Near Canton, Ohio on Monday, more than 300 men and women packed into the Metallus steel mill to see Vice President JD Vance. A sea of brightly colored hard hats cheered and applauded as the vice president touted the administration’s biggest legislative achievement, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Across the street, a few dozen protesters hoisted signs accusing Vance of “protecting pedophiles” — an allusion to the one problem the administration can’t seem to shake.
Asked about the long-promised release of files related to sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein, Vance insisted “we’re not shielding anything,” and that reviewing information takes time.
After first releasing a nothing-to-see-here memo in July, the Department of Justice is again reviewing the case at Trump’s order.
In the intervening weeks, the Wall Street Journal has reported Trump sent Epstein a lewd birthday card, and that Attorney General Pam Bondi informed the president in May that he’s named in the files.
Vance, like Trump, attempted to shift attention to previous administrations, calling out presidents Biden, Obama, and George W. Bush.
They decided “to go easy on the guy,” Vance claimed, saying that Trump should be commended for pursuing the case. Despite a 2008 plea deal with federal prosecutors in Miami, the Epstein case wasn’t widely known until The Miami Herald published its investigation in 2018, during the first Trump administration.
“Donald J. Trump, I’m telling you, he’s got nothing to hide,” Vance insisted. “His administration has got nothing to hide, and that’s why he’s been an advocate for full transparency.”
Big and beautiful
But Vance wasn’t in Ohio to talk about Epstein. He was here to sell.
His message to the Metallus steel workers was simple: Trump’s tariffs are protecting jobs like yours, and with the president’s signature on the One Big Beautiful Bill, workers like you are going to be taking home more of your paycheck.
“We’re going to see take-home pay go up in the United States of America,” Vance claimed. “In this district, probably $7,000, $8,000 per family over the next three or four years.”
Without Trump in office, Vance claimed their tax bills would’ve gone up — “to the tune of thousands of dollars for each and every single one of you.”
That spread mostly comes down to the tax cuts Trump passed during his first term. They were set to expire at the end of this year and making them permanent was one of the Trump administration’s biggest priorities.
The bill also increases the standard deduction and the child tax credit, but Vance emphasized the inclusion of tax breaks for tips and overtime. Those breaks come in the form of limited tax deductions that are set to expire after 2028.
“Raise your hand if you’ve worked an overtime shift in the past year,” Vance told the crowd. Nearly every hand in the audience went up.
“The federal government is not going to take a dime of that overtime pay,” he claimed, “because if you’re spending hard hours away from your family, the federal government ought to keep its hands the hell out of your pocket when you’re doing it.”
Under the reform, workers can subtract earnings from tips and overtime from their taxable income, but not all workers will be eligible for the deduction and there are limits on how much can be deducted depending on income and filing status.
Eyes on 2026
The Metallus plant sits just outside Democratic U.S. Rep. Emilia Sykes’ district, and Vance used the visit as an opportunity to call her out.
“She’s not celebrating no taxes on tips. She’s not celebrating no taxes on overtime. She’s not celebrating the highest rise in take home pay in 60 years, because she’s fought us every step in the way,” Vance said.
Vance’s critique was all about the 2026 midterms. Those elections are usually hard on the president’s party, and Republicans currently hold a very narrow majority in the U.S. House.
Later this year, Ohio state lawmakers will redraw the state’s U.S. Congressional district map, and Republicans seem eager to stack the deck against Sykes and Toledo-area Democratic U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur.
Vance added, “the door is always open,” for Sykes.
“Next time, we would love to have you celebrating the next great legislative accomplishment for northeastern Ohio,” he said, “But you’ve got to vote for it next time,” he went on, “and we’ll work with you every step of the way if you’re willing to make that happen.”
Sykes wasn’t amused.
“He’s not telling the truth,” she said in an interview.
Sykes explained that the White House invited several members of Congress to discuss the proposal.
“I was not on that list,” she said. “Neither were any of my colleagues on the Democratic side of the aisle.”
Skyes added that she proposed several amendments to the bill in multiple committees.
“All of those were voted down (on) party lines,” she noted.
“The reconciliation process, inherently, is a partisan process,” Sykes argued. “The reason that they do it is to bypass the filibuster in the Senate, which is to encourage partisanship. And so, if they wanted bipartisan activity, they would have just gone through the typical legislative process.”
And Sykes criticized Vance’s assurances about overtime.
“He came to this community, he lied directly to these people’s faces,” Sykes claimed, “particularly to the steel workers, who are not going to be eligible for the no tax on overtime, because they are union members, and union members are not eligible for it.”
That’s not exactly right either, but Sykes has a point. The bill’s use of the Fair Labor Standards Act definition of overtime applies a higher threshold for many union workers.
In response, more than 20 unions — including United Steel Workers, who represent employees at the Metallus mill — are urging Congress to pass a fix.
Health care changes
Paying for all the tax breaks Vance touted isn’t cheap. To cover the cost, the One Big Beautiful Bill makes deep cuts to safety net services like health care and food assistance.
The Congressional Budget Office projects changes to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act marketplace could lead to 10.9 million Americans losing their insurance. Add in the likely expiration of Affordable Care Act premium assistance, and the figure rises to 16 million.
A Kaiser Family Foundation analysis suggests 440,000 of them would be Ohioans.
What’s more, the Congressional Budget Office forecasts suggest that the measure will add $3.4 trillion to the deficit — triggering mandatory cuts of about half a trillion dollars to Medicare unless lawmakers intervene.
But Vance defended the administration’s health care policies, and rejected the expert conclusions that millions will lose access.
“I don’t believe that’s going to happen for a second,” Vance asserted.
He pointed to new funding for rural hospitals and framed new coverage requirements as a way to protect underlying the program. Able-bodied people looking for work? Single moms taking their kid to a doctor? They’ll be fine, Vance insisted.
“Who’s not going to have access to that Medicaid is people who are in the United States illegally and people who refuse to even look for a job,” he claimed.
Undocumented immigrants are already not eligible for Medicaid.
The new rural hospital funding came along to get the votes of Republican members of Congress who were worried about uncompensated care.
Hospitals have to treat everyone, and in rural regions many of their patients have Medicaid. If those patients lose coverage, hospitals lose revenue.
The initial $25 billion fund propping up rural hospitals got doubled in the U.S. Senate to earn moderate members’ support.
Whether that price tag will be enough the keep hospitals whole, is anyone’s guess. In Ohio, some rural hospitals are raising concerns about their ability to maintain their maternity wards.
Despite Vance’s claims that new Medicaid restrictions will “ensure only the needy get access,” there’s reason to believe otherwise-eligible people will lose their coverage.
Arkansas imposed similar work requirements and saw 18,000 people lose insurance, but not because they weren’t working. Many people were simply unaware of the reporting requirements or had trouble with the paperwork.
Sykes was particularly concerned about how the measure will impact health care in her district.
She argued the “overwhelming majority” of people on Medicaid are already employed and that those who aren’t often have good reason. Medicaid covers treatment for people in recovery from substance abuse, seniors in long term care, and kids, she noted.
“Should the children be working?” Sykes asked. “Obviously not.”
“They are acting as though these changes that are going to come out of Medicaid are going to weed out all the fraud, waste, and abuse, but it’s really just going to get your grandmother kicked out of her nursing home,” Sykes added. “It’s going to make it harder for you to access the breathing treatments for your child who has asthma.”
Short sighted
Before Vance took the stage, Metallus CEO Mike Williams praised what he called the Trump administration’s “bold, pro-growth” policies.
“The renewal and strengthening of the 232 steel tariffs have been critical,” he said of a 25% tariff applied to steel and aluminum imports. “They protect American jobs, they defend our national security and ensure that American steel remains a global force.”
Willams called the Big Beautiful Bill a “game changer,” and highlighted a provision allowing companies to immediately deduct the full cost of capital investments on their taxes.
And he argued those policies are helping them making new investments, including building a new furnace and inking a $99 million deal with the Department of Defense to produce components for 155 mm artillery shells.
But Ohioan Louis Maholic argued embracing Trump’s trade policies is shortsighted.
Maholic is retired now, but he used to work as a coal miner and then for the UFCW and AFSCME unions.
“I haven’t seen any real benefits to it for the blue-collar workers in Ohio,” Maholic said of Trump’s tariffs. “If anything, I think that it’s made things more unstable. It’s made companies more leery about what their future plans are going to be.”
Maholic dismissed Vance’s visit as an attempt to distract from the Epstein controversy and take some cheap shots at one of the Democrats Republicans are hoping to unseat in the midterms.
Maholic noted that while the bill cuts taxes immediately, it delays many of the biggest health care cuts to 2028.
“I think if the Republicans were truly, truly proud of this bill,” he said, “they wouldn’t have some of the most draconian cuts in it occurring until after the midterm elections next year.”
This story was originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal and republished here with permission.
This article appears in Jul 23 – Aug 5, 2025.