Rep. Mike Flood, R-Neb., held a city corridor Monday that began with boos shortly after he took the stage and ended with chants of “vote him out” when it ended.
In between, Flood was persistently heckled as he responded to questions on releasing extra data on Jeffrey Epstein, President Donald Trump’s firing of the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner and cuts to Medicaid within the GOP’s “Huge Stunning Invoice.”
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Viewers members started yelling at Flood and booing him when he talked about Medicaid and the impression of Trump’s sweeping home coverage regulation on hospitals in Nebraska. Flood argued that there’s “numerous misinformation” in regards to the “One Huge Stunning Invoice Act,” which no Democrats voted for when it made its approach by means of Congress this summer time.
Later he confronted a query that urged he was overlaying up recordsdata associated to Epstein. Flood responded that he helps releasing the recordsdata and can co-sponsor a nonbinding Home decision calling for his or her publication.
He added that he helps an effort led by Home Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., to have Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell sit for a deposition.
Comer final week postponed Maxwell’s deposition, beforehand scheduled for Aug. 11, till at the very least October to let the Supreme Court docket determine in late September whether or not it’s going to assessment her case.
Flood additionally weighed in on the firing of BLS chief Erika McEntarfer, whom Trump dismissed Friday shortly after the company revealed figures exhibiting that hiring in the US had slowed considerably in current months. Flood urged he might need dealt with the scenario otherwise, including that he doesn’t know “all the small print” about McEntarfer’s firing.
“I don’t know what the scenario was with the Division of Labor particular person. Neither do you. I don’t know. I don’t know,” Flood mentioned. “I can let you know I’ve been an employer for lots of years, and there’s all the time two sides to each story, and I don’t know what that facet was. I’ll say this, although, if all that particular person did was get the information on the market, if all that, and I don’t know that’s the case, but when that’s all they did, I might not have fired her.”
A number of Republican senators, in addition to economists and statisticians, took subject with Trump’s terminating McEntarfer final week.
Viewers members yelled, jeered and booed all through the occasion, with chants of “free Palestine” and “tax the wealthy” and, through the city corridor’s conclusion, calls to “vote him out.” When Flood tried to interact with viewers members on these matters, he was largely met with extra protests.
Attendees requested at the very least three completely different questions in regards to the Division of Homeland Safety and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, particularly about Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz,” which one particular person known as “Alligator Auschwitz.”
Inquiring in regards to the immigration detention facility in Florida, an attendee requested Flood, “How a lot do taxpayers must pay for a fascist nation?” Flood responded that almost all of Individuals voted for Trump and never for Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.
“Individuals voted for a, for a border that’s safe, and I assist the president imposing our immigration legal guidelines, which, by the best way, have been written by Congress,” he added, prompting extra boos.
The Nebraska Democratic Social gathering inspired individuals to attend Flood’s city corridor, telling voters within the 1st Congressional District on social media, “you understand what to do!”
The occasion additionally inspired attendance at Flood’s final in-person city corridor within the state, in Might, when he was grilled by viewers members and at one level conceded he had not learn a invoice in full earlier than he voted for it.
Flood was first elected to Congress in 2022. He gained re-election final yr with 60% of the vote.
