After doubling down on his vote to gut health care for nearly 40,000 people and slash food access for over 30,000 households in his district, Ken Calvert is dodging questions on why he won’t hold in-person town halls to answer to his constituents, instead defending massive Medicaid cuts and touting “disruptive” tariffs that will devastate businesses and working families across the Inland Empire and Coachella Valley.
All in all, Calvert keeps demonstrating that he is asleep at the wheel. When asked if he recognizes his Big, Ugly Bill is deeply unpopular and that House Republicans already have a slim majority, he simply replied “that’s going to be the case,” and “I recognize that.”
Lowlights:
- There have been multiple protests outside of Republican Ken Calvert’s office, many of those protestors wanting Calvert to answer their questions.
- WHITE: We get calls and emails every week from people who want you to have a town hall to talk about the Big, Beautiful Bill, about DOGE, about everything.
- CALVERT: I do telephone town halls… I’ve been around.
- WHITE: But will you have an open forum?
- CALVERT: I’ll do a telephone town hall meeting.
- [Calvert] is a big supporter of the Big Beautiful Bill…it’ll cut nearly a trillion dollars from Medicaid.
- WHITE: They’re saying you lied about supporting Medicaid cuts.
- CALVERT: Medicaid is fine. We’re not doing anything to Medicaid…that’s not too much to ask.
- WHITE: Do tariffs create uncertainty… which is what I would think is the enemy of most business owners?…We lose 10% of the Canadians, right? That can be a very damaging part of our local economy.
- CALVERT: I won’t argue that it’s disruptive.
- WHITE: The tariffs are paid by everyday consumers, so that’s a tax on everyday Americans meanwhile the highest earning Americans are getting more relief out of the Big, Beautiful Bill.
- CALVERT: The American worker is going to be more prosperous…ultimately we’re going to have a better economy.
- WHITE: The polls show that the bill is very unpopular.
- CALVERT: That’s going to be the case.
- WHITE: And you have a very slim majority.
- CALVERT: I recognize that.
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