Rep. Nancy Pelosi held a roundtable discussion Thursday to blast House Republicans’ proposed budget, which would slash healthcare and food programs for low-income households while creating new deficits with $4.5 trillion in tax cuts.
The speaker emerita’s event in front of several dozen people at the SF-Marin Food Bank in Potrero Hill was part of a strategy among House Democrats to turn public sentiment against President Donald Trump and Republicans’ agenda, in part by telling the stories of people who would be disproportionately harmed by cuts.
However, the question of whether these stories will resonate the way they did eight years ago has been a point of contention within the Democratic Party. Millions of people across the U.S. protested the day after Trump was inaugurated in 2017, but there have been few mass mobilizations during the first month of his second stint in the White House.
Pelosi’s outspoken resistance to Trump also has been noticeably different this time around. Using two walking sticks to enter the event after having her hip replaced in December, Pelosi suggested that getting people in Republican districts to complain to representatives and share stories through social media and the press remain Democrats’ most effective tools as they seek to reclaim control of the House in 2026.
“We stopped them in 2017, and we’ll stop them again in 2025,” Pelosi said. “And the reason we’re going to do it is because of these stories.”
Julie Walters, who attended Thursday’s event, told the story of her daughter Violet, who began experiencing violent seizures as an infant. The medical bills quickly added up to hundreds of thousands of dollars, Walters said, but expenses and in-home support services provided through Medicaid offered live-saving treatments.
“Slashing a program that families like mine rely on instead of making thoughtful improvements is dangerous,” Walters said. “Any disruption to their care can have devastating consequences.”
Nancy Netherland spoke of the difficulty of raising her daughter, who was born prematurely and suffered from opioid withdrawal, cardiac issues, and pulmonary difficulties. The family later learned the girl had a rare and incurable disease.
“We spent more time in the hospital than we do on vacations,” Netherland said, adding that Medicaid became a literal lifeline after her husband died unexpectedly and the family’s commercial health insurance was cut off.
Pelosi said the event will be one of many Democrats hold in the months to come as the party unveils a larger strategy to combat Trump and the GOP’s agenda.
“Yes, we have a plan,” she said. “We’re proud of what we did [in 2018]: We won 40 seats. But in addition to that, understanding we’re in a different world now, and we have different technology, different communication, we have to reach people in the way they receive their information.”
Pelosi expressed confidence in the plan of Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York), the House minority leader, to regain control of the lower chamber of Congress in 2026.
“Two years is a long time,” Pelosi said, “but it ain’t four years.”