Rep. Mark Alford (R-Mo.) addressed attendees at a town hall that got heated on Monday.Charlie Riedel/AP
It hasn’t been a great last week of the August recess for Republican members of Congress. At town hall events across the country, attendees booed, laughed, jeered, and demanded answers as their GOP representatives tried to defend President Donald Trump’s agenda.
The list of issues angering their constituents is long—everything from the Trump-backed cuts to Medicaid and other impacts of the so-called Big Beautiful Bill, to the deployment of the National Guard to Democratic-run cities, to the lack of transparency over the Epstein files.
On Thursday, Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) held a town hall in which attendees booed as he touted some of the Trump administration’s work; they demanded he “release the Epstein files.”
“We don’t want to hear your propaganda!” one attendee reportedly yelled.
In a subsequent post on X, Crenshaw blamed the commotion on “about fifty leftists” who he alleged “would not stop interrupting with shouting and incoherent chanting.”
“They demanded that we raise everyone’s taxes, give free paychecks to able-bodied adults, and sneered at the success of the flood mitigation projects we’ve done that have saved lives and property,” he added, claiming that the protesters did not live in his district.
The day before, Rep. Barry Moore (R-Ala.) fled his town hall through a back door, video obtained by NBC News shows, after constituents shouted “shame” and questioned him about the lack of due process afforded to immigrants and others whom the Trump administration has detained. (“Due process for a citizen and a noncitizen are different,” Moore claimed.)
A 40-minute livestream of the event posted to Facebook by a local chapter of the advocacy group Indivisible shows attendees booing, chanting their questions, and laughing at Moore as he tried to defend the Trump administration. Appearing on a conservative radio show on Thursday, Moore, who is also running for Senate, claimed the event was “hijacked” and disputed the notion that he had snuck out.
“I’m proud of everyone tonight,” local resident and progressive activist Johnston Tisdale told AL.com. “I’m not proud of him.”
Kayleigh Godwin, another attendee, told the local news site: “We came here knowing we would not get any answers and that we would just try and shame him for the policies he supports.”
On Tuesday and Wednesday, town halls hosted by Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) featured attendees demanding answers to questions around Medicaid cuts and Trump’s immigration crackdown, local news outlets WLWT and the Journal-News reported. The local news site the Heartland Signal posted videos to X showing attendees laughing and booing as Davidson tried to defend the work of DOGE and Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in cities. Davidson subsequently called some of the attendees “disruptive.”
Rep. Mark Alford (R-Mo.) tried to buck the perception of GOP lawmakers hiding from their constituents by holding five town halls this week. But he still met the same fate as many of his colleagues. At a Monday event, one attendee told him to take his “head out of Trump’s a– and start doing your representation of us,” the Daily Beast reported. On Wednesday, attendees booed and jeered when Alford insisted that Trump “has the best interest at heart,” according to the Missouri Independent. And local news site KOMU reported that that evening’s event ended with some constituents complaining about Alford’s “complacency” and lack of answers to attendees’ questions. Others told Alford they appreciated his willingness to address constituents, and he responded to protesters calmly, the Associated Press reported.
Rep. Josh Brecheen (R-Okla.) went further than Alford, hosting 20 town halls in four days this week. Video from local outlet KJRH shows attendees booing and demanding answers, and some attendees told the station they did not like that he limited questions to five people. At other events, attendees questioned him about Trump’s false claims of lowering drug prices by more than 1,500 percent and Medicaid cuts.
All this helps explain why a memo the National Republican Congressional Committee distributed last month—titled “Making August Count”—made no mention of hosting town halls. Back in March, the committee’s chair, Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.), told a closed-door meeting of House Republicans to stop hosting town halls in the midst of backlash from voters, Politico reported. Most appear to have taken that to heart: By mid-August, only 16 of the 219 House Republicans had held at least one in-person town hall event, NPR reported.
So…the midterms will be interesting.
