Hundreds of people, some bearing signs, lined up along the snowy block in front of Hillsboro’s J.W. Poynter Middle School at noon Saturday.
And many of them were about to find out that their efforts to get in were in vain. At least 1,200 people had already maxed out the school gym’s fire safety capacity, and staff outside the school doors were met with yells of protest when they announced they would have to turn people away.
But Saturday’s turnout wasn’t for a basketball game or other school event. It was for an annual town hall hosted by U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. It was a stark change from August, at his last town hall in the county, which fewer than 200 people attended.
In other years, people may have asked the senator about a range of issues impacting Oregon. But Saturday’s town hall was dominated by a single topic: the newly sworn-in administration of President Donald J. Trump.
At least 1,200 people showed up to Saturday’s town hall, a substantial jump from the last town hall in Washington County in August, which about 150 people attended.Tatum Todd
Front of mind for Wyden and many of the attendees were the federal hiring freeze, the Elon Musk-run Department of Governmental Efficiency’s access to sensitive government data and Trump’s pending tariffs against international trading partners — all issues that he believes will impact Oregonians.
“What can we do about the chaos and the confusion?” Wyden asked. “And let me use this word specifically, lawlessness,” he added, which was met with applause from the crowd in majority blue-voting Washington County.
Still, some members of the audience questioned the senator’s stance on key issues.
“Why are the Democrats so against Elon Musk finding millions and millions of our taxpayer dollars?” one woman asked from the gym bleachers.
A woman poses a question to U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden during his a town hall in Hillsboro Saturday. Many attendees voiced questions and concerns about changes put forward by the Trump administration.Tatum Todd
Wyden responded that he wasn’t against finding wasteful congressional spending, but asserted that federal budgeting is the purview of Congress, rather than political appointees.
Another audience member criticized Wyden’s support of Israel amid its war with Hamas — and the subsequent destruction in Gaza as a result of Israel’s military operations there — a divisive issue in the Portland area that has spurred multiple protests in the city.
“I’m opposing Donald Trump very strongly on his Gaza plan, I think it is ethnic cleansing,” Wyden responded, referring to the president’s proposed plan to seize control of the Gaza Strip for real estate development. “The way Trump is going about it is going to further destabilize an area where that’s the last thing you need,” he said, adding that he was proposing a bill to stop American soldiers from being installed in Gaza.
The same audience member also asked what Wyden was doing to protect access to reproductive health care in the face of the new administration. Wyden referenced his history of chairing the first congressional hearing on the abortion medication RU486 in front of the House Small Business Committee before the drug was approved by the FDA. He added that access to reproductive healthcare is now under siege.
“We’re going to need a grassroots organization for women unlike any we’ve ever found” to fix the recent rollback of reproductive rights, he said.
Other attendees struck a more fearful tone.
Jeremy Rauschert, 73, expressed his concerns about Social Security and Medicare being impacted by the Trump administration.Tatum Todd
“He’s going after our Social Security, our Medicare,” 73-year-old Jeremy Rauschert said of Trump from the rows of folding chairs on the gym floor. “What’s going to stop him?”
Wyden said he shared Rauschert’s concerns.
“Social Security information can be looked at by some 25-year-old kid, and we have no idea where it’s going and what it’s going to be used for,” the senator said of Musk’s employees, some of whom are under the age of 25. “But I’m going to press until I stop it.”
Wyden and some attendees expressed concerns about authoritarianism and what progressive political groups and citizens could do to curtail it.
During the town hall, Wyden said political change would come from the “grassroots up.”
“We can have a network around the country,” he said. “Every corner of the country having that grassroots mobilization, coalitions of people who frankly never talked to each other in the past, let alone worked with each other, that’s how we’re going to do it.”
Wyden also doubled down on his plan to find common ground with Republican voters in Oregon who may be hurt by Trump’s pending tariffs. In a separate interview Saturday, he said that he hopes to reach people in eastern Oregon — including counties where many people want to secede to Idaho — by advocating for veterans’ health care and passing legislation that would help export their farming products around the world.
Sen. Ron Wyden held a town hall in Hillsboro at which many people voiced questions and concerns about changes put forward by the Trump administration.Tatum Todd
But some people in the audience who opposed the actions of the Trump administration left the town hall with concerns about how politically progressive politicians could resist it.
Outside the school after the hour-and-a-half long town hall, Valentina Barret and Peter Van Patten were standing in the cold, talking about the changes the new administration could bring.
“I do think that Senator Wyden tried to answer the questions to the best of his ability,” Barret said. “But I don’t know that we have enough actionable plans to be able to activate against this current administration to be able to push back effectively,” the 35-year-old Air Force veteran and immigrant added.
Van Patten, a retired orthopedic surgeon, agreed.
“He kept returning to say, ‘Everybody’s got to get together, we have to have a public uproar about what’s happening,’” Van Patten said. “I don’t think it’s going to do it if (Trump) continues to ignore what the legislature and judicial system is doing.”
In a conversation with a small group of reporters in the middle school’s locker room, Wyden recognized the fear and concern that was pervading the minds of Barret, Van Patten and many other attendees that day. He noted that in the past, many of the town hall’s audience members were used to a traditional notion of how government operated, but many now felt that they were watching those processes get trampled.
“It felt like a lot of people out there were frustrated and scared,” he said. “This is a very different kind of town hall.”
— Tatum Todd is a breaking news reporter who covers public safety, crime and community news. Reach them at ttodd@oregonian.com or 503-221-4313.