Column By John Young
With a head of white curls and a face of demurred concern, Rosina Paolini asked for quiet.
She wanted to ask, and she wanted to hear – her representative in Congress, Rep. Mike Flood, as he dodged truth like his party’s leader does in every utterance.
Paolini was among the 700-plus citizens who flooded a Lincoln, Neb., auditorium to denounce actions Republicans in Congress have consecrated with blind consent to this president’s dictatorial designs. We will call her the Angel of Outrage.
Her concerns weren’t partisan, she said.
“This is about issues,” she said, pursing her lips, “as we’re about to lose our democracy.”
There wasn’t anything specific in her question, as she had too many. What she wanted to point out was that she’d sent many letters and emails to Flood’s office and gotten “crickets” in response.
That just about says it with the blind bull rush to make this president’s every impulse into law – from illegal Depression-era tariffs to unconstitutional snatching and disappearing of immigrants, to the evisceration of environmental laws, the end of life-saving foreign aid, and the indefensible kibosh put on scientific research, medical and environmental.
Add what the Horrible No Good Very Bad Bill does to Medicaid and SNAP, food for families.
Flood portrayed himself as a friend of Medicaid, as the audience booed. He said the cuts in question were aimed at “people who refuse to go to work.” Garbage.
I’m sorry, Mr. Pious Lawmaker, but there aren’t $1 trillion worth (the reductions over 10 years) of those kinds of people in our country. This is the “welfare Cadillacs” canard all over again.
Only about 4 percent of Medicaid recipients are unemployed. The rest are busting their butts trying to survive. And anyway, the whole idea behind Medicaid is to help the poorest Americans so they don’t wither and die.
Rep. Flood implied that the magic elixir to come from all those unnecessary tax cuts would mean more people would have employer-provided insurance.
To loudly paraphrase the crowd: Hooey.
The Horrible No Good Very Bad Bill is designed to make it harder for recipients to stay on Medicaid, not simply based on work requirements, with which most could comply, but with onerous twice-a-year reporting.
Flood wanted to make this about freeloaders brazenly exploiting taxpayers’ good graces. This audience wasn’t having it.
Paolini sure wasn’t. She actually knows the population Flood disparages. She works in a food co-op that administers SNAP. She sees poverty every day.
As she pointed out, the issue regarding the soundness of Medicaid (and by extension the Affordable Care Act) isn’t unemployment but underemployment – people working two or more jobs to survive.
Speaking on MSNBC after Paolini gained notoriety at the Nebraska event, she invited Flood to come and see what she sees – in particular, that so many of the people she serves don’t even have transportation.
This is reality. Paolini’s is the response to the Republican droids programmed by the faceless villains of Project 2025 and the president who said he had no idea what that was about. One more lie among thousands.
One of the most disturbing things about the moment is that the Melon Felon atop our government is acting to dismantle every means of institutional accountability Congress has installed, from independent budget and statistical agencies to inspectors general whose job is to investigate corruption.
We can hardly expect the Supreme Court to be a non-partial arbiter, either.
So, where is accountability? It is in the mirror. You and me. Foremost, it is being informed. So much has happened and is happening. The tendency is to throw up one’s hands.
Ignorance and apathy are why we are in these straits — with a man in our highest office only because he ran out the clock on the criminal cases against him.
But an opportunity to put a check on him is right around the corner with congressional elections next year, a time when marginal voters will stay home – no presidential election — and when the most concerned among us will have the biggest say.
Republicans are scared to death of the most informed and engaged Americans, those embodied by the lady in the white curls.
As much as we desire a response from those now in power, what we most need, as demonstrated in red-state Nebraska, is a response from those who can change things at the polls in 2026.
Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email him at jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.
The opinions expressed in this editorial are those of the author.
