Ilhan Omar Accuses Trump Admin Of Going After ‘Low-Hanging Fruit’ To Dismantle Government Agencies

Forbes Breaking News

During a town hall event on Monday, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) spoke about the Trump Administration’s firings of federal employees across various government agencies.

Transcript

00:05Here.

00:07Purple.

00:08Oh.

00:10Oh.

00:11Sorry.

00:13Go for it.

00:14Hi, my name is Jamie Sloan.

00:16I've met you several times.

00:18Hello, good to see you again.

00:21I'm wondering about, since we are facing this,

00:25this turn where your hands run essentially

00:28by the lack of majority power.

00:31How are you advocating for dual power

00:34in the case of community workers, the groups?

00:39I'm a member of the DSA.

00:41I also work at a not-profit that I really value

00:44as an organization that is really strong

00:47and you can think of young as you know what's up.

00:50So like, yeah.

00:52How do you advocate for community members

00:55or your constituents also interact with other community groups?

01:00I just wanted to make the point that public television

01:08had reported that 132,000 people in the federal government

01:13have been fired or pressured to take fire.

01:16And this raises the question of, in all this discussion

01:20of what's happening in the country

01:22and what the Trump hikes are doing to the country,

01:26where is common sense?

01:28Can the rally drive the common sense?

01:31Can anybody look at this and say,

01:35hey, this is good, this is normal?

01:39This is going to help us?

01:41Firing 132,000 people?

01:43And it goes on and on?

01:45Common sense, please.

01:46Let's rally around common sense.

01:48Unfortunately, there isn't much common sense to be found

01:58when it comes to the executive branch.

02:01You know, the whole plan with the federal firing

02:07or putting them on administrative leave

02:11is essentially to dismantle the departments.

02:15He understands, right, as we've reminded him time and time again,

02:19he does not have a constitutional right

02:22to dismantle any of the departments that were stood up by Congress.

02:31So I will try to get to as many of you.

02:34So the plan, then, is to go after the law-hanging fruit,

02:41which is a lot of the staff keep talking about people who are on probation.

02:46Many of these people who are on probation are not new employees.

02:51They are not new employees that were just hired.

02:55Most of them are employees who got a promotion

03:00because they excel in their job.

03:02So they are new to the role.

03:06And so not only is he gutting the functionality of these departments

03:13that carry out important work for the American people,

03:16they are firing the best of the best in many of these departments.

03:21So what he ultimately wants to do is that when the courts say,

03:28what you are doing is unconstitutional,

03:30to say the Department of Education still exists,

03:36even though it cannot carry out the letter of the law in its duties.

03:43He will say, you know, the VA is still there,

03:48even though they are planning to fire 77,000 staff at the VA.

03:54So that's the plan and that's the thing that we have to push back against.

03:59And I am so grateful for a lot of our AGs,

04:02a lot of the organizations that are bringing the lawsuits.

04:06If you get an opportunity, please thank them.

04:10We are working tirelessly every single day.

04:13There are trackers out there so you can see where these cases are.

04:17To your question about collaboration,

04:19we do inside-outside organizing all the time.

04:22That's essentially the existence of the Black Caucus.

04:26And that is essentially the existence of the Black Caucus.

04:29We oftentimes do weekly briefings with outside groups that work with us.

04:35on both of those caucuses.

04:37I know that the Hispanic Caucus and other caucuses also do that.

04:40Because none of us will have the information

04:43and we'll be able to disseminate the information

04:45without the outside groups working hand-in-hand with us.

04:50And actually before the election, for a whole year,

04:53we had a Project 2025 Task Force

04:56that was looking at what this possibly could look like

05:00and how we would respond.

05:02And that's why you saw those lawsuits be brought up instantly.

05:06It's because we've been planning for the possibility of this happening.

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