Two Utah GOP representatives hosted a town hall. They were met with shouts of ‘shame’ and ‘do your job.’

Over the course of an hour, two members of Utah’s all-Republican congressional delegation fielded boos and calls to “Do your job!” at a town hall on the University of Utah campus Thursday as they answered crowdsourced questions about what Congress is doing amid a flurry of executive orders and federal cuts from President Donald Trump.

Seats to hear from Reps. Celeste Maloy and Mike Kennedy, from the 2nd and 3rd congressional districts, respectively, had to be reserved ahead of time, and the slots available on an Eventbrite web page closed within minutes of it being posted Wednesday. Hundreds flooded into the auditorium toting posters, and dozens more waited outside hoping to get in after scrawling their names on a waitlist, while campus police lined the walls.

“We’ve gotten a lot of advice not to hold town halls because they’re getting rowdy,” Maloy said as she opened the event. “We both chose to be here because, one, I think it’s my job to stand up here and talk to you, but also, I think we can do this. I think in Utah we can have tough conversations.”

Earlier this month, Rep. Richard Hudson, of North Carolina, who chairs the National Republican Congressional Committee — the House GOP’s campaign arm — told members of his caucus in a closed-door meeting to stop holding in-person town halls, Politico reported.

Democrats have heard their constituents’ displeasure at town halls, too, for not pushing back hard enough.

Maloy and Kennedy appear to be the only members of Utah’s federal delegation to host a town hall during the March recess, despite widespread calls from constituents for members of Congress to take their questions.

Across town at the Salt Lake City Library, the progressive Utah Alliance Coalition organized a town hall for Sen. John Curtis, which he didn’t attend. The senator “has been too busy to organize a town hall, so we organized one for him,” a flyer read.

Some representatives, however, are attending annual private fundraisers for local Republican parties — Rep. Blake Moore from the 1st Congressional District is a guest for a Weber County Republican Party event, and Kennedy will join Rep. Burgess Owens from the 4th Congressional District and Sen. Mike Lee at a Utah County Republican Party dinner.

Other progressive groups are arranging protests outside those events.

As attendees shouted her down with exclamations like “shame” and “lies,” Maloy told the room, “If you treat us the same way for showing up as you treat people who don’t show up, you’re creating a disincentive.”

People within and outside of the auditorium submitted over 500 questions for the representatives. The top words, aside from “Utah,” were “Trump,” “DOGE” and “President.”

The first question asked, because it received over 200 thumbs up from attendees, came from Brigham Young University professor Peter Reschke: “If the current administration continues to defy court orders, will you commit to call for articles of impeachment to protect our republic’s checks and balances?”

“I don’t think we need to impeach the president,” Maloy said, and explained she’s expressed a desire for more checks on the executive branch and believes lawmakers and the courts can do that. “I just think we need to watch the process play out.”

Members of the audience met that remark with outcries: “He’s breaking the law now!” and “Will you commit to articles of impeachment?”

“If you want me to answer questions, I’ll answer questions. If you want to yell, you can yell, but we can’t do both at the same time,” Maloy said.

“People are extremely angry!” a woman in the audience responded.

Kennedy interjected, saying, “Can we have law enforcement come up?” and asked that police begin escorting disruptive attendees out of the auditorium — although none were removed.

“If there was defiance of a court order,” Kennedy, an attorney and physician, continued, answering the question, “absolutely somebody should be held to account. We know that this is how that works. However, how do we determine that in a non-banana republic fashion? We actually go through the process to do an investigation. You believe court orders were defied? I’m not sure; I’m waiting for the evidence to come out.”

On Thursday, a federal judge said the Trump administration had provided a “woefully insufficient” response to his earlier orders related to the White House’s use of wartime powers to deport immigrants allegedly in the country without legal status.

At one point, Kennedy began referring to one attendee as “Mr. Outburst,” saying, “Apparently you can’t control yourself,” to which the audience erupted in a chorus of boos.

The individual Kennedy was referring to was seemingly Michael Bretz, who said in an interview he thought the congressman was referring to someone else.

Bretz, who identified himself as a veteran and resident in Kennedy’s district, said he came to the town hall Thursday evening because he worries the country “keeps getting pushed further and further toward authoritarianism.”

“My goal is to at least get my opposition on record, saying, ‘Hey, something needs to be done here,’” he said. “I know that these people cater to the donor class, and that’s who they’re beholden to, but at the end of the day, we need to — as people and citizens and voters — make these people afraid to be not reelected again.”

As Kennedy prepared to leave to greet a troop of Boy Scouts from his district, he said, “I hope we can continue these conversations, they’re difficult ... ” but the rest of his comments were inaudible over the heckles.

Correction, March 21, 7:40 a.m. • This story has been updated to correct that the Utah Alliance Coalition hosted their town hall at the Salt Lake City Library.