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Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) once criticized former President Joe Biden’s administration for being “asleep at the wheel,” but was caught quite literally napping himself on Wednesday during a House rules committee hearing on President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.”
The legislation could kick millions of people off of Medicaid and curb eligibility for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which helps around 42 million Americans buy food each month, while extending the tax cuts Trump signed into law in 2017.
Republicans had set the meeting for 1 a.m., which appeared to be past Norman’s bedtime.
“@RepRalphNorman is ripping health care away from 13 million Americans not exciting enough to stay awake?” Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández (D-N.M.) wrote on X, formerly Twitter, with an accompanying video showing Norman dozing off during the hearing.
Fernández posted the footage at 2:16 a.m., suggesting Norman only made it through a little over an hour before falling asleep. It was the second time in a week that a Republican member of Congress dozed off during a hearing related to Trump’s consequential bill.
“HE DOESN’T CARE,” wrote one user on X in response to the footage, with another person commenting: “If only MAGA cared as much about the middle class as they do billionaires, the world would be a better place.”
The controversial legislation would provide hundreds of billions of dollars for Trump’s mass deportation initiative and a newly announced “Golden Dome” missile defense system — which the president himself admitted Tuesday the U.S. military hadn’t even asked for.
Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
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Republicans narrowly voted Sunday to advance the package, formally known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, with various holdouts demanding even faster cuts to Medicaid and green energy programs passed during Biden’s administration than it calls for.
Norman himself shared some gripes Friday with the bill and complained in a statement that the health care portion “delays working requirements for able-bodied adults” until 2029 and doesn’t “combat Obamacare’s unfair Medicaid expansion” as much as he’d like.
As for a provision aiming to make Trump’s tax cuts permanent, however, he wrote simply: “That is INCREDIBLE!!” The congressman is currently being wildly defended by pro-Trump users on social media who argue the bill will only affect illegal immigrants.
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