Many people voiced frustrations over sweeping cuts to federal agencies and concerns about Congressional oversight during Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley’s townhall in northern Iowa. It was part of Grassley’s annual 99 county tour.
Over 100 people crammed into a meeting room at the Franklin County courthouse on Friday. More filled up the hallways.
“Thank you all for turning out in the spirit of representative government. I consider myself half of that process,” Grassley said. “In order to represent people in Washington, you have to have dialog with your constituents.”
Grassley quickly outlined his top two priorities this year — passing a new, five-year Farm Bill and lowering prescription drug prices — before telling attendees, “Now, the agenda is yours.”
Speakers pressed Grassley to respond to the Trump administration’s dismantling of the Department of Education, staff cuts to Veterans Affairs and new verification requirements for Social Security. Attendees also shared fears and outrage over the way in which these changes are happening through Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency.
“What you learned in eighth grade civics, the checks and balances of government, are going to continue to work. That's the Constitution,” Grassley said.
But many of the audience members said that system is threatened. Some cited the deportation of Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador, despite a court order, and President Donald Trump’s calls to the impeach the judge who issued the order.
One pointed to DOGE’s access to Social Security Administration systems that hold the personal data of millions of Americans. A federal judge temporarily blocked that access.
Kalen Fristad said the courts are doing their job to try “to rein in Trump” but asked what Grassley and other members of Congress are doing to provide oversight.
“It seems to me that Trump and his people are moving very rapidly toward a dictatorship and an oligarchy, and that’s a very, very serious matter,” Fristad said.
In response to Fristad, Grassley said he asked Trump to close the Department of Defense’s Office of Net Assessment, which he said has not fulfilled its mission in years and wasted $20 million in taxpayer dollars annually. Grassley added that his staff have 33 active investigations, including one about waste in the Environmental Protection Agency.
Another audience member asked why the U.S. would impose tariffs on trading partners, adding that Iowa manufacturers sell $5 billion every year in farm and road equipment to Canada. He followed up by asking when Grassley’s committee will send a subpoena to Elon Musk.
“Nobody knows in this country what the hell is going on with Elon Musk and how he apparently has his own agenda, in my view, to ruin the country,” he said.
Grassley referenced Trump telling his Cabinet members in early March that they oversee staff reductions, not Musk.
“Everything that goes on in the executive branch of the government is the total responsibility of Trump and the people that he has appointed,” Grassley said. “The buck stops in the Oval Office.”
When asked about Trump’s executive order to close the U.S. Department of Education "to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law," Grassley said he voted against establishing the department in 1979 and would do the same today.
“Our population is so heterogeneous that the best education policies are made at the local, state level, so that's why I voted against it,” Grassley said.
Kila Sinclair from Iowa Falls said members of the LGBTQ community are afraid of having their rights stripped away at the state and federal level.
“How are you going to protect my marriage to my wife?,” Sinclair asked. “How are you going to stand up and protect us so that we don't feel like we are going to be abused, need to leave the country, going to be jailed because of who we are, going to lose our jobs, going to lose our homes, have our children taken away?”
Grassley said same-sex marriage is protected by the Constitution and would require a two-thirds vote in Congress to amend it. He doubted a proposal would be put forward.
Republican Party leaders this year have urged GOP lawmakers not to host town halls as many across the country have turned into shouting matches.
In a side room with reporters, Grassley reiterated that the event in Franklin County was “representative government in action.”
“We dealt with a lot of issues that are on peoples’ minds. It’s not only expressed here. It’s expressed in the massive amount of emails, postal mail and telephone calls I get every day, and it’s reflected that people are very concerned about a lot of issues that are going on in Washington, D.C.,” Grassley said.
