Texas Republicans in Congress scaled back town halls during summer recess amid criticism over Trump megabill

Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.

---

Most Texas Republicans in Congress refrained from holding public town halls back in their districts during their annual August recess, skirting the protests and heckling that have overshadowed events held by their peers.

Only a few of the 25 Republicans in Texas’ congressional delegation held in-person and publicly accessible town hall events during last month’s summer break, according to a tally by The Texas Tribune, tracking the low-profile approach taken by GOP members across the country during a time lawmakers usually travel their districts and meet with constituents.

Some Texas Republicans who did hold town halls faced criticism over their July votes for the GOP’s tax and spending megabill, the centerpiece of President Donald Trump’s domestic agenda that has polled consistently underwater with voters ahead of the 2026 midterms. At least one member also encountered demands for the Trump administration to release its investigative files tied to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The delegation’s shunning of public Q-and-A sessions comes after the National Republican Congressional Committee earlier this year advised members to avoid such events and instead opt for virtual ones. GOP members were told to stay alert for Democratic agitators and attempts to rile them on camera, reflecting a view pushed by Trump and other Republicans that the protests are being cooked up by paid activists.

“Republican members of Congress have been encountering a lot of hostility at town hall meetings,” said Matthew Wilson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University. “A lot of Republican representatives have decided that this is just not worth it.”

Some members, like Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Richmond, are intentionally avoiding public events where they could be bombarded by protesters. He said in a social media post earlier this year that he would not hold an event that could be disrupted by “George Soros-funded Democrat activists.”

Instead of hosting public town halls, Nehls held smaller constituent and stakeholder meetings over Congress’ summer break. He is not alone.

Several Texas Republicans spent their recesses targeting constituents in smaller and more private settings, including meetings with business owners, neighborhood associations and community groups.

Rep. Keith Self, R-McKinney, held multiple public events over the August recess but was careful not to call them town halls. Billed as “Koffee with Keith,” the events are only open to Self’s constituents from his district, located in the suburbs north of Dallas.

Self said he doesn’t know the questions being asked ahead of time, so they could be coming from supporters or critics alike. At one event in late July, he fielded questions about the Epstein files, calling for them to be released to the public.

“We’ve done this throughout my career so I see no reason not to continue,” he told The Texas Tribune.

Some of the Texas Republicans who held in-person and public town halls faced jeering and tense confrontations with their constituents.

At a town hall in Kingwood last week, Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Houston, was interrupted by dozens of protesters who booed and heckled him for voting for Trump’s megabill, especially its cuts to Medicaid.

Having never expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, Texas avoided most of the looming federal cuts other states will face under the legislation. But up to 1.7 million Texans are expected to lose their health insurance through other parts of the bill, including changes that make it harder to enroll in coverage through the ACA marketplace, along with the move not to extend Biden-era enhanced premium tax credits that lower out-of-pocket costs for people with marketplace coverage.

Some attendees also yelled at Crenshaw to “release the Epstein files!” as he tried to address the audience.

“The protesters did a great job of annoying all the actual constituents in the room,” Crenshaw posted on social media after the event.

The Houston Republican hosted four public town halls across the 2nd Congressional District in August to “let constituents know about the wins he and House Republicans are delivering for them,” his chief of staff Kenneth Depew said in a statement to the Tribune.

Crenshaw and the other Republicans who did tour their districts over the recess emphasized the GOP wins in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, including a permanent extension of income tax cuts signed by Trump in 2017 and increased funding for border security and immigration enforcement.

Republicans in Congress are facing pressure from the White House to promote the legislation by focusing on its more popular provisions.

But a recent survey from Pew Research Center indicates that the megabill is largely unpopular with Americans, about a third of whom approve of the bill compared to nearly half who disapprove. Other polling has found that Americans support the bill’s tax changes and immigration enforcement spending but disapprove of its clean energy incentive cuts, changes to social safety net programs and the increase to the federal deficit driven by the tax cuts.

“It’s certainly neither surprising nor unnoticed that Republican members are kind of hiding from their constituents,” Harris County Democratic Party Chair Mike Doyle said, pointing to the megabill changes that are expected to spike Texas’ uninsured population.

In the meantime, Doyle said, activists across Texas have hosted their own “empty chair” town halls to call out Republicans “refusing to answer at all for the bad things they’ve been doing in Washington.”

19 of the 25 Texas Republicans in the U.S. House did not respond to a request for comment. Of those who responded, Crenshaw and Self were the two who held town hall-style events; the other four held smaller events, with Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Flower Mound, hosting “neighborhood town halls” that were promoted by invitations sent to community leaders to distribute around where the town halls were held.

Two other Republicans, Rep. Pat Fallon of Sherman and Rep. August Pfluger of San Angelo, publicized town hall events online but did not respond to confirm whether the events had happened.

Shying away from public town halls is probably a smart political strategy ahead of the 2026 elections, political science experts told the Tribune.

Midterm cycles are historically difficult for the party that controls the White House, especially when the president’s approval numbers are low, signaling congressional Republicans may have to contend with built-in headwinds next year. Public approval of Trump’s job performance has fallen since his inauguration, settling in the low- to mid-40s in recent months.

Getting booed at town halls is more detrimental to Republicans than allowing Democrats to control the narrative around the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, said Sean Theriault, a government professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

The public appearances open Republicans up to negative media coverage that could hurt the entire party’s chances in the midterms, Theriault said, adding, “They just didn’t want that spectacle to make the front pages.”

Disclosure: Southern Methodist University and the University of Texas at Austin have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

---

Shape the future of Texas at the 15th annual Texas Tribune Festival, happening Nov. 13–15 in downtown Austin! We bring together Texas’ most inspiring thinkers, leaders and innovators to discuss the issues that matter to you. Get tickets now and join us this November.

TribFest 2025 is presented by JPMorganChase.