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According to the federal Office of Personnel Management, there are 11,285 federal workers in Maine, and Elon Musk is randomly and gleefully firing large numbers of federal workers, many of whom have families to feed and mortgages to pay. Musk is even firing large numbers of Veterans Administration workers, endangering critical veteran services and adding to a growing unemployment problem.
Musk is also gutting the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institute of Health, while avian bird flu and measles are spreading rapidly through the country. The Department of Education is facing outright elimination, at a time when students are facing record levels of suicide and mental health challenges. And Musk and Republican leaders are threatening to cut the Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security that millions of Americans depend on for their very survival.
And where is Rep. Jared Golden through all of this? Nowhere, it seems to. The man who last year announced in a BDN column that he would be fine with a Donald Trump victory is now appears nowhere to be found, and he has not held a town hall meeting to discuss the Trump administration’s assault on democracy and the Constitution.
If Golden is unwilling to fulfill his oath to protect and defend the Constitution, I think he should step aside in favor of someone who will.
Lawrence Reichard
Belfast
