A Democratic lawmaker spoke on the House floor this week about her personal traumatic experience with miscarriage to advocate her amendment to a spending bill that would direct the National Institutes of Health to study strategies for improving pain management during miscarriages.

Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Wash., told colleagues that she and her husband recently lost a pregnancy “after 11 weeks of hope of bringing a new member into the family. Miscarriage is hard but when your body doesn’t let go of a miscarriage, it gets harder. After several weeks of bleeding and mourning the loss of our pregnancy, my doctor made clear that future pregnancy could be much more difficult if I didn’t take medication to expel the retained miscarriage.”

A few weeks ago, my husband and I lost a pregnancy. The physical toll was something not even my doctor prepared me for.

The standard of care for women’s pain is medieval. We don’t need to agree on everything to agree this should be better. pic.twitter.com/FM07QT7Ip7

— Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (@RepMGP) June 10, 2026

Gluesenkamp Perez said she was told this medication “would be about as painful as a regular period, maybe a little stronger cramping.” But when she took the medicine on Sunday, she said “the pain was worse than the pain I experienced during labor and delivery of my son four years ago. I was not even advised to take this medication when my son was out of the house. He saw and heard things that he should never have had to.”

“Between 10% and 20% of all known pregnancies end in miscarriage,” according to the Cleveland Clinic, with most occurring within the first 13 weeks of pregnancy.

Gluesenkamp Perez condemned the standard prescription for pain medication after a miscarriage, which is an “over-the-counter pain medicine, such as acetaminophen (Tylenol), ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin), or naproxen (Aleve) for cramps,” according to Kaiser Permanente.

Gluesenkamp Perez likened the advice to “offering someone a stick to chew on.”

“Women’s suffering is profoundly under-treated. And for eons, the survival of our species has been predicated on it. But while we have advanced in so many other ways, the status quo of women’s pain treatment, especially when it concerns reproductive health in this country, is medieval,” she said. She went on to say, “I know there are broad differences in beliefs on reproductive healthcare here, and we do not need to agree and debate on all of these issues to agree that women should not have to endure excruciating pain to handle a miscarriage and protect their ability to go on and bring a baby into this world.”

Her amendment was adopted with unanimous support by voice vote, according to her office.

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Vice president and White House fraud czar JD Vance has asked the Justice Department to investigate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison over their handling of Medicaid fraud complaints.

Vance made the referral after receiving a 205-page report from the Republican-led House Oversight Committee alleging senior Minnesota officials failed to address widespread fraud in federally funded social services programs. The committee estimated almost $300 million in federal child nutrition funds and $9 billion in Medicaid-related funds were misused.

“Minnesota state officials are not above the law, and if they facilitated fraud, lied under oath about what they knew, or harassed and intimated whistleblowers, they must face justice,” Vance wrote on X on Tuesday.

Walz and the Minnesota Department of Human Services have said fraud is being addressed in the state, but Walz called the estimated amounts “sensationalized.”

“The allegations in the House Republican report are unfounded, and Vice President Vance’s referral is a political stunt from an administration that uses the machinery of government to target its perceived opponents while extending leniency to those aligned with its interests,” Ellison said in a statement issued to MS NOW by his office. “It is deeply troubling to see official powers and public resources diverted away from serving the people and instead aimed at pursuing political adversaries. That is not what government is for, and it diminishes public trust in our institutions.”

In the report, the committee alleged Walz’s and Ellison’s offices were made aware of fraud tips but went to “great lengths to keep them quiet, including intimidation through regular check-ins with high-level agency officials and threats of surveillance.”

The DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the referral and did not confirm if it was pursuing an investigation. A referral from Congress or another official does not automatically mean the DOJ must pursue an investigation.

However, the DOJ under former Attorney General Pam Bondi and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has rarely failed to act on matters that President Donald Trump has declared important to him.

Trump nominated Blanche for the position permanently Monday.

Minnesota, and Somalian immigrants in particular, became a target of the Trump administration after right-wing influencer Nick Shirley posted a video visiting several child care centers in Minneapolis, alleging they were empty or closed, and therefore misusing public funds. Shirley posted the video in December, months after the state itself had publicly flagged several providers as high risks for fraud and begun working with federal authorities to address it, including securing indictments.

During his State of the Union address in February, Trump seized on the outrage generated by the video by announcing a fraud task force to be led by Vance.

“You had people within Gov. Walz’s office who were saying, ‘You know what, this looks like fraud. It looks like these Somalian illegal immigrants are doing something that’s very shady,’” the vice president said in a Fox News interview late Monday.

“And then you had people who shut them down, who shut these whistleblowers down and said, ‘You know, you’re a racist or you’re a xenophobe for asking questions about where taxpayer money is going,’” he said.

Walz spokesman Teddy Tschann dismissed the committee’s allegations as politically motivated and hypocritical.

“Gov. Walz is glad to see fraudsters are going to prison,” Tschann said in a statement to MS NOW. “If the committee is concerned about corruption, they should investigate why President Trump continues to let fraudsters out of prison.”

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