Oregon U.S. Rep. Val Hoyle says she’s been hearing from people in Oregon who’ve been fired as part of President Trump and billionaire Elon Musk’s "Department of Government Efficiency."
Hoyle spoke with KLCC’s Rachael McDonald and said she believes the United States is in a constitutional crisis.
Val Hoyle: Elon Musk ... as this special adviser, special employee to the president, that is not an actual agency. And what he and his 19 to 25 year old unqualified unethical minions are doing are just taking out anyone in a probationary period.
They say that there are certain areas of government that are gonna be held harmless like the VA, like ICE, like wildfire fighters. But just because you say 'frontline wildland firefighters aren't being cut,' there's still a hiring freeze.
They literally turned around crews that were going to Florida and out to our national parks to do prescribed burns. The foresters that have been cut—and there are many—are the ones that work in the Forest Service and then go out on the front lines for wildfires. They're not able to do the things to take care of our forests so that they don't burn.
I talked to a nurse yesterday who had moved her family across the country to come work at the VA where we desperately need medical personnel. And she was getting fingerprinted for the job. And they told her ‘your job no longer exists.'
We also talked to a veteran yesterday who said that even though the the VA is supposed to be held harmless, that hiring for the veteran suicide line has now been frozen. They were already 500 people short. They get 60,000 calls a month, and they don't have the staff there. So what I'm asking people is, as you see things that affect us, tell our office, call our office. We've received thousands of calls and we're happy to get them because we want to talk to people and people want to do something. But it is telling these stories so we can go to Congress and we can go to the administration and say you said you wouldn't touch these things.
They are trying to set up an imperial presidency, basically, where the executive branch has full control that they will bypass Congress, that they will bypass the judiciary
McDonald: Your Republican colleagues, I imagine, are also hearing from their constituents. Do you think that there will be some effort to check what's happening?
Hoyle: What we're seeing is as Republicans are seeing these effects in their districts and people are calling, they're going to the administration to say you, you can't do this. Because it's not just affecting Democrats, and let's face it, red states are some of the highest beneficiaries of our tax dollars. So, all of these programs that they're cutting and the lack of staff able to respond to people, it's affecting all communities. So, I do think that that matters and it's working.
McDonald: It seems like every single day we're hearing about more and more cuts that are devastating to the people that are getting cut and also to the services that we rely on. So, do you see a possibility of this reversing or in some way being halted?
Hoyle: They are trying to set up an imperial presidency, basically, where the executive branch has full control that they will bypass Congress, that they will bypass the judiciary. So we have people like (Oregon) Attorney General Dan Rayfield, a number of unions, organizations and people that have standing to sue using the courts and so some of that has been successful.
And then in Congress, we are standing up. We are putting bills in, like protecting people's privacy. Having Elon Musk and his minions, having them have access to our tax returns and our social security numbers should worry everyone.
This is not a partisan issue. So we're putting bills in. We're highlighting what's happening every day, but Republicans are in control of the House and the Senate. Very slim majority in the House. (House Speaker) Mike Johnson has chosen to bend the knee as opposed to standing up for his constitutional obligation to lead one part, one half of the legislative branch. So there are a series of checks and balances, including the power of the purse, right?
And the executive branch and Elon Musk, an unelected billionaire, have decided they're going to freeze grants that we, as Congress, said we wanted. That's how we wanted the money spent. So fundamentally we have to call out Mike Johnson, (Senate Majority Leader) John Thune, and Republicans who, behind the scenes, are saying ‘I didn't vote for this. I'm not comfortable with this, but you know we think it's gonna be OK.' Nothing's gonna be OK.
