Trahan, working with COVID-19 from home, outlines priorities

by Robert Mills

WESTFORD — U.S. Rep. Lori Trahan is quarantining even from her family within the Westford home they share while experiencing minor COVID-19 symptoms, but she continues to vote by proxy and work despite her recent positive test, she told Sun editors Thursday.

Trahan also lashed out at Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, whom she voted later Thursday night to remove from House committees.

“I have colleagues who are getting fitted for bulletproof vests and they’re bolstering security at their homes and that’s because (Greene) openly condones violence at a time when we saw how that violence can manifest with the attack on our Capitol,” Trahan said.

Trahan’s vote on Greene, which passed the House, stripping the controversial freshman of her committee assignments, was cast by proxy, though, since Trahan has been quarantining in her Westford home since testing positive for COVID-19.

“I can’t say that I’m feeling great. But you know, my symptoms are mild, it’s mostly fatigue and head and body aches,” she said.

Trahan’s husband and two young daughters have tested negative for the virus, so while the family is all at home together, mom has remained isolated from them, communicating via the “old fashioned intercom of yelling down the stairs.”

“I’m fortunate we can quarantine in our home away from each other and not put each other at risk,” Trahan said. “That would have been impossible on 51 Staples St. (in Lowell) where my parents, my three sisters and me all shared one bathroom. I’m super mindful that that’s the reality for too many families.”

Trahan isn’t sure how she contracted the virus before she tested positive while at home in Westford on Jan. 28. Though she sheltered in place in her congressional office during the Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6, Trahan does not believe she got the virus then, because she was tested multiple times in the weeks since.

Trahan said she wears both a KN95 mask and a cloth masks when she flies, and despite such precautions still got the virus. She said everyone she was in contact with since her previous test was contacted to be sure they are tested or quarantining as well.

“I do think that you become acutely aware of the obligation that you have to look out for each other in the middle of this crisis,” she said.

The congresswoman got her first dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine in Washington DC about a week before her diagnosis, but said she was fully aware the first dose would not fully protect her. It is more than a week after getting the second dose of the vaccine that over 90% immunity is reached, she said. She’ll get the second dose when she gets back to Washington.

Asked if she believes children should be in school, Trahan said she thinks almost all parents want their kids back in school, but only safely. Asked about vaccination priorities, Trahan said the best solution to is truly ramp up distribution.

“We have to take the complexity out of eligibility and we’ve got to get more shots in arms,” she said.

While Trahan prides herself on efforts to work across the aisle, and recently created a pandemic response caucus with Republicans, she offered no mercy for Greene.

“Congressman Greene’s actions both before and and since her election show that she’s unfit to be a member of Congress,” Trahan said.

Trahan pointed out that Greene has supported calls for killing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former President Barrack Obama, and even FBI agents, in addition to amplifying conspiracy theories like QAnon and hrassing survivors of school shootings.

“I think it’s important to talk about, or to point out that we’re not talking about language that’s offensive here,” Trahan said. “We’re talking about condoning and promoting violence against others.”

Trahan said it has saddened her to see the Capitol in lockdown now, with troops and fences around, when she proudly showed her daughters the complex just days before the insurrection.

“This shouldn’t be a place where people fear going to work,” Trahan said. “I’m used to working in and walking around a Capitol Complex that is open to the people that it’s there to serve.”

She called for “a 911 type commission” to examine the Capitol insurrection, and how to ensure it never happens again.

“Every single one of us wants a very in-depth investigation into what went wrong,” Trahan said. “I do think that the attack on the Capitol was an act of domestic terrorism. I do think that there were people who were there in protest, and then I do think that there was a mob of people who, you know, wanted to stop the work of our government and to attack our democracy.”

She cited President Biden’s inaugural address, when he called for people to “hear each other out, see each other, listen to each other.”

“I think it’s really important. I think we all have a role to play in that,” Trahan said. “Certainly the toxicity that has enveloped Washington has never been worse, but it’s also playing out in our communities and on social media, and I think everyone has a role to play on tamping that down.”

Discussing her priorities, Trahan cited work from her first term on expanding federal funding to help communities like Lowell and Lawrence reduce combined sewer overflows which contaminate the Merrimack River, and said she will continue pushing for infrastructure spending to provide such aid in her new position on the House Commerce and Energy Committee. She also cited work to pass a measure requiring the military to study an alarming rise in service members dying by suicide, which she said was motivated by a mother from the district who raised the issue with her.

Asked about previously stalled efforts to pass a massive infrastructure bill, Trahan said she thinks President Biden and Congress see the chance to use badly needed infrastructure improvements to boost the economy as well.

“I think what’s not lost on this president at all, is that it’s also an opportunity to bootstrap our economic recovery, it’s going to create millions of jobs while investing in our communities, and that’s exactly what we’re going to need as we come out of this pandemic,” Trahan said.

Trahan said she also plans to reintroduce legislation she is working on with Republican colleagues to standardize addiction training for physicians who prescribe addictive opioids, and to also reduce the stigma of addiction.