Minnesota’s 10 members of Congress are back in the state for their week-long March recess, which comes as calls for lawmakers to hold town halls have grown in recent weeks amid President Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
Three members of the delegation are set to hold them this week: Rep. Ilhan Omar will host both an in-person town hall in southwest Minneapolis on Thursday evening and a virtual tele-town hall on Tuesday evening.
Rep. Kelly Morrison will host her first in-person town hall in Bloomington on Thursday evening and Rep. Betty McCollum will host a virtual town hall on Wednesday evening.
Some Democrats who have held them this year have said turnout has been higher than usual and attendees have pressed them to know about what’s going on in Washington as Trump and tech billionaire Elon Musk have moved to vastly reshape the federal government.
“We had a lot of people who were not residents of the fifth, but residents of other districts in the state, where they did not have access to their members, so they came to our town hall, to try to make sense of the chaos and corruption that we’re living through,” Omar said of the town hall she held in St. Louis Park in February, which drew about 125 people. Omar said it was the first time she needed an overflow room for a town hall.
Thursday will mark the fourth town hall Omar has held this year, which her office said 900 people have registered to attend in person. Omar said she holds town halls every month despite previous threats at some of the events she’s faced.
“When you ignore your constituents in a representative Democracy, you’re no longer representing them, and there are consequences,” she said.
Morrison, the delegation’s newest member of Congress, said the first virtual town hall she held last month drew 800 attendees.