Last night, Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA03) held a telephone town hall meeting (see below for audio and highlights), during which he gave an excellent summary of where things are at right now, while answering some highly relevant – and even disturbing – questions. For instance, one caller asked, “What is being done…about the proposal or the bill to change the Constitution that would allow a president to serve a third term, but excludes the previous president, and will you support a president serving a third term?” Rep. Scott’s response was very telling – and troubling, for anyone who doesn’t think America should be a dictatorship:
“I certainly would not support that legislation that would allow Trump to serve a third term – but not Obama, George W Bush or Bill Clinton. It’s in the form of a constitutional amendment, it requires two-thirds votes in the House and the Senate. I can’t can’t imagine it getting the 2/3 vote nor being ratified by 3/4 of the states. So I don’t think there’s any chance that it might pass. The problem of course is that when we get towards the end, whether or not the president will relinquish power to the newly elected president or whether he’ll cancel the election – we don’t know what he might do. I think…we’re kind of tied up with all of the chaos and confusion right now, but I think it’s always been a question what he meant when he told one group, if you vote for me this time you won’t have to vote for me again. What he meant by that? I hope he didn’t mean you won’t be ABLE to vote for me again. But as far as the law is concerned, I don’t think there’s any chance that the…constitutional amendment will pass either Congress or be ratified in time for it to be effective.”
Yikes. Now, here’s a lightly edited transcript of Rep. Scott’s excellent introduction, during which he reviews where we’re at and what’s happened over the terrible past few weeks.
“…I share many of those concerns and frustrations. What we have witnessed the last few weeks from President Trump and Elon Musk and the rest of the Trump Administration is nothing short of an assault on democracy and the federal government. They have unleashed chaos and confusion with executive orders and Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Governmental Efficiency or DOGE. Much of what they have done is designed to demoralize and destroy the federal workforce, just like it is written in Project 2025. They’re attempting to purge career civil servants who know what they’re doing, who have the experience to know what they’re doing, with a loyalist to Donald Trump. And the most recent actions are without any apparent legal authority.
The pace of action has been relentless and constant. On its first day, President Trump pardoned 1600 violent criminals who were convicted of crimes resulting from their participation in the violent insurrection on January 6th – people who assaulted police officers protecting the peaceful transfer of power are now free because of President Trump’s pardons. Then they announced the hiring freeze of all federal employees and a haphazard firing of other civil servants, including those who kept airline passengers safe and those working hard to stop the Avian flu. These actions are putting the public at risk -and the Veterans Administration, for example, who already had a staffing shortage and targeting probationary employees only makes things worse…many of those are positions that have been left open for a long time and they finally got to fill and now they’re vacant again. They’ve attempted to freeze all federal grant funding funding that provides for education, health care and access to food and public safety…these are programs that our community relies on every day like Head Start and community health centers and investments in the future like medical research.
Then we found out from public reports that Elon Musk invaded your privacy by accessing personal data in highly confidential systems in the Departments of Treasury, Department of Labor, Department of Education and others. This information includes Social Security numbers, healthcare information, student loan information. But they won’t tell you what they’re doing with the information and…that information could include sensitive information about Elon Musk’s business competitors or sensitive information about…the many federal agencies that are investigating his businesses, particularly OSHA and the NLRB, and he could be using that information for his personal financial advantage. There’s no reason for Elon Musk to get all that information. It begs a question what he intends to do with it. And he says it’s all in the name of efficiency, but we know that Musk had a private meeting with the prime minister of India – was that for personal business or what?
Let’s remember that Donald Trump and Elon Musk are claiming that all of this is in the way to reduce the deficit in national debt…suggesting that they’re doing anything about the national debt is ridiculous; first public reports indicate that his claimed savings are wildly exaggerated. And just last week House Republicans made their first moves to pass a new federal budget for the fiscal year that begins October 1st. We had an 11th-hour hearing and yesterday Donald Trump endorsed the budget – they reported this budget will actually INCREASE the annual deficit and add trillions of dollars to the national debt… after they whined incessantly about how bad the debt and the deficit both are. And it betrays the middle class by giving trillions of tax cuts to the top 1% in corporations while cutting services for the middle class.
But let’s be clear, this Republican budget makes cruel cuts to countless programs that working families depend on, and as ranking member of the Committee on Education and Workforce, I’m particularly offended by cuts being demanded of educational and nutritional programs. The budget means that children and seniors will go hungry, employers will not be able to find the skilled workers they need, and it will make it harder for students to go to college and even harder to pay back student loans. And the budget will rip away health care from millions of Americans by making drastic cuts in Medicaid, all this to fund tax cuts for the wealthy. Time and time again we’ve seen trickle-down economics fail to deliver on its promises to the middle class, and there’s nothing economically responsible about the new Republican budget. Working families and the middle class will pay for even more lavish tax cuts for corporations and billionaires like Elon Musk and Donald Trump. And they have actually been very successful in looking out for themselves. According to published reports, both Elon Musk and Donald Trump have made tens of billions of dollars, maybe hundreds of billions of dollars for themselves just since the election.
And we will not be distracted, let’s not be distracted from the fact that amongst all this chaos and confusion the price of eggs and other goods has been going up. Inflation went up last month despite President’s Trump campaign promise to bring costs down on day one. And inflation will only get worse with President Trump’s new tariffs, which amount to a new tax on American consumers, and his new policy on immigration, which will also put upward pressure on prices.
Now what can we do about this? Our Constitution provided for checks and balances. And regrettably, the American electorate chose to elect Republicans to control both chambers of Congress. And many Republicans in Congress have supported the chaos, confusion and corruption lock stock and barrel. But Congressional Republicans also have a very thin majority – we only need three Republicans in the House or four Republicans in the Senate to join us to stop this chaos and insanity. Countless lawsuits have been filed and many have yielded results…Leader Jeffries has launched a new effort to hear directly from the American people harmed by recent Trump Administration policies; if you or someone you know has a story you would like to share, please head to the website, Democraticleader.house.gov/shareyourstory and let us know how all this chaos has affected you.”
Finally, Rep. Scott pointed out that we “need five votes” on the Supreme Court “that have a real sense of loyalty to the Constitution and to democracy…I think there may be five that when you get down to basic democracy,” and hopefully “the Supreme Court will have the backbone to rule that we have a democracy and we’re not giving it away.” I mean, sure, let’s hope that’s the case, but what if Clarence Thomas, Sam Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett – all of whom have said/done crazy, lawless, unconstitutional stuff already – do NOT “rule that we have a democracy and we’re not giving it away?” Then what happens? Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, but the fact is – it could, so we’d better start thinking about it.
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