The frying pan is the overnight slog of House Republicans marking up different sections of their reconciliation bill. The fire is what comes next: actual text that must be defended.
“It doesn’t really change the core message, but it does give us specific policies we can point to to say, ‘Here’s how they’re doing it,’” said Michael Linden, the campaign director for Families Over Billionaires. The group is one of several already running paid ads on tax cuts and Medicaid in swingy Republican districts.
Those ads will continue to run, but now they are about a real bill.
House members got a taste of this during the early hours of the markup process. There were loud protests that disrupted proceedings and got press coverage. Some were serious and included arrests, while some were sillier.
“My day is going great! And if it goes even better I might buy myself another yacht,” a protestor dressed as the Monopoly Man told NOTUS.
That’s just the organized opposition. House Republicans also have the very real challenge of convincing their Senate colleagues to buy into this text.
Republicans say heat from liberal groups and Democrats is nothing new. NOTUS’ Hill team reported that some even welcomed it, arguing it puts them at an advantage by “hearing the rhetorical ambushes that Democrats plan to use” in campaign ads to come.
“I mean, this is effectively the beta testing of their messaging for ’26,” Republican Rep. Kat Cammack told NOTUS. “So really what they’re doing is they’re just giving us their playbook.”
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries stopped by one of the raucous markups and essentially laughed off that take. “Many of the members who are going to vote for the largest Medicaid cut in American history will not be back after the 2026 election,” he said.
But of course Republicans say they are just trying to keep their campaign promises and show that the GOP is united, not divided.
It’s still very early in this process, and House Republicans were going it alone Tuesday while Donald Trump was overseas. Several prominent conservative groups told NOTUS it was too early for them to begin their own spending in support of the bill, though Linden said he has seen some reports of small ad buys from corporate groups supporting one provision or another.
“I know for sure we are definitely the only ones knocking doors. We are the only ones doing town halls,” he said. “I don’t think there’s anybody on their side doing that, and part of it is just because they know they can read the polls as well as I can.”
But things are real for Linden and his allies too now. The bill has continued to move forward despite their best efforts to make it toxic to vulnerable Republicans over the past few months. The marathon markup only underlined how eager the GOP caucus is to deliver Trump’s One Big, Beautiful Bill (OBBB).
Opponents point to 2017, when vocal public opposition helped kill Trump 1.0’s effort to repeal Obamacare. But when those same groups got together that same year to try to stop the tax bill, Republicans were unmoved. And it cost them the House.
“Most of our job is just telling people what’s in the bill,” Linden said. “We don’t have to do a lot of convincing because people do not like this.”
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Evan McMorris-Santoro is a reporter at NOTUS. Samuel Larreal is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.