Congressman Mike Flood said he wanted to talk about President Donald Trump’s signature legislation and declared there was “a lot of misinformation” surrounding it.
That’s when the shouting started, continuing for more than an hour as the Republican lawmaker faced a rowdy town hall crowd in Lincoln, Nebraska, on Aug. 4, full of people irate about Trump’s new bill and other policies coming from his administration.
Audience members in the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Kimball Recital Hall pressed Flood on releasing the Jeffrey Epstein files, accused Trump of “fascism,” and raised concerns about cuts to government programs. They yelled and booed continuously as Flood spoke.
Trump carried Nebraska by 20 percentage points in 2024, and Flood won his district, which includes Lincoln and other communities in the eastern part of the state, by the same margin in 2024. But the town hall reflected an energized opposition to the new administration.
Trump’s top legislative priority, a package that includes sweeping tax cuts and deep reductions to spending on programs such as Medicaid, was a frequent target.
One woman called the measure a “monstrosity.”
The president signed the new law on July 4. With the House in recess until September, lawmakers are now home in their districts, hearing directly from voters about the legislation.
Polls indicate the measure is unpopular. Trump and the GOP have been gearing up to sell voters on it ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. The town hall highlighted the challenges they face.
The crowd unloaded on Flood, who tried to preempt some of the criticism by opening the event with a defense of the law, lauding the tax reductions and focusing on Medicaid work requirements and a fund to help rural hospitals.
“More than anything, I truly believe this bill protects Medicaid for the future,” Flood said.
The crowd booed, and the criticism kept coming.
The law is projected to cut $1 trillion mostly from Medicaid and Affordable Care Act insurance plans and eliminate insurance coverage for 11.8 million people over the next decade, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
A person raised concerns about thousands of Nebraskans losing health insurance coverage. Other constituents focused on the CBO projection that the law will increase the national debt by $3.4 trillion over a decade.
With the Trump administration embroiled in a controversy over releasing government records about Epstein, a wealthy financier who died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges, one question posed to Flood: “Why are you covering up the Epstein files?”
Flood said he favors releasing the records.
The congressman was also pressed about how to ensure the accuracy of the nation’s economic data after Trump decided to fire Erika McEntarfer, the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, following the agency’s release of a report showing weak job creation.
Flood said he didn’t know the details, but that “if all that person did was get the data out there… and I don’t know that’s the case, but if that’s all they did, I would not have fired her.”
“But I don’t know because things are complicated,” Flood added.
Contributing: Ken Alltucker
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Mike Flood booed by Nebraska constituents after defending Trump
