As you may recall, shortly after Congressman Cline joined other Republicans to pass Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” Augusta Medical Group closed three primary care facilities in Cline’s 6th District.

Augusta Medical cited huge cuts to Medicaid funding in the bill as the reason for the closures.

In August The Rockbridge Advocate reported:

Goshen Vice-Mayor Steve Binkley reported that the Rockbridge Area Health Center, citing anticipated Medicaid cuts, abandoned plans to open a branch in the town’s new Community Center.

Cline was asked about this in a recent interview with Cville Right Now

Cline said concerns about the viability of rural healthcare clinics, including those in his district, since the passage of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, are valid but the blame is being misplaced.

When Augusta Health announced it would close clinics in Buena Vista, Churchville and Weyers Cave, it cited the impact from Trump’s budget bill. But Cline said that should actually be blamed on former Pres. Barack Obama and the Affordable Healthcare Act.

“We definitely have a healthcare problem in this country,” Cline said. “The ACA, also known as Obamacare, really had a negative impact on healthcare in this country. And we need to fix it from a broader perspective. But on a day-to-day basis, we need to make sure that federal funds flow to rural hospitals. That’s why I was so proud to make sure that $50 billion was included in the One Big Beautiful Bill to go to rural hospitals to make sure that our rural healthcare needs are met.”

In fact the Affordable Care Act– which included Medicaid expansion which Cline opposed for Virginia as a state delegate– has provided health insurance for the first time to tens of millions of Americans.

If he ever holds another town hall , perhaps Cline can explain the “negative impact” of more Americans and more Virginians having access to decent health care– and not having to depend on uncompensated treatment, which drives up costs for everyone.

As for the $50 billion for rural hospitals, KFF reports, it is “a little over one third (37%) of the estimated loss of federal Medicaid funding in rural areas.” Further, those funds “will be temporary, while many of the cuts in health spending are not time limited,” among other problems.

As I posted in November:

Cline bitterly opposed the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) which sets minimum standards for the plans it offers. He thinks the solution to rising health care costs is to offer cheap policies that can leave people with staggering out-of-pocket costs.

This is no solution at all.

Congressman Cline claims to be concerned that Congressional Democrats, by supposedly holding up funding for the Department of Homeland Security, are forcing cuts to the staff of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

In an effort to force stricter oversight of immigration enforcement and bring ICE operations under control, Democrats in Congress are refusing to support a Republican plan to fund DHS. And as The New York Times reports:

Democrats offered their own proposal to fund the department except for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection and the office of Kristi Noem, who led the department until Mr. Trump removed her on Thursday. Democrats asked to quickly take up their proposal and pass it unanimously, without debate, but Republicans objected.

In other words, it’s Republicans who are blocking funding for CISA and other DHS functions– including the Transportation Security Administration and the Coast Guard.

But here’s the real irony in Cline’s predictable Democrat-bashing. In March 2025 TechCrunch reported:

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has fired more than a hundred employees working for the U.S. government’s cybersecurity agency CISA, including “red team” staffers, two people affected by the layoffs told TechCrunch. 

The people, who asked not to be named, said affected employees were axed immediately when their network access was revoked with no prior warning.

The layoffs, which happened in late February and early March, are the latest round of staff cuts to hit the federal cybersecurity agency since the start of the Trump administration. 

CISA spokesperson Tess Hyre declined to comment on the latest round of job cuts affecting the agency and wouldn’t say how many employees had been affected. Hyre told TechCrunch that CISA’s red team “remains operational” but said the agency is “reviewing all contracts to ensure that they align with the priorities of the new administration.”

One of the people affected told TechCrunch that CISA red team employees, who simulate real-world attacks to identify security weaknesses in networks before attackers do, were affected by the DOGE-enforced cuts.

 Did Cline protest this danger to national security? Of course not.

Instead he was one of DOGE’s most enthusiastic backers. He actually believed DOGE could save the government more than $2 trillion— which of course turned out to be a fantasy.

But hey– let’s remember the good times.

Cardinal News reports:

U.S. Rep. Ben Cline, R-Botetourt County, has launched the latest redistricting salvo, saying his campaign will “spend what it takes” to defeat the proposed constitutional amendment that would allow the Democratic-controlled General Assembly to redraw the state’s congressional lines before this fall’s midterms.

Cline, who represents the current 6th District, announced Wednesday that he’s formed a group called Stop the Gerrymander that intends to rally a get-out-the-vote-campaign against that amendment and has seeded it with an undisclosed amount of his own campaign funds.

There are already two other groups in the field urging a “no” vote, but they both seem focused on advertising campaigns. Cline said his group would be different because “ours is exclusively focused on ground game GOTV.” In campaign parlance, that stands for get out the vote — the operational details of identifying likely supporters and then getting them to the polls.

…..

To run the campaign, Stop the Gerrymander has hired John Pudner, a Wisconsin-based political operative who was active with surrogate groups for the Donald Trump campaign in that state in 2024 (Wisconsin voted for Trump that year).

Helping Trump to carry Wisconsin in 2024 by less than 1 percent of the vote was a far different task than winning in Virginia in 2026– less than a year after Democrat Abigail Spanberger was elected governor by a 15-point margin.

Some important background: If voters approve the redistricting amendment on April 21, Virginia’s 6th District, which Cline currently represents, will be redrawn to make it more likely that a Democratic candidate can win in this year’s election. In addition, Cline’s home county of Botetourt would move from the 6th District to the 9th District, currently represented by his fellow Republican Morgan Griffith. (Virginia law allows candidates to run in districts where they don’t live. If Cline wants to run in the 6th District without moving, he could do so.)

On his campaign Facebook page, Cline posted a link to the Cardinal’s article, along with this:

Cline has never objected to the mid-decade gerrymandering that Donald Trump told Republicans in Texas and other states to undertake in an effort to win more seats in Congress and prevent a Democratic majority. Why didn’t he consider that to be an unconstitutional effort to steal Congressional seats and disenfranchise voters?

I think we know the answer.

If Cline was serious about preventing partisan gerrymandering, he could have supported the For the People Act, which would have restricted it nationwide. Of course he opposed it.

Sorry, Congressman. Once again, your outrage at Democrats is nakedly partisan and selective.

You and your fellow Republicans don’t get to play by one set of rules and demand that Democrats play by another.

Who am I to disagree?

From Congressman Cline’s February 23 newsletter to constituents:

In a recent interview with WFIR Radio, Congressman Cline said a lot of ridiculous things– about the Virginia redistricting referendum, about the activities of ICE, about requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote, about health insurance.

But on the topic of energy, his comments stood out for their self-defeating stupidity.

Cline: “What we’re seeing right now is the greenification [!] of our energy grid, and it’s making costs skyrocket. Everybody’s seeing the impact of Democrats in Virginia putting a Green New Deal on our energy companies, Dominion, and then what’s happening at the federal level, what the Biden administration did. Trump is taking that off. But the Virginia legacy is still there. In fact, they’re doubling down in Richmond on making energy costs higher and making our energy bills worse. So we need to take more action in Washington to address that.”

Question: “But real quickly, is it part of the problem that the energy companies are putting too much of these green energy initiatives on the back of rate payers?”

Cline: “Well, they are the ones being ordered by the state government to shift to solar, to shift to wind, these inefficient means of producing electricity. And then they should be trying to make it as efficient as possible for ratepayers. But at the end of the day, when solar and wind are your sources of power, it’s going to cost a lot of money.”

Contrary to Cline’s assertion, solar and wind are cheaper in the long run than electricity from fossil fuel plants.

Aside from that: Although there is not a single oil well, natural gas well or coal mine in all of Cline’s Sixth District, there are at least 18 companies providing solar supply and installation. They include:

• Cenvar Solar

• Eco Sun Solar

• SolShine Energy Alternatives

• Main Street Solar Energy

• Solutions Solar and Roofing

• Virginia Energy Solutions

• Advanced Roofing & Solar

• Tiger Solar

• EcoGen America

• JD Solar Power

• DFH Solar

• Vesta Home Energy

• JK Renewables Virginia

• Absolute Energy

•Paradise Energy Solutions

• Green Hill Solar

• Solarsimple

• Hurricane Wind Power (solar and wind power)

I’m sure the owners and employees of these companies will be interested to know that the congressman who purports to represent them considers their products and services too inefficient and too expensive.

On Thursday I posted about Congressman Cline’s support for the “SAVE America Act,” based on the ridiculous premise that hordes of noncitizens are illegally voting in US elections despite massive evidence to the contrary.

But that’s not the only imaginary danger that Cline is purporting to fight.

Cline has joined other rightwing Congressional Republicans as a member of the “Sharia Free America Caucus.” (Seriously.) In fact there are no communities in the US where Sharia law is enforced and no serious efforts to impose Sharia law anywhere in the US. But Cline and the other Republicans apparently see political advantage in this anti-Muslim scaremongering.

The caucus is led by two Texas representatives, Chip Roy and Keith Self. Anti-Sharia hysteria has emerged in the 2026 Texas Republican primary campaign.

As Cline surely knows, any attempt to legally impose Sharia law (or Christian law or Jewish law) in the US would violate the First Amendment to the Constitution, which states Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

Meanwhile Cline ignores (or even supports) the real threats to Americans’ health, safety, well-being and freedom imposed daily by the Trump regime.

With the support of Congressman Cline and every other Republican, the House of Representatives voted Wednesday for the “SAVE America Act.” It now goes to the Senate, where it is likely to be filibustered by Democrats.

While supposedly designed to prevent non-citizens from voting, it would in fact make voting difficult or impossible for huge numbers of eligible American citizens.

The SAVE America Act is essentially the same as the SAVE Act that Cline and other Republicans tried to push through in 2024. It would require people registering to vote to prove they are American citizens.

Virginia Congresswoman Jennifer McClellan explained her opposition to that bill:

McClellan noted that the only methods to prove citizenship under the SAVE Act “just happen to be the ones that cost money.”

“You won’t be able to use your state driver’s license,” she said, adding that the easiest option “you could use is a passport. It costs money. A lot of Americans don’t have passports.”

McClellan further noted that it can be difficult for some people to obtain their birth certificates, which can be necessary to prove citizenship, and those who have changed their names — for marriage or other reasons — often struggle to “reconcile that in order to prove their citizenship.”

McClellan said the issue is personal, invoking her family’s history with the poll tax.

“Look, I took my oath of office on the Bible in which my father kept his poll tax receipt,” she said. “I am not voting for a modern poll tax just so that they can say they’ve done something to keep noncitizen voters from doing something that is already illegal, punishable by up to five years in federal prison, and that there’s very little evidence is a widespread problem.”

This bill is based on the ridiculous premise that hordes of undocumented immigrants are illegally voting in US elections. For obvious reasons, undocumented people try to keep as low a profile as possible when it comes to the government. How many does Cline think are willing to risk imprisonment or deportation to register and vote?

The Brennan Center for Justice explains:

Imagine you’re an undocumented person living in the United States. You’ve come to this country seeking a better life for you and your family. Or maybe your parents brought you here seeking the same when you were a child. You spend your life living in very real fear that you might be noticed by the government and be deported — perhaps to a country you’ve never known. There’s an election coming up, the outcome of which will surely impact your life. But you know you can’t vote because you’re not a citizen. Would you risk everything — your freedom, your life in the United States, your ability to be near your family — just to cast a single ballot?

Of course you wouldn’t. It’s a federal crime for noncitizens to vote in federal elections. It’s also a crime under every state’s laws. In fact, under federal law, you could face up to five years in prison simply for registering to vote. It’s also a deportable offense for noncitizens to register or vote. And sure, people make bad decisions and commit crimes all the time. But this one is different: by committing the crime, you create a government record of your having committed it. In fact, it’s the creation of the government record — the registration form or the ballot cast — that is the crime. So, you’ve not only exposed yourself to prison time and deportation, you’ve put yourself on the government’s radar, and you’ve handed the government the evidence it needs to put you in prison or deport you. All so you could cast one vote. Who would do such a thing?

Maybe you’re thinking that there are a bunch of noncitizens voting and getting away with it. Again, consider the fact that in order to commit these crimes you create a government record of having committed them. Indeed, anyone can look up your voter history on public voter files. And election officials conduct regular maintenance of these voter lists — in fact, they’re required to by federal law. Moreover, these are crimes that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officers are instructed to look into during the naturalization process. So, if you ever try to become a citizen, you’ll be caught.

The SAVE America Act is a “solution” to a nonexistent problem. It’s performative nonsense that– in the name of “election security”– would deprive tens of millions of Americans of their democratic rights.

Congressman Cline and Joe Neguse of Colorado both serve on the House Judiciary Committee.

In a Cline Watch post last month, I observed that Neguse “is everything that Ben Cline isn’t. I mean that as a compliment.”

If you need more proof, compare their questioning of Donald Trump’s appalling attorney general Pam Bondi at a committee hearing on Wednesday.

Here’s Cline trying his best to prop up the increasingly desperate Bondi and Trump:

We've all seen the staggering fraud in Minnesota and across this country. Right here in the Commonwealth, corruption has been festering in the shadows. The people deserve the truth, and they deserve accountability. I look forward to working alongside @realDonaldTrump and… pic.twitter.com/G2yNUXhLTb

— Congressman Ben Cline (@RepBenCline) February 11, 2026

And here’s Neguse showing them up for incompetent and malevolent hypocrites they are:

NEGUSE: AG Bondi, that man works for you now, right? The man in that video from J6 yelling 'kill them!' at cops. His name is Jared Wise.BONDI: He does work for us, yes. I believe he was pardonedNEGUSE: And you expect hard-working police officers to believe you take law enforcement seriously?

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-02-11T18:28:01.307Z

Perhaps it’s a sign of Congressman Cline’s eagerness to prove he’s doing something for the people of the Sixth District that he’s bragging about obtaining $17 million in federal funds to expand a portion Interstate 81 that runs through the district.

For some purposes, $17 million is a lot of money. Not for highway expansion.

In 2018 the Virginia Department of Transportation estimated the cost of adding an additional lane to I-81 would be between $10 million and $15 million per mile.

So the $17 million that Cline is so proud of obtaining will provide for less than two miles of an additional lane for I-81– a highway that stretches 650 miles in both directions in Virginia alone.

In the comments to one of Cline’s Facebook posts, Abby Schweber wrote:

The I-81 expansion is a massive, multi-year effort composed of 65 separate capital projects and numerous operational improvements throughout the interstate’s 325-mile corridor in Virginia, costing hundreds of millions of dollars. The work started in 2023, when substantial funding was granted by Biden’s Infrastructure Act, which Ben Cline voted against. A lot of the work is already done.

Ben Cline’s tiny little $17 million add-on is his bid to claim credit for work done by others. We are not fooled.

To Cline’s credit, in 2024 he inserted a $42 million earmark in a government funding bill for improvements in the I-81 corridor. The catch: he then voted against the full package.

As Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi noted at the time, Cline was one of dozens of Republicans who chose to “vote no and take the dough.”

Last Friday morning Congressman Cline was one of the speakers at a so-called “town hall” in Staunton sponsored by the rightwing City Elders VA and the Family Foundation. This is the only sort of “town hall” Cline is willing to participate in these days.

The event was not publicized outside of Republican circles, but word got out and some non-supporters attended. One of them got the opportunity to ask Cline a question:

Representative Cline, what are you doing to keep Virginia safe from federal agents who are coming into neighborhoods, shooting people, shooting tear gas and stealing children? We’re seeing this in Minneapolis.

Here is Cline’s response:

In where? Minnesota. Minnesota. Okay, thank you. We were, anytime there is a death, we all are saddened by that and we want to avoid that kind of situation. What I have said throughout this process is as we seek to detain and repatriate those who are not here legally, we have to respect the law enforcement that is trying to perform that action, respect the rule of law, and as I would say exercise your First Amendment right to protest, but don’t interfere with law enforcement and the lawful performance of its duty. And there is action going on in Minnesota that is attempting to interfere with law enforcement as it seeks to perform that duty.

They are violent actions, they are organized, and in many cases, paid to interfere with law enforcement. And my request, my plea to my constituents, and anyone who is seeking to exercise their First Amendment right, please do so peacefully. And please do so in a way that is respectful of law enforcement and does not interfere with them. That’d be my request.

No acknowledgement of the violent actions of the federal agents who murdered two American citizens and brutalized countless others.

But when you claim that protesters are “paid to interfere with law enforcement,” you’d better have solid evidence to back it up.

While we wait for Cline to provide the evidence, let me note that the congressman himself is paid $174,000 a year, and he spends much of each year spouting nonsense like this.