Latest news with #Hageman
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Sioux City man receives ‘Quilt of Valor' for service in Vietnam War
SIOUX CITY, Iowa (KCAU) — Friends and family gathered together on Friday for a Quilt of Valor Ceremony, which gives a veteran a quilt to say thank you for their sacrifice for our country. The idea of the quilts first started in 2003 to honor veterans being deployed to Iraq, but over the years, the quilts have been given to all veterans. On Friday, firefighter and Vietnam Veteran Dennis Hageman received his own. 'This quilt, it means $1,000,000 to me, like they said, it's warming. Kind of warms my heart and my hands holding it. I'm very appreciative, and thank you very much. I'm glad to see family, friends, and let them experience it with me. You know, I don't know what to say,' expressed Hageman. Hageman served as a firefighter for the Sioux City Fire Department for 32 years and served as an Engineman, Harbor Security, Patrol Boat Engineer and Admiral Barge in the Vietnam War. Sioux City Marina reopens to the public The quilter that made Hageman's the blanket said, when she heard Hageman hadn't received one, she knew she had to make one. 'I love doing it. I love the quilt, but I have a special feeling for these guys that were in Vietnam when they came back,' said Martha Klatt, the quilter for the Quilt of Valor. 'They didn't get a good welcome at all, and this is kind of their welcome home, and in to kind of make up for some of what they experienced when they came back and all they had gone through.' Hageman said seeing friends, family and the quilt brought back many memories. 'It brings a lot of memory back to a friendship with Gordon and ray and with Marty and whatever, and it brings that brings a lot of a lot of feelings back, you know, of time spent, you know, on the even in an air national guard between that and the Sioux City Fire Department. I spent a lot of time with the 232 incident on tour, you know, the days I wasn't at the Sioux City Fire Department, I was with the 185th Fire Department out there, so it reflects of a lot of good times and a lot of sorrow, and it was good time,' said Hageman. Throughout the Quilt of Valors' lifetime, 420,000 quilts have been made by hundreds of volunteers, and each quilt has meaning. The top layer represents the communities and the individuals that we are. The middle layer, or the filler, represents warmth and comfort. The backing represents strength. Local group sparks dialog on the human condition through 'library' event 'Each piece has some meaning, and you're thinking about, you know, what they've experienced, and we can't even imagine what they've experienced. But, you know, to put that together for them means a lot. You know, it's amazing what they have done and what they've accomplished and are continuing to do,' said Klatt. Hageman and his quilt are now officially registered with the Quilt of Valor Foundation. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
06-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Critics Sink House Republican's Gulf Of Mexico Claim With Brutal Reality Check
Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) made a wild geographical blunder at a House rules committee meeting on Monday when she suggested that San Diego borders the Gulf of Mexico. Hageman went to bat for a bill — introduced by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) — that looks to require federal laws, maps and other materials to rename the body of water to the Gulf of America. 'I think another reason why we should change this to the Gulf of Amexi — of America versus the Gulf of Mexico is for over 40 years, the country of Mexico has been dumping raw sewage into the area near San Diego, California,' Hageman declared. She went on to claim that both she and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin were recently in the area, adding that it's a 'horrific' situation and 'environmental catastrophe' that Mexico refuses to fix. 'That is another reason why we need to retake and claim ownership of this area and make sure people do know that it is the Gulf of America,' she added. Firstly, San Diego isn't remotely close to the Gulf and is well over 1,200 miles away from the body of water. And while Zeldin visited San Diego last month, he was in town to examine a sewage crisis in the Tijuana River, which flows from Mexico to Southern California before emptying in the Pacific Ocean. The bill — which the GOP-majority committee advanced to the House floor — looks to codify an executive order signed by President Donald Trump, who in January called on Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to take 'all appropriate actions' in renaming the body of water for governmental use. Critics on X, formerly Twitter, swiftly clowned Hageman over her gaffe. Trump DOJ Just Sided With Biden On Abortion Pill Case – But It's Not What You Think Trump Defends His AI Pope Image: 'The Catholics Loved It' Trump 'Honors' Cinco De Mayo By Reposting Infamous 2016 Tweet
Yahoo
06-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Critics Sink House Republican's Gulf Of Mexico Claim With Brutal Reality Check
Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) made a wild geographical blunder at a House rules committee meeting on Monday when she suggested that San Diego borders the Gulf of Mexico. Hageman went to bat for a bill — introduced by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) — that looks to require federal laws, maps and other materials to rename the body of water to the Gulf of America. 'I think another reason why we should change this to the Gulf of Amexi — of America versus the Gulf of Mexico is for over 40 years, the country of Mexico has been dumping raw sewage into the area near San Diego, California,' Hageman declared. She went on to claim that both she and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin were recently in the area, adding that it's a 'horrific' situation and 'environmental catastrophe' that Mexico refuses to fix. 'That is another reason why we need to retake and claim ownership of this area and make sure people do know that it is the Gulf of America,' she added. Firstly, San Diego isn't remotely close to the Gulf and is well over 1,200 miles away from the body of water. And while Zeldin visited San Diego last month, he was in town to examine a sewage crisis in the Tijuana River, which flows from Mexico to Southern California before emptying in the Pacific Ocean. The bill — which the GOP-majority committee advanced to the House floor — looks to codify an executive order signed by President Donald Trump, who in January called on Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to take 'all appropriate actions' in renaming the body of water for governmental use. Hageman: I think another reason we should change the name to The Gulf of America is for over 40 years, Mexico has been dumping raw sewage in the area near San Diego… That's another reason we need to retake and claim ownership of this area — Acyn (@Acyn) May 5, 2025 Critics on X, formerly Twitter, swiftly clowned Hageman over her gaffe. Please dear God someone show these people a map. — Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen) May 5, 2025 ah yes the famous San Diego part of the Gulf of Mexico — Rancid Hellscape Participant (@TheGlare_TM) May 5, 2025 San Diego is not on the Gulf of Mexico. How … How … Never mind. — Socrates2023 (@SocratesSword) May 5, 2025 Girl… — 2Z Designs (@2Z_Designs) May 5, 2025 Maybe if you don't know the Gulf is on the other side of the continent from San Diego, you're too stupid to be a House member. — Alex Cole (@acnewsitics) May 5, 2025 Mind you, these are the people trying to abolish the Department of Education. — R. Saoirse (@razzli_) May 5, 2025 The naming has literally nothing to do with international borders... MAGA logic 101 — Lib Dunk (@libdunkmedia) May 5, 2025 I remember when she said Kamala wasn't smart lol. 🤦🏾♂️🤦🏾♂️🤦🏾♂️🤦🏾♂️🤦🏾♂️ — Dr. Travis L. Stokes, Ed.D. (@TRAVNATION80) May 5, 2025 So now they care about the environment? 😑 — Rose Benson (@RoseBensonDC) May 5, 2025 Wyoming gave up Liz Cheney for this. — John A. Daly (@JohnDalyBooks) May 5, 2025 Trump DOJ Just Sided With Biden On Abortion Pill Case – But It's Not What You Think Trump Defends His AI Pope Image: 'The Catholics Loved It' Trump 'Honors' Cinco De Mayo By Reposting Infamous 2016 Tweet
Yahoo
02-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Residents claim Hageman intentionally excluded town hall attendees, congresswoman denies it
CHEYENNE – Several Laramie County residents have reached out to the Wyoming Tribune Eagle in recent days, saying they never received information from U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman's office on how to tune into her tele-town hall last Friday evening. To listen to the town hall, residents were told they needed to complete an online form stating their name and address. On that form, they were given an option to submit a question for the representative to answer during the hourlong call. Around 15 minutes before the town hall was scheduled to begin at 6:30 p.m. Friday, Hageman's office sent out an email containing the phone number to dial into the call and a passcode to enter the call. However, some who say they successfully filled out the form also say they never received this email. One of those who reached out to the WTE about this is Carol Mathia. 'I am conjecturing that Hageman chose which constituents she wanted to listen in and decided we were not ones she wanted,' Mathia told the WTE in an email. Lynn Carlson reached out to the WTE, saying the same thing. She said that she wrote a respectful question about the First Amendment with no bad language, but did not receive an email to attend the town hall. 'I never received the link, so I was not able to attend the Town Hall. How can we do better when we are excluded?' Carlson told the WTE in an email. A staff member in Hageman's office said all those who signed up and are county residents received an email. 'All Laramie County residents who signed up using the online form received outreach to join the tele town hall. Over 1,000 joined the call,' Hageman's office said in an email response to an inquiry from the WTE. In addition, some residents who said they didn't attempt to register for the town hall reported receiving a robocall from Hageman's office at 6:37 p.m., inviting them to connect with the tele-town hall, which was already in progress. During the call, Hageman fielded 16 questions reportedly submitted by those who filled out the form, and those listening to the call had the opportunity to dial 3 to submit their own question during the call. It is unclear how many of the questions were submitted online versus during the call. Regardless, listeners did not have the opportunity to speak directly to Hageman during the town hall, as a member of her staff read the questions to her, and she took a few minutes to respond to each question uninterrupted. In a news release sent out March 25, Hageman cited safety as the primary reason for stepping away from the in-person events she had been hosting throughout her time in office. This came after she said a woman followed her after an event in Wheatland, and she said there was a swatting incident at her Cheyenne residence. Swatting is falsely reporting an emergency to public safety by a person for the intent of getting a 'SWAT team' response to a location where no emergency exists, according to Platte County Sheriff David Russell confirmed that a woman in her 60s or 70s followed Hageman after the Wheatland town hall, but was removed and not arrested. Cheyenne Police Department Chief Mark Francisco told the WTE he cannot find any reports of a swatting incident occurring at Hageman's residence, which is inside city limits. Cheyenne resident Tom Dixon criticized Hageman's move to tele-town halls in a letter to the editor submitted to the WTE last week by email. 'This isn't partisan outrage. It's practical, widespread fear,' he wrote, referring to the shouting and booing that occurred at several of Hageman's recent in-person town halls, including a particularly raucous one in Laramie. 'Ranchers, scientists, postal workers, park employees, students and families are all feeling the effects of her choices in Washington. Hageman owes it to them to show up, face the consequences of her actions, and listen. And not just in a scripted webinar, but in person, on the ground, in the communities she was elected to serve. 'A real representative doesn't hide from the people. If Hageman wants to hold the reins of responsibility, she must stop running from the reaction.' One other resident reached out to the WTE by text message, claiming they had signed up for the tele-town hall but never received the phone number to call in to the event. The WTE has been unable to confirm whether these forms were filled out correctly without typos, or that the residents did not actually receive the email and it was redirected to a "spam" or "junk" folder. The Laramie County Democratic Party hosted an in-person town hall event Friday evening at Laramie County Community College – where Hageman was previously scheduled to hold her next in-person event that night – to assemble questions and comments and send a statement summarizing those to Hageman's office. At that event, several attendees expressed concern with having to give their personal information to listen to Wyoming's sole U.S. representative speak over the phone. When asked by the WTE, Hageman's office did not say there were any technical issues with the event and did not say whether tele-town halls will be any different going forward. At Hageman's online town hall on Friday, she said she hopes to resume in-person town halls this month "if we can get the temperature turned down a little bit and make sure that we can provide for the safety and security of people who attend." Other than the comments Hageman made in her announcement of the switch from in-person to tele-town halls, there have been no reports of violence between attendees at any of the events the congresswoman held in March.
Yahoo
31-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
As Hageman pivots to tele-town hall, Dems host in-person event
CHEYENNE — When U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman, R-Wyo., decided earlier this week to pivot to tele-town halls from in-person events, she blamed the Democratic Party for making the events too unsafe to proceed. In response, the Wyoming Democratic Party and Laramie County Democratic Party put together their own overlapping in-person town hall. Around 80 people gathered at Laramie County Community College Friday evening, where Hageman's in-person town hall was previously set to be held, to share their concerns and make their voices heard. Laramie County Democrats Chairman Matthew Snyder said his goal for the event was to give constituents a place to be heard. 'Our interest, as a party, is having an opportunity to organize around these events, or lack thereof. In many ways, I see this as a watershed opportunity to be meaningful,' he said. His fear is that leaders not meeting face-to-face with their constituents as a national trend will lead to a disconnect between Washington, D.C., and the rest of the country. Instead of hosting an in-person town hall Friday evening at LCCC, Hageman hosted a tele-town hall meeting that allowed constituents to submit questions online or over the phone to staffers, dial in and listen. Hageman said more than 100 constituents tuned into the call, down from around 500 who attended a chaotic recent town hall in Laramie that made national news. Democrat town hall 2 Attendees listen to speakers at a town hall hosted by the Laramie County Democratic Party discussing the actions of Wyoming's U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman at Laramie County Community College on Friday. In order to get the number to dial in, attendees were required to list their full name, contact information and address in an online form. Some attending the Democratic Party event said sharing this personal information made them uncomfortable. Shortly after the event began, however, automated calls went out to Hageman's constituents, offering them the opportunity to listen in. Over the course of about an hour, Hageman answered 16 questions that had been previously submitted by those who listened to the live call. At the end of the event, she said she hopes to resume in-person town halls as soon as next month 'if we can get the temperature turned down a little bit and make sure that we can provide for the safety and security of people who attend.' The questions she fielded ranged from the impacts of reported cuts of up to 80,000 Veterans Affairs jobs to the dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education on the state of Wyoming. She said that Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins is a friend of hers who cares deeply for U.S. veterans. She supported the cuts of the positions, saying that it weeds out waste, fraud and abuse. Hageman said the cuts focus specifically on the administration and bureaucracy, rather than the service providers of the VA. 'We need to have some changes at the VA,' Hageman said. 'We need to go in. We need to be not just tinkering around the edges, we need to go into these agencies, pull up the hood, pull out the engines, start looking at all of the different things that go on in these agencies, find out what works, find out what doesn't work, and focus on the services that we need to provide to our men and women in service, as well as the veterans.' Hageman also defended the dismantling of the federal Department of Education, saying that education was better off in Wyoming when she grew up and graduated from Lingle-Fort Laramie High School in 1981. She said she is confident Wyoming will be the best state in education going forward with the federal government out of it. Attendees at the Democratic event identified these as two of the top priorities they would have liked to ask Hageman about if she had been at LCCC Friday evening. 'Right now, it's very scary to me for my grandchildren,' one attendee, who asked not to be identified, said as she began to tear up. 'Right now, I don't (have hope), but I'm hoping that will change.' Her husband, who said he is a veteran, said he is concerned with how cuts to the VA may negatively impact veterans. Perhaps the top concern of those who gathered at LCCC Friday evening was Social Security. One of the three panelists at the event, Ted Hanlon, said he is currently receiving Social Security payments, and he wants to keep it that way. 'I know about Social Security; that's my money, that's not their money,' he said. 'And then somebody tells me they're going to take it away from me. And then they won't even listen to me when I want to talk about it?' President Trump has said he will not cut Social Security, which has more than 70 million recipients. However, he does plan to cut jobs in the agency. Last month, the Social Security Administration announced plans to cut about 7,000 employees, or about 12% of its workforce. Hageman addressed Social Security on her call. She said that Congress cannot touch Social Security by law, but she knows that there is an enormous amount of fraud within the program. She said cutting federal spending in certain areas will help strengthen programs like Social Security. 'Someone who has 17 Social Security numbers that he is receiving Social Security on every single one of those, that's fraud. We need to wipe that out,' she said. 'There are a whole variety of things, but I do believe that the President has made clear over and over and over again, we are not going to touch the benefits for Social Security Administration or Medicare, but we're going to have to strengthen those programs if they're going to exist a decade from now.' Also during the call, Hageman said she supports bipartisan legislation to have at least one United States Post Office Processing and Distribution Center in every state, she has been fighting a mandate on electronic identification eartags for cattle crossing state lines, and she supports most executive orders becoming law. 'We are in the process of, right now, writing the laws and introducing the laws to actually carry out those executive orders that should be written into law,' she said. 'And not all of them should be, but some of them should be ... and they may need some tweaks. We may need to do things a little bit differently than what's going on with the President. But again, the executive orders are directed at the executive branch. They happen to impact us now because the executive branch has become so powerful. That's the problem. That's what I'm trying to take care of.' At the time of publication, President Trump had signed 103 executive orders since he took office Jan. 20. In former President Joe Biden's four years in office, he signed 162 executive orders. Snyder concluded by asking his attendees, 'What's next?' He said he is not hopeless about the future, but he is not optimistic that Hageman will deviate from the party line set by President Trump or listen to her Democratic constituents as the sole U.S. representative for the state of Wyoming. 'This is happening all over the country, where duly elected representatives are not showing up, and that's part of the job. That's a lot of the job, showing up and being responsible and accountable and knowing your constituents in a meaningful way, and addressing issues if they may have them,' he said. 'Not everything is rosy in our country right now, putting it mildly, and there is discontent all over the country, and for representatives, including Representative Hageman, not to answer for those things ... that's problematic.'
