Gaslight. Shutdown. Rescind.
The Project 2025 playbook isn’t about policy. It’s about power. And healthcare is the test case for how far they’ll go to shred the ACA, Medicaid, and the Constitution itself.
Republicans want you to believe they are serious about bipartisan compromise.
They posture as dealmakers, shrug off gridlock as inevitable, and insist they’re just protecting taxpayers from waste. But the record tells a different story. Their strategy isn’t about negotiating in good faith; it’s about breaking the system, blocking the fixes, and then blaming Democrats while blasting their lies across social and legacy media. Let’s look at the myths they sell, the realities they conceal, and the new devious tools they’ve armed themselves with under Project 2025.
Lies Republicans Tell About Negotiations
Lie #1: “I’m willing to meet — but Democrats never try to legislate”
Reality: Democrats have introduced bills multiple times to restore coverage ripped out under GOP budgets and policies. Republicans routinely vote them down or use procedural maneuvers to block debate. They demand a “clean continuing resolution” (i.e., no healthcare or social policy riders), thereby refusing to let those bills pass as part of funding negotiations. 1
Lie #2: “Congress is gridlocked — we can’t negotiate”
Reality: The shutdown and lack of negotiation are deliberate choices by GOP leadership, not inevitable stalemate. Speaker Johnson shuttered the House floor, canceling days of votes and claiming there was “nothing to negotiate.” 2 Meanwhile, minority leaders Schumer and Jeffries kept offering bipartisan talks.
In other words: shutdown is weaponized, not inevitable.
Lie #3: “We’re open to dialogue — until they deserve to be mocked”
Reality: Trump and GOP strategists routinely undermine legitimacy by humiliating Democratic leaders immediately after “meetings.” After Schumer and Jeffries sat down with him, Trump blasted out an AI-generated video depicting Jeffries with a sombrero and mustache, and Schumer slamming Democrats, while repeating false claims about “illegal aliens” and healthcare. 3
This tactic isn’t an aberration. It’s the format: feign openness, then humiliate your counterpart to seize narrative control.
The Three-Step Gaslight
The GOP line isn’t about policy substance. It’s about narrative dominance. They block Democratic fixes. They cause crises like shutdowns. They smear opponents after meetings. Then, they weaponize both social and legacy media to invert blame. It’s a deliberate three-step gaslight:
1. Break the system (gut coverage, shut Congress).
2. Block the fix (vote no on restoration bills).
3. Blame Democrats and repeat the lie everywhere.
Lies Republicans Tell About Healthcare to Justify Withholding Funds
Lie #1: Immigrant Healthcare
Undocumented immigrants are generally ineligible for federal health programs such as Medicaid, Medicare, or ACA subsidies. The only federal requirement is that hospitals must provide emergency treatment under EMTALA, regardless of immigration status - and that’s funded through hospital budgets, not special “immigrant healthcare” programs.4 Some states (California, New York, Illinois) use state funds to cover certain groups, but those programs are not paid for by federal tax dollars. 5
Republicans repeat this lie to inflame resentment toward immigrants and to reinforce a Christian Nationalist vision of racial hierarchy.
Lie #2: Abortion Coverage
The Hyde Amendment (in effect since 1977, renewed annually) prohibits the use of federal funds for abortions except in cases of rape, incest, or when the life of the mother is endangered. 6Medicaid, Medicare, ACA subsidies, and federal employee health plans cannot pay for abortions outside those narrow exceptions. 7
Lie #3: Transgender Healthcare
The ACA prohibits insurers from discriminating based on gender identity, which means insurers can’t deny medically necessary gender-affirming care if you buy insurance on the exchange or through your employer. 8 But there is no line item in the federal budget earmarked for “transgender surgeries” or “taxpayer-funded transition care.”
Medicaid coverage for gender-affirming care is a state-level decision: some states cover it, others ban it.9Federal dollars aren’t driving these decisions.
Lie #4: The ACA (Obamacare) as the Real Target
Since 2010, Republicans have voted dozens of times to repeal or gut the Affordable Care Act. When outright repeal failed, they chipped away instead - repealing the individual mandate penalty, expanding short-term “junk” plans, suing in court (Texas v. California), and starving the system of funds.
Project 2025 and GOP budget drafts continue this trend by proposing deep cuts to Medicaid and premium subsidies, while expanding private and religious-based alternatives (vouchers, tax credits, health-sharing ministries).
So when Trump, Vance, or Vought talk about “your tax dollars” going to immigrants, abortion, or transgender care, they’re deliberately stoking cultural resentment.
The real fiscal story is about dismantling the ACA, shrinking Medicaid, and redirecting money upward to tax cuts and privatized health schemes.
The Devious Rescissions Strategy
Now that Project 2025 has effectively seized control of government, Republicans have taken a giant step forward in their efforts to strip healthcare from Americans. With their majority in Congress, they’ve ceded the Constitutional power of the purse to the executive branch. That means OMB Director Russell Vought, chief architect of Project 2025, can claw back funds through the process called rescission.
What Is a Rescission?
A rescission is a proposal by the President to cancel previously appropriated funds. Under the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, a President can send a “special message” to Congress asking it to rescind funding — but Congress must act within 45 days, or the funds must be released. Historically, rescissions were minor and rarely successful. From Reagan through Obama, presidents sent requests to cancel spending, but Congress almost always refused, respecting both the law and the constitutional principle that only Congress controls the purse. 10
Of course, the Trump–Project 2025 administration has no use for law or ethics. On July 24, 2025, the Republican Congress voted to cancel approximately $9 billion in previously approved federal funding, primarily targeting foreign aid and public broadcasting. 11
The “Pocket Rescission” End-Run
Vought has gone further, pushing what critics call a “pocket rescission.” By sending a request late in the fiscal year (within the 45-day window before funds expire), even if Congress votes no, the money lapses at year’s end. In effect, the executive cancels funds without approval. 12
In August 2025, Trump used this trick to block $4.9 billion in foreign aid that Congress had already approved. 13 A federal judge initially ordered portions of the frozen aid released before appeals changed the posture. 14 But, as we’ve seen time after time, the six-justice SCOTUS majority sanctioned it. 15
According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), so-called “pocket rescissions” directly conflict with the Impoundment Control Act’s (ICA) requirements, which were written precisely to keep presidents from unilaterally canceling appropriated funds. 16
Legal analysts emphasize that while previous administrations have occasionally tested the boundaries of rescission authority, those isolated episodes do not establish precedent for the sweeping power Vought now claims. 17 Experts go further, underscoring that pocket rescissions are outright illegal under the ICA and fundamentally undermine Congress’s constitutional power of the purse. 18 Yet, even as these warnings mount, Senate Appropriations records show Vought pointedly refusing to rule out additional end-runs around Congress. 19
The White House, for its part, has publicly touted the rescission maneuver as a legitimate tool of executive authority - a rebranding of illegality as innovation. 20
Why This Matters
The immediate cuts targeted foreign aid and broadcasting, but the tactic endangers every appropriated program: Medicaid, ACA subsidies, public health agencies, rural hospitals, mental health services. Trump and Vought have even threatened to make irreversible cuts during shutdowns, using them as leverage to freeze funds. 21
Once normalized, this tactic allows the executive branch to rewrite budgets after Congress has passed them, eroding trust in bipartisan deals and gutting constitutional order. 22
Vought’s rescissions scheme is part of the familiar Project 2025 playbook: if precedent or law stands in their way, they ignore it. They push it through, appeal until it reaches their Supreme Court majority, and consolidate more power in their unitary executive model.
This isn’t just healthcare policy — it’s authoritarian government in action.
Beyond Healthcare: The Real Target
The lies about healthcare and negotiations are not random talking points. They are tools in a larger strategy. By gaslighting the public, weaponizing shutdowns, mocking opponents, and now manipulating rescissions, Trump, Vance, Vought, and Johnson have shown that they will dismantle both the Affordable Care Act and the Constitution itself if that’s what it takes to entrench power. What they cannot repeal outright, they will claw back through technical tricks and legal fictions. What they cannot win in debate, they will enforce through humiliation and propaganda.
At the core, these lies are designed to inflame resentment toward immigrants, women, and LGBTQ+ Americans, while cementing a Christian Nationalist vision of racial hierarchy and white dominance.
Healthcare is the test case. If they succeed in normalizing these lies and rescissions, no program - not Social Security, not Medicare, not veterans’ care - will be safe from the same authoritarian playbook.
Footnotes:
Vance downplays Trump’s AI video of Jeffries in a sombrero - Washington Post (Oct 1, 2025)Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act (EMTALA) — CMS