Sacramento Congresswoman Doris Matsui warns Medi-Cal is at risk in federal spending plan
Good morning and welcome to the A.M. Alert!
MATSUI BRINGS MEDI-CAL CUTS HOME
Longtime Sacramento Congresswoman Doris Matsui is in the middle of the fight to preserve health insurance for very low income people in the United States.
“This is a real battle,” she said during a news conference Thursday in West Sacramento.
Matsui serves on the Energy and Commerce Committee in the House of Representatives. Republicans have asked that committee to cut $880 billion over the next 10 years, with most of those cuts being from Medicaid, which is called Medi-Cal in California. The cuts are to counteract President Donald Trump’s tax cuts and border security agenda.
“I said first, ‘are you sure it’s B?’ They said, ‘Yeah Doris, it’s not M, it’s B. It’s billion’,” she said. “I mean, that’s cutting everything down.”
A letter from the Congressional Budget Office sent earlier this month shows the Energy and Commerce Committee was expected to preside over about $8.8 trillion dollars of spending from 2025 to 2034, with 93% being Medicaid spending. According to health policy organization KFF, the Medicaid cuts could include dropping coverage, stopping payment of high-cost prescriptions, or cutting payment rates to providers.
The budget resolution also includes a directive that could cut hundreds of billions from the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Plan, known as CalFresh in California, over the next 10 years. Congressional Republicans are now working on a bill to hammer out the budget details.
Matsui convened a group of people who use Medi-Cal and CalFresh at the Yolo County Children’s Alliance Family Resource Center in West Sacramento Thursday to share their experiences.
“When I look at these programs, I don’t see bureaucracy,” said Jenaba Lahai, executive director of the Children’s Alliance. “I see the West Sacramento mother who brought her sick child to our center last week, relieved that Medi-Cal could cover the doctor’s visit.”
A poster next to Matsui highlighted the percent of her Republican colleague’s constituents who were on Medi-Cal: 43% in the district of Rep. Doug LaMalfa, R-Richvale, 23% in that of Rep. Kevin Kiley, R-Rocklin, 67% in the district of Rep. David Valadao, R-Hanford.
GUN MAGAZINE BAN REINSTATED
The California Department of Justice won a court decision to uphold the state’s ban on buying, selling, or transferring gun ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 rounds, but gun-rights advocates have vowed to take the seven-year-old case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said Wednesday that it had ruled to reverse a 2023 court decision by a Southern California federal judge that struck down the ban as unconstitutional. The new decision allows a state law that went into effect July 2017 that bans large-capacity magazines to stand.
In a 147-page opinion, senior Judge Susan Graber wrote that the previous decision failed to consider that the Second Amendment did not consider that “large-capacity magazines are neither ‘arms’ nor protected accessories.”
“Second, even assuming that the text of the Second Amendment encompasses the possession of optional accessories like large-capacity magazines, California’s ban on large-capacity magazines falls within the nation’s tradition of protecting innocent persons by prohibiting especially dangerous uses of weapons and by regulating components necessary to the firing of a firearm,” she wrote.
The California Rifle and Pistol Association, which sued to overturn the ban, said it was prepared to appeal to the Supreme Court.
“This incorrect ruling is not surprising considering the inclination of many 9th Circuit judges to improperly limit the Second Amendment’s protections,” CPRA president and general counsel Chuck Michel said in a statement. “It is high time for the Supreme Court to reign in lower courts that are not following the Supreme Court’s mandates ... and this case presents an opportunity for the High Court to do that emphatically.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom claimed victory while taking a thinly-veiled swipe at President Donald Trump and the U.S. Department of Justice, who are under fire for ignoring a federal judge’s order to stop deporting Venezuelan immigrants.
“When the executive branch disagrees with a court ruling, the answer isn’t to ignore it — it’s to appeal to a higher court,” Newsom said in a statement. “We did that. We won. That’s how law and order works.”
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“I am disgusted with this move by the President and this administration’s continued villainization of our public education system and willingness to slash and burn anything to fund tax cuts for billionaires. California must protect our children, school districts, and educators,” wrote Assemblymember Mia Bonta, D-Oakland, about the Trump Administration’s executive order to begin dismantling the federal Department of Education
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