Rep. Summer Lee told constituents the evening of Feb. 20 that Elon Musk has been acting like an unelected “prime minister” and pledged to fight against potential cuts to social programs and education through his Department of Government Efficiency.
“[Musk] essentially bought his way, not just into [Trump’s] inner circle, beyond it, right into the Oval Office,” Lee says. “He is essentially working as if he is the prime minister of the United States, which tracks, as Donald Trump is now proclaiming he is the king.”
The congresswoman’s team hosted a roughly one-hour “Tele-Town Hall” in which constituents could call in to listen and submit questions. Anyone interested could also listen live on Facebook, which about 100 people tuned into at a time. Lee, a Pittsburgh-area progressive often considered part of “the Squad,” represents residents in the City of Pittsburgh as well as parts of the South Hills and Mon Valley. Concerned constituents from areas such as Monroeville, Bloomfield, and Bethel Park all submitted questions answered by Lee.
Throughout the stream, a member of Lee’s team read submitted questions regarding DOGE, a non-government entity created by President Donald Trump and run by Musk, who posted that he loves Trump “as much as a straight man can love another man” and spent hundreds of millions of dollars to help elect him. Earlier this month, Congress’s Oversight and Government Reform Committee, of which Lee is a member, unsuccessfully attempted to subpoena Musk.
As explained by Trump and Musk, DOGE exists to assess spending by the federal government and kickstart actions to adjust spending. Critics fear such adjusting would amount to substantial cuts to programs such as Medicaid and Social Security that millions rely on for healthcare and income as well as broad, sweeping layoffs for federal workers to thwart the functioning of the federal government.
Recently, seemingly prompted by Musk, Trump has effectively shuttered the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), a department that amounts to less than 1% of the federal budget and disperses humanitarian aid to foreign countries. Attempts from DOGE to obtain a wide swath of citizens’ private data from the federal government has also sparked public controversy and scrutiny from courts.
Lee said in the broadcast that the first month of the second Trump administration has felt like a year. She used strong language to describe the style of governing she believes Trump has been practicing.
“I don’t believe that we can afford to mince many words,” Lee says. “President Trump is conducting an illegal and dangerous power grab, to call it what it is. Elon Musk is stealing from you, the American people, your jobs, your benefits, your data.” Later in the town hall, Lee added that it wasn’t “catastrophizing” to describe the United States as being in a “constitutional crisis.”
Regarding the proposed abolishment of the Department of Education floated by Trump and his allies, Lee said it would be illegal for Trump to unilaterally end the department.
“And that’s just wrong,” Lee says. “The Department of Education is there to ensure that all kids, all students, irrespective of their ZIP Code or their background, have access to a quality of education … it provides essential federal funding supporting our local school districts.”
One constituent asked about the impact of mass layoffs of government workers within Lee’s district. Pennsylvania has about 56,000 federal government workers, including more than 8,000 in her district, according to Lee.
“A lot of people, just across the country, feel like so much of the federal work happens only in D.C., and we know that that’s just not true,” Lee says.
Lee also made it a point to criticize the impact of money on politics following the 2010 supreme court case Citizens United v. FEC. Large super PACs and deep-pocketed donors have spent gargantuan amounts of money to support candidates opposing Lee and her allies in Congress.
“We have to speak out against dark money in politics … we shouldn’t accept it in any race because we know that it leads to this,” Lee says. “And we have to get back into the fight on messaging grounds. There are people who voted for Donald Trump, who voted for Kamala Harris or people who didn’t vote at all, who didn’t want this to happen. Who didn’t want the few, oligarchs, to run our country. And we have an obligation of helping them to understand what’s really happening.”
Still, despite the severity of her description of current events, Lee promised to fight and encouraged her constituents to do the same.
“I know you are discouraged. Some of you are confused or scared. Please do not give up,” Lee says. “Please do not feel like we are not in for this fight. I want to remind you it’s been 30 days. That’s it. It feels like a really long time, but it’s only been 30 days. We are in the first quarter … There are more quarters to come, and we are all going to have to be ready for the fight, be ready for the advocacy, and be ready for the lobbying.”
This article appears in Feb 19-25, 2025.
