OPINION: Our Congressional District Deserves More Than A Trump/Project 2025 Enabler …

Our own GOP Congressman Dan Meuser was miffed last August when demonstrators in Pottsville peppered him with questions about the Trump/Project 2025 administration’s numerous atrocities. 

Meuser, who was on his way to a photo op, voiced his indignation to WFMZ, implying that the protesters accused him of not caring about people.

It’s true that Meuser has never held a public, in-person town hall in our district, even though Schuylkill Indivisible, which I co-chair, recently invited him to one that we promised would be orderly. After ignoring us for three weeks, his scheduler blew us off. (Was it because we would have allowed follow-up questions and fact-checked his statements?)

By contrast, Meuser has never stopped showing his concern for certain people, mostly current and potential donors, GOP leaders, Project 2025ers and anyone named Trump, especially Donald.

Since Meuser took office in 2019, he has proudly served as DJT’s cheerleader, mouthpiece, puppet and stand-in. That’s why people who care about more than a select few, as well as about democracy, civil rights and basic human decency, oppose him so strongly.

It’s also why three Democrats who are vying to face off against him as he runs for reelection next year deserve serious consideration from every voter in Pennsylvania’s 9th District, not just the party faithful.

Jenn Brothers, Daniel Byron and Rachel Wallace recently laid out their positions at a candidates’ forum. You can read my coverage here. 

Democrats’ Nov. 4 victories, including in Pennsylvania’s hard-fought Supreme Court retention race, have given the party a much-needed boost, but no one thinks running against a GOP incumbent will be easy in our district.

It was red when it was redrawn along with the rest of the state in 2018, and it’s only gotten redder since then. Meuser won last year with 70.5% of the vote, up from a 59.8% share in 2018. And the Pennsylvania Department of State’s latest figures show that we have 290,357 registered Republicans and 132,151 Democrats, a gap too wide for the 72,855 third-party and unaffiliated voters to close.

But “people aren’t just spreadsheets,” Byron noted, and he says he’s encountered registered Democrats wearing MAGA shirts as well as Republicans and independents who welcomed him as an alternative to Meuser.

“We have to remember that Dan Meuser is not popular within his own party,” he added. As a potential 2026 gubernatorial candidate, Meuser received only 9.1% of the votes in the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference’s straw poll of influential right-wingers last April, far behind state Treasurer Stacy Garrity’s 41.1%. He announced in July that he wouldn’t run.

Also, Trump’s disapproval ratings stood at 50% or higher in all but one of nine polls this month, with one hitting 62%. 

I’d like to think many Americans who voted for him didn’t expect everything his second term has inflicted on us:  

* A government shutdown that broke the record set by Trump 1.0 and was caused by the GOP’s determination to make Affordable Care Act health insurance a lot less affordable to keep tax rates for billionaires low.

* Interfering in the 2026 elections by pressuring red states to gerrymander and suing California for fighting back.

* Decimating government agencies that perform vital functions like emergency management, weather forecasting and ensuring that food, medicine and consumer products are safe.

* Setting quotas for kidnapping brown-skinned people who wash cars, grow crops and staff restaurants, hotels and a host of other businesses.

* Higher prices due to labor shortages and haphazard tariffs, some of which are based on petty retribution rather than sound economics. 

* Threatening an unwarranted war against Venezuela to distract the MAGA base from the Epstein files.

Congress can and should stop this disastrous regime, but the GOP majority has instead let it run roughshod over a superpower whose economy just a year ago was the envy of the world.

As the congressional campaigns begin, we all should keep an open mind toward Brothers, Byron and Wallace, who are pledging allegiance to our district and our country instead of Donald Trump.

Each has also promised to listen to all constituents. After seven years of Meuser, someone else deserves a chance to represent us. 

Lisa Von Ahn is an experienced columnist previously published in the Pottsville Republican Herald newspaper.

Canary note: Opinions expressed in any Op-Ed column appearing on this site are the views of the writer and are not necessarily the opinions of Coal Region Canary.

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