In one deeply conservative district and another more liberal one, two Republicans expressed uncertainty and anxiety about the Trump administration's agenda and their support for that agenda.
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Elon Musk and the sweeping cuts being made by his Department of Government Efficiency drew the sharpest response yet at a town hall meeting in Evanston, Wyoming, chaired by Representative Harriet M. Hageman on Friday.
The packed crowd that gathered Thursday night at a civic center in Afton, Wyoming, to see Representative Harriet M. Hageman was filled with her longtime allies, but the pointed questions began even before she took the podium to speak.
“Nobody is touching Social Security,” Ms. Hageman, a second-term Republican, told a retiree in the front row who blurted out her concerns about potential cuts to the program by the Trump administration.
From this point on, the situation became even more tense.
The next evening, at another city hall about 100 miles south in Evanston, Scott Flint, a former miner, delivered a statement against Ms. Hageman about how the Trump administration’s cuts had cut into his pocket at the state by closing the local office of the Mine Safety and Health Administration, which provides vital support to the area.
He warned that President Trump and Elon Musk would soon face the same problems that corporate employers face after mass layoffs.
“They come in with a chainsaw, and then they realize, 'Oh, there was some value in what they did,'” Mr. Flint, 67, said later in an interview. “But those guys are gone. They're a thing of the past. You're not going to bring them back.”
ImageScott Flint, a retired miner who attended Ms. Hageman's meeting in Evanston, said he was concerned about the recent closure of a local Mine Safety and Health Administration office. Photo by Kim Ruff for The New York Times
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