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Nov. 13, 2025, 5:00 AM ESTBy Gary GrumbachALEXANDRIA, Va. — When acting U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan walks into federal court here in Virginia on Thursday morning, it will be Halligan — not the criminal defendants she hopes to prosecute — at the center of the court’s attention.Former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, both frequent targets of President Donald Trump, filed separate motions in their respective cases, arguing that Halligan is unlawfully serving as acting U.S. attorney and therefore the indictments against them should be thrown out. In a rare joint hearing, attorneys for Comey and James will argue this together before U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie, who is traveling up from the District of South Carolina.Currie is hearing this joint oral argument session, not a judge from the Eastern District of Virginia, to avoid any potential intradistrict conflict of interest.Halligan, who was part of Trump’s legal team in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case but has no prior prosecutorial experience, was sworn in to the job as interim U.S. attorney in one of the nation’s busiest federal court districts on Sept. 22. That’s three days after Erik Siebert, the U.S. attorney who had been serving in the role since Jan. 21, resigned after being pressured to indict Comey and James.The indictments against Comey and James came after Trump publicly urged Attorney General Pam Bondi to take action against Comey, James and another of the president’s adversaries, Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif. Comey and James both pleaded not guilty to their respective charges.“We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility,” the president wrote in a Sept. 20 Truth Social post. “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”According to federal statute, individuals may only serve for 120 days after being appointed U.S. attorney, unless confirmed by the U.S. Senate before then. The Senate had not confirmed him, but district judges of the Eastern District of Virginia exercised their own independent appointment authority to legally retain Siebert as an interim U.S. attorney beyond the 120-day limit.It is that 120-day limit that James and Comey’s attorneys argue should not start back at zero with the appointment of Halligan.“If the Attorney General could make back-to-back sequential appointments of interim U.S. Attorneys, the 120-day period would be rendered meaningless, and the Attorney General could indefinitely evade the alternate procedures that Congress mandated,” Comey’s attorney Patrick Fitzgerald wrote in a motion to dismiss the indictment against his client.Comey was charged in late September with making a false statement to Congress during a September 2020 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Asked by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, about testimony he gave in 2017 asserting that he did not authorize the leak of information to the media about an FBI investigation into the Clinton Foundation, Comey said, “I stand by the testimony.”Trump first clashed with Comey during his first term over the then-FBI director’s handling of the federal investigation Trump campaign’s alleged ties to Russia. Comey was fired in May 2017 and has been an outspoken critic of Trump since then.The Justice Department laid out in court papers that it believes the indictment of Comey — signed only by Halligan and unsealed days before the five-year statute of limitations expired — should survive this challenge to Halligan’s appointment regardless of what Currie decides, because of U.S. Code 3288, the statute that governs this very issue.“Whenever an indictment or information charging a felony is dismissed for any reason after the period prescribed by the applicable statute of limitations has expired, a new indictment may be returned in the appropriate jurisdiction within six calendar months of the date of the dismissal of the indictment or information,” the statute reads in part.This six-month grace period, legal experts tell NBC News, may be the DOJ’s key to a continued prosecution of the former FBI director. The bank fraud charge that James, who sued Trump and his businesses for fraud in 2022, is facing is well within the 10-year statute of limitations.Bondi has taken steps in recent weeks to shore up Halligan’s position.On Oct. 31, Bondi issued a formal order retroactively appointing Halligan to the position of “special attorney” within the Department of Justice as of Sept. 22 — three days before Comey was indicted — and wrote, “Should a court conclude that Ms. Halligan’s authority as Special Attorney is limited to particular matters, I hereby delegate to Ms. Halligan authority as Special Attorney to conduct and supervise the prosecutions” of Comey and James.”Halligan is also facing several Bar Association complaints in Florida and Virginia, filed by the left-leaning watchdog group Campaign for Accountability.“Ms. Halligan’s actions appear to constitute an abuse of power and serve to undermine the integrity of the Department of Justice (DOJ) and erode public confidence in the legal profession and the fair administration of justice,” the complaint says.Several other U.S. attorneys appointed by Trump are also facing legal challenges to their appointments.In late September, a federal judge in Nevada ruled that acting U.S. Attorney Sigal Chattah should be disqualified from serving in that role due to violating the Federal Vacancies Reform Act.In August, a federal judge in New Jersey ruled that Alina Habba was “not lawfully holding the office of United States Attorney” due to the 120-day interim appointment expiration, and that her actions since July as the top federal prosecutor in New Jersey may be declared void.Gary GrumbachGary Grumbach is an NBC News legal affairs reporter, based in Washington, D.C.

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Nov. 18, 2025, 12:01 AM ESTBy Berkeley Lovelace Jr.Americans are going into 2026 more anxious about health care costs than at any other point in recent years, a new West Health-Gallup survey finds. Almost half of adults, 47%, say they’re worried they won’t be able to afford health care next year — the highest level since West Health and Gallup began tracking in 2021, the survey published Tuesday found.Concerns about prescription drug costs have climbed steadily, the survey found — rising from 30% in 2021 to 37% in 2025, also the highest level recorded. And the share of adults who say health care costs cause “a lot of stress” in their daily lives has nearly doubled since 2022, rising from 8% to 15%. The survey also found that about 1 in 3 adults reported delaying or skipping medical care over the last year because they couldn’t afford it. The annual survey, conducted in June through August, was based on roughly 20,000 respondents across all 50 states and Washington, D.C., and asked 27 questions about people’s health care experiences. Health care has become a central issue in politics. Senate Democrats’ push to extend enhanced subsidies for the Affordable Care Act led to the longest government shutdown in history. The ACA tax credits, which have protected people from double-digit premium increases, are set to expire Dec. 31. Republicans blocked the effort, and the Trump administration has vowed to “fix Obamacare” but has yet to release a detailed plan. “The survey shows health care affordability isn’t just a political debate, it’s a problem many people are experiencing now,” said Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at KFF, a nonpartisan research group. “Americans have been struggling to keep up with rising health costs generally and health care specifically.” He wasn’t involved in the survey. The survey didn’t touch on the subsidies’ expiring. Nor did it include questions about Medicaid work requirements that will go into effect in 2027. Taken together with the coverage losses that would follow, many people could face even greater challenges paying for health care in the years ahead, said Timothy Lash, president of West Health, a nonpartisan group that researches health care costs and aging. “The urgency around this is real,” Lash said. “When you look at the economic strain that is on families right now, even if health care prices didn’t rise, the costs are rising elsewhere, which only exacerbates the problem.”Lash said every metric in the survey has either held steady or gotten worse. “Americans are saying, ‘Hey, now that I really think about it, I’m paying too much and I’m not getting enough,’” Lash said. “Health care is not what it needs to be right now.”Differences across statesHow people experience health care varied greatly across states. Iowa, Massachusetts, Washington, D.C., and Rhode Island ranked highest for overall health care experiences, particularly in how easily residents can afford, access and get health care when and where they need it.Texas, New Mexico, Nevada and Alaska ranked at the bottom of the list.While 66% of people in Nebraska — which ranked 10th overall — said it’s easy to get the health care they need, just 30% in New Mexico and 31% in Nevada agreed.But even in the top-ranked states, many people still face difficulties, Lash said. About 15% of people in the top 10 states said they’ve been unable to pay for prescription drugs in the past three months, compared with 29% in the bottom 10. About 25% of people in the top 10 states reported skipping recommended lab tests or medical procedures because of the cost over the last year, compared with 40% of people in the bottom 10. Skipping or forgoing medical care was most common in states like Texas (43% reported doing so), Montana (43%) and Alaska (41%), the survey found.Beyond cost, Americans cited other barriers that have restricted access to care. Nationally, 55% said long wait times prevented or delayed care, and 27% cited work schedules as a barrier. The top 10 and the bottom 10 states had similar shares of people who delayed or prevented care because they didn’t know how to find providers: 25% and 31%, respectively. “When you look at the rankings … we have to be very careful to say that someone won,” Lash said. “It’s like being the tallest kid in kindergarten and then suddenly walking outside the classroom and realizing, like, maybe you’re not so tall after all.”Dr. Adam Gaffney, a critical care physician and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, said the U.S. health care system is designed to make patients have “skin in the game” when it comes to paying for high health costs.“While it’s not surprising that states with high uninsurance rates — like Mississippi, which has not expanded Medicaid — have higher rates of cost problems than a state like Massachusetts, where I work,” Gaffney wrote in an email, “even here in the Bay State large numbers experience cost worries due to inadequate insurance.”Lawrence Gostin, director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University, said the findings may add pressure on Congress to extend the enhanced ACA subsidies before the end of the year.Even if they don’t, he said, the pressure could intensify once Medicaid work requirements begin in 2027. The Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan government group, projects that 4.8 million people will lose coverage because of the work requirements.“The public has major anxiety about access to affordable health care,” Gostin said. “Deep concern and anxiety over health insurance premiums and medical bills is only likely to become more acute due to the lapse in ACA premium subsidies and major cuts to Medicaid.”Berkeley Lovelace Jr.Berkeley Lovelace Jr. is a health and medical reporter for NBC News. He covers the Food and Drug Administration, with a special focus on Covid vaccines, prescription drug pricing and health care. He previously covered the biotech and pharmaceutical industry with CNBC.

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