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Congressman Brad Finstad claims to work for Minnesotans. His actions say otherwise.

I traveled to Finstad’s New Ulm office with several other constituents on Wednesday, asking him to leave the DOGE caucus and renounce Elon Musk, who has been carrying out a coup of our federal government in broad daylight.

The DOGE caucus has set its sights on institutions that provide aid for Americans, one of which is Lutheran Social Services (LSS). LSS runs Meals on Wheels in Mankato, which Musk has falsely labeled as a source of fraud in need of defunding. I deliver weekly Meals on Wheels for LSS. Most meal recipients on my route had Trump and Finstad signs in their yards during 2020 and 2024. These people put Finstad into office, they depend on social programs and likely also risk losing Social Security and Disability payments if this gutting of our infrastructure continues.

I am so tired of social programs being denied to those who paid for them with taxes, and for it to be done by heartless men who rejoice in harming the most vulnerable of us.

My entire life I’ve heard right-wing politicians tote “cutting bloated government spending and waste,” and they never start with our military budget. Instead these politicians, Finstad included, always set their sights on social programs first: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, WIC, and even Meals on Wheels. By now it should be brutally obvious that when people like Brad Finstad say they want to cut “waste,” they think that WE are the waste.

Kat Baumann

Mankato, MN