CLEVELAND — Democratic Congresswoman Shontel Brown reflected on what she calls a chaotic year in Washington, D.C. during her State of Ohio’s 11th Congressional District Address.
“Our communities are being terrorized by ICE,” she said. “Our health care is being cut. Our food assistance is being slashed. Our schools and our local programs are being defunded by Washington. Our pocketbooks are being stretched thin by Trump’s reckless tariffs.”
Brown says her district is facing pressure because of many of President Donald Trump’s priorities, including the tax and spending policy he calls the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”
“But I like to call it the Big Ugly Law,” Brown said.
The law extends tax cuts and cuts spending on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits and health care programs Medicare and Medicaid, reduces spending on clean energy tax credits and significantly increases spending for ICE.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates nearly 100,000 Ohioans will lose out on SNAP food benefits because of the Republican-backed spending bill. Brown said her district has the highest percentage of people relying on SNAP in the state. While she fights to protect and restore those benefits, she said Republicans invested $75 billion into ICE.
“I am going to introduce legislation in the coming weeks that would repeal that funding and put it right back into the SNAP program,” she said.
Brown vowed to use every tool she has to dismantle ICE, saying she would not vote to approve giving the agency even one more cent of funding.
She said House Democrats will continue using their leverage to secure wins despite being in the minority, pointing to the release of the Epstein files as a win.
Constituent Terreia Whitsett said she’d like to see Brown continue to press that issue.
“The biggest issue is that the attorney general is not interviewing the victims,” Whitsett said. “And I think that’s very important. When you’re a victim of something, you want to be heard and you want to know that people really feel what you’re going through. And I just think she’s deflecting a lot.”
Through all the chaos of 2025, Browns said her community banded together, protesting ICE’s crackdown, raising money to make up for frozen federal benefits and taking care of each other.
“We know our strength and we know our power,” she said. “We’ve been tested, but not defeated. Battered, but not beaten. Bent, but not broken.”
Nora McKeown
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