Lee — President Donald J. Trump’s deluge of executive orders during his first days back in office, including his order to freeze federal grants and loans, were a major topic of discussion at an event at Town Hall on Tuesday, January 28, with State Rep. Leigh Davis (D – 3rd Berkshire District) and State Sen. Paul Mark (D – Berkshire, Hampden, Franklin, and Hampshire District). Both Rep. Davis and Sen. Mark met with over 30 Berkshire County residents at their “Remarks and Refreshments” event to hear their concerns.

Before the event, President Trump ordered a freeze on billions of dollars in federal spending. The executive order caused chaos and shockwaves throughout the nation, including for Berkshire County nonprofit organizations that scrambled to figure out how to handle the impacts of the freeze.
By the afternoon of January 28, a few minutes before the freeze was to take effect by 5 p.m., and following objections from multiple advocacy groups who argued that the planned freeze would devastate programs, United States District Judge Loren AliKhan placed a temporary halt to President Trump’s executive order. The court is scheduled to revisit the issue on Monday, February 3.
In the meantime, President Trump’s executive order freezing federal funding, as well as other actions he has taken during his first days back in office, was a topic of discussion at State Sen. Mark’s and State Rep. Davis’s event. “The entire country is just being fire hosed out of Washington,” Lee resident Marilyn Wyatt told Sen. Mark and Rep. Davis. “I would love to hear what your priorities are in dealing [with President Trump’s actions]. Of course, funding is a major issue. But aside from that, what are the topics that you consider the most important? Maybe it’s not renaming The Gulf of Mexico, but there are clearly issues that affect us all very deeply here. What can you see doing through your legislative committees in order to counteract some of the really horrific changes that are being introduced?”
“I try to walk a fine line between not being panicked every day and not acting naive, and it’s hard,” Sen. Mark said. “We’re constantly trying to discern what is real, what is a distraction, and what is horrendous. I’ll say that I lived through the first two years of the Trump administration, and no matter what we saw, it was a complete unknown. There was a lot of fear and a lot of energy.”
Sen. Mark said that, during the first two years of the Trump administration, its major accomplishment was “a giant tax cut that benefited millionaires and giant corporations.”
He said that, despite threats of potential cutbacks to social programs, the state “has never faced that horrible floor falling out on us in terms of finances” and that it has been prepared to support social issues. “[Massachusetts has been] very well prepared for issues like supporting LGBTQ communities and supporting people regardless of what they look like, where they were born, or what language they spoke,” Rep. Mark said. “Then we took care of the reproductive health laws that we never thought would come up again and become an issue because we thought it was settled through constitutional law 50 years ago. We don’t have to do a lot of knee-jerk panicking because we have prepared well.”
Sen. Mark recalled that when Gov. Maura Healey served as the state’s attorney general from 2015 to 2023, “she sued the [Trump] administration more than any other attorney general.” “I think we have a great partner right now in [current] Attorney General Andrea Campbell,” Rep. Mark said. “She’s already picking up the mantle and swinging the bat when we need it. If you love the guy, awesome. Good for you. But no matter what your politics are, I hope we all agree that we want no one to have more power than what the Constitution allows, and no [more] power than what the law allows. A different president is going to come in someday, and we don’t want that person having too much power.”
Rep. Mark added that he is worried about President Trump’s attempts to change the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution in order to end birthright citizenship. “No matter what your politics are, that is a bad thing,” Rep. Mark said. “If you are born here, you are an American. It doesn’t matter what your parents were, you’re an American now.”
Rep. Davis added that she is also worried about federal funding being cut from state programs and about President Trump withdrawing the U.S. from The Paris Agreement. “We’ve moved forward in terms of addressing emissions and greenhouse gasses, so this scares me,” Rep. Davis said. “Directly related to that is what’s going on with the [Housatonic] Rest of the River [remediation project]. If there is money being taken away from the [Environmental Protection Agency], how is that going to translate into [MassDEP] and so forth? That really worries me.”
Rep. Davis said that the federal funding freeze may have an impact on climate law that Gov. Healey signed in November. “And then you look at the effects [of the Trump presidency] on our immigrant community, and the anxiety and fear that is going on,” Rep. Davis said, adding that both she and Sen. Mark would be meeting with Berkshire County Sheriff Thomas Bowler soon. “[We will discuss] how those who are in fear will be handled and treated in this district,” Rep. Davis said.
“We will talk to police chiefs and the district attorney about how things will be handled moving forward with those communities. I’m concerned about the effect of [Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)], where they will be, and if there will be sanctuaries. Are schools going to be sanctuaries? To think that [schools] can be an open target [for ICE], that’s worrying.”
Davis added that she is also worried about the potential federal cutbacks in funding for housing, social, and mental health programs. “The state will step in for all of these when federal dollars are no longer available, but the state only has so much money,” Davis said. “There’s going to be a lot of belt tightening and a lot of tough decisions and conversations.”