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At a raucous townhall on Thursday night, Rep. Chuck Edwards told constituents he supports abolishing the U.S. Department of Education and defunding USAID, believes Elon Musk has “brought a lot of smart people” to the federal government, and can get behind “a deal” with Ukraine to “recoup” the cost of U.S. military support.
Video by Jessica Wakeman
Details on those positions were scarce, which contributed to the Republican congressman’s meandering oratory style that often strayed off-topic or stopped short of a complete thought. When one constituent asked Edwards to list five things he had accomplished this week, as Musk directed federal workers to do each week, he listed only three.
But Edwards’ answers were also nearly impossible to hear over continuous disruptions from the crowd of about 300 gathered at Asheville-Buncombe Technical College. Throughout the 90-minute event, the audience barely allowed a sentence out of Edwards’ mouth before shouts of “Lies!”, “Shut the hell up!” and “You are a traitor, sir” drowned him out.
It was a palpably tense atmosphere, with deputies from Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office lining the auditorium and guarding exits. Deputies removed at least one man after he shouted, “I’m a veteran and you don’t give a f— about me! … F— you!”
Earlier this month, National Republican Congressional Committee chair Rep. Richard Hudson, also of North Carolina, told fellow GOP lawmakers to stop holding town halls in person, saying they could hold them online without disruption from activists. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has dismissed angry attendees as “paid protesters.”
Thursday night’s attendees were unmistakably a Western North Carolina crowd: ample tattoos and hiking boots, and at least one t-shirt of a squirrel playing a banjo. The audience was almost entirely white and appeared primarily retirement-age, perhaps owing to the 6 p.m. start time for which attendees had queued in line for hours.
Edwards began with an update on Hurricane Helene recovery, and took questions; constituents could pre-write questions on notecards, or speak into a microphone. He fielded multiple questions about spending cuts to the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Environmental Protection Agency, the war in Ukraine, and fears about what would happen to Social Security and Medicaid amidst the Trump administration’s cuts. Edwards consistently said he supported the president’s actions. At times he sought to address concerns, such as telling the crowd, “I’m not going to vote to dissolve your Social Security.” (An audience member yelled back, “What about cuts?”)
Other times, Edwards implied constituents were misinformed. “Why did you vote for the continuing resolution budget bill that will cut Medicaid, SNAP food stamps, public housing, and veterans benefits, et cetera, when you have so many hundreds of thousands in this district that were depending on them?” asked constituent Mirra Price.
Edwards replied, “With all due respect, I don’t think you’ve read that bill, because that bill didn’t cover any of the things that you just suggested.” He continued, “A continuing resolution continues to spend at the same rate as the previous—” before being interrupted.
Video by Jessica Wakeman
When asked about Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency accessing the U.S. Treasury Department’s payment system, Edwards said many people had access to the database already. Pressed on what he was doing to stop “dictatorship and fascism,” he responded, “Sounds like there’s a little bit of bias in that question.”
With the venue at capacity, Asheville resident Alana Johnson had to watch the town hall livestreamed on phones via local news channel WLOS outside the auditorium. (Asheville’s Reddit community estimates as many as 2,000 others gathered outside; it’s unknown how many hoped to get into the town hall or planned protests outside all along.) Johnson said she wanted to ask about the Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrest of former Columbia University student and Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, and hoped to ask Edwards, “how will you defend our First Amendment rights against the encroachment of authoritarian tactics?”
She said she has contacted Edwards’ office multiple times about various Trump executive orders but not gotten a response. She was not surprised by the booing and chanting inside and outside the event.
“Of course people are yelling at a town hall,” Johnson said. “The magma has been building up and the volcano has opened.”
Edwards followed the event with a press conference, which had been set up directly in front of a building exit. “I take away from what I heard today that we’re doing exactly what the American people sent us to Washington D.C. to do,” Edwards said to the media, as protesters banged a glass door 15 feet away and chanted “Do your job” and “Coward.”
Jessica Wakeman is a freelance reporter based in Asheville.