Minnesota's 10 members of Congress are back in the state for their weeklong March recess, which comes as calls for lawmakers to hold town halls have grown in recent weeks amid President Donald Trump's return to the White House.
Three Democratic members of the delegation are set to hold them this week: Rep. Ilhan Omar will host an in-person town hall in southwest Minneapolis on Thursday evening and a virtual town hall on Tuesday evening.
Rep. Kelly Morrison will host her first in-person town hall in Bloomington on Thursday evening and Rep. Betty McCollum will host a virtual town hall on Wednesday evening.
Some Democrats who have held them this year have said turnout has been higher than usual and attendees have pressed them about what's going on in Washington, D.C., as Trump and tech billionaire Elon Musk have moved to vastly reshape the federal government.
"We had a lot of people who were not residents of the Fifth, but residents of other districts in the state, where they did not have access to their members, so they came to our town hall, to try to make sense of the chaos and corruption that we're living through," Omar said of the town hall she held in St. Louis Park in February, which drew about 125 people. Omar said it was the first time she needed an overflow room for a town hall.
Thursday will mark the fourth town hall Omar has held this year, which her office said 900 people have registered to attend in person. Omar said she holds town halls every month despite previous threats she's faced at some of the events.
"When you ignore your constituents in a representative democracy, you're no longer representing them, and there are consequences," she said.
Morrison, the delegation's newest member of Congress, said the first virtual town hall she held last month drew 800 attendees.
"I have heard from tens of thousands of Minnesotans who are deeply concerned by what they're seeing from the Trump-Vance Administration and their Republican majority in Congress," Morrison said in a statement.
None of Minnesota's four Republican members of Congress responded when asked if they planned to hold town halls this week. All of them have faced protests led by the left-leaning group Indivisible in their districts, demanding they hold town halls.
Rep. Michelle Fischbach has characterized the protests as "garbage" and has speculated that the protesters may not be from her district. Rep. Tom Emmer has called protesters "liberal activist clown shows." He told NBC in an interview that he hasn't held a town hall this year but plans to schedule one in the near future.
Reps. Brad Finstad and Pete Stauber both held virtual town halls this year.
Republican leadership in D.C. has been advising members to avoid in-person town halls as some GOP lawmakers have faced rowdy crowds and pushback.
In their absence, some Democrats, like Gov. Tim Walz, have been holding town halls in Republican districts where representatives have not held them.
Walz has held them in Iowa and Nebraska and is set to hit Wisconsin on Tuesday as well as in Minnesota.
Though Rep. Angie Craig will not hold a town hall this week, her office said the Democrat plans to hold an in-person town hall during Congress' next recess in mid-April. That town hall mark the 72nd one she's held since she assumed office in 2019, her office said. Craig held a virtual town hall in February.
Sens. Tina Smith and Amy Klobuchar also have no town halls planned this week. The two Democrats have been crisscrossing Minnesota during the recess attending a number of public events.
Klobuchar's office said she plans to hold a virtual town hall early next week that will focus on health care. And Smith's office said she may schedule one in the coming week.
Both senators attended a virtual town hall organized by Indivisible in February, which was attended by 2,000 people.

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