Lawmakers around the country are facing early constituent concerns at town hall meetings about cuts made by President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency.
The House of Representatives is in recess this week, giving lawmakers one of their first opportunities to interact face-to-face with constituents back home and get an idea of the public sentiment toward the Trump administration’s efforts to shrink the size of the federal government.
Representatives from Georgia, Oregon, Oklahoma and Ohio were among those who received backlash and concern this week from attendees and callers.
Georgia Rep. Rich McCormick, who won his district, which is north of Atlanta, heavily in 2024, faced boos and outrage from a crowd of hundreds in videos posted by a reporter from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Trending
“Why is the supposedly conservative party taking such a radical and extremist and sloppy approach to this?” one attendee said of cuts to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, citing fired staff working on bird flu response.
McCormick’s response sparked shouts from the crowd.
“A lot of the work they do is duplicitous with AI,” McCormick said of the 1,300 employees cut from the CDC.
Across the country in Oregon, several constituents raised concerns about the federal government at Republican Rep. Cliff Bentz’s town halls, one of which on Wednesday received a round of applause for sharing frustration over DOGE firing federal workers.
“We’ve been through downsizing before, and you can do it in a way that is humane and treats people with dignity and doesn’t fire them on the spot for performance when we all know how hard these people work,” the constituent appeared to tell the congressman in a video posted to YouTube and reported by CBS News. “And it’s your job to make sure that people follow the laws.”
Bentz thanked attendees and ended the town hall after that statement.
Republicans have largely lined up behind Trump’s efforts to scale back the size of the federal government, for which his ally Elon Musk has been one of the most visible faces. It’s not clear whether the pressure constituents were putting on lawmakers this week will last, but it happened far from the D.C. area (the federal workforce is dispersed across the country) and in some fairly red districts.
Rep. Stephanie Bice of Oklahoma clashed with a constituent who called into her telephone town hall Thursday night. The constituent said he was a registered Republican voter who served in the U.S. Army and raised concerns about DOGE and Project 2025, saying the Trump administration had gone “absolutely off the tracks.”
“Anytime you cut 1,000 people from the workforce, that comes with a cost. How can you tell me that DOGE … has determined that it’s OK to cut veterans benefits?” the constituent said.
The caller was also concerned about the fate of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, where Russell Vought, the acting director of the bureau tasked with protecting consumers from marketing scams, ordered in early February for all work and funding to cease.
“What are you doing to commit that they’re not going to dip into my disability pension as a result of my five combat tours?” the caller asked. “I’d like to know what was wrong with the CFPB … the CFPB was directly in support of consumers, I’ve seen it work. And we’ve just scrapped it. You know, we are abandoning Ukraine — this stuff keeps me up at night.”
Bice argued Veterans Affairs benefits are not being affected by the federal freeze. The VA said in a statement in January that all of its financial assistance programs and operations “will continue uninterrupted.”
“VA benefits are not something that I would be willing to cut in any way, shape or form, and I will fight for that,” she said, adding that she hopes to see CFPB reform and that she disagrees with the president’s remark suggesting Ukraine started the war with Russia.
“I don’t believe that,” Bice said. “I hope that the president is being strategic in how he’s approaching this to come to some sort of resolution in the near future.”
Not all of the outrage was led by the constituents. Much of the Trump administration’s efforts since Trump took office just over a month ago have focused on expanding the power of the presidency and have in the process sidelined Congress.
GOP Rep. Troy Balderson of Ohio expressed frustration at a luncheon Thursday about Trump’s executive orders, saying they’re “getting out of control,” The Columbus Dispatch reported.
“Congress has to decide whether or not the Department of Education goes away,” Balderson said. “Not the president, not Elon Musk. Congress decides.”
—
Em Luetkemeyer is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.
Author
