photo credit: Thompson's office
CA District 4 Congressional representative Mike Thompson. 

MICHELLE MARQUES: Next, we speak with Congressman Mike Thompson...who represents California's 4th Congressional district....thanks so much for talking with me today.

MIKE THOMPSON: Oh, it's my pleasure.

MICHELLE MARQUES: First off, can you tell me why you will not be at President Trump's joint address tonight?

MIKE THOMPSON: Well, I've been asked to be the designated survivor by Leader Jeffries, so I'll be off campus watching it on a television.

MICHELLE MARQUES: So tell me, you will be monitoring President Trump's presentation to the joint session of Congress. What do you hope to hear from him?

MIKE THOMPSON: Well, I'd like him to address some of the major issues that are important to the people that I represent and to the American people across the country. People are worried, they're worried about the everyday cost of living. They're worried about the price of eggs, the price of gasoline, the fact that hundreds of thousands of federal employees have been fired.
And that's a problem not only for the families of those employees, but it also impacts our communities. It's going to be disruption in services to individuals. It's going to be money that's not in local communities that are spent in local communities. It's going to be a lack of access to agencies and services and hiking in national parks.
There's no rhyme or reason as to why they did the things that they that they did. We know that they didn't do it with precision. We know they didn't do it with any expertise. You know they've already had to bring back the people working on bird flu research. We know that they had to bring back the nuclear safety scientists and inspectors because nuclear safety is an important thing. You just can't fire the employees associated with that.
Veterans that I represent are concerned because veterans have been disproportionately part of the fallout from the firings. There are a lot of veterans serving in the federal government. So people are concerned with that. I don't like to hear what he's going to do to fix our everyday problems. What are you going to do to make life better for the American people?
I'm very concerned about access to health care for the people that I represent. Under his direction, the Republicans in the house passed legislation that's going to cut Medicaid, drastically cut Medicaid. And if these cuts go through, it's going to just up access to health care for the people that I represent as well as Americans across our country.
It's going to mean hospitals are closed, clinics are closed, people aren't going to have access to to health care. And the hospitals and the clinics that stay open are going to have to reduce their services. So people won't have access to health care. Many Americans will just be out of health care. And that's wrong. Health care should be something that every everyone has access to. Your health is the most important thing you have.
And then yesterday, here is the the richest man in the world is his right-hand person in cutting government programs came out and announced that social security is just one big Ponzi scheme. And that's that's dangerous to hear because Republicans have tried to privatize or cut social security for decades. There's a group right now in Congress that are trying to do that, and to get the blessing, what appears to be the blessing from Elon Musk should frighten everybody. 159,000 individuals in the district that I represent who receive Social Security and allows them to retire with dignity. And in addition to that, it brings hundreds of millions of dollars into our congressional district every year.
Most of the monies that are paid out in Social Security checks are spent locally, very few social security recipients that I represent take their check every month and deposit that money in some secret account became in the islands. It spent on food, on gas, and utilities, on rent, on house payments, and it multiplies across our local economy. These are foolish policies.

MICHELLE MARQUES: Congressman, there are many people in your district who showed up to the town hall that you hosted with Assemblyman Chris Rogers people who are frustrated with Democrats for what they see as in action. So can you tell me what kinds of action can you take and what kinds of action are you taking as well as you and other representatives?

MIKE THOMPSON: Well, I think you're correct. I think people were anxious, they were upset, they were mad and fired up.
What what I heard from people was they wanted Democrats in Congress to be able to do something and do something right away. And as you know, of Democrats and Congress are in the minority. So we're limited as to what we can do. And as the Republicans roll out their project 2025, which provides all all these cuts that we're talking about, there's a few things that that Democrats can do.
We can fight them in the Congress with the limited numbers that we have, and we're doing that. We'll look for leverage points that we can use to back these guys off. We're fighting them in the courts. There's, I think, 110 lawsuits that have already been filed, and we're working with those groups who have filed those lawsuits. We've had pretty good success. We'll have some wins, we'll have some uh, some losses, and there'll be more lawsuits, uh, filed.
And the last thing is, we're going to fight them in the court of public opinion. That's why it was important that I was having those town hall meetings. That's why it's important that I'm talking to you, uh, tonight. And the American people need to know what is happening, uh, right now.
They need to know that Elon Musk and this group of teenage, uh, people he has working for him have access access have gained access to their financial, their most important financial data. They have gained access to their most important health care data. And the health or the illness that a constituent of mine has is none of Elon Musk's business.
That is That is your private information. And people need to know that those are the types of things that we're fighting. People need to understand that the healthcare loss that they're going to experience is very, very real and it's going to hurt them and it's going to hurt our community. That's why it's important for us to talk about these things. That's why it's important for me and my colleagues to have town hall meetings.
While the Trump administration is working on their project 2025 to cut essential and critical government programs we can work on project 2026, which is winning back the majority in the House of Representatives, so we can better stop him from doing these things.

MICHELLE MARQUES:  Congressman, I know we've run out of time, but I do want to ask you just one quick question. In terms of what your constituents can do, what kind of actions make politicians pay attention? Is it emails, calls, protests? Do any of these make a dent?

MIKE THOMPSON: Well, as you know, my constituents don't have to convince It's me. I'm with them already. We stand together on these things. But they do need to be outspoken. We need to set a model. So other districts can hear...So people can say, boy, up in Sonoma County and Napa County and Lake County and Yolo and Solano County, people are upset about these things. Maybe we should pay attention. And that will get the attention of the Republican members of Congress who are promoting these things. They're so deleterious to our way of life.

MICHELLE MARQUES:  I appreciate your time.

MIKE THOMPSON: Thank you so much.