This is the Tom Hartman program.

Welcome of our program and live for this hour for a national progressive town hall meeting. He represents the 17th

district of California's vice chair of the congressional progressive caucus. Kana.coma.com is his website,

repro Kana over on blue sky and on Twitter. Congressman, welcome back. What's the top of your mind today?

Well, thanks for having me back. I was in three rural parts of California in red districts, Bakersfield, Norco, and then

Anaheim, a thousand people showing up in these districts, very, very upset that they're

taking Medicaid away, angry about it.

You know, in the previous cycle in Valdeo's district, Rudy Salas, who ran against it,

was getting two, three hundred people. So it's just a whole new level of anger. By the way,

in every district, someone came up and said they heard me on your show, Tom. So you got a big,

big audience in California.ia but i i'm telling

you that it's it's not just uh burney who's and of course incredible and uh attracting 30 40

thousand people across this country people are scared angry fed up uh about Elon Musk's cuts the

the cuts to medicate cuts to education. And I think that there's a popular

uprising. And now they're going after Social Security. I'm getting calls some people who's checked

and show up. They call Social Security, and they literally can't get through. There's nobody

answering the phone or they're put on a hold for two or three hours and then they get hung up on. I mean, it's apparently a complete mess over there at the Social Security Administration.

Have you been hearing that too?

I have. And this morning I talked to Congresswoman Latifah Simon, who's wonderful, you should have her

on sometimes Barbara Lee's successor. She said, when her husband passed away, she needed

$600 of Social Security as a death benefit, and she went and spent three, four, five

hours at one of those offices.

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