Gets heated

GOP’s summer town hall push gets heated

Rep. Bryan Steil faced a hostile crowd.

Meredith Lee Hill

House Republicans are beginning to face rowdy town halls as they try to sell President Donald Trump’s sweeping tax and spending law.

Rep. Bryan Steil of Wisconsin had a hostile crowd Thursday night, with jeers and boos from the audience, according to local media reports. Democratic organizers in particular spoke out against Steil. Attendees pressed him on topics spanning from Trump’s tariffs to immigration.

“It’s completely fine that we disagree,” Steil said, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and urged attendees to “help us engage in a more productive dialogue.”

NRCC Chair Richard Hudson discouraged GOP members from holding in-person town halls earlier this year amid backlash to the Trump administration’s DOGE cuts and Republican plans to cut Medicaid spending. But Hudson and the NRCC recently started advising members to aggressively sell Trump’s big domestic policy law to constituents over August recess — though they didn’t explicitly mention town halls.

Rep. Mike Flood of Nebraska is holding a town hall in his district on Monday. In an interview this week, he predicted it could be another unruly crowd if it’s “along the lines” of his last in-person town hall, which included heated encounters with constituents over the GOP megabill and Trump.

Asked if he expected questions on the GOP’s Medicaid spending cuts in the megabill, Flood said: “I do.”