February 7, 2017; The Hill

It’s not just the legal profession who are working on the latest policy changes. Activists and everyday citizens are showing up at the office doors of Republican lawmakers in numbers rarely seen. You can see them at town hall meetings and congregating on the sidewalks in front of the homes of members of Congress from coast to coast.

A week ago, 300 or so people marched peacefully from corner to corner along the sidewalk in front of the Long Island office of Peter King (R-NY). The signs they carried protested the “Muslim Ban” and the impending border wall. Speaker Paul Ryan’s hometown hosted hundreds of protesters blocks from his home in Janesville, Wisconsin. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) faced a crowd of more than 1,000 people Thursday night chanting “Do your job!”, referring to his role as chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, a panel with a key role in monitoring government conflicts of interest and improper or illegal activity. Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) requested a police escort to get through protesters who came to his recent town hall event.

McClintock has never seen the number of protesters he has been getting.

“This was something very different,” McClintock told The Hill in an email. “After an hour, the incident commander for the Roseville Police Department advised us that the situation was deteriorating and felt it necessary to get me out of the venue. That’s never happened before.”

McClintock did hold town hall meetings during the time of Occupy Wall Street, but the amount of people showing up now is much greater.

The protesters across the country appeared to focus largely on the policy issue of the moment from Washington: the executive order temporarily barring the entry into the U.S. of people from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen.—Marian Conway