(C) Common Dreams
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Republican House Members Told to Stop Holding In-Person Town Halls [1]
['Catie Edmondson', 'More About Catie Edmondson']
Date: 2025-03-04
“Democrat activists who don’t live in the district, very often, will show up for these town hall events and they’ll go in an hour early and they’ll fill all the seats,” Mr. Johnson said. “Now I’m not saying everyone in these town halls that you’ve seen on television were not from the local area, but look, there are people who do this as a profession. They’re professional protesters. So why would we give them a forum to do that right now?”
At recent town hall events, some of the most strident complaints have come from participants who identified themselves as Democrats. But a number of questions pressing lawmakers have also come from Republicans. During a telephone town hall with Representative Stephanie Bice, Republican of Oklahoma, a man who identified himself as a Republican and retired U.S. Army officer voiced frustration over potential cuts to veterans benefits.
“How can you tell me that DOGE with some college whiz kids from a computer terminal in Washington, D.C., without even getting into the field, after about a week or maybe two, have determined that it’s OK to cut veterans benefits?” the man asked, referring to the Elon Musk-led effort known as the Department of Government Efficiency.
Similar scenes played out in 2017, when protesters swarmed Republican town halls across the country and urged their lawmakers not to vote to replace the Affordable Care Act. Since then, a number of members of Congress have scaled back their participation in public town halls events, leery both of security concerns, and the optics of being subjected to testy confrontations.
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[1] Url:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/04/us/politics/gop-town-hall.html
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