubsidized premium for a 61-year-old individual in Washington, D.C., is $15,402 per year.   

Rather than fix ObamaCare’s structure, the newly-elected Democratic Congress in 2021 threw money at the problem with the American Rescue Plan Act. By expanding eligibility for subsidies to higher earners, the act reduced the cost of health insurance for a 61-year-old earning $70,000 from $15,402 to $5,950 — with federal taxpayers covering the difference. That legislation also expanded the generosity of subsidies for lower earners. Those earning $22,000, who would have contributed $756 to the cost of insurance under the original Affordable Care Act, would get it entirely paid for by the federal government.  

This approach has been hugely expensive. In May 2022, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that subsidies for the Affordable Care Act would cost $67 billion in 2024. Last June, following a renewal of the American Rescue Plan Act’s increased subsidies, the Congressional Budget Office’s revised cost estimate for 2024 surged to $129 billion.   

A recent Paragon Institute report found that this leap in cost owed much to a surge in enrollment among those who received coverage free of charge. Paragon estimated that such enrollees accounted for nearly half of new enrollment, and that 5 million people may have misreported their income to claim free coverage, costing taxpayers an additional $20 billion. 

Insurers eagerly welcomed the influx of new healthy enrollees, who had not deemed it worth purchasing insurance from the individual market until the federal government paid the entire price. Such newcomers proved enormously lucrative, as they used less medical care than existing enrollees but generated the same revenue. Democrats, who received twice as much in campaign contributions as Republicans from Blue Cross Blue Shield in 2024, eagerly boasted about reducing the number of uninsured Americans, with little concern for the cost. 

The expiry of the American Rescue Plan Act subsidies is now looming again, set to expire at the end of 2025. It will be up to a Republican president and Republican-led Congress to find a way forward.   

Fiscal conservatives have little appetite to pay for renewing all the expanded ObamaCare subsidies. But nor will they feel comfortable letting the American Rescue Plan Act’s enhanced subsidies expire entirely, as this would result in a $10,000-per-year premium hike on thousands of middle-income near-retirees.   

Congress should focus on targeted support by eliminating the cap on eligibility for the Affordable Care Act’s original subsidies, which limit premiums at 9.5 percent of income, to avoid a sudden benefit cliff for those with incomes just above $62,600. But they should also let other expansions of subsidies expire. 

In return, Republicans should insist that Americans be allowed to obtain discounted premiums if they purchase insurance before they get sick. In 2017, President Trump allowed Americans to do this by purchasing short-term insurance. However, in 2024, the Biden administration limited the duration of these plans to four months. This came following pressure from big insurers, who claimed that allowing the expansion of such plans would prevent them from cross-subsidizing enrollees with pre-existing conditions by overcharging those who signed up while healthy. 

In reality, the restriction of these affordable plans has served mostly to inflate insurers’ profits. Healthy enrollees remain able to purchase short-term plans afresh every few months; it is only those who subsequently become sick who are deprived of coverage. Regulatory protections for the long-term coverage of enrollees in non-ObamaCare plans should be strengthened; not weakened. 

Furthermore, with the extension of the American Rescue Plan Act’s premium cap, federal subsidies taxpayers directly subsidize most enrollees. It is therefore unnecessary to also prohibit healthy enrollees from obtaining insurance plans which offer long-term coverage at good value for their money. 

Chris Pope is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.