A House Republican leader on Tuesday explicitly told lawmakers they should not hold any in-person town hall events, an effort to avoid confrontation with constituents who are angry over President Donald Trump's agenda.
Politico reported that the directive came from National Republican Congressional Committee Chair Richard Hudson, a Republican lawmaker from North Carolina who is in charge of running the House GOP’s effort to protect their extremely narrow majority in the 2026 midterms.
Hudson said members should hold virtual events, where they can control who speaks, rather than in-person events where anyone can show up and ask questions.
The order to cease in-person town halls came after lawmakers from even safely Republican districts had faced a torrent of angry voters over the last week, many of whom demanded the GOP members answer for everything from co-President Elon Musk’s destructive Department of Government Efficiency cuts, to the budget plan House Republicans passed that demands steep cuts to Medicaid and food stamps in order to pay for tax cuts for the rich.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, left, and National Republican Congressional Committee Chair Richard Hudson walk down the Capitol steps on Nov. 12, 2024.
Rattled Republicans, including Trump, falsely claim the town halls are being filled with paid protesters—an effort to spin the backlash to their agenda as artificial.
"There are people who do this as a profession, they're professional protesters," House Speaker Mike Johnson said after the meeting, according to Politico, adding that he thinks Hudson’s directive to stop in-person town halls is “wise.”
After the news broke, Democrats slammed their GOP counterparts’ fragility, and said that they will show up to the districts where Republicans are avoiding their voters.
"That’s a shame,” Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz wrote on X, regarding Hudson’s call for Republicans to cease in-person town halls. “If your Republican representative won’t meet with you because their agenda is so unpopular, maybe a Democrat will. Hell, maybe I will. If your congressman refuses to meet, I’ll come host an event in their district to help local Democrats beat ‘em."
Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York basically called Republicans cowards.
“If you are going to vote to rip health care and food away from tens of millions of Americans, at least have the courage to face them,” Nadler wrote in a post on X.
Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California wrote in a Thursday op-ed in The American Prospect that he will travel the country to host town halls in districts Republicans won in 2024.
"Starting March 24th, I will be going to three red districts in California to speak out against DOGE’s mass firings and the Republicans’ Medicaid cuts,” Khanna wrote. “This is a moment for progressives to speak directly to people across the country, especially in places that have been hollowed out by the offshoring of jobs and failed policies that have put billionaires over the working class."
In past midterm election cycles, raucous town halls were the first sign that the party in power was in trouble.
Demonstrators are arrested during a protest against Elon Musk outside of a Tesla showroom on March 01, 2025, in New York City.
In 2009, Democrats faced down angry Republican voters at town halls before they were decimated in the 2010 midterm elections. And in 2018, Republicans faced angry voters after they tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act and rip health care coverage and preexisting-conditions protections away from millions of Americans.
Ultimately, polling shows that the current Republican agenda is unpopular. Large majorities of voters do not support cutting Medicaid and food stamps, nor do they support Musk’s cuts to federal funding of medical research.
Republicans can avoid their constituents all they want, but pretending like a problem doesn’t exist won’t make it go away.
“Take it from this 2010 [Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee] survivor: convincing yourself that the town hall people are all plants of your opposition feels good in the moment but the hangovers are brutal,” John Hagner, a Democratic strategist who worked on Democratic House campaigns in the brutal 2010 midterm elections, wrote in a post on X.
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