Lawmakers are increasingly hiding from their constituents

(Image credit: Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Getty Images)

published 21 August 2018

In 2014, members of Congress held about 550 town hall events to engage with their constituents during August recess. In 2016, they held around 450. This year, just 180 town halls are scheduled for the recess, and some 30 percent of those will be held by just five lawmakers.

The rationale for retreating to smaller or more private events or moving to a conference call or online venue is simple: It's less messy. Town halls offer angry constituents a space to vent their rage, and they do, often loudly.

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"People have come to expect disrupters on both sides. And, you know, you just gotta move on and not be flustered and not worry about it," Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.) told Politico. The alternative, Jones argued, is not acceptable for public representatives. "It'd be real easy to go talk to only people who love you, but you represent everybody," he said. "You don't need to get locked in your own echo chamber like so many people are doing in this country with their social media."

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.

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