Hello and welcome to the Punch Bull News readback podcast. I'm your host, Max Cohen,

and today I'm joined by fellow Punchball News reporter Mika Solner. Mika, how are you? Good. How are you?

We're hanging in here. It's a recess week, which everyone around the hill richly deserved and

needed very strongly, but there's still a lot of news going on. And you had a great story this

week on reconciliation, vulnerable House Republicans,

and Medicaid. So take it away. What did you learn? Yeah, yeah, the news never stops,

no matter if they're in session or if it's over recess. But yeah, so we broke a big story this

week on the new kind of warning signs that these vulnerable House Republicans are kind of sending to leadership. A dozen Purple District Republicans wrote to Mike Johnson, you know, Tom Emmer and Steve Scalise, as well as Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie about,

you know, Medicaid cuts, potential Medicaid cuts and how they're very concerned about that,

that it impacts a large swath of their constituents. And they also flex that they did win

Republicans helped win them the majority. So their voices should definitely be heard.

This is going to be a huge political fight because Democrats are already seizing on the Medicaid

portion of reconciliation in paid advertisements and billboards and all their political messaging.

You know, Jeffries even this past week held this day of action, focusing

on Medicaid and Social Security and these programs which, frankly, if you're going to cut

spending, you have to focus on these entitlement programs, right? And this is where things

that interesting, which you reported on, as you mentioned, the members who have the most at stake here, the members who

lose their jobs in the Republican conference, are saying basically, hold up, this is a warning sign,

right? Yeah. I mean, if you look at who's on this letter, it's really interesting because it's led

by David Valdeo. He didn't have, you know, as close of an election as maybe expected last cycle,

but he's still one of the House Republicans that voted to impeach Trump. So it's not like he and

Trump's going to help him if he's in trouble. He may not say anything, but I don't think he's

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