Let’s go right to the props. Those go to U.S. Rep. Mike Flood, R-Neb., who faced a hostile crowd at an in-person town hall meeting last week in Lincoln.

From my seat in the back of beautiful Kimball Hall on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s City Campus, the gathering did not disappoint. Nor — without mentioning names but their initials are Adrian Smith, Don Bacon and Deb Fischer — would Flood’s experience do anything but dissuade other Nebraska electeds to take the hot seat. To wit: The guy deserves an attaboy.

Before we get carried away, however, whatever information exchange he or the throng hoped for never materialized. Such is the nature of the modern political in-person town hall. Some peg the beginning of these boisterous beasts to 2009, when conspiracy theorists started showing up at town halls, shouting about President Obama’s birth certificate. The noise and the lie persisted at town halls and among true believers. Then we elected one president. Twice.

While the data dissemination at the Flood’s town hall was disappointing, clear from the outset was that he is all in with the president and MAGA — unremarkable, given Flood’s voting record. Any sense that we’d have a meeting of the minds or a parsing of policies was a long shot.

Nevertheless, several of Flood’s answers and comments were instructive as much for what they didn’t say as for what they did.

He stumbled out of the blocks when he began by suggesting that perhaps some Nebraskans may be misinformed about the Big Ugly, for which he unsurprisingly voted yes. While he cleared up the difference between Medicaid and Medicare for the three people there who didn’t understand it, his implication that the Big Ugly had nothing to do with Medicare runs contrary to the Center for Medicare Advocacy, which should know.

At least five times he said that the bill “saved Medicaid,” inexplicably equating increased funding for state hospitals and work requirements for Medicaid recipients as solving the loss of health care for 78,000 Nebraskans.

Few in the assembly bought that calculus, their boos reaching quite a crescendo. With no number on which to hang his hat, he also contended that apparently large numbers of Medicaid recipients who could work were government cheats, lolling at home and getting free health care.

Curious, I checked three different analyses, finding the percent of able-bodied adults on Medicaid who could work but didn’t in the 5%-8% range.

On Gaza, Flood was clear. “I stand with Israel.” Before he repeated that sentiment, he referenced the horrors Hamas visited on Israelis and that no one likes watching children suffer. Missing was what’s missing in too much of the war’s public discourse: that one can support Israel’s right to defend itself but be critical of its prosecution of the war, including the moral imperative it now faces while Palestinians dodge aerial assaults and starve to death, and be neither an anti-Semite nor a supporter of Hamas.

Both can be true and, as the war continues unabated, the distinction grows ever more pertinent.

The town hall was held before news that the feds are considering Nebraska as a site for one of its immigrant detention camps, an incredibly bad idea. Nevertheless, Flood was enthusiastic in his support of the president’s immigration policies and completion of a wall between the U.S. and Mexico, insisting we detain and deport violent criminals and stanch the flow of fentanyl into the country.

Great, except most data confirms that among those now detained, 65-70% have no criminal record, and less than one in ten are violent criminals. Plus, most fentanyl, 80-90%, comes across our border at legal crossing points.

One other lowlight was ironically glaring. Flood said of the president firing the Bureau of Labor Statistics director because he didn’t like the jobs report, that “there are always two sides to every story.” Really? This is the same BLS Flood and his GOP posse used during the creation of and argument for the Big Ugly.

Finally, in answering a query about why the administration is withholding medical science funds from major research universities, Flood pledged his support for such endeavors at both private and public institutions, adding that some of schools “have a poor record of anti-semitism.” To which one might ask … such as?

As in-person town halls go, Flood’s Lincoln soiree was louder and more raucous than most. The real test for those in Kimball Hall and like-minded Flood constituents in Nebraska’s 1st Congressional District, however, is to turn up at the only place louder than a town hall meeting: the ballot box.

This story was published by Nebraska Examiner, an editorially independent newsroom providing a hard-hitting, daily flow of news. Read the original article: https://nebraskaexaminer.com/2025/08/11/ballot-boxes-louder-than-town-halls/

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