Friends,

Last week began with me anchoring the Congressional Black Caucus Special Order Hour opposing the Trump Administration’s attempts to dismantle the Department of Education. It ended with House Republicans voting to impose a poll tax on millions of American citizens by passing the SAVE Act, which I discussed in detail in my last newsletter, and to strip health care and other essential services from millions more through the Senate-revised budget plan. I joined the House Democratic Policy and Communication Committee’s WTF Show with Rep. Kamlager-Dove (CA-37) to discuss these and other head-scratching moments of the week.

Read on for what you may have missed. 

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION ESCALATES TRADE WAR, THEN SOMEWHAT RETREATS

After escalating the dumbest trade war in history and sending markets into a tailspin with “Liberation Day” tariffs amounting to the largest tax increase since the 1960s, President Trump partially retreated when the bond markets tanked.

Article I, Section 8 explicitly grants Congress the power “to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises,” including tariffs, which are a tax on imports. In a misuse of emergency powers under various trade laws, President Trump declared an emergency over illegal immigration and illicit importation of fentanyl as a justification to impose tariffs on virtually all imports from Mexico, Canada and China (10%) in February. Declaring April 2nd “Liberation Day,” President Trump declared America’s trade imbalances an emergency and announced sweeping tariffs ranging from 10% to 50% on just about everything imported into the United States. In response, I cosponsored legislation by Rep. Gregory Meeks (NY-05) to terminate President Trump’s abuse of emergency authorities to impose these harmful sweeping tariffs. But House Republicans effectively killed that bill and any similar attempt to reign in the Trump Administration’s illegal tariffs through September.

The good news is that once the market spiral hit the bond market, Trump rolled back reciprocal tariffs on most nations except China, leaving a 10% universal tariff in effect.

HOUSE REPUBLICANS PASS THEIR “BILLIONAIRES FIRST, AMERICANS LAST” BUDGET PLAN

On Thursday, Congressional Republicans passed the Senate-revised budget plan that would cut services like Medicaid, veterans benefits, nutrition programs and more. These are popular programs supported by millions of Americans — but Republicans don’t care.

I sit on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle continue to say that this bill doesn’t touch Medicaid and Medicare. What they’re not telling you is that they’ve been instructed to find $880 billion to cut from the Energy and Commerce Committee’s budget, an impossibility without touching Medicaid. 

Constituents are constantly calling my office to express their fears and outrage over losing these services. My guest at President Trump’s Joint Address was Jeanne Robinson — one of the over 600,000 Virginians at risk of losing her health insurance because of these budget cuts. There are so many Americans with their own individual stories about how Medicaid and other government services have helped them. The impact of these cuts would be the same for all of them: it would hurt their ability to provide for themselves and their families.

Republicans continue to play political games while the Trump Administration blindly caters only to their billionaire donors, but Democrats know that these games will have very real and devastating impacts on American livelihoods.

I voted no on this budget plan. As a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, I promise to fight back against any further actions to cut Medicaid with every power at my disposal.

You can read a summary of the Republican budget plan here, a one pager on how Republicans cannot reach their budget targets without making the largest Medicaid cuts in American history here, and see how the plan betrays the middle class in each Congressional district here.

FIGHTING BACK AGAINST HARMFUL TRUMP ADMINISTRATION ACTIONS ON THE ENERGY AND COMMERCE COMMITTEE

As a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, I see in every hearing how the actions of the Trump Administration undermine every policy priority under the committee’s broad jurisdiction from health care to energy and more. The latest example came last week during the committee hearing focused on the future of artificial intelligence (AI) technology, human discovery, and American global competitiveness. 

As I observed in my comments during the hearing, AI has the ability to transform every aspect of our lives, and the sheer speed of AI development risks outpacing our societal and government ability to adapt. The U.S. is in a race with China for global AI dominance reminiscent of the space race with the Soviet Union in the mid-20th century. Yet the Trump Administration’s actions since day one — haphazardly firing federal workers and freezing or cutting funds for government agencies and universities critical to supporting AI, waging a war on renewable energy and reckless tariff policies — undermine our ability to compete.

MY BRIGHT SPOT: MEETING CONGRESSIONAL APP CHALLENGE WINNERS

This week, I had the pleasure of meeting Saket Sambaraju and Abhinav Gitta, VA-04’s winners of the Congressional App Challenge.

These talented 11th graders created an AI-powered app that allows patients to scan images of lesions or moles for Melanoma skin cancer with a 92.28% testing accuracy. We know that the survival rate for patients with Melanoma is drastically increased if it’s caught early, and thanks to Saket Sambaraju and Abhinav Gitta, detecting Melanoma just got a lot easier. I enjoyed meeting with them and discussing how my work on the Energy and Commerce Committee fosters innovations like their app. 

LOOKING AHEAD

Town Halls: Tonight at 7 pm, tune in to NBC 12 for a 12 On Your Side televised town hall where I’ll talk with Henry Graff about the latest news in Washington. I will also participate in two in-person town halls. First, I will meet with community members Tuesday, April 22nd at 6:30 PM in the Brunswick County Conference Center. Then on Wednesday, April 23rd at 6:00 PM I will participate in the Henrico County Branch NAACP’s town hall at Richmond’s Mosby Memorial Baptist Church.

We are less than two weeks away from the deadline for VA-04 high school students to compete in the Congressional Art Competition for a chance to see your artwork displayed in the U.S. Capitol! For more information, visit my website. 

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