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Hi there. I'm Presley Simblis from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and I'm on the last day of my research

internship. This podcast was recorded at 12.58 p.m. on Thursday, August 28, 2025. Things may have changed by the time that you've listened to this episode, but I will have

presented my findings to faculty. Okay, now, enjoy the show.

That's cool.

Congratulations.

I never did the academic route, so that just sounds really scary.

School sounds very hard. School is too much for me. I took it way too seriously. It stressed me out too much. Yeah. And now you're here. Yeah. Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Deba Shiverom. I cover the White House. I'm Barbara Sprint. I cover Congress. And I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. Okay, so today on the show, Congress is still in recess. And it's a time when traditionally members hold town halls and meet with constituents in their home districts. Many Republicans, though, appear to be avoiding town halls this August. But we're taking a look at one in particular who is actually embracing them. So Barbara, you've been spending some time with Republican Congressman

Mark Alford in his home district in Missouri. And he's an outlier in having town halls at all, right?

Yeah, that's right. He is really bucking the trend. The NRCC, the campaign arm of the House

GOP, had sent guidance earlier this year, basically telling members to avoid these in-person town halls, which can get really contentious, can turn into like yelling matches. I think we've all seen some of the videos. And Alfred is going in another direction. He didn't just hold one this week. He held 15. Yeah, 15 over the course of four days, like spread across all sorts of counties. His last event ended probably like a few hours before this podcast is going to post. So he's had quite the marathon week. Interesting. So, okay, so when we talk about bucking the trend, I mean, Ashley, what have these past town halls typically looked like for GOP members? Well, right now they're not having many. I mean, the trend is that a lot of Republicans are not holding town halls. I mean, typically in recess, like this is a thing that members of Congress would do is they'll go to their constituents and, you know, talk about the things they did when they were there. And one of those things would be, you know, passing the tax and spending bill. We could get into why a lot of them are choosing not to do that. But I will say this is not a typical for the Republican Party under Trump. I think in 2017, it was sort of the similar thing. Congress went into recess. And it was noticeable how few town halls were being held to the point that, you know, Democratic activists in like the group in divisible in particular, which is an activist group that is not directly linked to the Democratic Party, but it was just sort of like, you know, a good government type pushback. People were holding town halls for their congressmen, even without them there. So this isn't totally atypical. But yeah, right now, members of Congress are not holding a lot of town halls and the ones that are happening are actually pretty contentious. I mean, I think we all saw a lot of footage of Mike Flood, the Nebraska Republican. His town hall was a little spicy. Yeah, and spicy, like, like, cuckling and protests and like the person who's holding the town hall maybe not being able to answer the questions.

Not a good spice, not like a little jaleno, like too many havineros. Yeah. And I actually asked

Congressman Alfred about this, like why have so many, especially like in this time and like given

everything that his colleagues have gone through. And he actually said like, yeah, I was a little apprehensive.

He's a former broadcast journalist. He likes being in front of people. But he said, yeah, gave him pause.

I had seen the video of Mike Flood. And I had had a bad experience in March where 12 people

were supposed to show up for Mondays with Mark Coffee. And there was 200 people that showed up

...