Congress
Garcia warns U.S. government faces a ‘five-alarm fire’
Congressman blasted Senate Leader Schumer for supporting GOP budget
Although U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia (D) has only served in Congress since 2023, the representative for California’s 42nd Congressional District quickly emerged as a rising star in the Democratic Party who has become known as an especially outspoken critic of President Donald Trump since his return to the White House in January.
Delivering memorable hits on cable news programs, punchy sound bites in congressional hearings, and spirited spats with political opponents on X, Garcia is among a handful of leaders on the left who have been feted for their outspokenness at a time when pushback against the administration by Democrats has widely been criticized as anemic, ineffectual, inconsistent, or insufficiently aggressive.
Last week, the California congressman, who is gay, sat down with the Washington Blade in his office for an interview that was continued by phone on Tuesday in the wake of Friday’s move by nine Senate Democrats and their leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) to avert a government shutdown by supporting the controversial budget proposal advanced by congressional Republicans.
Critics blasted Schumer and the senators who voted with him, arguing that they had voluntarily forfeited leverage that their party will rarely again have the opportunity to exercise — at least, not until the 120th Congress is seated in 2027, and only then if Democrats are able to recapture control of either or both legislative chambers.
Calling the Democratic leader’s decision “out of touch” and “a huge disservice to the American people,” Garcia said he was “incredibly angered and beyond disappointed,” adding “I think that he’s turned his back, in my opinion, on the rank and file base of the party, and certainly on his own members.”
The congressman said he agrees with remarks made in recent days by Senate Democrats who have deemed this battle over the budget “the moment to actually stand up to Donald Trump and Elon Musk in a way that was forceful and strong.”
“Those that voted to support this budget resolution are completely not aligned with the vast majority of Americans and certainly [not with] Democrats who wanted to actually fight Elon Musk and push back much harder,” Garcia said, contrasting Schumer’s leadership with Jeffries who “did the right thing” and was able to bring “the caucus together,” successfully convincing “everyone, I mean, almost unanimously, to vote against the budget.”
More than that, Garcia said Friday’s vote exemplifies a broader failure among some elected Democrats “especially, maybe, among those that have been in government for a long time” to reckon with the existential risks presented by the Trump administration and powerful allies like Musk.
The congressman said these political leaders “are thinking that somehow this is just another year or just another cycle, and things will just get better and go back to the way they were” because they have failed to recognize the ultimate ambitions of the president, his administration, Musk, and their allies, who endeavor to “fundamentally restructure the way government works, to build a system where you have an authoritarian at the top with enormous amounts of power” unchecked by the federal judiciary or the legislative branch.
“It’s supreme executive authority,” he said, coupled with “disregard” for the powers ordained by the Constitution to the courts and to the Congress. “That is a very dangerous formula when you’re sitting on top of the wealthiest country in the world with an enormous military and enormous power over what happens in the rest of the world.”
“We live in a very dangerous time and I just don’t feel like everyone is understanding that, including people in our own party,” Garcia added.
The congressman noted that reasonable people might reach different conclusions about whether Trump’s second term has yet presented such a grave threat to America’s political and democratic institutions and the rule of law that the time has come to declare a state of emergency or break the glass, to to speak, to release the fire alarm.
In Garcia’s view, “you have the richest man on the planet who’s getting only richer since the election of Trump, who has an unobstructed ability to go into agency after agency, access people’s personal information, essentially eliminate jobs, directly email federal employees about having to report their activities to him — that is a five alarm fire.”
“That is unconstitutional and it’s a real challenge to the way we operate our government,” he added.
Organizing grassroots resistance at home
Returning to more familiar territory for inter-party debate the congressman criticized the GOP’s budget package, warning that it might “slash other types of health care, could slash Social Security,” but because it proposes trillions of dollars in cuts, lawmakers will have no option but to “take Medicare and Medicaid apart.”
Together with the “destruction of our agencies” led by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, Garcia said the effort by congressional Republicans to trim the budget in ways that will imperil access to critical medical care for populations that depend on it, including “low-income folks, seniors, and working class people” is meant to free up money for “huge tax cuts to Elon Musk, the billionaires, and large corporations.”
More specifically, during an interview Friday with MSNBC’s Alex Witt, Garcia warned the funding bill will “cut billions and billions of dollars, for example, for veterans’ health care” while prohibiting Congress from pushing back “on the tariffs that Donald Trump is trying to implement,” giving “a rubber stamp of approval to what Elon Musk is doing raiding our federal agencies,” and gutting programs by agencies like the U.S. Department of Education that serve students with disabilities and special needs.
Garcia further explained that “sending the money to the states as Trump wants to do essentially gives states the ability to send that money to private schools and to provide a system where actually public schools get defunded because private schools won’t take those programs up.”
Speaking with the Blade on Tuesday from Long Beach, the city in the center of CA-42 where he served as mayor from 2014 to 2022, Garcia explained how he was using the House’s district work period to organize opposition against the Trump regime.
After the congressman’s plane touched down from Washington, he took the opportunity to record a video for social media to explain that “We should be investing in our airports and passenger safety, not cutting 400 FAA positions” as the administration did last month.
“We need to hire more air traffic controllers and ensure that flying remains the safest way to travel,” he said.
We should be investing in our airports and passenger safety, not cutting 400 FAA positions. We need to hire more air traffic controllers and ensure that flying remains the safest way to travel. pic.twitter.com/3QSL6EcIIr
— Congressman Robert Garcia (@RepRobertGarcia) March 17, 2025
After Republican leadership encouraged its members to avoid holding in-person meetings with constituents because they had complained and expressed anger about the cutting or suspension of federal agencies, grants, programs, and services, Garcia announced he would hold town halls in GOP districts in California, a strategy that has been touted by other leaders in his party like Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the 2024 Democratic candidate for vice president.
“Not this weekend but the next weekend I’ll be launching in a Republican member’s district in California and doing a town hall there,” Garcia told the Blade. “It will be in a Republican swing district.”
In the meantime, the congressman said he has been visiting with and listening to his constituents. “I just left a school here in southeast L.A. where I met with the principal and a bunch of teachers, and talked about the students that they have in special programs that are receiving funds from the federal government.”
“They were showing me kind of a center where they have, like, toiletries and shoes and backpacks for kids that they’ve received through support from the U.S. Department of Education,” he said. “So there’s just so much need, in talking to folks, and so much anger from people about what’s happening.”
“Earlier today, I was at the Social Security Administration center here in one of the cities I represent, so I am going around talking to people where they are getting their services and people are really frustrated,” Garcia added. “I don’t think people realize that most of these people that depend on a lot of these programs are working families, that they need the support to survive, and yet they have the richest man on the planet cutting their services because he feels like it and he wants a bigger tax cut.”
During last week’s interview, when asked what he hopes to gain from engaging with constituents in competitive neighboring districts that are now represented by Republicans, the congressman said he hopes that attendees recognize that “you have a member of Congress too scared to actually answer these questions” but his aim is foremost to listen to their concerns and address their questions.
Garcia recounted some of the reports in the media detailing scenes from town halls in GOP districts that were held prior to the effort by party leadership to contain the bad press. Attendees “were pissed,” he said. “They were demanding answers. Why am I losing my job? Why are my veterans’ benefits going to be cut? Why are you trying to dismantle the federal Department of Education when my kid has a disability and depends on these programs?”
Democratic leaders bring different strengths, styles
None of the nine House Republicans that the Democratic National Committee identified as “most vulnerable” represent districts in California, and it remains to be seen how many House Democrats will follow Garcia’s lead and stage town halls in red or purple areas of their respective states to take advantage of the anger and frustration over Trump’s second term.
Nevertheless, and notwithstanding his criticism for the Senate Democrats who cosigned the Republican budget, or his concerns that some leaders in the party may not have come to terms with the exigencies demanded by this tumultuous moment in American politics, Garcia stressed that House Democrats benefit from the different strengths and different styles brought by its diverse members.
There is even room to accommodate differences of opinion, he said, on questions like whether and in which circumstances transgender female athletes should be permitted to participate in girls’ and women’s sports.
Breaking from the position that, at least in recent years, has been held almost without exception by Democratic elected officials serving in national and statewide office, California’s ardently pro-LGBTQ Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom argued during an interview earlier this month that allowing these athletes to compete against their cisgender counterparts was “deeply unfair.”
The comments, which drew criticism from groups like the Human Rights Campaign, came as some Democrats had begun to question whether their electoral defeat in 2024 might have been partly attributable to daylight between the party’s position and where the broader electorate lands on the issue, with most Americans tending to support restrictions targeting trans players in at least some circumstances, according to data from surveys and polls.
Garcia said his position is and always has been that far too much focus and attention has been paid to the issue, which ultimately concerns such a small population that becomes smaller, still, when the aperture is narrowed further to focus just on athletes. Young people, he said, should be able to reap the benefits that come with participating in competitive sports, including those who will encounter additional challenges or hardship because they are trans.
Still, the congressman said he continues to support the governor, noting that few Americans have done more for LGBTQ rights than Newsom has.
Besides, Garcia said, rather than trying to reconcile minor party differences about the sports question, Democrats should instead band together against extreme efforts by the anti-trans Republicans “trying to police bathrooms or trying to take away their health care.”
“People are gonna have different positions,” Garcia said, and “our party has various different positions on this issue” just as Democrats can bring different approaches to communicating about policy or styles of messaging about politics to their work on Capitol Hill.
While “some of us have figured out ways of taking on the administration that also get some attention” or offer chances to “shine a light on the policies” thus exposing their harms, on the other hand Garcia said “There are other people in our caucus that are so good at what they do, and I would have a hard time doing what they do, because they’re so good at it.”
Leaning in to differences
During his time in Congress, the California Democrat, 47, said he has tried to capitalize on his knowledge of pop culture and entertainment “to get attention on a policy issue.”
For instance, last summer when Republicans went after Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings during an Oversight Committee hearing and in response Democrats sought to redirect the focus toward Trump’s conduct involving foreign business interests during his first term, Garcia quoted from a monologue delivered by Heather Gay during the finale episode of Season 4 of Bravo’s “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.”
In 2023, amid a GOP-led effort to restrict young people’s access to drag performances, the congressman kicked off Pride month with a tribute on the House floor honoring “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” the popular program that has been credited with bringing the art form to wider attention and appreciation, including among non-LGBTQ audiences.
“The show has served as a critical space to discuss issues around inclusion, trans rights, mental health and self worth,” Garcia said at the time. “And this message couldn’t be more important as the LGBTQ-plus community continues to fight for equality and acceptance.”
Last month, a couple of years after Republican U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene famously displayed explicit photos of Hunter Biden that were taken when the former president’s son was struggling with substance abuse, Garcia referenced the incident during the first hearing of the House Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency.
After announcing that he had a “dick pic” to share, a large image of Musk’s face appeared on screen behind the congressman, who then delivered a message about how the controversial tech billionaire was “trying to take away your Medicare and Social Security and doing all these awful things to you.”
Garcia explained that this kind of creativity can help Democrats reach audiences that might be less inclined to see or less eager to consume traditional sources of information about politics. “I think that we have to remember that not everybody reads The New York Times and watches cable news,” he said. “You can do all the cable news you want. You can get quoted in The New York Times as much as you want, and put out statements, [but] there’s a huge segment of the population that’s never going to see that.”
“It’s important that we use moments that speak to different groups to drive a message,” the congressman added. “Because I am gay, and because I know a lot about pop culture and stuff — because, you know, we like to know a lot about stuff like that, I think it does help. I am still actively watching RuPaul. I follow things that maybe the average political person is not following.”
This familiarity that comes with membership in marginalized communities can become especially important in the context of working in a legislative body where their rights and protections are under attack.
“There’s an active dismantling of our rights,” Garcia said, “and gay marriage could be on the line [along with] gay adoptions, teaching history about leaders in our community in our schools. All of that is on the line, and so we’ve got to be very clear about that.”
Reciprocally, the congressman said, that responsibility also applies when people who belong to marginalized communities are present in those spaces. “I talk to gay friends back home, and I remind them there’s an attack happening right now on trans people, on gay people,” he said, “and you have to wake up to that and know that it’s your job to, like, stand up and be loud, and you just can’t live your life every day thinking everything’s just gonna get better when Donald Trump’s not the president.”
Standing up to Musk and the Trump administration can be risky
Of course, there is always a risk of attracting negative attention, particularly when a member of Congress stands up to a public figure as polarizing and powerful as Musk or Trump and with a message that is designed to reach audiences that might not otherwise watch clips from a hearing or floor debate in the U.S. House of Representatives.
In February, Garcia was targeted by Ed Martin, a close Trump ally who shortly after his appointment by the president to serve as U.S. attorney for D.C. issued a “letter of inquiry” to the congressman’s office over remarks he had made during an interview on CNN.
“When asked how Democrats can stop Elon Musk,” Martin explained, “you spoke clearly: ‘What the American public wants is for us to bring actual weapons to this bar fight. This is an actual fight for democracy.’”
He continued, “This sounds to some like a threat to Mr. Musk – an appointed representative of President Donald Trump who you call a ‘dick’ – and government staff who work for him. Their concerns have led to this inquiry.”
In response, Garcia vowed that his criticism would not be stifled by attempts to intimidate him with the specter of an investigation or charges by the Justice Department for comments that any reasonable person would interpret as a metaphor or figure of speech rather than a legally actionable call for violence against a public official.
The congressman told the Blade he believes the effort was meant to silence not just his criticism of Musk but also to create a chilling effect that would dissuade others from speaking out publicly against the billionaire.
“And so we’re going to continue to call out what Elon Musk does, the damage he’s doing, and I’m certainly not going to stop using metaphors,” Garcia said.
As of Tuesday, the congressman said his office did not reply after their receipt of the letter from Martin, adding that he had consulted with House counsel “which is the proper approach.”
Asked to share how he evaluates the risks and potential rewards of speaking out against powerful interests who lead a regime that is bent on retribution against critics and political enemies, Garcia said that as a lifelong comic book aficionado, to some extent he sees taking on real-life villains in Congress as a necessary part of his work on behalf of the people.
“I’ve learned my values through comic books,” he said, “and I view the world very much in terms of people that are doing the right thing in truth and justice and people that are, I mean, who better exemplifies Lex Luthor than folks like Elon Musk?”
Garcia said that earning the ire of Musk, Trump, and Republican colleagues like the anti-trans extremist U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (S.C.) is a sign that he is on the right path, adding that these folks should feel opposition from elected Democrats and other leaders along with the anger they might witness from X users who might post on the platform to vent their frustrations with its owner, demonstrators who might picket outside the White House, or angry constituents who might show up to their representative’s town hall meetings.
Additionally, he said, “I’ve told other members of Congress this, whether we’re in a meeting or sharing a meal, I said, ‘when you look back at this moment, and we think about who should be opposing Elon Musk and Donald Trump in this moment, that’s us.”
Garcia also expressed gratitude for his “fantastic, very supportive” family and close friends including pals from college who are part of his “great support system back home.” The congressman said that while he and his husband split up and are now divorced, the two have remained “very close” and share custody of their cat.
Support also comes from strangers, he said, who increasingly have been approaching him in public to express gratitude because they feel he is giving voice to their feelings about the administration. In fact, Garcia said he feels more embraced than ever before by his community in Long Beach, including compared to his tenure as mayor.
What’s next for the Democratic Party?
Garcia is realistic about the extent to which he and his Democratic colleagues can hold the administration accountable so long as they remain in the minority, where they are unable to even access all the documents and paperwork necessary to do their work on the Oversight Committee let alone pass legislation without buy-in from Republicans.
At the same time, he cautions that Democrats must not focus on the midterms to such an extent that they do not recognize or call attention to their opponents’ effort to gut the federal government, causing harm on a scale that will be difficult to quantify for savings that will be used to carve out tax breaks for the country’s richest people and corporations.
As Democrats work to rebuild after their losses in the 2024 cycle, Garcia said he has been influenced by proposals such as those floated recently by Ezra Klein of The New York Times, who has urged the party to focus on creating a politics of abundance as an alternative to the politics of scarcity that empowers Republican coalitions.
The Democratic Party has “made it difficult to build housing, by over regulating, by not allowing there to be more for everyone,” the congressman said. “I’ve seen it happen in the way we do our environmental policy, our housing policies,” the latter being a challenge that “I struggled with when I was mayor.”
“In our states and in our cities, everyone is talking about this question,” he said. “I mean, maybe they’re not calling it ‘abundance’ in the way that Ezra Klein is referring to it,” but there has been a lot of self-reflection and dialogue among Democrats about how “we have been creating communities in states where people are leaving,” where because they can no longer afford to live there, “working class people are leaving.”
Garcia in November helped to launch the bipartisan YIMBY caucus which works to promote the development of new housing across the country, leading the effort with fellow founding co-chairs, U.S. Reps. Scott Peters (D-Calif.), Marc Molinaro (R-N.Y.), Juan Ciscomani (R-Ariz.), Jake Auchincloss (D-Mass.), Brittany Pettersen (D-Colo.), and Chuck Edwards (R-N.C.).
Along with substantive reforms designed to deliver real results for working people, the congressman discussed some of the ways he would like to see Democrats refine their media strategy, including by making appearances on conservative media outlets like Fox News — without compromising or softening their message or policy positions.
Watching former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg spar with the network’s right-wing hosts, Garcia said, was eye-opening in terms of how the segments were mutually beneficial for the Democratic cabinet secretary and members of the right-wing cable network’s audience.
The California Democrat said that he was probably the only guest who appeared on Griff Jenkins’ 60-minute Fox News program during his most recent interview on March 1 with the network’s Washington based national correspondent to offer a take that was critical of Musk but grounded in facts.
“It’s about reaching as many people as possible and in as many venues as possible,”
Garcia said. “That’s why I’m going on Fox News. And honestly, I encourage all Democrats to do it. I feel good about our growing opposition. But, you know, it’s also taken us a while — I mean, we went through a really bad loss, and I think that a lot of the party apparatus was unprepared for how strong and fast Trump was going to be.”
Congress
Marjorie Taylor Greene’s bill to criminalize gender affirming care advances
Judiciary Committee markup slated for Wednesday morning
U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.)’s “Protect Children’s Innocence Act,” which would criminalize guideline-directed gender affirming health care for minors, will advance to markup in the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday morning.
Doctors and providers who administer medical treatments for gender dysphoria to patients younger than 18, including hormones and puberty blockers, would be subject to Class 3 felony charges punishable by up to 10 years in prison if the legislation is enacted.
LGBTQ advocates warn conservative lawmakers want to go after families who travel out of state to obtain medical care for their transgender kids that is banned or restricted in the places where they reside, using legislation like Greene’s to expand federal jurisdiction over these decisions. They also point to the medically inaccurate way in which the bill characterizes evidence-based interventions delineated in standards of care for trans and gender diverse youth as “mutilation” or “chemical castration.”
Days into his second term, President Donald Trump signed “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” an executive order declaring that the U.S. would not “fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called ‘transition’ of a child from one sex to another, and it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit” medical treatments and interventions intended for this purpose.
Greene, who has introduced the bill in years past, noted the president’s endorsement of her bill during his address to the joint session of Congress in March when he said “I want Congress to pass a bill permanently banning and criminalizing sex changes on children and forever ending the lie that any child is trapped in the wrong body.”
Congress
Pappas in Senate race focuses on costs, health care, and personal freedoms
Gay NH congressman hopes to succeed retiring US Sen. Jeanne Shaheen
U.S. Rep. Chris Pappas (D-N.H.) recently sat down with the Washington Blade for an exclusive interview following the official launch of his bid for New Hampshire’s open U.S. Senate seat, which is expected to be among the most closely watched contests of the 2026 midterm election cycle.
The congressman, who is serving his fourth term as the representative for New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District, expects next year’s race will be “very high profile” and “challenging.” The New York Times, meanwhile, anticipates “an expensive and dogged affair.”
Senate elections tend to attract a disproportionate share of attention and resources especially in recent years as control over the chamber has tended to change hands more often and with smaller margins, but Pappas’s race is expected to be a bellwether for Democrats as they work to mount a comeback after last year’s electoral defeat.
At the same time, Pappas is gearing up for the battle over the Republican led reconciliation spending bill, with Democratic lawmakers exercising what little leverage they may have in the minority to fight against “disastrous cuts to Medicaid” while “finding other ways to protect what’s important to the people that we represent.”
Lawmakers on Sunday night gave the go-ahead for the GOP’s tax and spending package, but negotiations continue into this week as Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) works to appease conservative hardliners and swing district Republicans.
Granite Staters are “really concerned” about negotiations in Washington over spending, but also with the exigencies created by President Donald Trump over the past 100+ days of his second term, which have cropped up repeatedly during the town hall-style events in New Hampshire that Pappas has headlined over the spring.
“That’s part of the reason why things are so challenging here in Washington,” the congressman said. “Oftentimes you’re pulled in 10 different directions on any given day based on what this administration is trying to do, based on what Republicans in Congress are trying to do.”
“We’ve got to figure out how we can shed light on what’s happening, try to confront the damage, and use whatever tools we have to fight back,” he said, while remaining “focused on those things that matter most, whether that’s people losing their health insurance, cuts to programs like Social Security, and people’s access to their benefits.”
The US Senate election
“I’ve got a strong foundation of support” for the Senate race, Pappas told the Blade, noting “I’ve run four campaigns for the House in half the state of New Hampshire” whose congressional map is cleaved into halves with the congressman’s constituents in the eastern portion of the state while freshman Democratic Congresswoman Maggie Goodlander represents the 2nd District.
Following the announcement in March that New Hampshire’s senior U.S. senator, Jeanne Shaheen (D), would not be seeking reelection next year, “I spent the first couple weeks,” Pappas said, “talking directly with folks all across New Hampshire to see what was on their minds, and increasingly, I was hearing from people that they wanted me to jump into the race.”
The sentiment was shared by Shaheen and the rest of the state’s congressional delegation — Goodlander and U.S. Sen. Maggie Hassan (D) — who quickly endorsed Pappas’s bid. Speculation that the state’s popular former governor Chris Sununu, a Republican, might mount a formidable challenge for the seat ended with his announcement last month that he would not enter the race.
Even if Pappas is on the glidepath for the Senate, which is difficult to handicap so far in advance of November 2026, the election is expected to draw substantial attention and resources.
According to the Cook Political Report, of the Senate seats that will be up for grabs in the midterms, nine are held by incumbent Democrats and 19 by incumbent Republicans who are expected to easily win reelection, which leaves just five races whose outcomes are less certain and which therefore are likely to earn most of the attention and resources next year: The blue-leaning open seat in New Hampshire, an open seat in Michigan that is currently deemed a toss-up, the seat in Georgia held by incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, which is also considered a toss-up, and the red-leaning seats held by incumbent GOP U.S. Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Thom Tillis of North Carolina.
While the maps present long-shot odds of Democrats regaining control of the upper chamber even though Republicans had reclaimed the Senate majority last year by flipping just four seats for a modest margin of 53-47, races like Pappas’s are expected to be testing grounds for the minority party’s major campaigns midway through Trump’s second term.
New Hampshire has long been a political battleground where elections tend to be close and voters tend to split the ticket. According to the Cook Partisan Voting Index, only three U.S. states are less politically partisan: Michigan, Wisconsin, and Georgia. The determination is based on data collated from the 2020 and 2024 presidential elections, where voters in both of the Granite State’s two congressional districts favored Joe Biden and Kamala Harris over Donald Trump while supporting the Republican gubernatorial nominees, Chris Sununu and Kelly Ayotte.
Shaheen has “really built a brand that’s based on serving people and delivering for the constituents of New Hampshire,” Pappas said. “So that’s the kind of work that I want to carry on — but recognizing, in this time, that we really have to stand up and fight and be a part of our response to what this administration is doing.”
“We do need to re-establish some basic checks and balances here in Washington, so that there is oversight and accountability of an administration that’s blowing through all the guardrails and is really estranged from public opinion and from the Constitution,” he said, while continuing “to find ways to meet people where they are, to hear their stories, and to connect the fight here in Washington to people’s lives back home.”
Responding to the needs of Granite Staters
Specifically, while “people are responding to a lot of different stories,” Pappas highlighted concerns about “cuts to specific programs, the fact that we’ve got 80,000 VA employees that are going to be fired,” and over the direction in which care for veterans is headed under the new administration.
“The big fight right now is around health care,” he said. “It’s around defending Medicaid coverage, ensuring we’re going to continue to have a Medicaid expansion program in New Hampshire, which is something that I’ve worked with then-Gov. Maggie Hassan to implement, and whether we’re going to have tax fairness and prevent huge tax breaks from going to the wealthiest Americans and the biggest corporations.”
Asked about cuts to medical research that are impacting research universities across the country, Pappas said the issue has been raised often in discussions with people in his home state.
“The University of New Hampshire does a tremendous amount of research with federal funds,” he noted, “and that’s something that we’ve worked hard through the years to advocate for, and it’s really important for the university to continue to be able to do that work and help us understand the world around us, how it’s changing, and how we can respond to protect public health, for instance, to protect our communities against sea level rise — those are just important priorities.”
Unlocking “breakthroughs in science and medicine” is important for America’s global competitiveness, the congressman added, whether by “homegrown talent here in the United States or research scientists from around the world that want to come to our country and share their expertise and help the United States move forward.”
“Donald Trump has decided that universities and colleges are a political enemy of his, and he’s trying to punish them, but in doing that, he’s really short changing our economy and the future of the United States,” Pappas said, adding, “most people recognize that, especially people in New Hampshire.”
The congressman recounted how he was able to work closely with his colleagues in the state’s congressional delegation to leverage public pressure and influence by labor unions to reinstate probationary employees at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard who were let go following drastic cuts to the federal workforce under the Trump-Vance administration.
“It’s really critical to the future of that facility, which rehabilitates our nuclear submarine fleet and has nearly 7,000 civilian employees,” Pappas said. “So that was one case where we found that we were able to get a lot of local attention and support around an issue, and perhaps that news made it all the way back here to the Defense Department who were concerned about public pressure.”
“We’ve got a lot of long-time employees at that shipyard,” along with “a lot of new people that have been brought on board as a result of an expansion over the last several years,” the congressman noted. “Across the board, people want to know that we’re focused, especially on our families’ bottom line right now,” which is why it was important for him and his colleagues to “go to bat for a facility that’s really important to people’s livelihoods, but also to our overall economy” and for national security.
Moving forward, Pappas said, they will continue pushing back against “efforts to attack the right to organize and collective bargaining,” because “unions at the shipyard have a great relationship with management, but that could be disrupted by political efforts from this administration to attack labor unions.”
The economy and protecting personal freedoms
The congressman said that while “we need to try a little bit of everything to try to identify what is going to break through,” at the same time, “I do have the sense that the last election hinged on the economy, that every election really hinges on the economy, and those are the issues that are going to be, I think, most salient to folks next year.”
“We’ve got to make sure that we’re making progress at addressing inequities in the economy and are lowering costs,” he said. “Right now, the top issues that I hear about in New Hampshire include the high cost of housing, the lack of affordability of child care, the fact that our health care system is still inaccessible, and far too expensive for most people to be able to get the care that they need.”
“We’re not getting any of that from Republicans right now,” Pappas said, when it comes to the “work we have to do to level the playing field in our economy,” adding, “they talked a big game in the last campaign about lowering costs, but they’re taking no meaningful action to do it, and so we need to be thoughtful about a really forward-thinking agenda that can focus on how we allow people to get ahead and stand in this economy.”
Asked about whether and to what extent Pappas will focus his messaging on the president’s tariffs, he noted “people are already responding,” especially in “a state like New Hampshire that has a longstanding close relationship with Canada.”
He continued, “88 percent of our small businesses import something. We have a lot of exporting businesses that rely on their markets overseas, including in places like Canada and China, and some of those markets are going away because of the tariffs that have been slapped on U.S. goods that we export.”
Trump’s trade war “has generated so much instability in our economy, it’s really hard for our small businesses to navigate,” Pappas said, with these new “disruptions to supply chains and the threat of increased costs” following a “really tough 5-year period from inflation and workforce shortages to the pandemic that predated that.”
“This is an issue that I think brings people together across party lines,” Pappas said. “Folks understand that we have trade agreements in place that have been negotiated [and] supported on a bipartisan basis, including” the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, “which was renegotiated during the first Trump administration.”
The congressman continued, “it only makes sense to move forward in a way where we are focused on how we can make more things in the United States, but also recognize that we can’t make everything and we can’t go it alone, so we need to be working with close partners like Canada, and there’s no there’s no reason for this sort of trade war that only hurts our businesses and our ability to create jobs and have a thriving economy.”
“I also think, with respect to personal freedoms, in the wake of the Dobbs decision, we have to continue to take steps to re-establish Roe v. Wade as the law of the land and defend reproductive freedom,” Pappas said.
“I’m the only candidate in this race right now, and I think regardless of who the Republican is, we’re going to be fighting for the Women’s Health Protection Act and to make sure that we’re re-establishing the precedent that Roe set for more than half a century, which is broadly supported in New Hampshire,” he said.
LGBTQ issues
A co-chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus, Pappas is the first openly gay member of Congress to represent New Hampshire. If elected, he would be the third out LGBTQ U.S. senator behind U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) and Laphonza Butler, who served from 2023 to 2024.
Trump, along with his Republican allies in Congress and appointees serving in his second administration, has undermined rights and protections for LGBTQ people on a variety of fronts, including by dismantling and defunding efforts to fight against HIV. Cuts to basic and clinical science research along with public health programs have been advanced by the president’s budget and the GOP lawmakers’ reconciliation package, as well as through the reorganization of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Now in the minority, House Democrats “will not be in the room negotiating, as much as we would love to tell the majority exactly how we feel about all these items,” Pappas conceded. At the same time, “to get a budget put in place and appropriations bills passed, you’ll need 60 votes in the Senate, which means you need some sort of bipartisan consensus, at least in that body,” which “could potentially be a difference maker in defending some of these programs that folks care about, that the president has sought to eliminate.”
“Services for people with HIV, access to health care, vital research — those are things that Americans broadly support,” the congressman said. “We’re going to stand up against it, and where there’s harm to people and important priorities, I’ll certainly be speaking out, and I know that members of the Equality Caucus will be taking that very seriously.”
“Many people in this administration,” Pappas said, “are not traditional Republicans and don’t support the same set of policies that we’ve seen even Republican presidents put in place,” like the PEPFAR initiative led by George W. Bush, “which has changed the trajectory of the treatment of HIV and AIDS around the world.”
“Now, they are attacking that program and its ability to provide care for people in some of the most vulnerable regions of the world, and it’s been reported that individuals in Africa have died as a result of not getting the treatments that they were counting on through that program,” the congressman noted.
He continued, “We really have a human responsibility to do whatever we can to meet the needs of people who are susceptible to disease or who have been exposed to it, and the fact that this administration is breaking with that long bipartisan tradition of research, of humanitarianism, I think is incredibly cruel, and it’s not what the United States should stand for.”
What has been especially frustrating, Pappas said, is the silence from Republicans in Congress including those who “have championed these programs for decades.”
“I don’t know what to say to that,” he said, except that “people need to be paying attention and we need to do everything possible to speak out and fight back against it” because “we can’t see an interruption in terms of the progress that’s been made in fighting disease and developing new therapies.”
Public health aside, when asked about how the Democratic Party should approach messaging on issues of transgender rights and gender identity, Pappas stressed that “Americans largely embrace equality” and people want others “to have the same rights and responsibilities.”
The congressman raised the Equality Act as an example — a bill that would protect Americans against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in areas from housing to employment, which was reintroduced last month with a press conference headlined by Pappas and top Democrats from both chambers of Congress.
Democrats should not shy away from advancing bills that advance “fairness and equality before the law,” he said, “especially at a time where we know that the LGBTQ community is being targeted by really cynical political attacks.”
“Where I come from, in New Hampshire, we’ve adopted protections for trans individuals in our state’s non discrimination statutes,” Pappas noted, “and so I think when you come from an environment like New Hampshire, you understand that people do respect their neighbors for their differences.”
He continued, “We’re a live and let live state, and so I think it’s really consistent with who we are to be tolerant and embrace people of different identities and orientations. That’s who we are as Granite Staters. And I think people recognize that in order to have a future where everyone can live a full and productive life, you need to provide people with equality before the law.”
Congress
Garcia confronts Noem over gay asylum seeker ‘forcibly removed’ to El Salvador
Andry Hernández Romero is makeup artist from Venezuela
California Congressman Robert Garcia on Wednesday asked Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem about the well-being of a gay asylum seeker from Venezuela who the U.S. “forcibly removed” to El Salvador.
The gay Democrat during a House Homeland Security Committee hearing asked Noem whether Andry Hernández Romero is “alive” and whether “we can check and do a wellness check on him.”
“This individual is in El Salvador, and the appeal would be best made to the president and to the government of El Salvador,” Noem told Garcia.
The Trump-Vance administration in March “forcibly removed” Hernández, who asked for asylum because of persecution he suffered due to his sexual orientation and political beliefs, and other Venezuelans from the U.S. and sent them to El Salvador.
The White House on Feb. 20 designated Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang, as an “international terrorist organization.” President Donald Trump on March 15 invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which the Associated Press notes allows the U.S. to deport “noncitizens without any legal recourse.”
Alvaro M. Huerta, director of litigation and advocacy for the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, a Los Angeles-based organization that represents Hernández, said officials with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection claimed their client is a Tren de Aragua member because of his tattoos.
The Washington Blade on April 17 reported Hernández was sent to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, a maximum-security prison known by the Spanish acronym CECOT.
Garcia, along with U.S. Reps. Maxwell Alejandro Frost (D-Fla.), Maxine Dexter (D-Ore.), and Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.) last month met with U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador William Duncan and embassy staffers in San Salvador, the Salvadoran capital. The lawmakers did not visit CECOT, but Garcia told the Blade that the embassy agreed to ask the Salvadoran government to “see how (Hernández) is doing and to make sure he’s alive.”
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