Politics
Moulton spoke at a press conference in Danvers on April 4 along with leaders from North Shore community organizations.

Rep. Seth Moulton said Friday the cuts the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency are making are “chaotic,” affecting thousands of Massachusetts residents.
Moulton, who represents Massachusetts’ 6th Congressional District, spoke at a press conference in Danvers on April 4 along with leaders from North Shore community organizations who work with low-income families.
“There are families that can’t make it through a Massachusetts winter without the help of a program to help them pay home heating bills,” Moulton said. “There are families that can’t make it through a day without the Medicaid services they rely on.”
About 10,000 federal workers have been laid off at the agencies under Health and Human Services, which include the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
The cuts, also stewarded by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., are meant to refocus on preventing epidemics and consolidating the 28 divisions into 15 new ones, according to a statement from HHS.
About 2.1 million people, or 30% of the commonwealth, hold Medicaid, which is feared to be affected by these cuts.
“This is not some marginal part of the population, this is our community,” Moulton said.
Kerri Sheeran Perry, CEO at Community Action, Inc., said the work the organization does to help tens of thousands of families overcome poverty is “in jeopardy” from the federal government’s actions.
“The programs that we run are clearly being looked at by the federal government,” Perry said. “If we lose these programs, families will suffer.”
LEO Inc. is a Head Start organization that helps two generations of families with their educational needs. The freezing of federal grants already put Head Start programs in jeopardy, but mass layoffs added to their struggle, according to the Associated Press.
Aleah Tillotson is a family service manager at LEO Inc. who has worked with the organization for 12 years and has gone through Head Start with her daughter.
“Head Start really gave me an opportunity and a push forward, not just for my child, but for myself as well,” Tillotson said. “I couldn’t imagine what my life would have been like if I didn’t end up bringing my child to Head Start.”
At the end of the conference, Moulton called on government officials and the Republican party to “justify” the cost-cutting measures they are implementing.
“You don’t need to hurt families you support every single day because the wealthiest in the world [want] more tax breaks,” Moulton said. “That is what Republicans are doing. That is what Trump and Musk are doing … every Republican in Congress stands idly by, doing nothing to stop this reckless chainsawing of our government.”
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