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 “Massive Lovely Invoice.”
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Viewers members started yelling at Flood and booing him when he talked about Medicaid and the influence of Trump’s sweeping home coverage legislation on hospitals in Nebraska. Flood argued that there’s “a number of misinformation” in regards to the “One Massive Lovely Invoice Act,” which no Democrats voted for when it made its means via Congress this summer season.
Later he confronted a query that recommended he was masking up information associated to Epstein. Flood responded that he helps releasing the information 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 Courtroom resolve in late September whether or not it is 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 printed figures exhibiting that hiring in america had slowed considerably in current months. Flood recommended he might need dealt with the state of affairs otherwise, including that he doesn’t know “all the small print” about McEntarfer’s firing.
“I don’t know what the state of affairs 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 aspect was. I’ll say this, although, if all that particular person did was get the info on the market, if all that, and I don’t know that’s the case, but when that’s all they did, I’d not have fired her.”
A number of Republican senators, in addition to economists and statisticians, took difficulty 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 have interaction with viewers members on these subjects, he was largely met with extra protests.
Attendees requested at the very least three totally 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 referred to 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 People voted for Trump and never for Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.
“People voted for a, for a border that’s safe, and I assist the president imposing our immigration legal guidelines, which, by the best way, had been written by Congress,” he added, prompting extra boos.
The Nebraska Democratic Occasion inspired individuals to attend Flood’s city corridor, telling voters within the 1st Congressional District on social media, “you understand what to do!”
The social gathering additionally inspired attendance at Flood’s final in-person city corridor within the state, in Could, 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 12 months with 60% of the vote.
