One of DeLauro's latest Bluesky videos.
WASHINGTON — Rarely does a day go by without Rep. Rosa DeLauro calling out the Trump administration.
She said Budget Director Russell Vought is “violating the law” for hiding spending information, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy’s layoffs of experts mean “Americans will die,” and President Donald Trump is threatening Americans’ retirement. “We cannot, we will not, let them tamper with Social Security,” she said at an East Haven press conference.
And that was all since Monday.
Last week, she warned that the Federal Emergency Management Agency was in the administration’s crosshairs, told Vought that he was providing “ineffective and misleading counsel” to the president, and that Trump and Elon Musk planned to fire hundreds of thousands of teachers.
“You’d expect her to be out front repeatedly,” said Paul Herrnson, a political science professor at the University of Connecticut. “That’s her style and that’s what her constituents expect from her.”
With Republicans in control of the presidency and both houses of Congress, Democrats have little power other than the power of persuasion.
In an interview with the Independent, DeLauro cited a quote from Abraham Lincoln: “Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed.”
“Public sentiment is going be strong and outspoken to what they’re going to do,” she said at the Capitol. “It’s going to tell them that they can’t go there, they can’t do some of these things. The courts are our friends, it’s what we do here, and it’s grassroots advocacy. That’s going to turn stuff around.”
Trump’s defenders, meanwhile, have welcomed his administration’s cuts as targeting a bloated bureaucracy and “woke” spending. At a Social Security-focused event in East Haven this week, the president’s supporters criticized DeLauro for sounding a false alarm about just how harmful these cuts will be.
What gives DeLauro, D‑New Haven, the heft to be out front is her position as one of the most powerful House Democrats — ranking member of the Appropriations Committee, which writes the bills that fund the federal government.
“She’s in a great position because of the fact that she’s a senior member and understands the significance of Social Security and Medicaid and Medicare,” said another senior House Democrat, Energy and Commerce Committee ranking member Frank Pallone Jr. of New Jersey. “She’s really pressing those issues in particular. As much as she’s in the leadership here, she really deeply cares about the average person and how they’re impacted.”
When the Office of Management and Budget eliminated its website of the projects funded by Congress, DeLauro said the agency was breaking the law.
“The public has the right to know, as required by law,” she said in a statement. “This isn’t about politics. This is about truth and accountability to the American people.”
A letter signed by Vought about that website closure states that “OMB has determined that it can no longer operate and maintain this system because it requires the disclosure of sensitive, predecisional, and deliberative information.” Check out the edited version of that letter here to see DeLauro’s red-pen responses, as included in a Tuesday press release.
And in an interview, DeLauro also blasted the Health and Human Services (HHS) firings, which she blamed on Trump, Musk and Kennedy.
“We’re losing scientists. we’re losing researchers, we’re losing the inspectors that deal with food safety, with drug safety,” she said. “It’s 10,000 people gone. Is that going to make this a healthier country? Hell, no. People are going to die senselessly because they don’t know what they’re doing.”
Pallone said the drumbeat of criticism by DeLauro, him and others is making its mark on issues like cutting Medicaid, the federal-state health care program for the poor and elderly.
DeLauro's edited version of a recent letter sent by OMB Director Russell Vought.