On Saturday, an enthusiastic crowd of about 1,400 Ohioans packed the Valley Dale Ballroom to protest that their federal officials aren’t representing them — and that they’re not standing up to President Donald Trump as he allows the world’s richest man to cut federal programs.
The event, organized by Indivisible Central Ohio, was jokingly dubbed a town hall.
Chairs were set up on stage for Republican U.S. Senators Bernie Moreno and Jon Husted. They sat empty, and organizers claimed the senators’ offices did not bother to inform them that they would not be attending.
Instead, organizers directed the questions they would have asked the senators to the AI program Chat GPT. The program claimed that massive layoffs and cuts to federal programs would cost Ohio jobs, harm university research, and stifle the biomedical sector.
Mia Lewis, an organizer, urged the crowd to come out on a regular basis to protest what was going on.
“This is an unprecedented event in our country. “This is not normal,” she said of an administration that routinely attacks the judiciary and allows an unelected, unconfirmed Elon Musk to hack wildly at the federal government. “Just two people standing on a highway is not the same thing as 50 people being there every day.”
Members of the audience held signs that read “Nobody elected Putin,” “Nobody elected Musk,” and other things that cannot be published by a general-audience news organization.
Moreno and Husted were not the only ones mocked for being absent. Joyce Beatty, a Democrat and longtime Columbus congresswoman, declined, citing a “prior commitment.” An unfortunate constituent was repeatedly heckled as she attempted to read a letter sent by Beatty in the first person.
When the constituent read a passage that implied Beatty was present, a man exclaimed, “You’re not here!” The crowd laughed.
Arnold Scott summarized the general mood.
“As an ex-federal employee and a union member, I’m mad as hell,” he told me. “How about the billionaires pay their taxes? When they cut employees at various agencies, they are actually reducing the services that taxpayers pay for.
When they cut the VA, they also cut veterans. You stand there and claim to support the veterans, but then you cut them. When you cut them, it will take longer for them to receive the services to which they are entitled.”
Scott stated that an Ohio federal employee lost her job and complained to one of the Ohio senators. “What do you want me to do?” Scott claimed that the senator responded.
Scott addressed the empty chairs and stated, “Mr. Senator, what we want you to do…we want you to do your job.”
The crowd rose to its feet and chanted, “Do your job!”
Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” is reducing funding for the Veterans Administration, the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, the Social Security Administration, the Park Service, and many other agencies.
Catherine Duffy informed the audience that buried in that list is a cut that is extremely harmful to Ohio’s poor and farmers. Musk’s alleged agency eliminated $1 billion in national funding for overburdened food banks to buy directly from farmers.
“Every dollar we don’t have is produce we don’t grow,” Duffy informed us.
