Ordinary heroes give Congress an earful about Trump and Musk
A special congressional recess edition of Heads Up News
Let me tell you about some of the things ordinary Americans did last week, during the congressional recess.
Virginia Lim of Roswell, Ga., stood up at a jam-packed town hall hosted by her Republican congressman, Rep. Rich McCormick.
“It’s clear from all the writings of our Founding Fathers that our great Republic was never meant to be ruled by a dictator, nor a king,” Lim said, before being interrupted by cheers and applause from many of the 500 attendees.
She continued: “So you can imagine my shock and pure horror when I woke up to find that our president had given himself unprecedented executive powers, and then, within a few days, named himself king to his followers.”
More cheers.
“Tyranny is rising in the White House, and a man has declared himself our king. So I would like to know – rather, the people would like to know -- what you, congressman, and your fellow congressmen are going to do to rein in the megalomaniac in the White House.”
Sustained applause. Partial standing ovation. You can watch it unfold here.
Keep in mind this is a deeply red district, where Trump beat Biden by 22 points in 2024.
McCormick’s response – to the effect that he heard similar complaints from Republicans when Joe Biden was elected – was met with loud boos.
And Lim was hardly alone. Many other citizens lobbed tough questions – like Larry Lesueur, from Canton Ga., who railed against “indiscriminate” cuts of the federal workforce, and asked: “Why is a supposedly conservative party taking such a radical and extremist and sloppy approach to this?”
The crowd at various times yelled out “we’re pissed!” “don’t bend over!” and “shame!”
McCormick scolded the attendees. “I came here to have a discussion. I think a lot of you didn’t come here in good faith to have a discussion. You came here to yell at me and to boo me,” he complained.
But – get this! – four days later, he was telling a Georgia podcast that the White House needs to slow down and be more cautious about firing federal employees.
“I think we’re just moving a little too fast,” McCormick told the “Politically Georgia” podcast. “We should have impact studies on each department as we do it, and I’m sure we can do that. We’re moving really, really rapidly, and we don’t know the impact.”
Meanwhile, in Oklahoma
John Adams had a question for his Republican member of Congress, Rep. Stephanie Bice, in her telephone town hall. (It starts at 13:18 in this recording.)
“I’m a registered Republican voter and retired active Army officer,” Adams began. “How can you tell me that DOGE, with some college whiz kids, from a computer terminal in Washington, D.C., without even getting out into the field, after about a week or maybe two, have determined that it’s OK to cut veterans benefits?”
He also raised concerns about the cutbacks at the Consumer Products Safety Commission and Trump’s lack of support for Ukraine.
“This is Project 2025, chapter and verse, and I didn’t want to believe it,” he said. “This administration has gone absolutely off the tracks. This is beyond alarming to me and I feel that it’s worse than we even know… Something has got to be done.”
In her reply, Bice cited a debunked claim that the Veterans Administration “was in charge of payments for illegals for housing.”
But Adams was not buying it.
“I’m not aware of that,” he said. “And I would tell you that’s a red herring, a false flag. If you’re throwing that kind of political stuff up trying to cut veterans benefits, that’s very alarming to me.”
Meanwhile, in Oregon
Bailey Langley, a recently fired national forest employee, told her story to Republican Rep. Cliff Bentz at a town hall attended by about 300 people. She was laid off 52 days before the end of her probationary period.
“This was a blanket butchering of employees who will one day carry on and sustain the agencies. Instead of contributing to our communities in a productive manner, I am now being forced to file for unemployment and other government services,” she said.
“Especially in our rural communities,” she said, “this is your opportunity as a public servant to stand up for American values, to not follow a king, but serve the people.”
The East Oregonian newspaper reported that “Much of the crowd stood, clapping, whistling and cheering, for more than 20 seconds once she finished.”
Meanwhile, in California
In San Bernadino County, Republican Rep. Jay Obernolte faced an increasingly angry crowd at his town hall, especially when he defended Elon Musk.
Heather Drake asked him: “My question to you, as a member of Congress which holds the purse strings, what are you going to do to stop the cuts and how do you feel about an unelected nonconfirmed person making the decisions you should be making?”
The Hi-Desert Star reported that she could barely be heard over the applause and cheers.
Obernolte, after responding that he was “very glad someone is looking at all of the waste,” was then drowned out by the crowd loudly chanting “Do your job.”
Meanwhile, in Wisconsin
In West Bend, Wisc., Republican Rep. Scott Fitzgerald hosted what WTMJ-TV called a “testy town hall.”
Mary Sylvester asked about the role and responsibility of Congress. "We need three branches of government, not one. When will you stand up and say that’s enough?"
Michael Wittig was concerned with Elon Musk's role, holding sign that read "Presidents are not kings." "Are you going to subpoena him at some point?” Wittig asked. “Are you willing to use your subpoena power to tell Musk to stand in front of Congress and answer some hard questions?"
Empty Chairs for the AWOL
Many members of Congress chose to avoid the public entirely.
That’s why protesters outside Montana Republican Rep. Ryan Zinke’s office in Bozeman set up an empty chair to represent the congressman, KBZK reported.
Bozeman resident Kay LaFrance asked the empty chair: “What do you recommend to help my neighbors, your constituents, who have lost or are worried about losing their jobs?”
She continued: “Congressman, we hired you to work with us in the United States House of Representatives. The job description includes managing our government's budgets. We entrusted you with that responsibility. Why did you give up all of the power we gave you and give it to an unelected billionaire?”
Kansas Republican Sen. Jerry Moran was represented by an empty chair in a virtual town hall organized by Laura Mead after Moran ignored her repeated requests to hold one of his own.
About 1,200 people tuned in during event, which, according to the Kansas Reflector, featured 32 speakers — including farmers, veterans, health care workers, cancer patients, and special-needs parents — who voiced concerns about Trump and Musk.
Among the protesters outside West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito’s district office in Morgantown were local resident Ted Webb.
“We need Shelley Moore Capito to do her job, support the separation of powers, support the Constitution,” Webb said, according to the Daily Athenaeum. “We need all the power in our districts and states, not with the president. There's no kings in America. There's no dictators, so we need our democracy.”
Members of MoveOn gathered outside the Palm Desert offices of California Republican Rep. Ken Calvert. “Elon Musk is an unelected person. They’re creating a new federal agency that is cutting other federal agencies, without any input from the people,” Laura Nguyen said, according to KESQ-TV.
“This is where we stand. These folks out here in Palm Desert, these are folks that need benefits, they need Social Security, they need Medicaid, Medicare. These are directly impacted folks. And we can’t let unelected people cut their benefits just to line their own pockets."
Democrats Are Urged to Do More
Democrats were not immune from tough question and even protests, with many constituents demanding they be more aggressive in countering the Trump/Musk agenda.
In Olympia, Wash., about 100 people gathered outside the office of Democratic Rep. Marilyn Strickland, to send her a message.
Olympia Indivisible co-founder Lisa Ornstein read the message out loud, reported the Olympian. “Democrats must take matters into their own hands and hold shadow hearings to expose how MAGA elites are trying to loot the government and rig the system for billionaires,” Ornstein read. “We are here in person as constituents standing outside your office today in Lacey to express the importance and urgency of these issues to you and your staff.”
At a town hall in the North Bay area of California, Democratic Rep. Jared Huffman, Bali Simon, a 16-year-old high school student, asked Huffman what he was doing to fight back.
“I study AP history and I have read about how democracies crumbled in the face of fascism when leaders try to compromise with extremists,” Simon said, according to the Press-Democrat. “I am watching history repeat itself. Donald Trump and his enablers are not just political opponents, they are a threat to democracy.”
Several hundred demonstrators gathered outside an Oakland venue where House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, (D-N.Y.) was promoting his new book.
“He’s not fighting what’s happening here, and on top of it, he’s out here selling books like he’s on a vacation or something,” Celia Bueb, a demonstrator who was holding a sign saying, “Jeffries! Be Ruthless,” told the San Francisco Chronicle. “This is serious what’s happening and it doesn’t feel like there are people taking it seriously.”
Honorable Mention
An Idaho woman was pulled from her seat, wrestled to the ground and dragged out of a high school auditorium on Saturday after heckling a legislative town hall hosted by the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee in Coeur d’Alene.
Teresa Borrenpohl was one of several attendees heckling the speakers. “Is this a town hall or a lecture?” she asked repeatedly.
After she refused an order from the sheriff to leave, she was dragged out by three people who appeared to be security personnel. It was all captured on a video, which went viral.
Borrenpohl is planning to take legal action, and a GoFundMe launched to raise $30,000 for her legal costs had raised $291,000 as of Wednesday morning.
What Does It All Mean?
I think this is the start of something.
“There’s been a lot of talk about how there hasn’t been the same amount of Democratic outrage that there was at this point in Donald Trump’s first term,” Greg Bluestein, who covered the McCormick town hall for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, told MSNBC. “This is the first moment that that I really kind of felt it on the ground here in Georgia. This was a sense of bubbling outrage that really reminded me of some of the Tea Party backlash we saw 15 years ago or so at town hall meetings.”
Organizers share that view. “We are seeing a broad-based wave of opposition sweep the country, including in really deep red areas,” Leah Greenberg, a co-founder of Indivisible, told the New Republic. “It’s building in a different way,” she said. “But it is absolutely building.”
Postscript
NBC News reports that in the wake of town hall debacles of the past week Republican party leaders are “urging lawmakers to stop engaging in them altogether.”
“Party leaders suggest that if lawmakers feel the need to hold such events, they do tele-town halls or at least vet attendees to avoid scenes that become viral clips, according to GOP sources.”
Economic Blackout February 28
One last note: Several grassroots groups are calling for a halt to discretionary spending for 24 hours on February 28 in protest against major retailers — including Amazon and Walmart — for scaling back diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in response to Trump.
USA Today has more information. Forbes is keeping a list of companies that are cutting their DEI programs.
Is the GOP suggesting that only loyal party members be allowed to question Republican congresscritters and senaterats?