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The town hall in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, held by U.S. Rep. Madeleine Dean, Thursday, April 17, 2025. (Kenny Cooper/WHYY)
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Congress is in recess, but constituents in Pennsylvania’s 4th Congressional District delivered a roadmap for U.S. Rep. Madeleine Dean to return to Capitol Hill with fervor.
Residents filled the 563-seat Montco Cultural Center in Blue Bell Thursday night to lambaste President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk’s actions to reshape the federal government.
“You brought tears to my eyes to see you in line tonight,” Dean told the crowd. “This is a test of our democracy.”
Dean’s town hall came amidst a tariff-fueled trade war, the Trump administration’s campaign against higher education, the wrongful deportation of a Maryland man and DOGE’s massive cuts to federal programs.
She said Trump is “worthy of impeachment.”
“Lies told in the Oval Office are beyond the pale and that’s why you’re here tonight and that’s what energizes me,” Dean said. “We can never be satisfied with that. We must continue to speak the truth — cut through the chaos, call out the corruption, the misinformation and the lies.”
Dean said the Trump administration’s actions in the past 88 days have resulted in “self-inflicted harm to the American people, to our country, to our standing in the world.”
“My concern is, what happens when he declares martial law, when he suspends habeas corpus and says, ‘Midterm elections, we’re in a state of emergency, we’re not going to have them,’” said Len DiSesa, 77, of Dresher.
To a round of applause, DiSesa asked Dean about what she and other Democrats are doing in the House of Representatives to take action and do more to “throw monkey wrenches” into Trump’s agenda to “slow him down.”
Dean replied that she thinks he is “absolutely right on the question of martial law.”
“People text me in a panic: ‘Is it possible he’s going to declare martial law and avoid another election, cancel an election?’ I didn’t used to be like this. He will do anything. Of course, he will,” Dean said. “Will he try to run for a third term and stay in office? Of course he will.”
Dean said the Democrats are using some procedures, but acknowledged it is “not enough,” to block the Trump administration’s actions.
“We have to use every device we possibly can and call upon our Senate colleagues to help us to slow-walk some of this craziness,” she said.
John Lockard, 75, of Dresher, said he’s been writing letters to U.S. Sens. John Fetterman and Dave McCormick of Pennsylvania about Trump’s cabinet picks. Lockard called McCormick a “sheep,” following fellow Republicans. But Lockard questioned Fetterman’s “apathetic” responses as a Democrat.
“It’s almost too hard to remember because it’s so vague,” Lockard said of the response he’s received from Fetterman’s office. “He really doesn’t give direct answers when most of the letters that I sent to him were about votes for department chairs.”
Dean said she didn’t have a good answer, however, she told the crowd that she left Fetterman a voicemail expressing her thoughts after several of those votes.
Trump’s divisive orders have split Republican lawmakers on how to manage backlash from angry constituents. In March, the chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee ordered GOP legislators to avoid in-person town halls after early attempts went viral.
But recently, a few conservative members of Congress have tested the waters again, with chaotic results. U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa faced backlash Tuesday from frustrated residents. That same day, protestors were arrested and stun-gunned at U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Georgia district during a town hall event.
U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, the last Republican member of Congress in Philadelphia’s collar counties, has largely avoided weighing in on the presidency in his purple Bucks County district. On CBS’ “Face The Nation” in March, Fitzpatrick expressed his belief that “dark money groups” turn town halls into a “circus.”
Meanwhile, his Democratic colleagues in the suburbs have sought to capitalize on the widespread discontent.
U.S. Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon organized a rally outside of a Social Security Administration building in Delaware County to protest the Trump administration’s attempt to overhaul the agency. In Pennsylvania’s 6th Congressional District, which encompasses Chester County, U.S. Rep. Chrissy Houlahan engaged with constituents at her annual address in February.
Dean, who previously held a pair of virtual town halls, jumped into the fray with her latest in-person event. She said that since Trump’s inauguration, 10,000 constituents have called her office with their concerns, and 12,000 people joined the telephone town halls.
She told WHYY News that people are anxious and concerned.
“We have to be comfortable saying the answer, ‘I don’t know. I don’t know the answer to your question, but I want you to know I’m here,’” Dean said.
Dean said her office has already budgeted for more town halls this year, because her constituents are “desperate for information and they deserve it.”
Tina Martin, 72, of Penllyn, asked Dean how the Supreme Court’s ruling on Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s case could be enforced while the administration refuses to work to bring him back to the U.S. The ruling found the legal resident’s deportation to El Salvador was illegal.
“It doesn’t seem to me that there’s any possibility of enforcement on these court decisions, and I’m just worried that, how do we move forward without that?” Martin said.
Dean shared Martin’s worry.
“What the courts can do is to hold in contempt his minions, his courtiers,” Dean said of Trump. “Hold them in contempt, arrest a couple of them and hold them in jail. He won’t care. He won’t feel the heat for them if AG Bondi is sitting in a jail, but it would be OK with me.”
Dean, who is on the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs, expressed her concerns about the case.
“People are just disappeared off the street,” she said. “That man was disappeared from his child, in front of his child, he was disappeared.”
Dean praised Maryland U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen for his visit to El Salvador to meet with and advocate for Abrego Garcia.
“We’ve asked for a trip, a congressional delegation,” she said. “The majority will never approve that. So we’re just going to go on our own, on our own dime.”
Many Democratic voters have been angry not just with the Trump administration or the broader Republican Party. Some have been infuriated with the Democratic Party’s broader vision and the party’s aging leadership.
Maria Catrambone Rosen, 77, of Upper Dublin Township, wasn’t able to ask her question at the town hall, but said she left feeling “a little less unhopeful.”
“I would feel comfortable if I knew that the Democrats got together, all of them, and that they had people assigned for specific things, and that they had a specific strategy for these things,” she said. “And we may not know about it, maybe we’re not supposed to … but I would feel better about that, and I don’t think that’s really happening so much. But I think we have Madeleine Dean and Cory Booker and some really good people who are hopefully going to get us out of this mess.”
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