U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, D-6th District, holds a town hall for constituents at Masconomet High School in Boxford, Massachusetts, on Saturday, March 15, 2025. (John L. Micek/MassLive)
Tech billionaire Elon Musk is cutting a destructive path through the middle of the federal government, and the damage will take a deadly toll on the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton told constituents at a town hall on Saturday.
“Musk is killing veterans with his cuts,” Moulton, a former Marine, told a constituent who’d asked whether the tech billionaire and his quasi-governmental Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has “the legal authority to cut and slash and burn the way he has been.”
“No, he does not,” Moulton, D-6th District, told a capacity crowd of about 600 people who’d gathered at Masconomet High School in Boxford on Saturday afternoon.
The VA is set to shed some 80,000 workers as it seeks to return to 2019 staffing levels of just under 400,000 employees.
The move drew the ire of veterans' groups and Democrats in Washington and on Beacon Hill, including Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey.
“I made a commitment to continue going to the VA for my own health care, which I still do today,” Moulton told the crowd. “There are veterans who will die on waiting lists again because of what Musk is doing. Musk is killing veterans with these cuts. And I’m going to do everything in my power to stop it.”
Last week, Moulton and U.S. Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., a retired U.S. Air Force brigadier general, sent a letter to VA Secretary Doug Collins, seeking clarity on the reductions and their potential impact on workers who staff the Veterans Crisis Line, which assists veterans in their darkest moments.
In a statement, VA spokesperson Pete Kasperowicz told MassLive that “all 300,000-plus VA mission-critical positions — including all Veterans Crisis Line positions — are exempt from the federal hiring freeze and layoffs, and hiring for all open mission-critical positions continues."
All things considered, it might have been one of the easier questions that Moulton faced Saturday.
The 60-minute gathering was interrupted more than once by constituents demanding more actions and straight answers.
That tone was reflective of Democratic voters who have complained that their representatives on Capitol Hill aren’t doing enough to counter President Donald Trump’s radical government downsizing as he seeks to pay for $4.5 trillion in tax cuts.
One audience member wearing a “Trans Lives Matter” T-shirt was escorted from the room as Moulton began his remarks. Another stood up repeatedly to demand action.
“We’ve asked you, really calmly, to follow some basic ground rules,” Moulton told the crowd. “Other people who are here for the first time, students, a few. It matters to participate in democracy. So, I want to, first of all, thank you for showing up. And we do have a great turnout. And we will get to your questions.”
Those critics were, at times, also matched with applause, as when Moulton stressed that it was not enough for Democrats to match Trump’s rhetoric ― they also needed to win elections.
One of those students whom Moulton mentioned was Dania Delacruz, 17, a senior at Lynn English High School, who identified herself as the “proud daughter” of Guatemalan immigrants.
On Friday night, Delacruz’s mother cleaned the very school auditorium where Moulton gave his remarks, she said, asking the Salem lawmaker what he was “doing to protect the rights of children of immigrants?”
“And what are you doing to change the conversation surrounding immigration?” Delacruz asked.
Moulton said his office has been working along parallel tracks.
One involves “making sure that only the people who deserve to be deported get deported … and the people who [have the] right to stay here, stay here. And we have intervened in many cases in the past, and we will continue to do so, despite the threats from the administration to the contrary.”
Moulton said he’s also “talking with my colleagues to try to get some sense into them about having good immigration policy.”
“Don’t forget, there was a bipartisan, an imperfect, but bipartisan immigration bill in the Senate, largely negotiated by Republicans but supported by both sides of the aisle, that was ready to get passed when one man, Donald Trump, said, ‘No, I want to make this an election issue,’” Moulton said referring to last year’s scuttled immigration reform measure.
With Republicans unwilling to step up, " we need Democrats who are willing to work on immigration, not deny it, not refuse to talk about it."
In an interview after the town hall, Delacruz said her parents, who came to the U.S. in the early 2000s, are documented but are not yet American citizens.
Delacruz was born after their arrival. And she is one of the millions of American young people whose legal standing is in jeopardy as Trump seeks to end birthright citizenship for the American-born children of immigrants.
“I’m really proud of being American,” she said. “I want to see change. But it can’t be done by questioning the citizenship of millions of American children.”
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