West
'Has done nothing': GOP Senate hopeful rips Dem opponent for not holding Biden-Harris accountable on key issue
LAS VEGAS – GOP Sen. John Kennedy hit the campaign trail for Nevada Senate candidate Sam Brown, and the two spoke to Fox News Digital about why they believe Biden administration policies have hurt voters in the crucial swing state.
“The number-one issue that folks have been worried about for the last couple of years has been the economy and how this Biden-Harris economy has put so much pressure on individuals, on families,” war veteran Capt. Sam Brown recently told Fox News Digital at an event with Sen. Kennedy in Las Vegas.
“For instance, the average Nevada family’s paying $1,200 more a month now than they were four years ago. When you’ve got seniors who are having to leave the dignity of retirement to go pick up a job because they can’t make ends meet. They can’t pay their rent. When you’ve got moms and dads who are skipping meals so that their kids can eat, that’s not right. It’s not fair to Nevadans.”
Brown explained that the number-two issue that voters relay to him is immigration.
WAR VETERAN’S CAMPAIGN UNLEASHES ON DEM OPPONENT AFTER TOP AIDE’S ‘DISGUSTING’ SMEAR OF HIS MILITARY BOOK
Sam Brown and John Kennedy speak to Fox News Digital in Nevada (Fox News Digital)
“The number two issue is this border crisis,” Brown said. “Vice President Harris was the border czar, she allowed this crisis to happen, and Senator Rosen sits on the Homeland Security Committee. She should be providing accountability. Should be providing leadership and pushback against an administration that has allowed, we now know, over 400,000 convicted criminals into this country, and she has done nothing, in fact, only visited the border one time. And that’s unacceptable. As someone who comes out of the military. Leadership is about being in the front, representing your people, their concerns and accomplishing the mission.”
Brown, a war veteran who sustained serious injuries from an IED explosion during a 2008 deployment in Afghanistan, is running against incumbent Dem. Sen. Jacky Rosen in a race that could play a key role in deciding which party controls the Senate. The Cook Political Report ranks the race as “Lean Democrat.”
‘RENT IS TOO DAMN HIGH’: ROSEN PANNED FOR BIDEN-ALIGNED VOTES, HIGH HOUSING COSTS
U.S. Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nevada, speaks during a news conference on June 16, 2023, at the East Vegas Library. (Madeline Carter/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
Kennedy told Fox News Digital that he felt it was important to travel to Nevada and support Brown because the combat veteran is a “rock star.”
“He’s a beast. He’s what cool looks like. We need him in the United States Senate,” Kennedy said. “The people of Nevada need him, and they deserve him. The people of Nevada deserve the right to go to the grocery store without having to first sell blood plasma so they can afford it, and Sam’s going to help us fix that.”
“The people of Nevada deserve to be able to pay their rent or pay their mortgage without first having to cash in on their retirement account and Sam’s going to help us fix that in Washington. The people of Nevada deserve to be able to retire before they’re 94, for God’s sakes. And when they retire, they ought to be able to live in dignity. They shouldn’t have to live in a tent behind Outback and eat cat food, and that’s a direct result of that problem I just described as a direct result of inflation caused by the Democrats who’ve been in control the last four years.”
Jacky Rosen and Sam Brown are each running for Senate in Nevada. (Reuters)
Brown told Fox News Digital that the energy on the ground he has seen for his campaign has been “terrific.”
“This is a battleground state in the presidential race, a battleground state for the Senate,” Brown said. “When we win this race, we’ll take the majority. When President Trump wins, he’ll be in the White House. Folks are fired up because they need change. They’re desperate for change and Jacky Rosen, as senator, she’s been running from the people, while I’m running for them.”
Kennedy told Fox News Digital he thinks the presidential race between Harris and Trump will be “close” in Nevada but that he is ceratin Brown will be a “great senator.”
“I mean, the guy’s a war hero, West Point graduate, SMU business school graduate, he’s been a businessman, he’s a good dad, he’s a good husband, he’s whip smart,” Kennedy said. “You get between Sam Brown and what’s best for Nevada, he’ll devour you like a light snack, man.”
“Back home in Louisiana, we say he’s tough as a $3 steak, and the people in Nevada need him, and they deserve him. They’ve been through a lot. This bunch in Washington, D.C., their entire plan for the last four years, the Democrats, has been let’s do the worst thing possible that won’t work. They screwed this economy up so badly. The American people have been gutted like a fish because of this inflation, and we’re going to fix it. And Sam Brown will help lead the charge.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Rosen’s campaign for comment but did not receive a response.
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HELENA — You probably have goals and plans for 2026—the Montana Department of Agriculture does too.
“We’re really focusing on innovative agricultural practices,” Montana Department of Agriculture director Jillien Streit said.
It’s no secret that agriculture—farming and ranching—is not easy. There are long days, planning, monitoring crops and livestock, and other challenges beyond farmers’ and ranchers’ control.
(WATCH: Montana Department of Agriculture focusing on innovation in 2026)
Montana Department of Agriculture focusing on innovation in 2026
“We have very low commodity prices across the board,” Streit said. “We still have very high input prices across the board, and we have really high prices when it comes to our equipment, and so, it’s a really tough year.”
But innovation, including new practices, partnerships and technology use, can help navigate some of those challenges.
“We can’t make more time and we can’t make more land, so we need to start putting together innovative practices that help us maximize what our time and land can do,” Streit said.
Practices range from using technology like autonomous tractors and virtual fencing—allowing rangers to contain and move cattle right from their phones—to regenerative farming and ranching.
“It is bringing cattle back into farming operations to be able to work with cover cropping practices to invigorate the soil for new soil health benefits,” Streit said.
The Montana Department of Agriculture is working to help producers learn, share, and collaborate on new ideas to work in their operations.
The department will share stories of practices that work from farms and ranches across the state. Also, within the next year or so, Streit said the department is hoping to roll out technology to help producers collaborate.
“(It’s) providing a communication platform where people can get together and really help each other out by utilizing each other’s assets,” she said.
While not easy, agriculture is still one of Montana’s largest industries, and Streit said innovating and sharing ideas across the state can keep it going long into the future.
More than 10,000 people have enrolled in Nevada’s new public option health plans, which debuted last fall with the expectation that they would bring lower prices to the health insurance market.
Those preliminary numbers from the open enrollment period that ended in January are less than a third of what state officials had projected. Nevada is the third state so far to launch a public option plan, along with Colorado and Washington state. The idea is to offer lower-cost plans to consumers to expand health care access.
But researchers said plans like these are unlikely to fill the gaps left by sweeping federal changes, including the expiration of enhanced subsidies for plans bought on Affordable Care Act marketplaces.
The public option gained attention in the late 2000s when Congress considered but ultimately rejected creating a health plan funded and run by the government that would compete with private carriers in the market. The programs in Washington state, Colorado, and Nevada don’t go that far — they aren’t government-run but are private-public partnerships that compete with private insurance.
In recent years, states have considered creating public option plans to make health coverage more affordable and to reduce the number of uninsured people. Washington was the first state to launch a program, in 2021, and Colorado followed in 2023.
Washington and Colorado’s programs have run into challenges, including a lack of participation from clinicians, hospitals, and other care providers, as well as insurers’ inability to meet rate reduction benchmarks or lower premiums compared with other plans offered on the market.
Nevada law requires that the carriers of the public option plans — Battle Born State Plans, named after a state motto — lower premium costs compared with a benchmark “silver” plan in the marketplace by 15% over the next four years.
But that amount might not make much difference to consumers with rising premium payments from the loss of the ACA’s enhanced tax credits, said Keith Mueller, director of the Rural Policy Research Institute.
“That’s not a lot of money,” Mueller said.
Three of the eight insurers on the state’s exchange, Nevada Health Link, offered the state plans during the open enrollment period.
Insurance companies plan to meet the lower premium cost requirement in Nevada by cutting broker fees and commissions, which prompted opposition from insurance brokers in the state. In response, Nevada marketplace officials told state lawmakers in January that they will give a flat-fee reimbursement to brokers.
The public option has faced opposition among state leaders. In 2024, a state judge dismissed a lawsuit, brought by a Nevada state senator and a group that advocates for lower taxes, that challenged the public option law as unconstitutional. They have appealed to the state Supreme Court.
Federal Policy Impacts
Recent federal changes create more obstacles.
Nevada is consistently among the states with the largest populations of people who do not have health insurance coverage. Last year, nearly 95,000 people in the state received the enhanced ACA tax credits, averaging $465 in savings per month, according to KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News.
But the enhanced tax credits expired at the end of the year, and it appears unlikely that lawmakers will bring them back. Nationwide ACA enrollment has decreased by more than 1 million people so far this year, down from record-high enrollment of 24 million last year.
About 4 million people are expected to lose health coverage from the expiration of the tax credits, according to the Congressional Budget Office. An additional 3 million are projected to lose coverage because of other policy changes affecting the marketplace.
Justin Giovannelli, an associate research professor at the Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University, said the changes to the ACA in the Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which President Donald Trump signed into law last summer, will make it more difficult for people to keep their coverage. These changes include more frequent enrollment paperwork to verify income and other personal information, a shortened enrollment window, and an end to automatic reenrollment.
In Nevada, the changes would amount to an estimated 100,000 people losing coverage, according to KFF.
“All of that makes getting coverage on Nevada Health Link harder and more expensive than it would be otherwise,” Giovannelli said.
State officials projected ahead of open enrollment that about 35,000 people would purchase the public option plans. Of the 104,000 people who had purchased a plan on the state marketplace as of mid-January, 10,762 had enrolled in one of the public option plans, according to Nevada Health Link.
Katie Charleson, communications officer for the state health exchange, said the original enrollment estimate was based on market conditions before the recent increases in customers’ premium costs. She said that the public option plans gave people facing higher costs more choices.
“We expect enrollment in Battle Born State Plans to grow over time as awareness increases and as Nevadans continue seeking quality coverage options that help reduce costs,” Charleson said.
According to KFF, nationally the enhanced subsidies saved enrollees an average of $705 annually in 2024, and enrollees would save an estimated $1,016 in premium payments on average in 2026 if the subsidies were still in place. Without the subsidies, people enrolled in the ACA marketplace could be seeing their premium costs more than double.
Insights From Washington and Colorado
Washington and Colorado are not planning to alter their programs due to the expiration of the tax credits, according to government officials in those states.
Other states that had recently considered creating public options have backtracked. Minnesota officials put off approving a public option in 2024, citing funding concerns. Proposals to create public options in Maine and New Mexico also sputtered.
Washington initially saw meager enrollment in its Cascade Select public option plans; only 1% of state marketplace enrollees chose a public option plan in 2021. But that changed after lawmakers required hospitals to contract with at least one public option plan by 2023. Last year the state reported that 94,000 customers enrolled, accounting for 30% of all customers on the state marketplace. The public option plans were the lowest-premium silver plans in 31 of Washington’s 39 counties in 2024.
A 2025 study found that since Colorado implemented its public option, called the Colorado Option, coverage through the ACA marketplace has become more affordable for enrollees who received subsidies but more expensive for enrollees who did not.
Colorado requires all insurers offering coverage through its marketplace to include a public option that follows state guidelines. The state set premium reduction targets of 5% a year for three years beginning in 2023. Starting this year, premium costs are not allowed to outpace medical inflation.
Though the insurers offering the public option did not meet the premium reduction targets, enrollment in the Colorado Option has increased every year it has been available. Last year, the state saw record enrollment in its marketplace, with 47% of customers purchasing a public option plan.
Giovannelli said states are continuing to try to make health insurance more affordable and accessible, even if federal changes reduce the impact of those efforts.
“States are reacting and trying to continue to do right by their residents,” Giovannelli said, “but you can’t plug all those gaps.”
Are you struggling to afford your health insurance? Have you decided to forgo coverage? Click here to contact KFF Health News and share your story.
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
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