Within the first few minutes of Tuesday’s House Committee on Energy and Commerce hearing on planned Republican Medicaid cuts—which would render more than 8 million Americans uninsured—a contingent of protesters entered the room in Washington, DC’s Rayburn Building where members of Congress had gathered. The protesters, shouting “No cuts to Medicaid!” represented groups including the disability rights protest organization ADAPT. Twenty-five demonstrators were arrested and removed from the building.
The committee’s proposal for extensive cuts to federal health funding, including sweeping Medicaid cuts, are estimated by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office to likely “reduce the number of people with health insurance by at least 8.6 million” nationwide. The legislation would also enact more than $700 billion dollars in health-related cuts, in addition to also promoting work requirements for people on Medicaid—which tends only to serve as a means of of kicking them off, even though federal data shows that a majority of adults on Medicaid already work full- or part-time.
After the initial protests, committee Chair Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.), who released the legislation on Sunday evening—Mother’s Day—threatened the protesters with arrest for disrupting the hearing, calling the outcry illegal and “a criminal offense.”
The Energy and Commerce Committee’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), asked the Capitol Police to avoid making arrests, especially given the subject at hand. “People feel very strongly because they know they’re losing their health care, and [because of] the cruelty that comes from the Republican proposal,” Pallone said.
Pallone went unheeded. The Hill reported that more than two dozen protesters were arrested for civil disobedience, including wheelchair users. One protester, while being escorted out of the room by the police, shouted, “You will kill me,” according to the Independent’s Eric Garcia.
It wasn’t just people in the room who were loudly protesting against Medicaid cuts—other protesters demanding that Medicaid cuts be halted filled the hallway.
BREAKING: Chaos at the Rayburn Building. A Congressional hearing just stopped cold as protesters flooded the halls to fight Medicaid cuts. Capitol Police are warning of arrests. The situation is developing… #NoCutsToMedicaid pic.twitter.com/cRAfsppI4U
— CALL TO ACTIVISM (@CalltoActivism) May 13, 2025
Back in 2017, civil disobedience coordinated by ADAPT helped halt the GOP’s plan to destroy the Affordable Care Act: As activist Colleen Flanagan told the 19th’s Sara Luterman, “We risked injury. We put our bodies on the line to demand that they save our health care.”
Now, it’s a wait-and-see game to determine whether a similar fightback by disabled people can help stop destructive cuts to Medicaid.
