Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-CA) defended the Medicaid cuts that Congress passed as part of President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, as the lawmaker got heckled by residents in his home district at a town hall Monday night.
LaMalfa hosted the town hall in Chico, California, a Democratic college town in the otherwise Republican-leaning congressional district in Northern California. He was met with an uproar of shouting from his constituents.
“You’re out of your mind. You cut our healthcare,” one constituent yelled when LaMalfa started talking about the cuts to Medicaid and California’s Medicaid program called Medi-Cal. He was quickly booed after he mentioned Trump’s massive tax and spending law.
LaMalfa said the GOP bill makes “no cuts to the people themselves” benefiting from Medi-Cal and instead roots out “waste, fraud, and abuse,” a term that the Trump administration has used to describe excessive bloat in the federal government.
Town hall attendees called the House Republican a “liar” and said “healthcare is a human right.”
LaMalfa defended his record and questioned whether yelling was appropriate for the public forum.
The open hostility seen on Monday is reflective of the outrage that Republicans are facing from their constituents over the megabill’s cuts to Medicaid and other federal assistance programs.
Just last week, Rep. Mike Flood (R-NE) faced pushback at his own town hall after saying he voted to cut food stamps provided under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
“We do not have unlimited money in the United States,” he said, prompting the audience to boo.
The Congressional Budget Office recently estimated roughly 10 million people, including more than 3.4 million California residents, will lose their Medicaid coverage by 2034. Changes to SNAP benefits are also expected to reduce participation by 2.4 million people per month on average until 2034, according to the nonpartisan agency.
Unruly crowds have attended a number of Republican town halls since Congress started its weekslong summer recess. Despite the angry chants, Republicans continue to defend the Medicaid reforms and say the disruptions may actually be helping their cause.
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The heckling at Republican town halls has been persistent for months, often generating news headlines. In May, raucous crowds disrupted two events held by Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY). The battleground Republican has said the behavior comes directly from the “Democratic playbook,” suggesting Democrats are orchestrating the outrage.
“People have a right to come and ask their representatives questions,” Lawler said on Fox News’s Hannity in May. “But the fact is, these folks don’t want to hear answers. They don’t want to know what I have to say or why I may vote the way I vote on a certain issue. They want to come and protest.”