‘These are dark times for everybody’: Hundreds tell R.I.’s congressmen about their frustration with the Trump administration – The Boston Globe

The two town halls were the first the Rhode Island congressmen have held since President Trump took office in January.

Many of the Rhode Islanders at Magaziner’s event said they were afraid that democracy was dying, and they wanted to know how to stop it.

“I am sick and tired of Rhode Island’s delegation not standing up in the way it should as a progressive state,” said one woman at Magaziner’s town hall, her voice cracking. “You have a role to play in Rhode Island to do more and to engage in civil disobedience. What are you going to do to stop Musk and the oligarchs from taking over the very little left of our representative democracy?”

People loudly applauded. Magaziner, a Democrat first elected to Rhode Island’s Second Congressional District in 2022, said he was doing all he could.

“It takes all of us, right? We need to be making a case to the public. We need to be doing what we can legislatively, we need to be doing what we can in the courts. It’s an all-hands-on deck moment,” Magaziner told the crowd. “The fact that you are all here tonight, when you could be doing anything else, gives me a lot of hope.”

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In East Greenwich, except for a Cranston woman wearing a Make America Great Again shirt — who challenged Magaziner not to criticize Trump — the crowd was overwhelmingly upset about the country’s direction under Trump and Elon Musk.

They spoke of the higher prices, the tariffs, the ransacking of government agencies by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency without accountability.

Jen Manzi of Cranston said her preteen daughter needed an individualized education program at her school, but the Department of Education was being cut. She feared she would fall behind in school.

“I’m worried about my kid’s rights, and right now, they’re under attack,” Manzi said, beginning to cry.

The cuts made by DOGE are short-sighted for all Americans, Suzanne Colby, a Warwick resident and a research professor at Brown University, told Magaziner.

Her work involves studying the impact of tobacco products on young people, with funding from the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Tobacco Products. It’s the kind of research that led to the FDA’s ban of sweet-flavored vaping products for teens, which the Supreme Court upheld on Wednesday.

But the FDA has been cut, and with it, the funding that scientists like Colby rely on. In the long run, this loss and others will impact people’s lives, and that’s not a partisan issue, she said.

“I think there’s an element missing from the public discourse, and that is the cuts that DOGE is making — education, libraries, health and human services, the CDC, FDA, NIH — are going to cost more than they save,” Colby said. “Because they’re preventative in nature, because they protect our public health and help our children thrive and grow and succeed, we will spend more because these cuts are being made.”

Magaziner said he’d called the president of Brown University after hearing about funding cuts. He said he’d spoken to Textron and Electric Boat about how the tariffs were going to effect them.

He urged people to stay informed and engaged, and to keep speaking out.

“We’re living in truly unprecedented times,” Magaziner said, “because in my view President Trump is taking an alarming array of actions to expand his own executive power at the expense of checks and balances that our country is founded on.”

At Amo’s town hall in East Providence, Neronha told hundreds of people packed into the school auditorium that “more lawsuits are coming.”

Neronha, alongside dozens of other attorneys general, have filed numerous lawsuits against Trump policies that have resulted in court injunctions. “What we have done is effectively stopped the administration in its tracks.”

Al Soares, a 74-year-old lifelong East Providence resident, said he was afraid of Medicare cuts. Soares, who stood using a walker, said he lives in an assisted living facility.

“And I thank God for it,” Soares said. “I’m petrified … if they take away my Medicare, you know where I end up? On the street.”

Other constituents said they were fearful of immigration enforcement, proposed restrictions on voter registration, and funding cuts for farmers, health care workers and nonprofits.

“I’m not a hair-on-fire kind of person, but this is unprecedented,” said Amo, who was first elected to Rhode Island’s First Congressional District in 2023. “This is not normal.”

Renee Boyce, 37, an unaffiliated voter, said she’s not happy with either side, as housing costs and inflation have soared.

“As much as I don’t like Trump, I want to know what you’re going to do to fight about that,” Boyce said to Amo. “When it comes to DOGE, I actually did support government efficiency. Because I think there were spending problems.”

“Right now, we are in a defensive posture,” Amo responded. “There was a world where people in Washington used to sit and talk with each other about solutions. That is not happening right now.”

He added that Trump’s “stupid, boneheaded tariff regime” would further increase costs.

Afterwards, Boyce told the Globe: “These are dark times for everybody.”

Neighbors and retirees Judy Bessoff and Gale Dyer of West Greenwich came an hour early to hear Magaziner and said they want to pressure the Democrats to take action.

“I’m concerned about the whole kit and kaboodle, and the dismantling of our government without regard for jobs and lives,” said Dyer.

Bessoff said she wanted to know why Trump was being allowed to skirt the Constitution, and why no one was stopping him. “I’ve been hearing people saying this is not what I voted for.”

“It doesn’t give you a whole lot of faith in the government,” she added. “You used to feel safe and secure. Now, it just feels nebulous.”

Amanda Milkovits can be reached at amanda.milkovits@globe.com. Follow her @AmandaMilkovits. Steph Machado can be reached at steph.machado@globe.com. Follow her @StephMachado.