{"id":53431,"date":"2025-12-05T23:39:06","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T23:39:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/53431\/"},"modified":"2025-12-05T23:39:06","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T23:39:06","slug":"u-s-rep-meuser-hears-constituent-concerns-at-in-person-town-hall-friday-scranton-times-tribune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/53431\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Rep. Meuser hears constituent concerns at in-person town hall Friday \u2013 Scranton Times-Tribune"},"content":{"rendered":"

POTTSVILLE \u2014 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\u2019s congressional voting history, his relationship with the President and problems being experienced in District 9 communities.<\/p>\n

Meuser listened and responded to constituents\u2019 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 \u2014 a detail pointed out mid-forum by Steven Moyer, a retired veteran in the audience.<\/p>\n

Friday\u2019s town hall was a long-time coming \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Rachel Wallace, another Democrat seeking her party\u2019s nomination in 2026, held a counter-forum at the same time.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: Congressional candidate Rachel Wallace meets voters at town hall meeting in Pottsville<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u2019s Director of Operations. The email invited them to Friday\u2019s forum and provided a link to RSVP.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

To recipients of these emails, the event was advertised as a private forum \u2014 Michael Schroeder, one of Meuser\u2019s Lebanon County constituents, received one around 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, and it stated, \u201cFor security reasons and space constraints, we will be sending out the location directly to emails that RSVP and this is not a public invite.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meuser told the Herald Friday that the forum was always public and that those who thought it was not were mistaken.<\/p>\n

Press was not originally invited into the forum, with Meuser\u2019s office citing the limited seating being prioritized for constituents. The Republican Herald was told Thursday that the congressman was available for interviews before Friday\u2019s forum began. Following the scheduled interview, Meuser invited the Herald into the town hall, as well.<\/p>\n

The discussion<\/p>\n

Some community members have previously critiqued Meuser\u2019s telephone town halls \u2014 which involve residents tuning into a telephone line to ask Meuser questions and listen to his responses \u2014 for not giving adequate opportunity for constituents to respond to Meuser\u2019s answers.<\/p>\n

Friday\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Overall, though, those who spoke typically did so in a calm and controlled manner \u2014 however, residents did not shy away from being pointed in their critiques and questioning of their Congressman.<\/p>\n

A majority of attendees\u2019 questions referred to Meuser\u2019s expressed opinions and involvement in national events, such as his initial refusal to certify the 2020 election and recent boat strikes in the Caribbean.<\/p>\n

The uncertainty around healthcare subsidies was brought up multiple times.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

When asked whether he would support the extension of healthcare subsidies, Meuser responded, \u201cperhaps.\u201d He said he could be open to extending them for one year or two, but thinks that a focus should be had on \u201ccleaning up\u201d government spending and mitigating \u201cstealing from programs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMedicare is fully funded and will continue to be,\u201d Meuser told the audience.<\/p>\n

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

Meuser\u2019s response echoed his previous statements on the shutdown, being that he blames his Democratic colleagues for halting Republicans\u2019 progress on issues like the economy and the border.<\/p>\n

A few attendees\u2019 focused on local happenings: Duncan MacLean, a registered Republican, brought up this past spring\u2019s ICE arrest<\/a> of Ruben Rojas-Vargas, a naturalized citizen who lived in Pottsville and had resided in the U.S. for 16 years.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Mixed feelings<\/p>\n

\u201cThe feeling I had with this was that this was a true town hall where we got to voice opinions\u2026\u201d MacLean said. \u201cI have the impression that he did listen. He said some key things, and now he needs to talk the talk and walk the walk.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lisa Von Ahn, whose question asked Meuser what line the Trump administration would have to cross for him to push back on the President\u2019s decisions, appreciated the opportunity but felt like her question wasn\u2019t truly answered. Rather, she felt the congressman\u2019s responses often relied on whataboutisms.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe immediately segued into Obama and Biden,\u201d Von Ahn said. \u201cIt was like a Democratic bash-a-thon.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cGod bless him for having a meeting, that\u2019s my first impression. I mean, we\u2019ve been advocating for getting a meeting,\u201d said Overholt, a member of \u201cMondays with Meuser,\u201d which is a group that protests outside the Lebanon County Courthouse weekly to demand that Meuser hold an in-person town hall.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"POTTSVILLE \u2014 U.S. Representative Dan Meuser (R-9) met with around 30 of his constituents at a town hall…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53432,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[349,182,803,139,28,50,231,178,180,179],"class_list":{"0":"post-53431","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-scranton","8":"tag-berks-county","9":"tag-local-news","10":"tag-luzerne-county","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-pennsylvania","13":"tag-politics","14":"tag-schuylkill-county","15":"tag-scranton","16":"tag-scranton-headlines","17":"tag-scranton-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53431\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}