House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) on Tuesday took a shot at Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) for dismissing constituent concerns that President Trump’s sweeping domestic agenda — including Medicaid cuts — would cause people to die.
Ernst churned headlines during a town hall last week, when a member of the audience warned that “people will die” as a result of the proposed health care cuts. Ernst responded, “Well, we’re all going to die.”
Jeffries, who has hammered the Republicans’ “big, beautiful bill” since its inception earlier in the year, said Americans are wise enough to comprehend the inevitability of death. But death shouldn’t come prematurely because people lose health care coverage as a result of public policy — as will happen, he says, under the GOP bill.
“Yes, Joni, we know — the American people know — that at some point in their lives they are going to pass away,” Jeffries told reporters in the Capitol.
“The cause of death should not be Republican cruelty,” he added. “The cause of death should not be this disgusting abomination of a bill. The cause of death should not be the reckless Republican effort to rip away health care from millions of people, and rip food out of the mouths of starving children or veterans in the United States of America.”
The House last month passed its version of Trump’s domestic agenda, featuring an extension of tax cuts, a crackdown on immigration and a boost in domestic energy production. To offset the huge costs of the tax cuts, Republicans proposed hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to Medicaid.
Supporters of that design say it merely establishes tougher work requirements to prevent fraud. Critics contend the changes create onerous barriers that will leave even working Medicaid patients without health coverage. In one analysis, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that, under the House plan, 7.6 million people would lose health coverage over the next decade.
Democrats got a big boost on Tuesday when Elon Musk, the billionaire who had, until recently, been leading Trump’s efforts to reduce the size of the federal government, bashed the Republican bill as a “disgusting abomination.”
Jeffries was quick to align himself with his former political adversary — “Breaking news, Elon Musk and I agree with each other,” he said Tuesday — although the reasons behind the opposition are likely very different between the two figures.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
