Van Orden FactsEvery card below is sourced. Click a citation to check it yourself.

276,175 Wisconsinites are projected to lose health coverage.

The Wisconsin Department of Health Services' own analysis of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act: 276,175 Wisconsinites will lose coverage under the ACA and Medicaid combined over the next decade. DHS reached this figure independently while confirming it aligns with the Joint Economic Committee's CBO-based estimate.

63,000 Wisconsin adults are at immediate, high risk from the new work requirements alone.

Separate from the broader coverage-loss figure, DHS estimates the bill's new red-tape work-reporting requirement alone puts 63,000 Wisconsin adults at immediate risk — based on the state's own current Medicaid enrollment data.

He denied the bill cut healthcare — after voting for the cuts himself.

Responding to constituents protesting outside a May 7, 2026 event in Sparta:

“There has been no cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. There's not going to be cuts to Medicare and Medicaid.”

He had voted for the bill's Medicaid work-requirement and eligibility changes eleven months earlier.

He replied “YES!” to a tweet celebrating 17 million losing healthcare — then deleted it.

Responding to a post listing the bill’s toll — 17 million losing health care, 18 million kids losing school meals, 3 million losing food assistance, and $3.5 trillion added to the deficit — Van Orden wrote “YES!” He deleted the post after the backlash.

His campaign website still lists repealing the Affordable Care Act as a priority.

Even as he was voting to extend ACA subsidies to avoid a premium spike, WKOW confirmed Van Orden’s own campaign website continued to call for fully repealing the ACA, which he refers to as the “Unaffordable Care Act.”

After months opposing it, he voted to extend ACA subsidies — in an election year.

During the fall shutdown, Van Orden called extending ACA subsidies an attempt to “blackmail Republicans.” In January 2026, facing a competitive re-election, he was one of only 17 House Republicans to vote for the extension.

He voted for a bill that adds $3.4 trillion to the deficit.

Van Orden voted for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act twice — once on May 22, 2025, and again on final passage July 3, 2025. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office's final score of the enacted law puts its cost at $3.4 trillion added to the federal deficit through 2034.

Nationally, the bill he backed costs more than 10 million people their health coverage.

CBO's final score of the enacted One Big Beautiful Bill Act: more than 10 million people lose health insurance nationwide over the ten-year budget window.

Most of his 2025 money didn't come from Wisconsin — it came from national leadership PACs.

Of the $4.3M+ Van Orden raised in 2025, the bulk arrived through joint fundraising committees like Grow the Majority and Defend the Majority, which can accept hundreds of thousands of dollars per donor — far above the $3,500 an individual can legally give a candidate.

He claimed credit for $1 billion in funding he had no role in securing.

Van Orden boasted on X that he “helped secure” $1 billion a year for BadgerCare and $500 million for rural healthcare. Rep. Mark Pocan’s office publicly corrected the record: that funding came from a bipartisan deal between Governor Evers and the state legislature — not from Van Orden.

He told the VA Secretary he hopes to see it cut — from his own committee seat.

At a May 15, 2025 Veterans' Affairs Committee hearing, Van Orden said the VA has “more bureaucrats than healthcare providers” and told VA Secretary Doug Collins:

“When we are going to cut the VA — and I hope you do, sir — this is where you need to make the cut.”

He chairs a veterans' subcommittee while backing cuts to the programs those veterans rely on.

Van Orden chairs the VA Economic Opportunity Subcommittee. He also voted for a budget bill cutting Medicaid and SNAP — programs more than 150,000 of his WI-3 constituents rely on, according to his 2026 opponent.

A veterans' advocacy group is calling him out directly.

VoteVets PAC ran 2026 ads asking why Van Orden — a Navy veteran himself — backs an additional $200 billion in war spending while having supported VA cuts at home.

He threatened to report a disabled, fired veteran to DOGE.

After a fired VA employee — a veteran with an 80% disability rating — posted about his firing, Van Orden responded: “I will be referring you to DOGE… There needs to be accountability. Now.”

He mocked Wall Street's reaction to tariffs the same week Wisconsin farmers started reporting losses.

As the Dow fell roughly 4,000 points in five trading days after the tariff announcement, Van Orden posted a tweet mocking traders' surprise. The same week, UW-Extension Outagamie County projected 2025 losses of roughly $200/acre for corn, $175/acre for soybeans, and $227/acre for winter wheat for Wisconsin growers.

Wisconsin soybean farmers went five straight months without a single Chinese buyer.

An unprecedented five consecutive months without purchases from China, the U.S. soybean industry's largest trading partner, during the tariff fight Van Orden has continued to support. Even after a partial trade deal, farmers won't be made whole, per the Wisconsin Farmers Union.

He backs the tariffs. Wisconsin's own farmers union doesn't.

“The farmer is the one that suffers the most.”

— Darin Von Ruden, Wisconsin Farmers Union president and organic dairy farmer, on the tariff war Van Orden continues to support.

He backed SNAP cuts called “the largest cut in the program’s history.”

Van Orden’s vote to slash SNAP jeopardizes food access for an estimated 700,000 Wisconsinites — 60% of them in families with children — per Wisconsin Public Radio.

He co-sponsored a resolution to protect Medicaid and SNAP — then voted for the cuts himself.

On May 5, 2025, Van Orden co-sponsored H.Res. 382, opposing reconciliation cuts to Medicaid and SNAP. Nine days later, the House Agriculture Committee — which he sits on — advanced up to $300 billion in SNAP cuts on a party-line vote, and Van Orden ultimately voted for the final bill.

His vote pushes an estimated 30,000 rural Wisconsinites off Medicaid and cuts food assistance for 90,000 more.

Of the roughly 90,000 Wisconsinites losing food assistance under the bill Van Orden backed, one in three are children, according to Wisconsin Examiner reporting.

He voted to make it harder to register and vote.

Van Orden voted for H.R. 9494, which included the SAVE Act — requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register and in-person ID to vote in federal elections.

He's missed votes at more than double the rate of his peers.

Van Orden has missed 96 of 1,886 roll call votes (5.1%) since January 2023. The median miss rate among currently serving House members is 2.0%.

He cursed at teenage Senate pages during a Capitol tour.

In July 2023, Van Orden told a group of Senate pages lying on the Rotunda floor to photograph the dome — a traditional practice — to “get the f— out of here,” calling them “lazy s—” and “jackasses.” He did not deny the incident. It drew condemnation from Senate leaders in both parties, including Senate Majority Leader Schumer and Republican Senator Thom Tillis.

He interrupted a classified briefing on Israel with a profane outburst.

Reported as part of a broader, well-documented pattern of conduct incidents during his first year in office.

He threatened to cut off all federal funding to Eau Claire over two council members’ posts.

After two Eau Claire City Council members posted about Charlie Kirk’s assassination, Van Orden posted: “This is My District… We’re having a meeting today to figure out how to make that stop if this is not rectified immediately.” Eau Claire has roughly 71,000 residents.

Eau Claire wasn’t the only target — he threatened a small village and a hospital system too.

Van Orden also threatened federal funding for the village of Ellsworth over a single employee’s post: “I represent Ellsworth in Congress. It is a beautiful town full of wonderful people, except this one.” He made the same threat against the Mayo Clinic Health System over another employee’s post.

He co-introduced a bill letting local governments block refugee resettlement — aimed at Eau Claire.

Van Orden and Tom Tiffany introduced legislation giving state and local governments veto power over refugee placement, in direct response to a planned resettlement of 75 vetted refugees in Eau Claire. The city's own manager said opposition to the plan was driven by “fear of people who are different.”

He demanded special vetting reports on refugees who'd already passed 2–3 years of federal screening.

Van Orden sent a letter to the State Department demanding individualized vetting documentation on the Eau Claire refugee cohort, then publicly criticized the agency's “silence” when it missed his deadline — despite refugee resettlement requiring a multi-step federal vetting process that already takes two to three years.

He admits the ag industry can't survive without undocumented labor — and backs the deportations anyway.

At a farm listening session, Van Orden acknowledged that 60–90% of Wisconsin's dairy workforce lacks legal status, and that dairy, hospitality, and construction “will shutter in a moment's notice” if every undocumented worker is deported — while continuing to back the administration's enforcement agenda.

He opposes gun safety legislation and holds the NRA’s top rating.

Van Orden has opposed gun safety legislation and received the NRA’s highest possible rating in 2020. In 2022 he accepted a $4,950 donation from the NRA’s PAC and touted its endorsement. In 2021, he was fined for bringing a gun in his luggage into an Iowa airport.

He called himself “100% pro-life” and backed a 15-week abortion ban.

In his 2020 campaign, Van Orden called himself “100% pro-life,” accepted funding from the anti-abortion PAC Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, and said abortion should be illegal even in cases of rape and incest. In 2023 he called for a 15-week ban with exceptions only for the life of the mother, rape, and incest.

Elon Musk personally cut him a $6,600 check.

Musk is among Van Orden's confirmed top individual donors for the 2026 election cycle.

His top individual donors are concentrated in private equity and out-of-state retirees — not WI-3.

Confirmed max-out donors include the co-CEO of Audax Group (Boston), the founder of Elliott Investment Management (Florida), and the former CEO of Morgan Stanley & Dean Witter (Utah). Few of his largest checks trace back to the district he represents.