Inside Dems’ Medicaid-focused GOP takedown strategy
Plus: The number-five House Democrat on DOGE’s veterans firings and the case against Trump’s plan to use military installations as deportation hubs.
👋🏾 Hi, hey, hello! The House is moments from voting on a Republican budget blueprint that would unlock the process for the GOP to pass President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda. The vote will be tight: Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) can ill-afford to lose more than one or two votes. Keep reading for what’s worth knowing from the Hill today before you clock out—straight from my notebook to your inbox.
1. “They’ve been duped”
— Rep. Troy Carter told me this afternoon that House Democrats have found success in localizing the Republican budget plan the House will vote on in moments and demonstrating that the proposed cuts to Medicaid will not just impact Democrats.
— “This is going to impact you. And you will see, and you have seen, the increased feeling of voters’ remorse because people are realizing they’ve been duped,” Carter told me this afternoon. “These cuts are impacting the very people who supported Trump in 2024.”
— House Democrats spent the day hammering Republicans over the budget plan that would slash federal social programs to bankroll tax cuts for the wealthy and big corporations.
— “Children will be devastated. Families will be devastated. People with disabilities will be devastated. Seniors will be devastated. Hospitals will be devastated. Nursing homes will be devastated,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said during an event on the East Front Steps of the U.S. Capitol this afternoon. “So let me be clear. House Democrats will not provide a single vote to this reckless Republican budget. Not one.”
— ICYMI: “Dems find footing by defending Medicaid”
2. Lieu denounces Trump’s Russia coziness
— House Democratic Caucus Vice Chair Ted Lieu (Calif.) offered a simple explanation for why President Trump has grown increasingly antagonistic against Ukraine: He’s afraid of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
— “Donald Trump acts like he is scared of Putin,” Lieu told me when I asked him about the American president’s false claim that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a dictator. “Now Trump is saying things that are completely false. Zelenskyy is not a dictator. Ukraine did not start the war.”
— I also asked Lieu for his reaction to the United States’ opposition to a United Nations resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “It was a shameful day for America,” he said. “We used to fight the axis of evil. Now Trump apparently wants to join the axis of evil.”
— The number-five House Democrat also ripped into Trump and the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency for firing nearly 5,800 veterans across federal agencies, according to an analysis by House Appropriations Committee Democrats.
— “As a veteran, it is just completely outrageous to see Trump’s misinformation and his comments about Russia, about Putin, he said. “And then the indirect firing of employees at the [Department of Veterans’ Affairs] and many agencies of folks who happen to be veterans. That is highly disturbing.”
— Lieu served as an Air Force military lawyer, handling military legal cases in Guam and California. He’s now a colonel in the Air Force Reserve and brings that experience to his roles in leadership and the House Judiciary and Foreign Affairs Committees.
— See for yourself: Lieu on Trump and Putin, Lieu on the U.N. resolution
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3. Escobar’s mass deportation warning
— Rep. Veronica Escobar told me she sees the Trump administration’s reported plan to use a military base in her district for mass immigrant detention as both unnecessary and a threat to U.S. military readiness. The Texas Democrat warned it would undermine preparedness for global conflicts and divert resources from national defense.
— The New York Times reported last week that Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, would become a deportation hub capable of holding up to 10,000 people, with plans to develop similar facilities nationwide.
— “All of this should alarm people, even people who support his mass deportation efforts,” Escobar said. “None of this is making us safer, making us better, or improving people’s cost of living. This is actually doing the opposite.”
— The congresswoman pointed to the evacuation effort the U.S. carried out during the 2021 Taliban offensive as an example of how the use of military installations for immigrant-related missions can endanger national security.
— “After all of the refugees were resettled and went into communities across the country, there was a review of the impact that operation had on the installation,” she told me. “It set us back in terms of our military readiness by two years.” (While there’s little dispute that the effort was resource-intensive, I didn’t find any publicly available sources with detailed assessments of its impact on overall military readiness by press time.”
— Despite warnings from critics of poor conditions at past migrant detention sites on military bases along with concerns about militarizing immigration enforcement and potential strains on military resources, Trump officials say the move to use military installations as deportation hubs addresses detention space shortages.
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