Washington Wednesday: Town hall backlash

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: It’s Wednesday, the 19th of March.

Thanks for listening to WORLD radio today! Good morning, I’m Lindsay Mast.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

First up on The World and Everything in It, Washington Wednesday.

The Senate and House of Representatives are on recess this week, and lawmakers are back home with their families and constituents.

MAST: Many use the time to catch up on meetings, community gatherings, and town hall events. This spring, however, many Republicans are seeing angry constituents swarm their meetings: protestors venting frustration over workforce cuts prompted by entrepreneur Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency.

BROWN: Here now with more on what’s happening is Washington Bureau Reporter, Carolina Lumetta.

EDWARDS: I happen to agree with a lot of that things that’s going on in Washington, DC [crowd boos].

CAROLINA LUMETTA: In an auditorium in Asheville, North Carolina, Republican Congressman Chuck Edwards found out why his party leadership told him not to hold in-person town halls.

EDWARDS: Our last question Here Amelia from zip code 28805, What Are you doing for your constituents regarding musk and his minions having reading writing privileges with the Treasury Department's database.

Yeah. Well, thank you. So, can I answer this one also before you start yelling at me, uh, let's let's be honest with one another if if the name of the person that was running that agency was anything more than Elon Musk you probably wouldn't be as angered. [booing]

The Thursday event turned rowdy. Attendees frequently booed or yelled over Edwards and security escorted a few angry demonstrators from the room.

Hundreds more chanted outside and pounded on the auditorium room doors.

CROWD: Do your job, do your job…

The object of their frustration? Elon Musk’s approach to trimming the federal workforce.

EDWARDS: Like him or not, Elon Musk has brought a lot of really smart people to DOGE, and they’re finding vulnerabilities and inconsistencies in our databases [loud booing]

Several attendees told WORLD they were on the receiving end of those actions.

DOWNIE: When suddenly I received an email that told me my performance was lacking, in spite of my supervisors providing me with exemplary performance reports, and that I was no longer needed by the government.

Martin Downie took a remote job with the Department of Agriculture in 2020. Before that, he served for 30 years in the Army. Along with thousands of other federal employees, he accepted a buyout offer last month. But he is worried about what will happen to agencies and programs Americans like him benefit from.

DOWNIE: I'm scared to death that they're just going to chop back all of the progress that they've made with the Veterans Administration. They're going to take it all back again. If that's what they call making America great again, I humbly disagree.

Similar protests cropped up at Senator Roger Marshall’s town hall last month in Oakley, a small town in northwestern Kansas, hundreds of miles from any large city. Irritated constituents repeatedly interrupted Marshall when he talked about DOGE.

MARSHALL: If you all keep cutting me off, if you're rude which you’re being, I'm going to leave. I mean, people from Oakley don’t deserve this.

When a veteran said cuts to the Department of Veterans Affairs were shameful, Marshall ended the town hall early.

MARSHALL: I do got two more commitments today. I appreciate everybody making the drive out and God bless America, thank you. [yelling]

Louise Ehmke attended that town hall. She and her husband, Vance, own a western Kansas farm that’s been in the family since 1885. They have contracts with the Department of Agriculture to use the land for research. They worry DOGE will cut the contracts. But they are more concerned that lawmakers aren’t listening.

EHMK: He represents Democrats and Republicans. It’s not a Republican meeting, it’s for his constituents.

Earlier this month, House Speaker Mike Johnson and other party leaders told their members to temporarily stop holding in-person town hall meetings. They said that Democrats are busing in activists just to cause a scene. So Republican leadership advised a switch to virtual town halls, where staff may screen questions from constituents calling in. But it’s a risky strategy.

GREEN: It makes lawmakers look like they're scared of their constituents. And that that is not the message you want if you are an incumbent lawmaker.

Matt Green is a politics professor at the Catholic University of America. He says lawmakers have a responsibility to hear the opinions and concerns of their constituents.

GREEN: And so if Republicans are simply refusing to have in public, large town hall meetings because previous meetings went south, it does look like they are running scared from their constituents, and then indirectly, they're running scared from Trump.

Republican lawmakers allege that the demonstrations are coming from paid activists, not real constituents.

In both Asheville and Kansas, attendees told WORLD this wasn’t true, but some national groups are organizing people to attend Republican town halls to voice concerns about DOGE.

EZRA LEVIN: You as a constituent have a right to request this.

Ezra Levin is an organizer for the group Indivisible, an organization formed to “resist Trump’s authoritarian agenda.” The group has been encouraging its members to attend town halls, or organize their own, and set up empty chairs if lawmakers don’t show up. Here’s Levin again in an instructional video.

LEVIN: Any response of ‘no I'm not going to hold a town hall or I'm I'm going to hold a virtual Town Hall’ it's not real. you want in-person access to your representative, you have the right to get that. And whether it’s a Democrat, Independent or Republican saying ‘no I don’t think I’m going to do that,’ you shouldn’t accept no for an answer.

Republican communications consultant Mark Weaver disagrees.

WEAVER: There's certainly no legal duty. Members of Congress are elected for their full two years, and they can spend all of it in Washington, or all of it back home, or all of it in the Caribbean getting a suntan.

Weaver says with town halls becoming more raucous, lawmakers could lean into other ways to meet with constituents. That could include unannounced visits at county fairs, taking a factory tour, or stopping by a diner.

WEAVER: It’s important that members of Congress keep in touch with folks back home but there are so many other ways they can do it, particularly when these lately have become traps, partisan traps set up by these astroturf groups.

Artificial astroturf,as opposed to an organic grassroots movement.

WEAVER: It won't make for much of an exchange if you have somebody who's going to get on and scream and use four -letter words, because that's not how we talk to one another in a civil environment.

Back in Asheville, Congressman Edwards pressed through the town hall. He thanked attendees for bringing their contradicting perspectives to the table.

EDWARDS: And I hope that you will certainly stay engaged with my office and all of those folks that are elected to represent you. God bless you all. [boos and shouts continue]

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Carolina Lumetta.

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