POTTSVILLE — U.S. Representative Dan Meuser (R-9) met with around 30 of his constituents at a town hall Friday morning, where attendees were direct in addressing their concerns about Meuser’s congressional voting history, his relationship with the President and problems being experienced in District 9 communities.

Meuser listened and responded to constituents’ questions and statements in a meeting room at Alvernia University, Pottsville CollegeTowne, from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. He stood in front of the Pennsylvania and American flags, which were incorrectly placed on the wrong sides of Meuser — a detail pointed out mid-forum by Steven Moyer, a retired veteran in the audience.

Friday’s town hall was a long-time coming — various constituents and community organizations have been asking Meuser to hold a civil forum where people could directly speak to the representative for some time now, previously to no success.

Newly elected Pottsville Mayor Tom Smith, state Representative Jamie Barton (R-124), and Jenn Brothers, a Democrat running against Meuser for his congressional seat in 2026, were in the audience, alongside both Republican and Democratic constituents from Schuylkill and Lebanon Counties.

Rachel Wallace, another Democrat seeking her party’s nomination in 2026, held a counter-forum at the same time.

READ MORE: Congressional candidate Rachel Wallace meets voters at town hall meeting in Pottsville

Word about the forum spread upon fairly short notice on Tuesday and Wednesday, when constituents who had previously expressed interest in such an event to the office received emails from Courtney Trigg, Meuser’s Director of Operations. The email invited them to Friday’s forum and provided a link to RSVP.

Meuser said Friday that the forum was announced only 48 hours in advance at the advice of the U.S. Capitol Police and the House Administration Committee.

To recipients of these emails, the event was advertised as a private forum — Michael Schroeder, one of Meuser’s Lebanon County constituents, received one around 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, and it stated, “For security reasons and space constraints, we will be sending out the location directly to emails that RSVP and this is not a public invite.”

Meuser told the Herald Friday that the forum was always public and that those who thought it was not were mistaken.

Press was not originally invited into the forum, with Meuser’s office citing the limited seating being prioritized for constituents. The Republican Herald was told Thursday that the congressman was available for interviews before Friday’s forum began. Following the scheduled interview, Meuser invited the Herald into the town hall, as well.

The discussion

Some community members have previously critiqued Meuser’s telephone town halls — which involve residents tuning into a telephone line to ask Meuser questions and listen to his responses — for not giving adequate opportunity for constituents to respond to Meuser’s answers.

Friday’s forum did not have that problem; exchange between the congressman and audience members frequently went back-and-forth, with both sides occasionally raising voices, talking over one another and throwing a hard stare.

Overall, though, those who spoke typically did so in a calm and controlled manner — however, residents did not shy away from being pointed in their critiques and questioning of their Congressman.

A majority of attendees’ questions referred to Meuser’s expressed opinions and involvement in national events, such as his initial refusal to certify the 2020 election and recent boat strikes in the Caribbean.

The uncertainty around healthcare subsidies was brought up multiple times.

One woman, Mary Fitzpatrick, shared her personal experience as the director of a nonprofit who gets her healthcare from Pennie, a state-based healthcare marketplace exclusive to Pennsylvania residents. Fitzpatrick shared she will be facing a cost increase of over $300 per month without the subsidies.

When asked whether he would support the extension of healthcare subsidies, Meuser responded, “perhaps.” He said he could be open to extending them for one year or two, but thinks that a focus should be had on “cleaning up” government spending and mitigating “stealing from programs.”

“Medicare is fully funded and will continue to be,” Meuser told the audience.

Another woman mentioned the federal government shutdown that ended last month, and questioned why more was not done by Republicans to open the government.

Meuser’s response echoed his previous statements on the shutdown, being that he blames his Democratic colleagues for halting Republicans’ progress on issues like the economy and the border.

A few attendees’ focused on local happenings: Duncan MacLean, a registered Republican, brought up this past spring’s ICE arrest of Ruben Rojas-Vargas, a naturalized citizen who lived in Pottsville and had resided in the U.S. for 16 years.

Steven Moyer expressed his concerns for understaffed nursing homes in the area, after HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. repealed much of the federal nursing home staffing mandate just a few days ago.

Attendees reminded Meuser that he has access to the people making the decisions that have local impacts like these and urged him to bring their concerns to his D.C. colleagues.

Mixed feelings

“The feeling I had with this was that this was a true town hall where we got to voice opinions…” MacLean said. “I have the impression that he did listen. He said some key things, and now he needs to talk the talk and walk the walk.”

Lisa Von Ahn, whose question asked Meuser what line the Trump administration would have to cross for him to push back on the President’s decisions, appreciated the opportunity but felt like her question wasn’t truly answered. Rather, she felt the congressman’s responses often relied on whataboutisms.

“He immediately segued into Obama and Biden,” Von Ahn said. “It was like a Democratic bash-a-thon.”

Tom Overholt, a retired physician who asked Meuser about healthcare, was fairly pleased with how the forum went and felt like he was able to get his points across.

“God bless him for having a meeting, that’s my first impression. I mean, we’ve been advocating for getting a meeting,” said Overholt, a member of “Mondays with Meuser,” which is a group that protests outside the Lebanon County Courthouse weekly to demand that Meuser hold an in-person town hall.

Multiple times throughout the forum, Meuser expressed that he supports inter-party collaboration and does not blindly support all that the Trump administration does. Audience members repeatedly and resoundingly emphasized that those are great things, but that they need to see the Congressman being more vocal and insistent upon those values.