Congressman Stephen F. Lynch denounced President Trump and his administration during a two-hour virtual town hall meeting for his district held via Zoom last week.

“Let me just say at the outset that President Trump’s actions and those of his administration from beginning to end represent a clear and present danger to our democracy,” said Lynch, a South Boston Democrat and member of Congress since 2001. “I honestly feel that way. A danger to our basic rights, our basic freedoms. In addition to damaging us internally and domestically, I think he has seriously undermined our standing in the world and that’s a full stop right there.”  

Held about 100 days into Trump’s second presidential term, Lynch’s town hall was one of scores conducted across the country by members of Congress from both parties in recent weeks. Many of them have drawn loud protests and sharp rebukes from constituents enraged by Trump policies from immigration crackdowns to tariffs to widespread cuts to the federal work force.

Lynch says he’s alarmed by what he has seen so far and by what’s likely to come. House Republicans, he said, have passed a budget resolution that will cut billions of dollars from federal programs overseen by the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

“When they passed the budget resolution, the Republicans’ blueprint said we’re going to cut $880 billion from that account,” said Lynch. “The only fund big enough to get $880 billion out of that committee account would be Medicaid.” 

In Massachusetts, the state pays 50 cents for every Medicaid dollar spent while the other half is funded by the federal government. Other states, like Mississippi, are responsible for funding much less, Lynch noted.

“Any cuts to Medicaid will hurt Massachusetts far greater than a lot of other states because we’ve expanded it and we do so much with it. Because of the suddenness of this change, it would not give Gov. Healey the ability to respond to that. It could blow a hole in our budget that could be in the billions because of the number of families we take care of on Medicaid.” 

Lynch warned that the cuts could eliminate health care services to about 62,000 children and nearly 30,000 seniors in his district.

“We’re only six weeks, seven weeks into the Trump administration and we continue to experience a barrage of executive orders and administration actions,” said Lynch. “If they were left unchallenged, it would have a tremendously corrosive effect on our constitutional framework and the structure of our representative democracy itself, and the whole fabric of our basic rights and freedoms that are granted and protected under our continuation and the rule of law.” 

He added: “The keywords in there are if left unchallenged and all of these actions are being challenged by rapid response teams.” 

Through a collaboration with the Litigation Working Group, the Congressional Labor Caucus, partners from pro-democracy groups, and attorneys from ACLU, there are more than 80 lawsuits ongoing against various actions and executive orders issued by the president. 

According to Lynch, many of these have been successful so far resulting in court-ordered pauses to Trump directives, including the prevention of USAID direct hires from being placed on administrative leave, and mass layoffs of many probationary employees. 

 “We need to do more to make people understand what these cuts are and what these mass firings mean to average families,” said Lynch. “We need to communicate what it means for people waiting for life-saving therapies for cancer or Alzheimer’s when researchers are fired. We need to explain what it means to veterans who are seeking treatment.”

Many of Lynch’s constituents on the call will be personally impacted, they noted. Kim Brooks of Norwood spoke about her late husband, Lt. Col. Timothy Brooks, and said she is frightened by what Trump’s cuts will do to the Veteran’s Administration and the health care services it provides to veterans and their families. 

Lynch said that not enough people understand or fully grasp the gravity or scope of the Trump agenda.

“We got this problem in our country where we don’t have a shared reality. There are some people who are never going to get [it], ‘cause they’re too far gone,” said Lynch. “[But] there are some people who voted for Trump [for] other reasons. They might be independents; they might have been fearful, or they didn’t want to go Democrat for whatever reason. We need to persuade those people. We need to teach them, educate them, help them understand what this means and what’s going on here.” 

He added: “Trump has been masterful in terms of using fear and anger and punching down on groups that are most vulnerable. We have to push back, we have to fight every moment, and every time you hear an untruth, call it out. This is something we’re going to have to win one person at a time.

“I do think in the past five or six weeks a lot of people are having second thoughts. They’re having buyer’s remorse in terms of what they got at the White House, but that needs to happen more quickly and in a much more thoughtful way.”