Several religious activists were arrested in the Capitol Rotunda Monday for demonstrating against planned GOP cuts to Medicaid for the second time in as many months.
The Rev. William Barber led a group of clergy in several minutes of prayer in front of a statue of suffragettes inside the Rotunda building just after noon before the group was advised by a senior officer with the US Capitol Police that they were in violation of the building’s prohibition against demonstrations.
Barber and several others can be seen continuing to pray as they are led away in zip-ties, in video taken by The Independent at the protest.
As Barber and his group received their first warning, a large group of at least two dozen Capitol Police officers formed a line separating the group from the visiting tour groups proceeding around the room.
Other officers quickly began directing those tours out of the room. Within minutes, the group received their second warning, and officers in the police line began ordering reporters in the room to exit as well, or risk arrest.
“We're going to pray. if they arrest us, that's on them,” Barber had told The Independent ahead of his arrest.
His words touched repeatedly on the Republican budget reconciliation bill passed by the House of Representatives last month, which is now in the Senate where upper-chamber lawmakers will begin debating changes to Donald Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill” — including splitting it up into multiple packages.
At the core of the legislation is an effort to fund an extension of the 2017 tax cuts passed during Trump’s first administration, and Republican lawmakers are doing so by adding work requirements that experts, including the Congressional Budget Office, estimate will endanger the eligibility of millions of Americans.
This was the second time Barber and his organization, Repairers of the Breach, were involved in a prayer demonstration against the GOP budget bill, and it was evident in the mannerisms of Capitol Police officers who participated in the arrests. Barber’s first arrest occurred in late April.
One source familiar with the operations of the building told The Independent that Capitol Police were expecting the group’s demonstration on Monday. Barber and his group walked from the Supreme Court, where a rally was held ahead of the demonstration.
Several officers were holding zip-tie handcuffs before the arrests began, and in pairs the group were led out of the room with their wrists bound, with reporters now watching from afar. The reverend, who was walking gingerly with the aid of two canes, was the last — along with a woman in a wheelchair — to be restrained and led from the room.
The Independent witnessed Barber being led into a side corridor, away from view. A total of eight people were arrested, per a representative for Repairers of the Breach.
In an interview Monday morning, Barber said that the GOP budget bill’s planned changes to Medicaid and food stamps, including work requirements and changes to SNAP for families with children, constituted a moral issue that should transcend typical Washington party divisions.
“Interestingly enough, we were arrested for just praying,” Barber said of his demonstration in May. “They are passing a bill that's preying — p-r-e-y-ing — on the poorest of us, and we were arrested for praying.
“Clergy have said this is a moral issue. It's not a Republican or Democrat. It's a moral issue,” he continued.
He had stinging words for House Speaker Mike Johnson and other Republicans who have claimed that analyses of the budget bill indicating that millions are at risk of losing Medicaid eligibility should it pass are false.
Barber said that the disproportionate benefits of the 2017 GOP tax cuts for wealthier Americans amounted to the 2025 reconciliation bill being the largest robbery of wealth from lower-income Americans in history, with the exception of slavery.
“These folk get up every morning and decide the way to use power is to hurt people,” he said. “There's no reason for them to even be touching Medicaid. That's the whole point. The only reason they're doing this is because they're trying to get the money for the tax cuts...It is for those tax cuts to the wealthy and the greedy.”
The reverend is a longtime activist for low-income Americans and raising the federal minimum wage through his organization and a larger group he is part of, the Poor People’s Campaign.
His Moral Monday rallies, held in DC, his home state of North Carolina and elsewhere, have rallied left-leaning faith leaders on issues that affect low-income communities across the country for more than a decade. Barber also rallied voters to support former Vice President Kamala Harris during the 2024 election.
More recently, the 61-year-old was accused of directly moving funds from Repairers of the Breach into a personal shared bank account, which he then used for an alimony payment. His attorney told a local newspaper, the Raleigh News and Observer, that her claims “are not true.”
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