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Yomiuri Shimbun
a day ago
- Politics
- Yomiuri Shimbun
A Peace Vigil Sits near the White House. A Congressman Wants It Gone.
Just beyond the tall metal fence encircling the White House, visitors from Europe paused outside a makeshift shelter on the red brick of Pennsylvania Avenue to offer thanks to a graying man in a wheelchair. Then a couple from New Jersey approached with questions. A man asked to take pictures for his wife. Sometimes, a whole tour group would descend, all at once. Philipos Melaku-Bello is used to this parade of people. He's been stopped here every few minutes – with questions, challenges, gratitude, offers for help and support – for more than four decades. Melaku-Bello, 63, is the longest-serving steward of the White House Peace Vigil, a 44-year protest calling for nuclear disarmament and an end to global conflicts. To maintain its position in Lafayette Square, just across Pennsylvania Avenue and visible from the north side of the White House, the demonstration must be manned 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Melaku-Bello spends more than 100 hours each week keeping the vigil alive. He is aided by a rotating cast of volunteers. Some stand watch through quiet mornings and scorching lunch breaks. Others work overnight shifts, spending the darkest hours of the day under a tarp covered in flags and banners that read: 'War is not the answer!' The demonstration is widely considered to be the longest continuous act of political protest in U.S. history. It has survived seven presidents, countless global conflicts, hurricanes and blizzards, heat waves and floods. It has outlasted several U.S. wars, including the Cold War, the Persian Gulf War, the War on Drugs and the War on Terror. Now, it faces a new threat: Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-New Jersey) wrote a letter to the Interior Department calling the vigil 'a 24/7 eyesore' and accusing the protesters who maintain it of hijacking a national park. He demanded the agency review its legality and, if appropriate, disband the demonstration. Van Drew did not respond to multiple requests for comment. 'Let me be clear: nothing in the Constitution guarantees the right to erect permanent structures and occupy public land day after day, year after year, in a manner that creates public safety hazards, degrades the appearance of one of our most iconic parks, and burdens both the District and the National Park Service,' Van Drew wrote in May to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. Van Drew is a fourth-term congressman who was initially elected as a Democrat, but changed his party affiliation to Republican in 2020 to protest the first impeachment of President Trump, to whom he pledged his 'undying support.' Trump has repeatedly pressured D.C. and other cities to do more to target encampments and homelessness. This year, the president issued an executive order that directed the Park Service to remove all homeless encampments from federal land in the District and last month directed federal agencies to find ways to forcibly hospitalize homeless people with mental illness and addiction. But the peace vigil is not a homeless encampment. Its tent – used by vigil keepers to shelter from the elements – houses literature, signs, water and other supplies. Melaku-Bello and other volunteers maintain homes elsewhere. A spokeswoman for the Interior Department declined to comment on Van Drew's letter or say whether the agency was furnishing a report on the vigil. 'While we do not comment on congressional correspondence through the media, the Department of Interior takes all correspondence from Congress seriously and carefully reviews each matter,' spokeswoman Elizabeth Peace wrote in an email to The Washington Post. When asked about the potential threat of removal, Melaku-Bello smiled and gestured to the handwritten copy of the First Amendment he keeps on display. This, he said, is not the first time someone has wanted the vigil disbanded. Decades of threats The Peace Vigil began on June 3, 1981, when its founder, William Thomas, appeared outside of the White House holding a placard that read, 'Wanted: Wisdom and Honesty.' With time, he accumulated other signs and broadened his message. Soon, it was: 'Ban All Nuclear Weapons or Have a Nice Doomsday' and 'Live By the Bomb, Die By the Bomb.' In his 28 years as the vigil's primary keeper, Thomas was homeless on and off, arrested several times for illegally camping in Lafayette Square, and surveilled nearly constantly by the Secret Service. Still, he amassed a following. Long before social media could beam a message around the world in an nanosecond, Thomas relied on a network of alternative publications, groups and supporters from out of town to spread the word of his protest. One such supporter was Melaku-Bello's father. It was through him that Melaku-Bello found his way to the vigil. In 1981, Melaku-Bello was an anarchist kid from Southern California who believed in radical equality, peace and punk rock. He was touring the East Coast with his bandmates, performing at alternative venues – including the original 9:30 Club in D.C. – when he first came to visit the peace vigil. It was, at the time, a small operation, with Thomas and a handful of others filling out round-the-clock shifts. Melaku-Bello said he volunteered to pull an overnight, three nights in a row, while he was in town. He found it peaceful, he said, staying up in the park as the city emptied and quieted down. 'It was basically young people who agreed with this neo-anarchistic ideology of no more wars, no more top-down systems, no more misogyny and racism,' Melaku-Bello recalled recently, sitting under an umbrella outside the shelter. 'That there had to be a better way.' From then on, every time Melaku-Bello found himself in the District for work or art or any other reason, he would make a pilgrimage to the Peace Vigil and relieve the keepers for one night or several. By the 1990s, Melaku-Bello had moved to the area and secured a job with the Alexandria parks and recreation department. He split his time between the job he got paid to do and the job he gave himself: supporting the peace activists and their mission and filling out the rotating crew of vigil keepers outside the White House. At their peak, Melaku-Bello said, they had a group of about 20 in rotation. That number tends to swell when other big protests come to town. Today, there are about a half-dozen. Thomas died of pulmonary disease on Jan. 23, 2009, at the age of 61. His longtime collaborator Concepcion Picciotto became the face of the vigil soon after. Seven years later, Picciotto died after spending three decades of her life outside the White House 'to stop the world from being destroyed.' Soon, Melaku-Bello, who for decades had been a behind-the-scenes organizer, was thrust into the spotlight. He is the last of the original activists still dedicated to preserving their protest, and, over the past decade, has become its de facto leader – a title that he, a lifelong opponent of hierarchies, rejects. Global support Melaku-Bello said the number of hostile interactions he's had in recent months with passersby has increased – not just compared to what he experienced during the Biden administration, but also compared to President Trump's first term. The vigil keepers have been physically attacked, spit on, heckled and called names and slurs. On a recent afternoon, a young man wearing a kippah shouted at Melaku-Bello for waving the Palestinian flag. On several occasions, Melaku-Bello has returned to his protest to find posters torn down, kicked in and vandalized. Several are covered in ink. In its 44-year run, the protest has faced several legal challenges and been under near-constant watch by police agencies that patrol in and around the square, as well as the Park Service, which bans camping in Lafayette Square, requiring that a protest be active to qualify as a First Amendment demonstration. The vigil has been torn down or removed just a handful of times, according to media accounts. It happened twice roughly a decade ago, when the makeshift structure that shelters the vigil keepers from the elements was left unattended in violation of Park Service rules. The protest was also forced to move from Lafayette Square in 2020, amid confrontations between racial justice demonstrators and police following the murder of George Floyd. Over the years, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D), the District's longtime nonvoting representative in the House, has aided them in reestablishing their protest after U.S. Park Police have cleared the demonstration. Norton, who has had a decades-long relationship with the vigil keepers, also became their champion in Congress, helping the activists craft legislation that calls on 'all countries possessing nuclear weapons' to begin the 'verifiable and irreversible elimination of such weapons.' The delegate has introduced a version of this bill every year since 1994. In March, she introduced the Nuclear Weapons Abolition and Conversion Act for the 17th time. This year, the delegate included language that would direct the U.S. to 'redirect resources that are being used for nuclear weapons programs to be used for addressing the climate crisis and human and infrastructure needs, such as housing, health care and restoring the environment.' The legislation has never been brought to the House floor for a vote. Norton, in a statement to The Post, bristled at her colleague's attempt to dismantle the demonstration. 'The First Amendment protects peaceful protests, even when they're seen as unsightly or inconvenient, and even when they occur in front of the White House,' Norton said in the statement. 'The Peace Vigil has stood in front of the White House for more than 30 years, with its organizers engaged in principled activism at considerable personal cost. If Representative Van Drew's claim that the vigil creates public safety hazards were valid, it would have been removed long ago.' 'Finally, Representative Van Drew argues in his letter that the Peace Vigil burdens D.C., but his district is in New Jersey,' Norton added. 'As D.C.'s sole member of Congress, I'm the best advocate for the District, and I wholeheartedly support the Peace Vigil, its organizers and its message.' Van Dew's letter accuses the peace activists of sending 'the wrong message to law-abiding Americans.' 'This isn't about stopping a protest. It's about upholding the rule of law, preserving one of America's most iconic public spaces, and ending a double standard that's made a mockery of both,' the congressman wrote. Despite these recent attacks, Melaku-Bello said the vigil's following has only continued to grow. He frequently gives interviews to international press and relies on social media to communicate with followers and donors. Melaku-Bello – who speaks eight languages fluently and is as comfortable quoting Black Sabbath as he is Stokely Carmichael – has amassed supporters in countries all over the globe, and has used his platforms to speak out against global conflicts and, most recently, Trump's protectionist trade policies. 'I have a big following in the Philippines, I mean, I have a big following on a lot of continents,' Melaku-Bello said with a chuckle. 'A lot of times they'll send me messages through WhatsApp or through Instagram or Facebook Messenger. They'll send me articles that will come out in their country about us. It's cool.' On a recent afternoon, Melaku-Bello balanced an open umbrella on the arm of his wheelchair to shield himself from the sun as temperatures crept close to 100 degrees and the bustle of Lafayette Square simmered. Music from a trombone player across the street lilted past. Vendors hawking cold water, political T-shirts and, occasionally, ice cream greeted him like an old friend as they patrolled the plaza. A man on a scooter paused to assure Melaku-Bello that he would be back soon – to do an overnight shift at the vigil. Then, a woman approached. 'Thank you for your protest,' said the woman, a German journalist named Ulrike Schirmer. 'You are a single man, but you do more than many leaders do at the moment.' Melaku-Bello bowed his head in a gesture of gratitude. 'We are going together into the future,' Schirmer continued. 'That's my interest here. Not people trying to force us to separate.' 'Thank you, sister,' he said. As she turned to go, he waved – to her and others who paused to watch the exchange – then settled back into his chair, ready for another photo, another hello, another round of questions. He's got time, after all. He'll be here all day, maybe all night. And then back again tomorrow.
Yahoo
10-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
House approves pair of resolutions condemning antisemitic attack in Colorado
The House on Monday approved a pair of resolutions condemning the antisemitism attack in Boulder, Co., as the chamber looks to crack down on the spate of incidents targeting Jewish individuals. The first resolution, led by Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.), was adopted in a 400-0-2 vote, with just Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) voting 'present.' The second measure, spearheaded by Rep. Gabe Evans (R-Colo.), cleared the chamber in a 280-113-6 vote, with 113 Republicans voting 'no.' 'Antisemitic violence will not be ignored, excused, or tolerated in the United States of America,' Van Drew wrote on X after the vote. While both measures were adopted in a bipartisan fashion, the resolution sponsored by Evans drew Democratic ire. Lawmakers were frustrated that Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.), who represents Boulder, was not included as a co-sponsor of the legislation. Some also took issue with the inclusion of details about the suspect, Mohamed Sabry Soliman's, immigration status. Evans' resolution also said the attack 'demonstrates the dangers of not removing from the country aliens who fail to comply with the terms of their visas,' leaning into the politically polarizing issue of immigration. And it 'expresses gratitude' to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement 'for protecting the homeland.' 'In times like these I would have hoped that my colleagues would be willing to come together to properly honor the victims, to condemn antisemitism as I have said and as our resolution does. It's not hard to do the right thing, Mr. Speaker,' Neguse said on the House floor. 'And the question that Mr. Evans should answer is why? Why not join his two other Republican colleagues in Colorado and join the bipartisan resolution that thanks the Boulder Police Department, that thanks the FBI? The purpose of these resolutions is to unite the congress, not divide it.' Neguse and other members of the Colorado congressional delegation — including two Republicans — introduced their own resolution condemning the attack last week. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said the Evans resolution was 'not a serious effort.' 'Who is this guy? He's not seriously concerned with combating antisemitism in America,' Jeffries said. 'This is not a serious effort. This guy is going to be a one-term member of Congress. He's a complete and total embarrassment.' Soliman was charged with 118 counts of attempted murder after he threw Molotov cocktails at a group of people who were gathered peacefully and calling for the release of Israeli hostages taken by Hamas amid the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. He was also charged with a federal hate crime after acknowledging that he planned the attack for a year and said he 'walked to kill all Zionist people.' In a statement on X after the vote, Greene said she voted 'present' on Van Drew's resolution because Congress has not condemned hate crimes against other groups of Americans. 'Antisemitic hate crimes are wrong, but so are all hate crimes. Yet Congress never votes on hate crimes committed against white people, Christians, men, the homeless, or countless others,' Greene wrote. 'Tonight, the House passed two more antisemitism-related resolutions, the 20th and 21st I've voted on since taking office. Meanwhile, Americans from every background are being murdered — even in the womb — and Congress stays silent. We don't vote on endless resolutions defending them.' 'Prioritizing one group of Americans and/or one foreign country above our own people is fueling resentment and actually driving more division, including antisemitism,' she added. 'These crimes are horrific and easy for me to denounce. But because of the reasons I stated above, I voted present.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Hill
10-06-2025
- Politics
- The Hill
House approves pair of resolutions condemning antisemitic attack in Colorado
The House on Monday approved a pair of resolutions condemning the antisemitism attack in Boulder, Co., as the chamber looks to crack down on the spate of incidents targeting Jewish individuals. The first resolution, led by Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.), was adopted in a 400-0-2 vote, with just Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) voting 'present.' The second measure, spearheaded by Rep. Gabe Evans (R-Colo.), cleared the chamber in a 280-113-6 vote, with 113 Republicans voting 'no.' 'Antisemitic violence will not be ignored, excused, or tolerated in the United States of America,' Van Drew wrote on X after the vote. While both measures were adopted in a bipartisan fashion, the resolution sponsored by Evans drew Democratic ire. Lawmakers were frustrated that Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.), who represents Boulder, was not included as a co-sponsor of the legislation. Some also took issue with the inclusion of details about the suspect, Mohamed Sabry Soliman's, immigration status. Evans' resolution also said the attack 'demonstrates the dangers of not removing from the country aliens who fail to comply with the terms of their visas,' leaning into the politically polarizing issue of immigration. And it 'expresses gratitude' to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement 'for protecting the homeland.' 'In times like these I would have hoped that my colleagues would be willing to come together to properly honor the victims, to condemn antisemitism as I have said and as our resolution does. It's not hard to do the right thing, Mr. Speaker,' Neguse said on the House floor. 'And the question that Mr. Evans should answer is why? Why not join his two other Republican colleagues in Colorado and join the bipartisan resolution that thanks the Boulder Police Department, that thanks the FBI? The purpose of these resolutions is to unite the congress, not divide it.' Neguse and other members of the Colorado congressional delegation — including two Republicans — introduced their own resolution condemning the attack last week. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said the Evans resolution was 'not a serious effort.' 'Who is this guy? He's not seriously concerned with combating antisemitism in America,' Jeffries said. 'This is not a serious effort. This guy is going to be a one-term member of Congress. He's a complete and total embarrassment.' Soliman was charged with 118 counts of attempted murder after he threw Molotov cocktails at a group of people who were gathered peacefully and calling for the release of Israeli hostages taken by Hamas amid the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. He was also charged with a federal hate crime after acknowledging that he planned the attack for a year and said he 'walked to kill all Zionist people.' In a statement on X after the vote, Greene said she voted 'present' on Van Drew's resolution because Congress has not condemned hate crimes against other groups of Americans. 'Antisemitic hate crimes are wrong, but so are all hate crimes. Yet Congress never votes on hate crimes committed against white people, Christians, men, the homeless, or countless others,' Greene wrote. 'Tonight, the House passed two more antisemitism-related resolutions, the 20th and 21st I've voted on since taking office. Meanwhile, Americans from every background are being murdered — even in the womb — and Congress stays silent. We don't vote on endless resolutions defending them.' 'Prioritizing one group of Americans and/or one foreign country above our own people is fueling resentment and actually driving more division, including antisemitism,' she added. 'These crimes are horrific and easy for me to denounce. But because of the reasons I stated above, I voted present.'
Politico
20-05-2025
- Politics
- Politico
Charges against House Dem sets up clash at immigration hearing
Members of Congress are poised for a potentially dramatic clash at a hearing Tuesday after the Department of Justice brought criminal charges against a House Democrat who protested outside a federal immigration facility. The charges against Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.) for allegedly 'assaulting, impeding and interfering with law enforcement' at that May 9 event will sharpen talking points for Republicans serving on the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Oversight as it 'examines threats to ICE Operations.' Subcommittee chair Jeff Van Drew, a New Jersey Republican, vowed in an interview Monday that 'We're going to go into … the actual scuffle itself.' Van Drew made these remarks shortly before New Jersey interim U.S. Attorney Alina Habba announced the charge against McIver. 'What happened in that scuffle?' Van Drew asked. 'What was the behavior of the individuals who were involved? Was it appropriate or not?' For Democrats, the episode at the Delaney Hall immigration detention center has become a flashpoint around oversight of President Donald Trump's hard-line immigration agenda. The DOJ's Monday announcement intensifies their accusations that the administration is intent on punishing its critics. 'Charging Members of Congress for doing our jobs is a dangerous precedent to set,' said the top Democrat on the oversight subcommittee, Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas, in a joint statement with the ranking members of the other House Judiciary subpanels. 'It reveals the increasingly authoritarian nature of this administration and its relentless, illegal attempts to suppress any dissent or oversight, including from judges.' The standoff stems from a visit McIver and fellow New Jersey Democratic Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman and Rob Menendez made earlier this month to Delaney Hall, where they attempted to inspect the Trump administration's reopened ICE detention center that contracts with the private prison company GEO Group. Critics say the facility is unfit to house up to 1,000 undocumented immigrants. A tussle erupted amid a group of demonstrators that led to the arrest of Newark's Democratic mayor, Ras Baraka, and accusations that McIver had been physically aggressive with the law enforcement officers controlling the crowd. McIver, in a statement Monday, said she and the other members were 'fulfilling our lawful oversight responsibilities … and our visit should have been peaceful and short' before 'ICE agents created an unnecessary and unsafe confrontation.' The trespassing charge against Baraka were dropped Monday, according to Habba. Van Drew said the Tuesday hearing would focus on the conditions of the Delaney Hall detention center and the people held inside the facility. He also said he believed behavior of the House Democrats was 'inappropriate.' That sentiment is being echoed inside the larger GOP Conference, where Rep. Buddy Carter (R-Ga.) has introduced a measure to strip McIver, Watson Coleman and Menendez of their committee seats. Among members of the Trump administration, former North Carolina GOP Rep. Dan Bishop — now the No. 2 at the Office of Management and Budget — likened the incident to an 'insurrection,' a phrase commonly used to refer to the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Bishop also said the incident was 'Worse than 9/11.' A House GOP aide also said Republicans plan to brandish the incident throughout their remarks and lines of questioning of witnesses, including former ICE and Department of Homeland Security officials. The proceedings could mark the latest escalation in Republican attempts to frame Democrats as impediments to efforts to crack down on illegal immigration, a key pillar of Trump's messaging on the campaign trail. Democrats, meanwhile, are expected to zero in on their targeted colleagues, too — but in a different way than the GOP. 'The Republicans' focus of the incident at the Delaney Hall Detention Center only raises the question surrounding Trump's intimidation campaign against Members of Congress: what is this Administration so afraid of?' a spokesperson for Judiciary Committee Democrats said in a statement. 'We've already seen that the Trump Administration is wrongfully detaining U.S. citizens, unlawfully deporting people without due process, and conducting indiscriminate enforcement actions.' Jason Houser, a former ICE chief of staff who is set to be the Democrats' witness Tuesday, said Republicans can use the Delaney Hall episode to portray Democrats as obstacles to immigration enforcement, but it doesn't change the fact that Republicans are still ignoring real problems with the U.S. immigration policy. 'You have an administration not fixing the totality of the immigration system,' said Houser in an interview. 'What you have here is a bunch of political operatives in the White House demanding certain things to be done in a certain way.'
CNN
27-04-2025
- Politics
- CNN
GOP centrists borrow hardliner tactics to sway Trump agenda
Speaker Mike Johnson's agenda has been repeatedly seized by a group of GOP hardliners who have used the party's razor-thin margin in the House to score their own political wins. Now, Republicans from the party's center are prepared to try the same. As Congress returns Monday to the enormous task of drafting President Donald Trump's first policy package, Johnson will be hearing an earful from an even larger faction of his conference with big red lines on the bill: the middle. And those GOP centrists insist that unlike in past votes, they won't be the ones forced to swallow whatever leadership puts to a floor vote. 'There is a strong and loud group of us that are not going to be bullied into supporting something that we don't agree with,' Rep. Mike Lawler of New York, whose 2022 upset helped propel Republicans into the majority, told CNN. 'The only reason we have the gavels is because of folks like me.' Many of these members — a loose coalition of several dozen centrists, purple seat and pro-governing Republicans — told CNN they are tired of the House GOP's longtime playbook in which right-wing members have refused to compromise and, in effect, have cornered Johnson into supporting their own ideas. And they say the stakes are even higher now, as Republicans prepare for a potentially difficult 2026 midterm cycle that some already fear could wipe out their House majority. Their biggest concern now is preserving benefits for Medicaid, which has become a target of party fiscal hawks as they seek to cut at least $1.5 trillion from government programs — a large chunk of which must come from federal health programs. But the centrists have plenty of other priorities, from federal nutritional programs to state and local tax deductions to clean energy programs — and policy fights are about to come to a head in the House in the next month. One centrist — Rep. Jeff Van Drew, a self-described 'populist Republican' — is already flexing his political muscle. He's spoken with Trump about Medicaid four times, including once in recent days. He was also one of 12 members who signed a rare public letter to their leadership demanding that they preserve the health program benefits in a final bill. (Behind the scenes, more members were supportive but decided not to put their names on it, according to three people familiar with the discussions.) Van Drew said he will not vote for any bill that 'cuts eligible recipients — whether they be entities such as hospitals and nursing homes — or human beings' from Medicaid. The New Jersey Republican said a group of right-wing Republicans have repeatedly dictated their own agenda to leadership, but that he and others would not – in this case – accept 'business as usual' for the sake of their constituents and their House GOP majority. 'You don't take stuff away from people who are legally and appropriately receiving it. Don't do that. That's bad,' Van Drew said. 'If you want to do a one-hour tutorial on how to lose your majority, do that. Go ahead and do that stuff and you can write a game plan on how to lose your majority.' The party's political fault lines on Medicaid are bursting into public view with just weeks to go until Republicans are expected to release their first draft of the plan. The panel charged with finding those savings — the Energy and Commerce Committee — will meet the week of May 5 and the GOP will have to publicly show how they plan to shave $880 billion in their jurisdiction. For weeks, GOP lawmakers and senior aides have stressed to party leaders that it would be a terrible idea — both policy-wise and politically — to go after Medicaid, according to multiple people who have been part of the conversations. The program enrolls more than 80 million Americans, including many who voted for Trump. Democrats have already signaled they'll seek to make it a defining issue of the 2026 midterms. The president said in a recent interview with Time magazine that he would veto a bill that cuts Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and Republicans have argued there are ways to cut hundreds of billions in wasted money on federal health programs without slashing Medicaid benefits – but it remains unclear where those cuts would come from. Top Republicans believe they have found some politically palatable ways to trim spending — including potential new rules requiring recipients to work to get coverage, rules requiring recipients to reapply every six months to ensure eligibility and tightening existing rules that ban coverage to anyone who is in the country illegally. (One GOP member estimated that those alone could have saved a half-trillion dollars over a decade — but still far short of leadership's $880 billion goal.) Last week, Georgia Rep. Austin Scott, however, reignited a political firestorm in the conference when he told Fox News that Republicans are eying big reductions to the federal government's matching funds to Medicaid, which was expanded in many states under the Affordable Care Act. That was something that many of his colleagues believed had already been ruled out, according to two people briefed on the discussions. 'There have been a gazillion things talked about but with very little specificity. Now is the time in the game for people to actually put proposals on the table,' one GOP member said. The difficulty for Republicans on programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, will be finding ways to reduce wasteful spending in these massive federal programs without causing any disruptions to those who rely on those benefits. Some Republicans are anxiously thinking back to the 2018 midterms, when their party was similarly accused of trying to take away health care for millions. 'We know how the movie ends,' a senior GOP aide said of that election. 'We lost 40 seats.' For months, Johnson and his leadership team have punted their toughest choices about how to proceed with Trump's 'one big, beautiful bill,' papering over major divisions within their ranks. Now Johnson and his leadership team are eying a vote on the House's version of Trump's agenda as soon as the week of May 19, though few in the party are taking that self-imposed deadline seriously. But even if the House can overcome deep party divisions to move this quickly, the Senate is expected to move far slower. And that reality has further stoked anxiety among GOP centrists who do not want to walk the plank on a contentious bill that dies across the Capitol in the Senate. The next month in the House will consist of marathon committee meetings and markups to hash out policy — including trillions in tax cuts, massive increases in border and military funding and sharp spending cuts to federal programs. So far, GOP leaders have kept any details largely under wraps. That includes another issue that will be critical for Republicans like Lawler and his New York colleagues: the state and local tax deduction issue, known as SALT. Republicans from New York, New Jersey, Illinois and California have spent months crafting a compromise to restore a state and local tax deduction that was capped in Trump's 2017 tax bill. These members are waiting on leaders of the House Ways and Means Committee to present a final proposal on what the change may look like — language that will almost certainly cause headaches within the conservative House Freedom Caucus as well. Most Republicans in Congress — including those in the GOP controlled Senate — hail from lower-tax states and therefore detest the expensive policy change. House conservatives have balked at some of the proposals in the past to raise the deduction. But Republicans like Lawler and fellow New York Rep. Nick LaLota have insisted they will not support a bill that doesn't include major SALT changes back home. 'I would not have voted for the 2017 tax bill if I were in Congress. It is unreasonable to ask me to lend my vote to extend the status quo,' said LaLota, who won his Long Island seat in 2022. 'At the end of the day, it's going to take 218 votes in the House. The fact is, with a very slim majority, the majority was delivered by seats like mine,' Lawler added. 'We're not going to do things that harm our districts or our constituents. The fact is, there's going to need to be compromise along the way.'
