CD-3 House Rep. Jeff Hurd, who represents western Colorado (Photo: X/Twitter)
When CD-3 Rep. Jeff Hurd (R) was running for office, he was open to talking to all sorts of western Colorado residents when he wanted their votes. Now that he’s in office, though, Hurd can’t be bothered with meeting hundreds of voters clamoring to talk to him about the lawless destruction of the federal government now happening under convicted felon and sexual abuser President Trump and his co-president Elon Musk. Instead, Hurd dismissed multiple town halls and hundreds of constituents and their concerns by suggesting they are mere Soros-funded theater.
In a February 27, 2025 interview with Colorado Public Radio’s Ryan Warner, Warner asked Hurd about the 2/22 town hall meeting in Grand Junction attended by more than 400 worried constituents, that Hurd blew off. Here’s the part of the interview about it, and what Rep. Hurd said:
2/17/25 Colorado Public Radio interview with CD-3 House Rep. Jeff Hurd (R)
Hurd suggests the Indivisible groups that organized the G.J. town hall were funded by George Soros, a Hungarian-born Jewish philanthropist, Holocaust survivor and billionaire and who supports liberal causes through his grant-making foundation, the Open Society Foundation, which benefits civil rights and social justice organizations. Soros is an outspoken critic of authoritarian governments that stifle the free exchange of ideas. He and his family survived the Nazi onslaught in World War II by changing their name from “Schwartz” and disguising themselves as Christians.
Hurd may not realize it, but as the Southern Poverty Law Center points out, the phrases “Soros-funded” and “Soros-backed” are anti-semitic tropes. SPLC also points out that Republican Vivek Ramiswami, Elon Musk’s initial partner in starting the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency,” was himself the recipient of a Soros-funded fellowship, a fact that Ramiswami paid to have scrubbed from his Wikipedia page.
A 1940s cartoon from an antisemitic Hungarian publication, depicting a Jew puppeteering influential figures. (Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum via SPLC)
Of course Soros didn’t pay anyone to attend the town hall meeting in G.J. that Hurd blew off, nor did Soros pay Indivisible to organize the meeting. Intimating the event was “Soros funded” and calling it “political theater” is Hurd’s way of dismissing constituents’ legitimate concerns out of hand — a rude and haughty attitude from a freshly-elected representative who asked for our trust and is supposed to represent the entire district, not just people who ascribe to his views.
We don’t see Hurd criticizing billionaire Elon Musk, who purchased access to presidential power in exchange for a $280 million donation to Trump’s campaign. If a Democratic president did one one-hundredth of what Trump & Musk are doing, Republicans like Hurd would be screaming bloody murder about it.
But Hurd is silent on the usurping of power by the executive branch of government, and all the illegal things Trump and Musk are doing.
Hurd blew off more than one western slope town hall meeting:
It wasn’t just the Grand Junction town hall that Hurd blew off or that he dismissed as Soros-funded theater, either. The League of Women Voters also asked Hurd to attend a town hall meeting at the Dolores Public Library in Dolores, CO. Hurd failed to show up there, too, but sent his staffer, Naomi Dobbs, Regional Director of his Southwest Office, to attend. Dobbs quickly ran out of the library and fled town immediately, though, after getting a look at the size of the crowd that turned out for that meeting, too, according to Daily Kos and the Durango Herald:
Hurd and his staffers had better learn how to face large crowds of angry constituents, because their numbers will only grow under the Trump/Musk slash-and-burn regime, as it continues illegally dismantling the federal government and destroying entire agencies created by Congress, ignoring court orders to cease their activities and as they destroy trust in the U.S. globally by refusing to fund promised contracts, grants and services, and work to dismantle as much of our democracy as they can, as quickly as they can. And Hurd is only making those growing crowds angrier by dismissing their concerns.
Sooner or later, Hurd will have to talk to voters about the ongoing massive breach of the Constitution and our laws that is destroying the country.
He’d better figure out how to do it, and fast.
Every time I send a message to Jeff Hurd, I ask him if he remembers his oath of office. I am a federal employee too, so I took the same oath. He is not upholding that oath, along with many others in office. Always ask him if he remembers his oath of office.
If you look at the Mesa County website, they post how many people receive Medicaid and it shows 20% of the county population receives some form of Medicaid. For any of you who count on Medicaid to say, oh, I don’t know, have help getting you out of bed, helping you shower and get dressed for the day, cooking your meals and feeding you if you need assistance, well, I guess tough luck for you. I have been a provider of Medicaid services to clients for the past 25 years, and I can tell you it is no walk in the park for the clients and their families. Every quarter, you have to justify your needs, and fight when they try to reduce your hours of care. Every year, a case manager comes to your home to see if you are getting the services they are paying for and if those services could be trimmed, and they look around your house in a judging way. We are constantly lobbying to try and keep services for people who need assistance. We have created Medicaid waiver programs like CDASS, where people with disabilities can live in their own homes and hire and manage their own staff, and they get much better care than from home health agencies, where random staff who aren’t trained show up at your house and do things the way they want to, not the way the client needs to have things done. When clients have control over their own care, they have fewer medical emergencies, their families can go off to work and know that their loved ones will be cared for so that they can continue to put a roof over their loves one’s head and buy groceries. And, most importantly, the clients are safe and comfortable in their own homes instead of being warehoused in nursing homes where the cost of care is much greater, and the care is normally substandard.
I have tried to call Jeff Hurd and engage him in productive conversation, but he doesn’t respond to my request for a returned call. Every quarter, the state Medicaid Advisory Council meets in Grand Junction at the workforce center to try and troubleshoot issues, come up with innovative policies and work with Medicaid providers here in our district to create solutions that work for both clients and Medicaid. Maybe Jeff will attend one of our meetings, like our elected state officials do, and see what it is we are working on before he judges us as some political theater.
Rep. Hurd: To say Nothing against your party’s unveiled, unfounded attacks on minorities is damnable. But when you, Jeff, mouth antisemitic crap, that is more than damnable. And when you vote to cut Medicaid, thereby physically harming your constituents, that is taking from them their health. Please explain, representative.
He doesn’t like “theatre”, but we have to put up with a clown show every gd day! Another spineless GOP looking to help the morbidly rich!
The Republicans need to get a lot done before the mid-terms. It’s gonna be a fight to the death in 2026.
Hurd is going to have to learn how to stand up to hostile crowds.
Maybe he can hire a magician for a warm up act.
🙂
hurd just like coffman and gardner in trump’s first term, learning from the true con artist/grifter himself, and coffman snuck out of townhalls (I was at one in 1/2017 where coffman refused to have the townhall at Auora library when 200 showed up to ask about why he was voting to end our healthcare, and coffman insisted on talking to people one at a time and after talked to 5 people while rest of us stood outside in the hall and outside in the cold, many in wheelchairs or walkers, coffman snuck out the back. None of us knew for a while but one person was waiting in the back and got a great video of the coward. gardner wouldn’t hold townhalls so a cardboard gardner was carted to those set up BY THE PEOPLE and people stood in for him and his opponent Jason Crow came and talked to crowds (now the best federal representative I’ve ever had in 72 years). Both tried hurd’s new approach to have a short phone townhall that all questioners who call in have to be vetted first and if they have a disagreement with hurd, not GOP, they don’t get to be on it. It will be fake people and fake ideas set up in advance, only hurd supporters, fake like he is fake about being qualified and caring about his constituents and want to hear from them (supposedly everyone in his district are his constituents but of course that’s a lie).
Jeff Hurd – Grand Junction Office 970-208-0455
Call and leave a message. Go to his website and send him an e-mail. We are all his constituents whether we voted for him or not. He needs to be reminded of that. He voted in favor of the proposed budget that give tax breaks to the wealthy. That’s not going to reduce our deficit, not Rocket Science!
The 2017 Trump tax plan reduced taxes for everyone.
It’s simply being renewed.
There are those who believe that there is a sweet spot for tax rates which generate the most revenue.
One such scheme was called the Laffer Curve, popularized by Reagan.
GoodHatBarry
It should be called the Laughter curve because it has no validity and has never been proven so by any reputable economist. The reductions are almost all for billionaires and giant corporations who are determined to crush workers and forget that crushed workers don’t buy much
Today it was announced if Medicaid is cut, 65,000 Mesa County residents will be affected. Do you have any clue what that will do to our county??
That is a great question, Daniel. If I were part of Indivisible, or activising from this blog group, I would consider response to Medicaid cuts to be priority 1.
The Western Slope once had a community and practitioner originated health organization. Then it sold to United Healthcare.
I suggest the providers do some quick planning to provide some services for the uninsured … probably partnering with National Association of Free Clinics … The Good Samaritan Clinic in GJ is one.
Yes, they need to move quickly. This is going to hit a lot of families hard.
Indivisible is not a healthcare nonprofit. And getting these services to our county is our responsibility now, our state, our county, any other nonprofits or others offering healthcare services – but many grant and funding cuts happening now may cripple that. But that will never be able to keep up anyway, and new tax bill will raise our lower/middle class taxes and drastically cut again the rich taxes so income to fed govt will be low – from us 99% but will continue not to have rich pay their share of taxes (trump caused largest deficit in our history in first term with them) – and with all the cuts trump/musk making to govt staff and services in healthcare, and drastically reduced revenues, it will be unable to provide what people need (the 99%). Indivisible goal is: “save American democracy” and “resume the project of creating a humane America that is more like social democracy than corporate plutocracy.” They will beyond busy doing that in every state for as long as it takes – who knows how long that will be – or even if our country survives this trump coup.
The 2017 fax plan increased taxes for a lot of lower-middle class like me, by ending most deductions forcing us to use the standard deduction which was raised just a little. Any middle-class tax cut was miniscule and started ending the very next year and our tax rate started increasing the next year, and by 2021 we were at a higher rate than before and it has continued to increase. BUT THE TAX CUTS FOR THE RICH STAYED IN EFFECT UNTIL NOW, 2025, AND HAVE TO BE RENEWED. THE NEW TAX CUT BILL HAS MANY ADDITIONAL DEDUCTIONS ENDED LIKE MORTGAGE INTEREST DEDUCTION AND CHILD CARE TAX CREDIT & OTHER CREDITS FOR LOWER/MIDDLE CLASS, RAISES TAXES FOR SINGLE PARENTS, ADDS $200 A MONTH PAYMENTS FOR STUDENT LOAN DEBT CHANGING THEIR CONTRACTS WHICH ARE INCOME-BASED. The 2017 bill put in special deductions just for trump/rich like deduction for new private plane, deduction for golf course management and real estate developers. It was a true boondoggle. Now the new bill would extends those cuts and offer more cuts to just the rich, like trump/musk/bezos/zuckerberg, etc. and bankrupt the government which none of them care about, but to make it look alright, they are first cutting the govt in ways that will decimate Americans working there and all the rest of us. Pay attention because there’s no efficiency going on here, it’s an attempt by musk to make govt nonexistent, create mass-unemployment, decimate the university system, remove our healthcare, to reach the theocracy they hope for. AMERICA IS GOING TO BE TRUMP’S 7TH BANKRUPTCY.