Constituents say Rep. Van Orden refuses to listen to their concerns about safety net cuts

Voters in Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District are speaking out against President Donald Trump’s cuts to safety net programs. Their U.S. representative, Republican Derrick Van Orden, is making headlines for refusing to listen to their concerns.

The House of Representatives held a district work period, when members return to their districts to meet with constituents, the week of Feb. 24-28. Lawmakers across the country and in Wisconsin held town hall meetings. Many heard from voters who were upset about Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency making unilateral moves to slash federal agencies without the permission of Congress and about the just-passed House GOP budget resolution, which would require major cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. 

Van Orden avoided hearing from Trump critics.

“He’s our elected official, and guys like me can’t even get near him,” Paul Wuensch, a lifelong resident of the district, a military veteran, and a nonpartisan elected member of the La Crosse County Board of Supervisors, told the Wisconsin Independent in a phone interview. “It’s not fair to the district.” 

Wuensch was part of a group that had planned to hold signs in a peaceful protest outside of a Van Orden community meeting at a La Crosse brewery on Feb. 28. Constituents signed up to attend the event, hoping to participate, according to a WXOW report. Van Orden’s staff moved the event at the last minute and emailed some who had signed up to attend to say their tickets had been rescinded.

A day earlier, his office canceled a planned meeting for constituents in Eau Claire with Van Orden staff members, according to WQOW. The office said the event organizers, Chippewa Valley Indivisible, “took it upon themselves to distribute the meeting details to the public, without authorization from our office, to ambush the congressman’s staff.”.

Eau Claire resident Kristin Deprey, who works for a mental health advocacy nonprofit, told the Wisconsin Independent in a phone interview that she was one of the constituents who attended the canceled event, hoping to talk with her U.S. representative or his staff about Medicaid cuts.

Deprey said that she has disabilities and is able to work part time, but worried that if that changes, cuts to Medicaid might affect her access to health care.

“As somebody who could be affected, obviously, I’m concerned. But as a fellow Wisconsinite, I’m concerned for Wisconsin as a whole, and nationally,” she said. “There is obviously a correlation between — people with mental health conditions may be dependent on Medicaid … Knowing that there’s medications that can’t be taken if the Medicaid goes away, and then we’re looking at more correlations with people with mental health conditions that no longer have access to medications, that now are in a mental health crisis, which, let’s be honest, we already have mental health crisis in the United States right now. I can just see the spiral, in that sense.”

Van Orden said he made the changes to the event plans to avoid disruptive outsiders. “There is a George Soros-funded group of agitators who have gone to multiple Republican offices around the country as of late, and they’re just disrupting proceedings, so you can’t actually talk to your constituents,” he told reporters in a video posted on X by the La Crosse Tribune’s Caden Lee Perry. “A lot of these people don’t live in the congressional districts that they’ve been agitating in, and that’s not OK.”

Van Orden’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment by the Wisconsin Independent. However, after Wall Street Journal reporter Olivia Beavers reported on March 4 that House Republican leaders had urged members of their caucus to stop holding town halls entirely, Van Orden responded in a social media post: “Agitation includes a widespread, coordinated effort to disrupt proceedings and surely you can see that this is exactly what is happening around the country by George Soros funded groups. [The National Republican Congressional Committee] is not a pack of fools, we are people that understand history and will not fall for the Left’s bullshit. I am looking forward to your well researched article about how the American Left is directly mirroring the Tactics, Techniques, & Procedures of Communist Russia, China, and North Korea, along with Nazi Germany.”

“To be clear, none of the protestors on Friday were paid to be there, and all of them reside in the 3rd CD,” Wiliiam Garcia, the chair of the 3rd Congressional District Democratic Committee and co-organizer of the La Crosse protest, told the Wisconsin Independent in an email. “Van Orden’s comments to the contrary are nothing but a smokescreen to justify hiding from his constituents.”

“For myself, the protesters who gathered were scared about potential cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Some were worried for themselves, others were doctors, teachers and social workers who know the impact these cuts will have on their clients and friends. Some were local elected officials concerned about how these cuts will impact the people in their community,“ Garcia said. “At the very least, these protesters believe they have the right to speak to their congressperson face to face.”

Wuensch said he was not affiliated with any larger organization and that he has no association with Soros, a wealthy progressive philanthropist often cited in antisemitic conspiracy theories. As a veteran nearing retirement, he said, he sees the Trump administration’s cuts to the executive branch staff imperilling access to Social Security and veterans’ benefits for people like him. “We’re just getting to a point where appointment times are realistic, because we’re finally getting veterans’ hospitals and clinics staff to a point where it’s realistic. And now what are they going to do? They’re going to gut it, and it’s the same thing as Social Security. Oh, we don’t need all these bureaucrats, as they call them, but those people all have a job to do.”

As a local elected official, Wuensch said, it is vital to hear from constituents with differing viewpoints: “It’s the very heart of why you’re there. You’re representing everyone. You’re not just representing the ones that checked your name on the ballot. … That’s a very basic tenet of running for public office. If you put yourself in an echo chamber and only listen to those people who agree with you, that kind of personifies everything that’s wrong with our system right now.”

Opportunity Wisconsin, a coalition of Wisconsinites that advocates for working people, announced on March 6 that it was launching digital billboards and ads around the district to urge Van Orden to hold in-person town hall events.

Van Orden has made negative headlines repeatedly during his time in politics for berating constituents who do not agree with him and others who cross his path. He cursed at a group of teenage U.S. Senate pages in 2023 as they took protographs in the Capitol rotunda.

On March 1, he threatened a disabled veteran who had been recently fired by the Department of Veterans Affairs and messaged Van Orden on LinkedIn to ask him to stop mass firings. Van Orden said he would report him to Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency: “I will be referring you to DOGE as it seems that at 13:46 on a Monday you should have been working for veterans, not posting trash about your boss, President Trump.” The veteran had already been fired.