The chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, Representative Richard Hudson of North Carolina, instructed his fellow G.O.P. members of Congress on Tuesday to cease holding in-person town halls, lest they be confronted — as many of their number have been over the last few weeks — by hordes of angry constituents demanding a halt to the slashing and burning of our American democracy. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson reinforced this later in the day, throwing in the baseless jibe that the citizens who have turned up to give their representatives an earful are “professional protesters.”
We’ll leave it to the psychologists to explain the G.O.P.’s persistent fantasy that anyone in opposition to their views must be accepting cash. Watching the news clips from Oregon to Georgia, the voters demanding answers at these town halls look mostly like retirees to us, judging by the white hair and worn-out trucker hats, concerned about how, for example, the laying off of 83,000 employees of the Veterans Administration by members of Elon Musk’s DOGE team barely out of their teens might impact services.
Instead of town halls in which voters can face their elected representatives and ask questions in person, uncensored — as Americans have done since before we became a nation — House Republicans are encouraged to hold “tele-town halls” or Facebook Live events instead. As The New York Times pointed out, “Both of those formats allow moderators to filter questions and comments.”
Representative Nick LaLota here in the First Congressional District never has held in-person town halls to begin with and had already scheduled one of these tele-town halls for last night, after press time. Mr. LaLota also posted a map on social media claiming to show 20 previous town halls held since he took office, but this was political spin; not one of these events he was labeling a “town hall” was a town hall as the term has been understood forever. Only four had been the phone-in tele-town hall type with cameras and microphones off and questions carefully vetted by staff. The rest were random private appearances, like a June 2023 meet-and-greet with, according to his own X account, “about 75 members of the Fathers’ Guild” at his old high school, St. Anthony’s in Melville, and an aerospace-business-development event with paid ticketing two years ago at the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Nassau County, which isn’t even in our district.
It can safely be said that Mr. LaLota will never hold an in-person town hall, and that means that the voice of the people will have to speak louder in what venues remain: calling, writing, discussing, showing up, and, if need be, marching peacefully. The congressman can clap his hands over his ears as forcefully as he likes, but the shock and dismay being expressed from coast to coast today is in direct response to Congress’s own dereliction of duty, and his constituents can’t be put on mute.