28 Mar Rep. DeSaulnier Leads Contra Costa County Town Hall on Trump Administration’s Impact

Rep. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Walnut Creek, spoke to constituents March 20 at Mt. Diablo High School in Concord. (Finn Atkin / The CC Pulse)

By Finn Atkin

Rep. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Walnut Creek, hosted a town hall meeting March 20 to tell Contra Costa residents how Congress is counteracting the efforts of President Donald Trump and Elon Musk — an unelected official — to dismantle federal programs.

“We have to be principled, and we’re fighting against an administration that I don’t agree with very often at all, and I don’t think shows the respect that the U.S. Constitution deserves,” he said.

Among the large crowd at the Mt. Diablo High School gymnasium in Concord were Pleasant Hill City Council member Belle La, Brentwood Mayor Susannah Meyer and Concord Mayor Carlyn Obringer.

“This funding should not be frozen,” Obringer said to the crowd, describing a recent meeting with DeSaulnier in Washington, D.C., where elected officials discussed the freezing of an allocated $20.6 million intended to revitalize the city of Concord. The funds were meant for road repairs and city beautification efforts.

“We’re working on getting that unfrozen, but this is unprecedented,” she said, adding that Concord’s federal employees, several of whom were apparently in the audience, are also being impacted by the dismantling of federal programs.

DeSaulnier then spoke to the crowd about his nearly 35 years in politics, going from his start as a Concord City Council member in 1991 to currently representing California’s 10th Congressional District, which encompasses much of Contra Costa County.

In a PowerPoint presentation, DeSaulnier shared a brief list of House committee assignments, such as the Ethics Committee of which he is a ranking member and the Education and Workforce Committee, that are threatened by the Trump administration.

He listed multiple actions the administration has tried to take that have been at least temporarily stopped by the courts. Those include taking the away the constitutional right to citizenship now guaranteed to anyone born in the U.S., giving the controversial, new Department of Government Efficiency access to taxpayer data, and firing thousands of federal employees.

He also touched on maximizing efficiency — something Trump and Musk have used to justify cutting federal jobs, programs and services — by elected officials in the use of taxpayer dollars.

“There’s always waste in every organization,” DeSaulnier said. “Can we be analytical about how we improve — how we take taxpayer funding and make it more efficient? I’ve always said that should be nonpartisan.”

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Following the presentation, DeSaulnier took questions, which were chosen at random after being written on cards by audience members. He said everyone who had submitted a question would later receive a response from his office, provided they had written legibly.

One audience member asked whether President Trump’s status as a felon and apparent disregard for the law would cause others to disregard the law as well.

DeSaulnier approached the question cautiously and urged the audience to become more active in politics and their communities. He encouraged people to organize marches, something he can’t do as an elected officials because taxpayers’ money cannot be used for political purposes.

A few audience members became more vocal in expressing their concerns, which led to a tense exchange. DeSaulnier, trying to maintain control of the discussion, said, “Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to stop interrupting. If I don’t give you the right answer, I’m happy to meet with you later — or as always, you don’t have to support me any longer.”

After the town hall, DeSaulnier spoke one on one with the Pulse.

In the interview, he shared his efforts to push back against the dismantling of public services like the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said she wanted to eliminate at a Cabinet meeting Monday.

“We’re passing bills that they’re not supporting or letting us run through Congress to put them on record that they’re stopping funding for FEMA,” DeSaulnier said, adding that they’ll know more soon what that will look like.

He also said he voted against the continuing resolution that Trump signed March 15. According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, a continuing resolution is a temporary spending bill to avoid a government shutdown.

The congressman voiced concerns about Trump’s focus on heavily Democratic areas and the potential challenges Californians could face as a result.

During his presentation, DeSaulnier also expressed concern over the low voter turnout for the 2024 election. He cited a statistic that more than 88 million eligible voters did not cast ballots, and only 42% of young voters participated, compared with 50% in 2020.

When asked by the Pulse what young people should do in such a tumultuous time, DeSaulnier offered words of encouragement and a call to action.

 “The encouragement is just to engage,” he said. “When all of us are young, we all spend time on things that are of interest to us. Being more engaged in things sooner will make a big difference.”