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PBS News Hour - Segments

How lawmakers are responding to frustrated constituents at town halls

PBS News Hour - Segments

PBS NewsHour

News, Daily News

41K Ratings

🗓️ 24 April 2025

⏱️ 5 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week marks the end of Congress’s longest break from Washington since President Trump re-entered the White House. For most lawmakers, that has meant more time with constituents. And for some, aggressive questioning at town halls. Lisa Desjardins reports on the past week’s interactions. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

Transcript

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0:00.0

This week ends Congress's longest break from Washington since Donald Trump re-entered the White House.

0:06.1

For most lawmakers, that's meant more time with constituents.

0:09.6

And for some, aggressive questioning at town halls.

0:12.8

Our team has looked over the past week's interactions, and Lisa Desjardin is here with more.

0:17.4

Lisa, good to see you.

0:18.1

Hi.

0:18.5

So you've seen a lot of the anger bubbling up at town halls.

0:21.7

Folks are watching that. When you take a closer look at the questions and the responses here

0:25.6

from Republicans in particular, the governing party, what do you take away? A few things. First of all,

0:30.7

we're seeing that even in deep red districts, opponents of President Trump are showing up in

0:35.3

significant numbers and increasingly they are more vocal

0:38.2

and, in a few instances, more aggressive in how they're being vocal.

0:42.7

One example, Marjorie Taylor Green of Georgia, she had a town hall last week.

0:47.5

Now, it's important to note, her staff checked constituents at the door to make sure that

0:51.6

they lived in that district.

0:53.2

But even so, we saw a

0:54.4

very fiery dissent in that town hall. You see it right here. Even before it started,

0:59.5

shouting protesters were removed by force and two of them tased by police officers. Again,

1:05.9

before this began, all in all, three people were arrested, some six escorted out. Now Marjorie Taylor Green

1:12.4

actually used that as something of a springboard in the town hall. The Democrats have been

1:18.8

rioting. They are the party of violence. They are the party. Go. Go. Of course Democrats say, no, that's not true. We're none of that. But Marjorie Taylor Green said she's been receiving death threats. She thanked police for their interaction. But this was one way of using it by force. She's someone who likes to have confrontation and provoking, and she has used that town hall as a fundraising mechanism. And that approach we saw there from Congressman

1:45.0

Marjorie Taylor Green. How typical is that for Republicans? Not typical at all. In fact,

...

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