Hageman touts success, goals in Jackson town hall

Applause filled the Teton County Library auditorium on Tuesday afternoon as U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman called out all the ways she wanted to push back against the federal government.

The town hall of close to 50 attendees backed each of the Wyoming Republican’s goals: preventing solar panels from being installed on federal lands; cutting funding for the Secret Service, Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Homeland Security; and taking away the government’s ability to censor free speech guaranteed in the First Amendment through social media companies.

“I’d like to bring as much power off out of Washington, D.C., as I possibly can, for a lot of reasons,” she said. “And I think that every day that goes by, that becomes more imperative.”

She spent the first half of the town hall walking through her accomplishments in her first term in office and the last nine weeks Congress was in session.

She said she secured additions to a House spending bill for the Department of the Interior and Environmental Protection Agency that would cut the federal agencies’ funding, delist the grizzly bear in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and take down conservation management plans and rules impacting Wyoming’s oil and gas industry.

Hageman was proud of another bill she introduced that would require yearly training for health professionals who are going to work in Indian Health Services, ensuring that they know more about the culture. She is chair of the Subcommittee on Indian and Insular Affairs, and has traveled around the nation learning about the barrier to access for Indigenous people who don’t feel understood when they go to the doctor.

“We know that they have more issues with hypertension, they have more problems with diabetes, but a lot of times they don’t get medical care because they say that they are so uncomfortable when they go to do that,” she said.

The first bill she sponsored that was signed into law allows more families of victims of violent crimes to get restitution for the expenses they incur in dealing with the judicial system or medical care.

Town Councilor Arne Jorgensen congratulated Hageman on this success, and also spent time talking about where the Republican and him found common ground. Teton County and Jackson got support from her office on infrastructure grants and constituent services.

In the second half of the town hall, Hageman took questions from the nearly full auditorium. They spanned her stance on and impact of the Supreme Court’s reversal of the Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council decision, Bitcoin, the border crisis, election integrity and how Teton County residents could support Hageman’s agenda.

She was passionate about the Chevron decision, as it was considered “40 years of the unchecked authority of executive branch agencies” on rulemaking, she said. The nonprofit law firm she worked for before becoming a congresswoman won the case, and it was her “white whale.”

She said it distorted the legal system and left people like innocent Wyoming ranchers facing millions of dollars in fines from the EPA.

Immigration and election integrity also took up a good portion of the question-and-answer opportunity. A constituent thanked her for her part in passing a bill that outlawed noncitizens from voting in elections. Noncitizens, including permanent legal residents, already were barred from voting in federal, state and most local elections.

But Hageman said preventing them from voting isn’t the only concern. Permanent residents and noncitizens are taken into account for congressional apportionment.

“Perhaps the biggest reason why they’ve allowed this invasion of over 11 million people is that it is not just citizens that are counted in redistricting,” she said. “Illegals are counted for purposes of determining what states have how many seats in Congress.”

Hageman said the 2024 election would be more secure than the 2020 election. She said lawsuit wins and Republican poll watchers helped with that sense of security.

The freshman lawmaker encouraged Republican Teton County voters to turn out this election cycle, and get out early. She said many elections are determined early. But she still wants the absentee and early-voting period shortened even more than Wyoming’s most recent update from six to four weeks.

“I think in a state like Wyoming, it should probably be one week, maybe two weeks,” she said. “I don’t understand why we have an election season.”

Hageman didn’t leave Jackson after her town hall. She is going to Sublette County tomorrow, attending the Congressional Western Caucus meeting in Teton County and co-hosting former President Donald Trump’s fundraiser on Saturday.