About 200 folks gathered in the ballroom of the Twisp Valley Grange on Tuesday and held a community town hall while members of Congressman Dan Newhouse’s staff met with small groups of citizens in the basement.
People were there to voice their concerns about the Trump administration, Elon Musk and DOGE. They shared their anger over recent legally-dubious terminations of Forest Service employees and potential cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and the Veterans Administration. One woman voiced her fears over what an end to the Department of Education will mean for children in Okanogan County, another expressed concern about what will happen to rural broadband, and a man wondered aloud what will the future hold for his 7-year-old son now that we’re turning our allies into enemies and enemies into allies.
Anger, frustration and fear over what happens in the future were common themes shared by community members who spoke.
“Put your hands up if you’ve woken up thinking that everything is going to shit,” one man said.
Most of the hands in the crowd went up.
Folks across Newshouse’s district seem to share the attitude of the people in the Twisp Grange. He told the Tri-City Herald that typically his office gets about 100 calls a week.
That number has spiked to 500 to 600 calls a day.
Many are frustrated with Newhouse for not being more accessible to his constituents. Some of them have turned to mockery, drafting up fake “Missing” posters for the Congressman.
But folks in Okangoan County decided to show up to where his staffers would be and simply host their own town hall.
Many who spoke were retired, since the event was in the middle of a workday. But they said they were there to speak for their friends and family who couldn’t make it.
Almost every speaker focused on Musk and DOGE. A retired teacher who had spent a career in the Omak School District said the plan is to make the government go bankrupt so billionaires like Musk can buy the country for pennies on the dollar.
The man who stood to speak after him was a former Parks ranger who wanted to ask Congressman Newhouse what Congress was going to make DOGE accountable to the law and to the courts. If Congress is going to be a co-equal branch of government they better step up, he said, and fulfill their Constitutional role.
“I’m a retired National Parks Service Chief Ranger and as such, like any federal employee, I took an oath to defend and protect the Constitution and the United States against any enemies foreign or domestic,” he said. “And I feel like we have domestic enemies right now.”
A former smokejumper who lost his job with the Forest Service due to Elon Musk’s DOGE cuts last month said the callous and impersonal nature of the mass terminations were part of a bigger plan to make the federal government essentially a hostile workplace.
“The layoffs are one thing, but what’s less obvious is the efforts to make it really hard to be a federal employee,” he said. “Elon Musk described it as making it miserable enough so that folks leave on their own accord.”
Meanwhile downstairs small groups of citizens sat across the table from Newhouse’s staffers in the basement and shared their concerns in a more controlled setting.
While the applause from above bled through, one group emphasized the importance of public lands and the stewardship of them.
You can watch those remarks here:
Back in the main hall, a member of the LGBTQ community spoke about their experiences living in Trump’s America. They said these days they and their trans partner are concerned about traveling by air.
They also remarked on the shift in tone regarding sexual minorities, and that the LBGTQ+ community is a “canary in a coal mine.” What happens to them is a test on what is acceptable in society.
“We have anti-queer rhetoric moving through young people in our education because the adults around them use that language with abandon,” they said. “We have elevated monstrous identities into substantial leadership – this is a scary time.”
The event even brought out some conservative voices.
One man who described himself as a “historically Republican voter” spoke after he finished meeting with Newhouse’s staffers in the basement.
“The concept that I presented to the staff was that he (Newhouse) look at the specific cuts DOGE makes from a judiciary standpoint where he can judge whether those cuts are warranted through the secretary,” he said. “And I don’t think that is happening. I think right now we have mass cuts that are not directed by secretaries.”
You can watch his remarks here:
Near the end one woman quoted the journalist, author and philosopher Hannah Arendt, who was forced to flee Germany because of Nazi oppression but later returned to the country to cover the Nuremberg trials.
Her works are foundational to the study and understanding of authoritarian systems and how they take root.
“This constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore. A people that can no longer distinguish between truth and lies cannot distinguish between right and wrong,” she said. “And such a people, deprived of the power to think and judge, is, without knowing and willing it, completely subjected to the rule of lies. With such a people, you can do whatever you want.”
You can watch the entire town hall event via videographer Tim McGuire’s YouTube channel here:
Congressman Newhouse’s office did not respond to a request for comment as of the publishing this article, but if they do get back to me I will update this piece.
I’ll also add names of the speakers when/if I can get them from the event organizers, who I also reached out to.
Special thanks to Tim McGuire for producing a video of the event.
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