During a virtual town hall Tuesday night focused on the first weeks of the Trump Administration, Democratic Representative Chellie Pingree fielded calls expressing fear and alarm over the influence of billionaire Trump advisor Elon Musk, the President's threats to seize foreign territory, and federal layoffs.
One caller from Sebago said his wife, a federal employee, had been suddenly fired earlier that day.
"This really hurts families and hurts people," he said. "You lose your job, you lose your benefits, and a lot of people don't have backup."
Pingree said it was emblematic of widespread hardship caused by arbitrary firings across the federal government, driven in part by billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency.
She said congressional Democrats have limited options as the minority party, but she vowed to join colleagues in fighting to protect legislative priorities including the Affordable Care Act, and to work with state attorneys general and other groups to pursue legal action against the Trump Administration's tactics.
Pingree said many of those lawsuits are already finding success in the courts.
"These executive orders written by Donald Trump are not very well crafted in legal terms, so they're not standing up in court," she said. "They give us the feeling like he just wanted to throw a lot of them out there and keep them going in all directions, but didn't expect to win many of them."
But Pingree cautioned that the President is ignoring court orders in some of these cases.
Though the tone of the event was largely cordial, Pingree did use profanity at one point in describing the Trump Administration's tactics, in particular the firing of federal employees and efforts to unilaterally dismantle entire agencies.
