May 29, 2025 02:44 PM UTC

Gabe Evans Holds Bizarre Presser To Punish Himself For Medicaid Cuts

•  
• by: Colorado Pols

This morning on the steps of the Colorado State Capitol in the heart of uber-liberal downtown Denver, as CBS Denver reports and other outlets are expected to follow, America’s Most Vulnerable Republican™ freshman GOP Rep. Gabe Evans held a press conference to “celebrate” the passage last week in the U.S. House of the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” enacting sweeping cuts to social safety nets like Medicaid and food stamps in order to fund tax reductions for the wealthiest Americans. Rep. Evans was joined for this press conference by carpetbagging Republican lightning rod Rep. Lauren Boebert, along with state Rep. Carlos Barron and Sen. Byron Pelton.

But it doesn’t really matter what Rep. Evans came to Denver to say, because no one could hear him over the lively but peaceful crowd of protesters who easily outnumbered the Republican staff and reporters present:

Protesters showed up at a Republican event to discuss the budget bill in downtown Denver on Thursday, shouting over the speakers.

As protesters overshadowed the discussion about what is known as the “one big, beautiful bill,” Colorado Representatives Gabe Evans and Lauren Boebert met with reporters outside the State Capitol to discuss the spending bill that passed the U.S. House of Representatives by a single vote…

“And this one big, beautiful bill actually protects Medicaid by getting 1.4 million illegal immigrants off of the Medicaid rolls, by getting 1.2 million people who are not eligible for Medicaid benefits off of the Medicaid rolls, and preserving the program for the people who need it most,” said Evans.

Axios’ John Frank tried his best to explain Evans’ game plan:

Over shouting and chants, U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans stood in front of the state Capitol on Thursday and defended his support for President Trump’s spending bill, touting efforts to extend tax breaks and purge waste from safety-net programs like Medicaid.

Why it matters: The first-term GOP congressman is looking to shift the conversation about Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill” ahead of the 2026 election, where he will need to defend one of his party’s most vulnerable districts in the northern Denver suburbs.

Driving the news: With U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Windsor) and other local Republicans at his side, Evans spent 50 minutes trying to recast the bill as “a win for Coloradans” and pushed back against TV ads and protests targeting him for his vote.

A coalition of advocacy groups fired back in a release early this afternoon:

“Gabe Evans has the audacity to push massive tax cuts for Colorado’s 14 billionaires at the expense of thousands of his own constituents who will lose Medicaid and food assistance,” said Kathy White of the Colorado Fiscal Institute. “They’ve told him they didn’t vote for this — and he simply doesn’t care. Gabe Evans and the GOP have picked a side, and it’s not the side of working families. Gabe Evans doesn’t represent Colorado — he represents the rich and powerful. Rather than crowing from the steps of the state Capitol, he should be hanging his head in shame for his vote on this terrible bill.”

“The supporters of the federal bill are deeply misguided if they think it will do anything to address waste, fraud, and abuse,” said Chris deGruy Kennedy, President and CEO of the Bell Policy Center. “This bill has little to do with “efficiency” or even debt reduction. It has everything to do with shaming and blaming lower-income people to justify giving outrageous tax cuts to the wealthiest and corporations. Evans should be ashamed of himself for turning his back on his constituents — and his conscience. To the contrary, the bill increases administrative costs while taking dollars away from actual healthcare, stripping healthcare away from thousands of working Coloradans through new red tape, all to justify tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefit the rich.”

Evans’ attempt to “recast” this unpopular legislation as something that will benefit residents of his swing district instead of throwing thousands of his constituents into medical peril and/or food insecurity with his vote to slash social safety nets, assuming that was the true intent of this press conference, did not achieve its goal. The only thing Evans and Boebert demonstrated today was a callous indifference to the overwhelming public sentiment against this legislation. It’s one thing for Boebert, who represents the state’s safest Republican district and somehow weathered scandals that would have ended just about any other political career, to be so insensitive to the needs of one’s constituents to invite this kind of backlash.

For Gave Evans, who won his seat by fewer than 3,000 votes last November, the indifference borders on pathological. To stand before these upset constituents and nonchalantly fire off the same excuses they’re heard a dozen times before, knowing that they already have the troubling answers Evans doesn’t want to give, requires a narcissistic arrogance we simply do not possess. And that leads to the question we want to leave with readers, being genuinely curious at this point what the logical answer could possibly be:

What does Gabe Evans think he accomplished today? Because all we see is a short political career growing even shorter.