A Republican got jeered at a townhall. He plans to hold more.

Representative Mike Flood, R-Neb., Faced a noisy crowd which threw him hooks, lines and fingers in the middle in a town hall in Lincoln on Monday.

He said that he had no regrets and that he would start again.

“I do not regret it at all,” said Tuesday in a telephone interview. “Each member of the congress must do so as it seems.

“And if you feel firmly on how you vote and the choices you make,” he added, “you should be able to stand in the city’s place and be responsible for these votes and tell people why you did it and take their opinion.”

In this polarized political climate, the vast majority of legislators, in both parties, choose not to hold the town hall in this August break. Last spring, after a series of Gop City Hall leaves the rails, representing Richard Hudson, RN.C., head of the GOP campaign for the 2026 electoral cycle, urged his republican colleagues not to hold the town hall in person, describing them as “more effective” because of democratic disturbances. And violent threats against politicians have regularly shot in recent years.

But Flood, the president of the Republican Main Street Caucus, whose members are called “pragmatic conservatives”, did not take into account Hudson’s advice. He held a town hall in Columbus in March and another in Seward in May before the event on Monday on the campus of the University of Nebraska in Lincoln Liberal, the largest city in his district.

“As elected officials, we have to put ourselves in environments that are not comfortable,” he said, although he has clearly indicated that he did not judge his colleagues in one or the other of the parties who chose not to hold the town halls.

The president of the House Republican Conference, Lisa Mclain, R-Mich., Called her on Tuesday morning and congratulated her for suspending, said Flood. Its next town hall will be likely to be in the spring.

Flood said that the concerns about the Medicaid cups in the GOP “Big and Beautiful Bill” dominated the town hall of 87 minutes on Monday evening, which public television has carried live.

“Medicaid, Medicaid, Medicaid, Medicaid – it was the problem n ° 1 and something with which I started, just because I look at the calls that my office receives,” said Flood, adding that he had spent time tackling the public in the public on the way in which the bill would affect them and reassure the elders that they would not lose their drug coverage.

The Trump law requires that the beneficiaries of Medicaid – the health care program for low -income and disabled people – work 80 hours a month if they are valid adults under the age of 65, with a few exceptions.

“If you are 28 years old and you don’t want to work, you shouldn’t expect free health care if you can work,” said Flood. “And that resonates with, like 70% of people, that you would have work requirements.”

Democrats believe that Trump law will cost Republicans the majority of the room in 2026, and they say that the Hostile City Hall of Flood is proof of how it is unpopular with voters.

“Each republican of the vulnerable chamber should follow the example of Mike Flood and be courageous enough to face their voters in person to see in the first hand how unpopular and hated the law,” said Viet Shelton, spokesperson for the campaign committee of the Democrats of the Chamber, in a declaration sent by email.

Flood, 50, the former president of the Nebraska Chamber who was elected to the Congress in 2022, also asked difficult questions about the recent dismissal by the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics by Trump and if he supports the publication of more information from the investigation Jeffrey Epstein.

He said he would connect to a resolution by members of the Rules of the Chamber Committee on Wednesday to publish Epstein files. “As long as he protects the victims and does not revital these people,” said Flood, “I am for his release.”

But it is opposed to a bipartite effort led by representatives Thomas Massie, R-Ky., And Ro Khanna, D-Calif., To circumvent the leadership of the GOP and force a vote on the ground in September to oblige the Ministry of Justice to publish the files.

“I am not signing any discharge petitions,” he said, “and that comes back to my day as president of the Legislative Assembly, where I would not do the same thing.”

The Nebraska is a red state that made Trump of more than 20 points for Trump last year, but the recital room of Kimball University on Monday evening was mainly filled with democrats, said Flood, who told how he recognized certain people who had attended his three city halls this year.

Flood, a former lawyer, said that he had prepared for about five to six hours for the town hall, anticipating the questions he could get and how he would react. Before the start of the event, he told the University’s police at hand that he did not want someone to be expelled from the town hall for having made the exercise of his first amendment rights.

Only one person was invited to leave after protesting the situation in Gaza, said Flood, and he left peacefully.

“I said,” I don’t want people to expel or deleted just for having expressed an opinion, no matter how they express it. If someone fights someone else, yes, do what you need to do “” said Flood.

“When you watch the video, it looks quite hard. People literally cry, overturn me. They jump from top to bottom. They hold their backs on me,” he said. “None of these people wonders to leave. They don’t. I don’t even say: “Please stop. »»

Just a handful of legislators choose to hold the town hall during the longtime recess in August. For many, there are few advantages. During the night of the town hall of Flood, the veteran of the representative Adam Smith, D-Wash., Had to abruptly cancel his town hall halfway after a group of demonstrators “took over on stage” and disturbed the rally, the local police announced. Three people were arrested for intrusion.

Things were very tamed in a first year of first year student, Senator Elissa Slotkin organized in Michigan.

At one point at his town hall, someone asked Flood: “How do you help the working class?”

He explained how Trump’s law included no tax on advice, an extended children’s tax credit and other provisions.

Then he said something that made many participants furious: “Today’s republican party is made up of the heart and soul of the working class.”

“It dropped the house. They were very upset that I said it,” NBC News told NBC. “But that’s reality. … everyday Americans recognize that something has changed in our country, where, as a republican, we have won the heart and spirit of the working class. And it was very difficult for the crowd.