A protester’s accusation about Sen. Roger Marshall’s medical practice cut through a manufacturing plant in Olathe, Kansas, on Monday, September 14, 2026, where Vice President JD Vance had come to campaign for the senator. Vance’s comeback was a line about a Mexican flag.
Make America Great Again Inc. (MAGA Inc.), President Donald Trump’s main super PAC, organized the event at Webco Manufacturing. Just before the interruption, Vance had been talking about illegal immigration and foreign corporations. “We are not going to stand by as we allow illegal immigrants and foreign corporations to undercut the wages of the people in this factory,” he said.
Then came the shout, aimed squarely at the man Vance had come to boost: “He sues his patients!” The protester, who was wearing green, got muscled past the crowd and out of the venue by Men in dark red shirts, while supporters booed him and broke into a chant of “USA.”
The Line About a Mexican Flag
Vance repeated himself as the man kept yelling: “I see we have a guy who is protesting.”
“You know, the last time I gave a speech and we had a guy who was interrupting, he had the common courtesy to bring a Mexican flag so we knew where he stood,” he continued.
Neither Mexico nor immigration had anything to do with the heckle, which concerned Marshall’s record of taking patients to court over unpaid medical bills. Vance’s remark instead reached back to the Republican midterm convention in Dallas on September 10, where a protester waving a Mexican flag interrupted his keynote address.
The man, Vance told the Olathe crowd, “decided to come in and lie about my very dear friend, Doc Marshall.” He then defended the senator’s record. “Doc Marshall has stood up for everyday Americans every single day he’s been in the United States Senate,” he said.
The Lawsuits Behind the Shout
The senator’s own camp has acknowledged the accusation the vice president waved off as a lie. An obstetrician-gynecologist before he entered politics, Marshall took more than 700 patients to court over outstanding medical bills; 81 of those patients were ultimately arrested after missing court dates over the debt. The suits were filed between 2003 and 2015, and collection efforts on some of the debts continued between 2017 and 2021, after he had reached Congress — he kept trying. Marshall has confirmed that he sued patients, as has his office.
Asked about the lawsuits at a debate two days earlier, Marshall said he had used “common business practices.” He told the audience the hospital did not move quickly on unpaid accounts: “We would go a year before we would ever send somebody over.” Debts as small as $101 drew legal action from the practice, reporting on the suits also found, and patients were charged 18 percent annual interest on overdue bills.
The incumbent had a rough outing at that debate, held at the Kansas State Fair, with the audience booing and heckling him as he tried to speak. Megachurch pastor Adam Hamilton, his Democratic opponent, hammered him over the lawsuits and pointed to caring for the poor as the subject of what he said were 2,000 Bible verses.
A Tightening Race in Kansas
Republicans once treated this contest as an afterthought, and the medical-debt story has now landed in the middle of it. The Cook Political Report rates the Kansas Senate seat “likely R,” down from “solid R” — a downgrade that goes a long way toward explaining a vice president spending a Monday afternoon inside an Olathe factory.
No Democrat has won a U.S. Senate seat from Kansas voters since 1932. The party does not face uniformly hostile territory in the state, though: they elected Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly in 2018 and returned her to office in 2022.
Ahead of the visit, Marshall said he looked forward to “sharing the manufacturing renaissance happening across our state.” Vance’s swing through the Kansas City metro area went beyond backing the senator, also focusing on new anti-fraud operations. An audience of more than 93,000 watched the Olathe appearance as it happened, streamed live by LiveNOW from Fox.
Once the man was removed and the chanting died down, Vance turned to credit card swipe fees, the charge retailers pay whenever a customer reaches for a card. Marshall spearheaded the push to force Wall Street to lower those charges, he told the crowd, describing the two of them as partners on the matter back when he was a senator himself.
