Freshman GOP Rep. Gabe Evans held his first telephone town hall Wednesday night, after weeks of calls from some voters in his district and Democratic-aligned groups.
“I know a lot of you have been waiting for a town hall, so I’m very glad that you were able to take the time,” he said as about 8,500 people joined the call. “We’re committed to being open and transparent with our constituents.”
Evans started with an extensive rundown of his first three months in Congress, and took his first question, which was about Medicaid cuts, about 20 minutes into the hour-long call.
Evans talked about the process Republicans are using to advance their fiscal policies, pointing out that the reconciliation resolution “so far has no policy attached to it” and stressed the focus would be on eliminating “fraud, waste and abuse.”
He pointed to a congressional watchdog report that found $31 billion in wrongful payments in the Medicaid program. He also said the way Colorado administers the program “is not that effective,” using Colorado’s 90-day grace period for a person to show proof of citizenship as an example of its inefficiency.
Still, Republicans’ budget resolution calls on the House Energy and Commerce committee, which has oversight over Medicaid, to find $880 billion in cuts over 10 years. An analysis from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office found that goal can not be met without cuts to the program.
When asked about the painful cost of tariffs on consumers and agricultural producers in his district, Evans answered by defending the Trump administration’s sweeping tariffs.
“What we saw the President do this afternoon was implement reciprocal tariffs, which means that if they have a tariff on us, then we have a tariff back on them, but if they lower their tariffs or get rid of their tariffs, then we lower or get rid of our tariffs as well,” he said. “I'm a big believer in free trade, but free trade has to be fair trade as well.”
He likened it to a pool game, with Wednesday’s broad announcement as the rack break. “It seems like everything’s in flux, but at the end of the day, I am absolutely confident that by getting back to free and fair trade practices… that will ultimately bring down the prices of goods for all Americans.”
Trump instituted some reciprocal tariffs, but also across-the-board tariffs. The White House’s reciprocal tariffs were calculated as the necessary tariff rate to balance bilateral trade deficits, divided in half, rather than matching the rates those countries place on U.S. goods.
Evans was the last member of the entire Colorado congressional to hold a town hall as Coloradans have expressed concerns with some of the steps the Trump Administration has taken in its first couple of months. While the state’s Democratic lawmakers have been holding in-person town halls, none of Colorado’s Republican members have done so, choosing to go the virtual route, something Republican leaders have been encouraging.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle agree that telephone town halls are a convenient way to talk to thousands of people in their district at once, especially large districts like the 3rd District and the 4th District.
Still the telephone town hall highlighted one problem with the technology. The call dropped for this reporter right before the second question. Other people experienced similar problems, according to posts on social media. While CPR News was able to get back on, not everyone else did.
Over the course of the event, Evans took six questions, covering topics from Ukraine and immigration to how he’s helping the Hispanic community in the district and how his family is coping with the new job. (Evans’s two kids are homeschooled and he said the family travels back and forth with him to and from D.C.)
This virtual town hall was originally scheduled when representatives were supposed to be working in D.C., But Tuesday afternoon, House Speaker Mike Johnson canceled votes for the rest of the week, turning it into an unexpected recess and allowing representatives to return to their districts.
Evans’s town hall comes weeks after Democrats launched a pressure campaign, criticizing Evans for not talking to his constituents face-to-face.
During the March recess, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez held a rally in Greeley, in Evans’s district. She called out Evans for not holding an in-person town hall.
"I hear that you have a representative that has not done a town hall," Ocasio-Cortez said to the crowd at the time, pointing out that Republican leaders had encouraged their members not to hold in-person town halls in order to avoid viral moments of public anger with Trump policies.
Later she said she and Sanders “came instead to fill the gap.”
Evans is representing the state’s only toss-up seat, which he won by about 2,500 votes last November.
