Updated at 10:35 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 27, 2025.
Democratic Rep. Jason Crow told a packed crowd at an Aurora high school Thursday night that he wouldn’t back down from a fight with the Trump administration, but the four-term congressman acknowledged his limitations as a single member of the House in the minority party dealing with an unconventional president.
“I don't think there are many people who don't think that I'm not a fighter,” he told reporters ahead of the town hall at Hinkley High School. “That is my reputation. When I first ran for office my mantra actually was, ‘I go where the fight is.' And that sure in hell hasn't changed.”
About 1,400 people packed into the main auditorium, with a few hundred more watching from a screen in an auxiliary room. Several audience members pushed Crow on the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, saying they were skeptical of the cuts and the vilification of government workers.
“I don’t believe that an unelected unaccountable billionaire who didn’t come before Congress to be accountable should have a right to your information, a right to our payment systems, to be hiring these young, unclear people that used to work for him to access our classified systems,” Crow said, bringing a few people to their feet.
“Lock him up!” the audience chanted. “Shut it down!”
“I don’t believe it should be happening,” Crow continued. “Not to mention the fact that in this case, you have the fox guarding the hen house, right? Elon Musk is one of the biggest government contractors in the country and to put him in charge of reviewing which contracts to cancel, which ones not to cancel … It’s extremely troubling.”
In recent weeks, the fourth-term congressman and former Army Ranger has blasted the Trump administration for its approach to foreign policy and cuts to the federal workforce, dotting cable news programs and decrying the administration’s lack of doctrine, discipline and policy.
He even traveled to Munich to attend a security conference where Vice President JD Vance scolded European allies and called “the enemy from within” their biggest threat—steering clear of criticisms of Russian and China.
“I am in Munich because I refuse to let Donald Trump and JD Vance and Secretary (of Defense Pete) Hegseth and others be the voice of America to the world,” he said, in an MSNBC interview. “There are a lot of people in America who understand that our economy is tied to Europe, that our peace and prosperity is tied to Europe.”
On Thursday, the Aurora town hall crowd was friendly. There were no major partisan detractors and Crow received a standing ovation when he took the stage. The crowd clapped at his answers and booed when he mentioned President Trump or Elon Musk’s name.
At one point, people shouted, “Impeach him!”
Crow told reporters that this was his biggest town hall in his four terms in congress—by two or three times.
A man stood up and said he worked for 43 years as a peace corps volunteer and working for USAID. He asked Crow what he could do to protect foreign aid around the world.
“These wars, by the way, cost us over $2 trillion. Thousands of American lives,” Crow said. “Thousands of American families disrupted hundreds of thousands of other lives around the world. And for what?”
Crow has been critical since the start of the administration’s ICE crackdowns—many of the enforcement actions have taken place in Aurora, which is in his congressional district. When the administration initially announced that Buckley Space Force Base would serve as a makeshift detention and holding center, Crow held a press conference criticizing the use of the military for civil immigration enforcement.
Crow said he received confirmation that immigrants won’t be housed at the military installation after he showed up at the base unannounced and “started poking around.”
Asked ahead of Thursday’s town hall about news reports of Buckley becoming a mass detention center, he said he was “assured” a month ago that there were no plans to use it.
“Remember, I said ‘as of right now, there are no current plans and nothing being done to use it,’” he said. “But with so many other things in this administration, it changes day to day.”
A woman in the audience asked what he was doing about the immigration crackdowns.
He said he believed in deporting “the most violent criminals” but not people who are law-abiding citizens.
“That means people who own homes, that own businesses, they have U.S. citizen children that are our friends and neighbors,” he said. “And will be if they carry through on those plans. And I'll fight down to resist that because that's not the reform that's needed.”
One woman said she felt helpless in the face of so much change and such a barrage of news about this administration. She asked what she should do.
Crow paused for a moment and then urged his overwhelmingly Democratic audience to be a little more welcoming and big-tent in their approach to people they may not wholly agree with.
“Collectively, our voices and our advocacy and our power to stand up and preserve the fight can move this in a better direction,” he said. “Americans did not sign up for this, and they will join us if we open our arms and if we welcome people back into our coalition. And we have to be willing to do that right? We can't push people away. We have to be willing to welcome them back and to be open minded even if we don't always agree with them all the time.”
Haley Foster, a first time political activist, said she came to the town hall because she doesn’t like what’s going on in the country. She works under a federal grant for the city of Aurora in substance abuse and said she’s worried that people aren’t paying enough attention to all of the change.
“I wanted to find out first hand what the other party is doing to stop Trump and Musk,” Foster, who lives in Centennial, said. “I’ve never been political before, but I’ve been protesting and I’m now involved and fighting back and standing back for my rights. I’m a little scared.”
