“There’s no cut in Medicaid,” Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. yelled numerous times over the past couple days as he testified in front of a handful of different congressional committees.
That line, and his refusal to acknowledge the historic Medicaid cuts Republicans enacted in last year’s reconciliation bill — dubbed the One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) — was one of the few things that stayed consistent over the hours and hours of testimony he gave on Capitol Hill this week.
That and an almost verbatim opening statement he delivered to each committee he appeared before.
Despite the spin Kennedy spun during congressional testimony — and Republicans’ purposefully misleading statements on Medicaid cuts in recent weeks — the devastating cuts to the social safety net program enacted in the OBBBA are very real and have serious consequences for everyday Americans who rely on the health care program.
As Democrats questioned him about the impacts of the cuts to Medicaid, Kennedy repeatedly referred to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) February 2026 baseline projections that show an increase in Medicaid spending to suggest the program hadn’t actually been slashed. But budget experts point out to TPM that, by default, Medicaid spending increases naturally due to medical inflation — which outpaces normal inflation — and population growth.
“The fact that spending is still rising doesn’t mean there were no cuts,” Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, told TPM.
The reality is OBBBA cut Medicaid benefits for millions of people. The CBO has laid out estimates on the number of Americans who will lose health insurance as a result of those cuts several times since the passage of the reconciliation package.
“Make no mistake: CBO continues to estimate huge cuts to #Medicaid from OBBBA, last year’s reconciliation bill, despite Trump Admin officials’ false claims otherwise,” Gideon Lukens, senior fellow and director of research and data analysis at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said on Wednesday.
Lukens also pointed to the CBO’s most recent baseline projections that show seven million people will lose their Affordable Care Act Medicaid expansion coverage between 2025 and 2032. CBO also projects that the number of people who are uninsured will rise by roughly 11 million by 2032.
— Emine Yücel
Republicans Warn That Gerrymandering May be Bad, Actually
In the wake of Virginia voters approving new congressional maps that will give Democrats a newfound advantage in winning U.S. House seats in the state, Republican members of Congress are speaking out about the nationwide gerrymandering war that President Trump kicked off more than a year ago. It started with the president pressuring Texas to engage in mid-cycle redistricting — that is drawing new congressional district lines outside of the standard post-Census schedule in order to give Republicans an advantage in holding the U.S. House in the midterms.
Texas legislators, of course, caved to pressure from Trump — though state Democrats did all they could to prevent the passage of new maps, including fleeing the state at one point to try to prevent state Republicans from reaching a quorum to hold a vote. The new maps are expected to give Republicans five new seats in Texas. It set off a nationwide battle — Trump urged more Republican-controlled state legislatures to follow Texas’ lead while a handful of Democratic-led states worked to offset the damage Trump was doing. Virginia was one of those states. Voters approved a Dem-led redistricting referendum on Tuesday evening that paves the way for Democrats to flip as many as four seats in the state.
Some more moderate Republicans in Congress are, now, speaking out against Trump’s crusade, per Politico.
Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) said in an interview he warned the White House months ago the effort could backfire, while Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) suggested the outcome of the nearly yearlong saga should have been utterly predictable.
“Chess players think three to four moves ahead,” he said. “It doesn’t appear this happened.”
Trump himself, meanwhile, is sharing a similar sentiment: “I don’t know if you know what gerrymandering is, but it’s not good,” he reportedly told supporters Tuesday.
— Nicole LaFond
Judge Dismisses Separate Kash Patel Defamation Suit
A federal judge in Texas dismissed a defamation lawsuit that FBI Director Kash Patel brought against Frank Figliuzzi, a former FBI assistant director who later became an MSNBC contributor, and who made remarks on the MSNBC, now MS NOW, about Patel spending time at “nightclubs.”
“Yeah, well, reportedly, he’s been visible at nightclubs far more than he has been on the seventh floor of the Hoover building,” Figliuzzi said on Morning Joe last year.
Patel sued for defamation. But U.S. District Judge George Hanks Jr. said in his ruling that the statement amounts to “rhetorical hyperbole” and therefore cannot be defamation.
“Figliuzzi’s statement, when taken in context, cannot have been perceived by a person of ordinary intelligence as stating actual facts about Patel,” he said. “A person of reasonable intelligence and learning would not have taken his statement literally: that Dir. Patel has actually spent more hours physically in a nightclub than he has spent physically in his office building.”
This comes just days after Patel sued The Atlantic for defamation seeking $250 million, after it published a story alleging he drinks alcohol to excess and is absent from his job. Patel has vehemently denied the allegations, calling the article a “sweeping, malicious and defamatory hit piece” in his lawsuit.
— Nicole LaFond
Dems Push Trump Admin to Refund Consumers for Tariffs at Budget Hearing
House Democrats took an opportunity Wednesday to re-up their populist proposal urging the Trump administration to repay consumers who paid for goods with inflated prices because of the president’s now-illegal tariffs.
The push came as U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer testified before the House Ways and Means Committee about the full scope of Trump’s trade agenda. Representatives from both parties highlighted the ways the president’s tariff scheme has made life more difficult for agricultural workers, manufacturers and importers in their districts. But some Democrats tried to push Greer to commit to using the tariff refunds, which the administration was ordered to issue after the Supreme Court struck down Trump’s emergency tariffs, to repay consumers, not businesses.
“I’d like to get a commitment from you, Mr. Ambassador, to work with me and my office to make sure that we’re able to get that money back to the consumers who paid it,” said Rep. Mike Thompson (D-CA).
Thompson introduced legislation in February to refund U.S. consumers via a tax credit, legislation that is, for now, largely symbolic because the bill has no chance of passing the Republican-controlled House or Senate.
“I’m anxious to find out how the consumer is going to receive their refunds,” said Rep. Richard Neal (D-MA), the ranking member of the committee.
And Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA) compared targeted tariff exemptions that multinational corporations received after cozying up to Trump — certain electronics received tariff exemptions after leaders at tech companies including Apple, Meta and Amazon donated to Trump’s inauguration, for example — to the lack of relief from increased prices shoppers got at home.
“Everyday people like my constituents in Southern California watch in disgust as this administration refuses to do anything to refund them the money they were forced to spend due to tariffs we knew were illegal all along,” Chu said.
Wednesday’s rhetoric is part of a continued, albeit sporadic, campaign from Dems in an election year to galvanize voters by relating tariff-related inflation to affordability issues more broadly. It remains to be seen whether shoppers (i.e. voters) will begin to view individual tariff refunds as an issue they can influence at the ballot box. Greer’s response to Thompson’s search for a commitment to get tariff money back to consumers suggested the administration is not seriously considering the issue: He referenced the Customs and Border Protection portal — which is available exclusively to corporate importers.
— Layla A. Jones
Consider Joining TPM As a Memeber!
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If you need more convincing, we have a video for you: TPM founder Josh Marshall sat down with Elizabeth Spiers, a founding editor of Gawker and a contributing writer for the New York Times Opinion section, to discuss why independent media matters more than ever.
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— Nicole LaFond
In Case You Missed It
Josh Marshall: The Scale of Iran’s Advantage Comes Into View
Morning Memo: The Latest DOJ Travesty Is a Dire Warning of the Grave Dangers Ahead
From Khaya Himmelman, this morning: ‘Fairness Won’: Virginia Voters Just Gave Dems a Win in the National Redistricting Wars
Where Things Stand: DeSantis Is ‘Begging’ Trump for Something to Do With His Life
Yesterday’s Most Read Story
EXPOSED: 2 CIA Officers Die After Anti-Drug Op in Mexico
What We Are Reading
The Devil Wears Prada Inflation Index
What I Learned About Billionaires at Jeff Bezos’s Private Retreat
Iran’s military more capable than Trump administration is publicly acknowledging, sources say
Join TPM as a “ Memeber “ ? Is that just a typo or is there some new phrase out there that refers to memes now ?
Per CNN Secretary of the Navy John Phelan has resigned “ effective immediately “. Hard to know what to think of that, he was a Trump supporting businessman with no military experience so totally unqualified for the job to begin with. Now he’s suddenly leaving, gotta wonder what’s going on behind the curtain
I believe RFKjr’s pontifications about as well as those of trump. Which is zero.
I bet it’s a case of “holy shitstains… I gotta actually work at this job an stuff”. And it is in the middle of a war after all.
Hi darr ! Hope you are back home and feeling better. RFK Jr is spun so far off the wheel he might as well be orbiting elsewhere. I’ve seen some pics today showing an animated confrontation between he and AOC but seen nothing on what it was about. Hopefully someone on The Hive will have details