Republican Senator Joni Ernst’s meeting with her constituents went off the rails on Friday when she faced angry protests over Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.”

In one jaw-dropping moment, the senator gave a flippant response, further agitating the crowd when being pressed over the cuts to Medicaid and other benefits like food assistance.

While Ernst was talking about who was eligible for benefits, someone in the audience could be heard raising concerns that people would die.

“Well, we all are going to die, so for heaven’s sake,” Ernst responded with a smile.

A rumble went through the crowd. It was a standout moment as many constituents took issue with the bill passed in the House and now headed to the Senate for cutting Medicaid and other benefits.

Sen. Joni Ernst was pressed over Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill” and accused of being a coward at her town hall in Butler County, Iowa on Friday. C-Span

The fiery town hall in rural Butler County, Iowa, is the latest in a series of Republican events where lawmakers have returned home from Washington to be lambasted by livid constituents.

In other vitriolic confrontations at the Iowa meeting, one angry attendee blasted the Trump administration’s actions as a “Nazi blitzkrieg” and another branded Ernst a “coward.”

The Congressional Budget Office estimates millions will lose Medicaid coverage, but Ernst denied the legislation cuts the low-income insurance program and insisted the bill would make it so people who are not eligible would not be receiving benefits.

The “big, beautiful bill” was the priority for many of the attendees who showed up early on a Friday to give the senator an earful, but it was not the only matter that got constituents going.

One man, a teacher who said he served in the Navy, told Ernst to her face that Trump is destroying the federal government and claimed the House and Senate had been “rendered useless.”

“You folks have let it happen. You sat back and done nothing,” he said as the crowd applauded. “The House is the best example. We’re still seeing on the Senate. It looks like there’s a little gumption to fight back against the new dictator. But this has been like a Nazi blitzkrieg and you folks have sat back and done nothing.”

He then blasted her for voting for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and accused her of being scared.

“Are you afraid of Trump, are you corrupt like Trump, or are you just at the point you don’t care anymore, and that’s why you don’t do anything?” he asked.

His question prompted a round of cheers and applause from the crowd.

“Obviously, I don’t agree because I don’t think our country is being destroyed,” Ernst responded as the crowd grumbled.

Another person shouted about squealing as Ernst talked about her focus on government spending. The senator fired back, saying: “I’m not squealing, ma’am.”

Sen. Joni Ernst was confronted at a fiery town hall in Butler County on Friday with a series of challenging questions over her support for President Trump’s agenda and work in Washington. C-Span

At another point, a constituent stood up to ask her about a provision of the House bill that would restrict the federal courts from enforcing contempt orders and warned about it unraveling the government’s system of checks and balances.

He asked her if she would pledge not to vote for the bill or any other that contains the ”poisonous provision.”

Ernst argued that while the House wrote one version of the bill, the Senate would have its own version of the legislation. She claimed that due to Senate rules, their reconciliation bill has to stick to mandatory spending.

“I don’t know anything about that provision that talks about mandatory spending or revenues, so a lot of what has been wrapped up into the House bill will be flushed out in what we call the Byrd bath in the Senate,” Ernst said.

However, her answer did not satisfy attendees in the auditorium who shouted out follow-up questions. Ernst responded that the provision would not be in the Senate bill.

As she tried to move on to the next question, disgruntled constituents loudly disapproved and said they didn’t trust it.

Republicans’ tax-and-spending cut package faces a number of hurdles in its path to President Trump’s desk, but the state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap could be the tallest to surmount.

Tax writers on the House Ways and Means Committee initially offered to raise the cap to $30,000 for joint filers making up to $400,000 a year. But suburban Republicans from higher-tax blue states said that number wasn’t going to cut it.

Republican members of the SALT Caucus have advocated for a $62,000 cap and $124,000 for couples. GOP leadership reportedly discussed raising the cap to $40,000 for individuals and $80,000 for couples with hard-liners in their conference over the weekend.

A proposal floated late Tuesday would increase the SALT deduction cap to $40,000 — quadruple the current $10,000 cap — for individuals making $500,000 or less in income, three sources told The Hill. One source said the level would increase 1 percent a year over 10 years.

Here’s a look at what the SALT deduction cap is, how it works within the broader tax code, and why it’s controversial enough to jeopardize the entire GOP agenda.

What is the SALT cap?

SALT is a tax break that lets taxpayers deduct part of what they owe in state and local taxes from their federal tax return. Prior to 2017, the deduction was unlimited, but the tax reforms in that year capped it at up to $10,000.

That cap is worth thousands of dollars to millions of typically higher-income taxpayers, who itemize their deductions instead of taking the standard deduction. Different estimates from the Joint Committee on Taxation put the cost of an unlimited deduction at around $1 trillion over the next decade.

Before 2017, the average SALT deduction was around $13,000, according to the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. That’s $3,000 higher than where it was capped.

In 2022, nearly 10 percent of all taxpayers used a SALT deduction. With around 162 million tax returns filed for that year, more than 15 million American taxpayers likely used some form of SALT.

Property taxes on things like houses and vehicles are also often eligible for the SALT deduction.

There is also a business SALT deduction that allows companies to deduct part of what they owe in local tax from their federal returns.

SALT is more valuable where state and local taxes are higher

The SALT deduction is more valuable for people with higher state and local taxes. Typically, those people live in more affluent coastal states, where taxes and the cost of living are higher.

Accordingly, taxpayers dislike the cap on the deduction more in those states.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) — a born-and-raised New York resident — has called the cap a “nasty” bit of legislation.

“I’ve always been for eliminating the cap on SALT. I think it was a nasty piece of legislation, supported by Donald Trump, aimed at the blue states, which help the people of their states in many ways,” he said last year.

Political organizers say the issue is now top of mind for many voters, superseding other issues of high importance.

Political consultant Gabby Seay, who ran a 2023 special election canvassing campaign for Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.), said SALT was on the tip of voters’ tongues as they knocked on doors in January of last year in New York’s 3rd Congressional District.

“This is a heavily Jewish district, it’s a really diverse district. … We anticipated Israel and Gaza being the issue because it was really fresh then, and it was a huge issue nationally. … But it never came up on a single door, and we knocked on 700,000 doors in less than a month. … What did come up was taxes and specifically SALT taxes and how they’re waiting on someone to deliver on their promises,” Seay told The Hill.

The geopolitics of SALT — the ‘donor state’ and ‘taker state’ argument

SALT is such a touchy issue in part because it is a tax break that benefits wealthier taxpayers more, and Republicans in poorer parts of the country don’t think they should have to pay it.

Nationwide, almost all people making more than $200,000 claim a SALT deduction, according to the National Association of Realtors. That’s fewer than 15 percent of U.S. households, according to census data. For people making less money, use of SALT falls off sharply.

“With my colleagues who want their SALT cap increased … which is subsidizing blue state high-tax jurisdictions, if they want that, then I want the reforms to Medicaid,” Rep. Chip Roy (Texas), one of the GOP budget hawks seeking public health care reductions, said last week.

Democrats and blue-state Republicans frequently counter that their states effectively subsidize lower-tax states through their higher federal revenues, and that they deserve relief for taking a larger share of the national tax burden.

“We’re older states. We’re mature industrial states,” said Suozzi during a Ways and Means Committee markup of the bill. He proposed an amendment last week to increase the SALT cap to $80,000, which was voted down.

“[These] high-tax states give more to the federal government than they get back in federal services, and most of the red states are taker states — states that get more from the federal government than they actually pay in taxes.”

Is there effective SALT relief in another part of the tax code?

The Republican tax bill extends an increased cutoff for the alternative minimum tax (AMT) — another tax provision for wealthy taxpayers. The boosted AMT threshold is very expensive, costing more than $1.4 trillion through 2034. Altogether, the tax portion of the GOP bill is set to cost $3.8 trillion over the next decade, less than the $4.5 trillion limit that GOP tax writers had set for themselves.

Some tax lawyers say that the modestly increased SALT cap, when paired with the higher AMT, will put wealthy taxpayers in blue states in a better position than they had before.

“Taking a whole bunch of these upper-middle class or lower-upper class out of the AMT and giving them $30,000 of SALT deduction puts a bunch of them in a far better position than they were,” Rohit Kumar, former deputy chief of staff to Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), told The Hill.

Republican members of the SALT Caucus aren’t being swayed by arguments linking the SALT and AMT caps, despite their potential interactions.

“It’s not actually a connection between the two,” Rep. Andrew Garbarino (N.Y.), one of the core SALT Republicans who is threatening to spike the overall package, told The Hill. “The Ways and Means Committee is saying there’s a connection between the two, but they’re two separate things.”

“AMT hit a lot of people, just like the SALT cap hit a lot of people. When it was lower, it was hitting 5 million people, and now it hits only about 200,000 in the country. So I would love to not see the AMT come back either,” he added.

Business SALT change throws another wrench in the works

SALT for businesses, which are set to benefit from a boost in the pass-through deduction to 23 percent from 20 percent, is another front of controversy for the tax deduction.

For one type of business designation known as specified service trade or business (SSTB), state and local tax deductions from business profits are set to be excluded and will mean higher taxes for companies with medical, financial, legal and entertainment practices, tax lawyers say.

“Doctors in the medical field, veterinarians, dentists, physical therapists, accountants, actuaries … [these are] people who talk to congressmen, who donate, who run into [lawmakers] when they do district stuff — it’s a problem, a big, big problem. I don’t think they knew when they were drafting this that this was inviting a big political problem, but it is,” tax attorney and enrolled IRS agent Ryan Ellis told The Hill.

SSTB industries are getting hip to the change and starting to sound an alarm.

“The American Dental Association is urging Congress to restore the [pass-through entity taxation] deduction and ensure tax parity for some of our most impactful professions,” a representative for the American Dental Association told The Hill. “Congress must act now to amend the budget reconciliation bill and prevent a disproportionate tax hike on dentists and other service-based small business owners.

Originally published at 2:33 p.m. EDT May 20.

They did it. House Republicans led by Speaker Mike Johnson managed to come together and pass their sweeping tax and spending bill. Here’s what you should know.

Trump’s Big Bill Squeaks Through House, Setting Up Senate Battle

House Republicans delivered a huge win for President Donald Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson early Thursday morning, overcoming weeks of infighting and days of tense final negotiations to narrowly pass the massive bill containing their domestic policy priorities, including trillions of dollars in tax cuts as well as reductions to Medicaid spending and new funding for the military and border enforcement.

The package was approved in a 215-214 vote shortly before 7 a.m., meeting Johnson’s self-imposed deadline to send the measure to the Senate before Memorial Day. (See more about what’s in the bill here, here, here or below.)

Trump touted the passage in typically Trumpian terms: “This is arguably the most significant piece of Legislation that will ever be signed in the History of our Country!” he wrote in a post on social media that also called for the Senate to send the bill to his desk quickly.

Johnson called the vote a historic moment that will long be remembered and said that the bill itself was “nation-shaping” and “life-changing.”

“This one big, beautiful big is the most consequential legislation that any – any – party has ever passed, certainly under a majority this thin,” the speaker said on the House floor before the vote. “We planned, and we worked, and we locked arms together as a team, and we have delivered this against all odds.”

Johnson’s furious scramble to sway two groups of holdouts led to a 42-page manager’s amendment, released Wednesday night, that made a slew of last-minute modifications to the legislation in the Rules Committee, which advanced the bill and set up an all-night debate leading to the early morning floor vote.

The speaker admitted there were moments when the outlook was bleak. “I’m just going to be very blunt about it: There was a few moments over the last week when it looked like the thing might fall apart, and I went to the little chapel over here and got on my knees and prayed that these guys would have wisdom and stamina and discernment,” he said about the Republicans flanking him.

In the end, just two Republicans opposed the bill: Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Warren Davidson of Ohio. “While I love many things in the bill, promising someone else will cut spending in the future does not cut spending,” Davidson wrote in a social media post. “Deficits do matter and this bill grows them now. The only Congress we can control is the one we’re in. Consequently, I cannot support this big deficit plan.”

Three other Republicans didn’t vote for the plan. Rep. Andy Harris of Maryland, the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, voted “present.” Rep. Andrew Garbarino of New York “fell asleep in the back” after the all-night session and accidentally missed the vote, Johnson told reporters. And Rep. David Schweikert of Arizona tried to vote too late, the speaker said.

Democrats continued to blast the package, warning that it will take health care coverage and SNAP food aid away from millions of Americans to help pay for tax breaks for the wealthy that will also increase the deficit. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries previewed what’s likely to be a prominent Democratic line of attack in next year’s elections: “Children will get hurt. Women will get hurt. Older Americans who rely on Medicaid for nursing home care and for home care will get hurt. People with disabilities who rely on Medicaid to survive will get hurt. Hospitals in your districts will close. Nursing homes will shut down. And people will die. That’s not hype. That’s not hyperbole. That’s not a hypothetical.”

A rewrite coming in the Senate: The bill now heads to the Senate, where Republicans are already eyeing changes that could threaten the narrow victory eked out by their House counterparts. Johnson earlier this week urged senators not to make significant changes to the House plan for fear of disrupting the delicate balance that led to Friday’s passage. “All the senators, every one of them, has promised me that they’re not going to change anything in our bill,” Johnson joked at a news conference after Thursday’s vote. That drew a knowing laugh from those in the room.

The reality Republicans now face is that some GOP senators have made clear that they want deeper spending cuts while others have raised concerns about the bill’s Medicaid changes, its phaseout of clean energy tax breaks, its spectrum auction or its increased deduction for state and local taxes. The $4 trillion debt-limit increase will likely also be an issue, at least for Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky.

“Somebody’s got to be the dad that says, ‘I know y’all want to go to Disney World, but we can’t afford it.’ I guess I’m going to be that guy,” said Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, according to CNN.

‘A fiscal failure’: Budget hawks hope to see the bill change significantly given that, as written, it would add about $3 trillion to deficits, including interest costs, over the next 10 years.

“This plan is nothing short of a fiscal failure. It adds massively to the national debt, it relies on timing gimmicks and false claims about growth, it fails to make the structural spending reforms we desperately need, and it uses the important savings it does find to partially offset tax cuts rather than reduce the debt,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which advocates for deficit reduction. “The fact that lawmakers passed this bill less than a week after America’s latest credit downgrade and yet another worrying Treasury auction is especially maddening. Will nothing wake our leaders up to the need to take our debt challenges seriously?”

The bottom line: With help from Trump, Johnson accomplished what many doubted could be done, but as Republican Sen. Mike Rounds told CNN, “We’re a long ways from the finish line.”

Chart of the Day: What’s in the GOP Bill

Running more than 1,100 pages, the Republican reconciliation bill passed by the House today includes trillions in tax cuts and hundreds of billions in spending increases, as well as a smaller but still significant amount of spending reductions and other offsets. The chart below from The Washington Post’s Jacob Bogage summarizes some of the major components of the bill, including the single largest element: the extension of the 2017 tax cut package, which comes with a cost of roughly $2.2 trillion over 10 years.

The bill would also increase the standard deduction, which was doubled under the 2017 tax law, adding another $2,000 per couple filing jointly and half that for single filers for the next four years, at a cost of $1.3 trillion. An increase in the child tax credit from $2,000 to $2,500 would cost about $800 billion.

Smaller tax breaks, some added to satisfy pledges made by President Trump, are sprinkled throughout the bill, including the elimination of federal income taxes on overtime (costing $124 billion over 10 years) and tips ($40 billion), tax deductions for car loan interest rates ($58 billion), and a $4,000 increase in the deduction for seniors ($72 billion), which takes the place of a promised cut in taxes on Social Security income. New $1,000 savings accounts for newborns, with the name changed from MAGA accounts to Trump accounts in the final version of the bill, would cost $17 billion.

House Republicans also agreed to raise the state and local tax (SALT) deduction from $10,000 to $40,000, a move that would save money relative to the baseline in which the cap expires. The change costs $320 billion more than the leaving the cap at $10,000 and roughly $660 billion more than allowing the cap to expire, according to an estimate by the Tax Foundation.

The GOP bill includes more than $1 trillion in offsets, led by cuts to Medicaid, which have been estimated to save more than $700 billion. The bill would establish new work rules for Medicaid beneficiaries, tighten eligibility requirements and punish states that provide healthcare to undocumented residents, resulting in 7.6 million more people going uninsured by 2034.

The bill would also phase out or repeal green energy tax credits, including a $7,500 credit for electric vehicle purchases, saving more than $600 billion. Changes in the student loan program would save nearly $300 billion, and new taxes on colleges and universities would raise $23 billion.

Overall, the plan would increase deficits by about $2.3 trillion over 10 years, according to a preliminary analysis of an earlier version of the bill by the Congressional Budget Office. The Committee for a Responsible Federal budget said that, including rising interest costs on the national debt, the tally grows to $3.1 trillion. Once updated to reflect the final version passed by the House, the CBO cost estimate is expected to rise.

Judge Blocks Trump’s Closure of Department of Education

A federal judge on Thursday blocked the Trump administration from closing the Department of Education and ordered the department to rehire more than 1,300 employees terminated in a mass layoff. The judge’s order also prevents the administration from shifting the management of federal student loans from the Department of Education to the Small Business Administration.

Judge Myong Joun of the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts issued a preliminary injunction in response to a request by local school districts, the American Federation of Teachers and 21 Democratic state attorneys general to block an executive order signed by President Trump in March that instructed Education Secretary Linda McMahon to begin shutting down her agency.

“We’re going to shut it down, and shut it down as quickly as possible,” Trump said at the time.

Joun ruled that the shutdown order is illegal, and only Congress has the authority to close the department. “The record abundantly reveals that defendants’ true intention is to effectively dismantle the department without an authorizing statute,” Joun wrote.

Rejects ‘efficiency’ argument: Lawyers representing the Department of Education defended the layoffs and resignation efforts at the agency, which has seen a decline in staffing from 4,133 employees to roughly 2,180 since Trump took office, saying the reductions were unrelated to the shutdown order and were instead an effort to make the department more efficient.

Joun rejected that argument, saying the staff reductions made it impossible for the agency to carry out its functions as required by statute. “This court cannot be asked to cover its eyes while the Department’s employees are continuously fired and units are transferred out until the Department becomes a shell of itself,” he wrote.

A spokesperson for the department said the administration would challenge the judge’s ruling. “Once again, a far-left Judge has dramatically overstepped his authority, based on a complaint from biased plaintiffs, and issued an injunction against the obviously lawful efforts to make the Department of Education more efficient and functional for the American people,” spokesperson Madi Biedermann said in a statement.

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