Tensions at All-Time High as GOP Aims to Steal Medicaid from Their Own Constituents

Within months of Trump 2.0, Congressional Republicans are already poised to push nearly 9 million Americans off Medicaid. This comes as part of Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson’s so-called “big, beautiful bill,” a budget bill that will encompass all of Trump’s proposed domestic policy. Said “big, beautiful bill” will include more than $700 billion in health-related funding cuts, as well as insidiously named “work requirements” for people to access Medicaid. Of course, these requirements are only a backdoor to kick people off their health coverage, including the majority of adults on Medicaid who work full or part-time.

None of this comes as a surprise: The Trump administration, with Elon Musk at the helm, has spent the last several months pushing baseless conspiracy theories about widespread Medicaid fraud, which is simply not happening, because, if anything, there are far too many barriers for low-income and disabled people to even access Medicaid benefits to begin with. If House Republicans thought they’d be able to throw millions of Americans to the wolves without a fight, they were sorely mistaken. 

On Tuesday night, throngs of protesters burst into the Rayburn Building at the Capitol to disrupt the House Committee on Energy and Commerce’s hearing on planned Medicaid cuts. The hearing, in total, spanned roughly 17 hours, NBC News reports, from 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday to about 8 a.m. on Wednesday. Protesters, including many from the disability rights organization ADAPT, chanted “No cuts to Medicaid” and forced their way into the hearing room. The Hill reports that at least 25 protesters were ultimately arrested for civil disobedience, including several wheelchair users. “You will kill me,” one protester reportedly shouted at House Republicans as they were taken away.

BREAKING: The scene at the Rayburn Building is pure rebellion. Protesters are swarming in during live hearings on Medicaid cuts.

Security’s losing control. Because when the government wages war on the poor, the poor fight back.

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— Kye (@gxldsociety.bsky.social) May 13, 2025 at 5:51 PM

Committee Chair Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.), who released the proposals for sharp Medicaid cuts on Mother’s Day (of all days), threatened the protesters with arrest and accused them of “criminal offense.” Indeed, it would seem it’s a “criminal offense” to disrupt a meeting where powerful people weigh whether you should live or die, but not a criminal offense to wield state power to deny people their rights to care, to shorten their lives, and perhaps to even kill them. Across the U.S., 85 million people are either uninsured or underinsured; it’s estimated that 60,000 Americans die each year because they can’t afford timely access to health care.

Meanwhile, the Energy and Commerce Committee’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), implored police to avoid arresting protesters—to no avail. “People feel very strongly because they know they’re losing their health care, and [because of] the cruelty that comes from the Republican proposal,” Pallone said.

After protesters were removed, tensions over the proposed Medicaid cuts continued to run high. In the early hours of Wednesday, 13 hours after the hearing began, Rep. Randy Weber (R-Texas) instigated a heated exchange with Democratic star Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). Specifically, he took issue with Ocasio-Cortez for directing her remarks at a camera as the hearing was livestreamed to Americans watching from home. Her remarks were focused on an important topic: whether House Republicans’ proposed Medicaid work requirements would apply even to people experiencing miscarriage. (Fact check: They would!)

“We’d like for you to address the Republicans,” Weber told Ocasio-Cortez. “Let’s have a dialogue this way and not to a camera.”

“There are 13.7 million Americans on the other side of that screen, right there,” Ocasio-Cortez replied before continuing to look directly into the camera and waving. “I’m talking to you because I work for you, and they deserve to see what is happening here, because there are plenty of districts, including Republican ones, where 25 percent of your constituents are on Medicaid, 40 percent of your constituents are on Medicaid.” Asked if she would yield her time back, Ocasio-Cortez refused: “I will not yield because it was a terribly disrespectful comment and I will not yield to disrespectful men.”

Rep. Yvette Clarke, Ocasio-Cortez’s fellow New York Democrat, backed her up: “When the gentlelady from New York looks at the screen—if she wants to check her hair, she wants to say anything she wants to that screen—she has the right to do so. There’s not a member on this panel that can tell another member where to look, who to look at, and where they want to look.”

While Republicans move forward with Trump’s agenda, Trump is in Qatar—a nation he previously accused of sponsoring terrorism—just days after seemingly accepting a luxury Boeing jet as a bribe to use as Air Force One. Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, maintains that because Trump is a billionaire with his own personal fortune, he’s somehow incorruptible—as if his very status as a billionaire isn’t gapingly obvious evidence of his corruption. The imagery of Trump accepting an airplane as a “gift” could hardly present a starker contrast to the millions of low-income Americans he and his cronies in Congress are on the brink of screwing over. What a perfect encapsulation of his presidency that we all saw coming.