On Saturday, Jan. 24, Widener University was cold, gray, and slow-moving. Overall, the weather promised a dull day for Chester, PA. Even still, dozens of attendees lined up inside the university’s Alumni Auditorium for Congresswoman Mary Gay Scanlon’s town hall.
The crowd it drew was mostly elderly, representing a concerned caucus of voters drawn in from across Pennsylvania’s fifth district to make their concerns known about the health of their communities and their local governments under President Trump’s Administration.
At 2:06 PM, the event commenced. With the last comments abruptly halting, citing feelings of division and frustrations (“We can’t bring ourselves to Washington, right?”), the congresswoman was received with ready applause. She first thanked her constituents and visitors for bearing the cold ahead of the weekend winter storm, but from the energy in the room, it was clear that they would have made their opinions clear regardless of any winter chill.
Scanlon wasted no time in addressing their formative concern with the 2026 Trump Administration: ICE. First addressing what she called “the elephant in the room,” Scanlon said that the recent killings of civilians by ICE agents in Minnesota “show us what happens when you have a reckless deployment of masked and armed agents to the streets in an American city.”
Identifying the deaths of Alex Pretti and Renée Nicole Good, the congresswoman spoke with conviction, focusing on the violent harms that American citizens have borne under ICE and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Asserting that “we have been gaslit,” the Congresswoman contrasted the virtue and deservedness of American citizens with the mountain of intolerable executive orders and actions taken by the Trump Administration, especially when, in her words, “Those agents don’t appear bound by our laws or even humanity.”
“We like the rule of law; we like due process; we like the First Amendment.”
Throughout her time at Widener, it was made clear that Scanlon sought to position her tenure as a bulwark of good government: representative, democratic in its outreach, upright, and law-abiding.
To this effect, the congresswoman took the stage and read the room to the letter. Round after round of applause sounded throughout her speech, underlining her claims of a truly attentive office. “Every day I hear from folks across the district of every faith and political persuasion … that they are deeply worried about the actions of this president and his administration, who are worried about these seismic changes that this administration is making in U.S. policy at home and abroad, and what it means for our families and our communities and our nation.”
The concerns of the citizenry of which Scanlon spoke were “unauthorized foreign invasions; the expiration of the Affordable Care Act and healthcare tax credits, which have caused healthcare costs for many to really skyrocket; and then the escalating and dangerous conduct of federal agents in Minnesota and even here in Pennsylvania’s fifth district.”
These issues she spoke on served as an appeal to the economic diversity in her constituency, later adding “reckless unemployment” to the list. Of all of them, opposition to shootings by ICE agents was positioned as the great unifier among these diverse issues to her admittedly snowy audience.
“Their primary purpose appears to be to spread propaganda and division and disregard for the law. But that’s where we all come in to stand up and push back on this.”
Although much of the conversation on immigration enforcement was centered on Minneapolis, both nationally and at Widener, the experiences of scared immigrant families, detainments, concerns over possible constitutional violations, and surveillance deeply resonated with the suburban audience.
By this point, the crowd was boiling with the sentiment that things had been taken too far. Scanlon continued, “I don’t think anyone could object to them detaining and deporting folks who are violent criminals who’ve been convicted of being violent criminals, that’s what the law is, but it is this brutality, it’s this inhumane treatment of folks — it is really going above and beyond and terrorizing whole communities.”
“I mean, we knew that he would be going after immigrants. I don’t think anyone expected it to be this bad, but here we are.”
Encouraging the attendees to participate in nonviolent resistance trainings, the congresswoman called on history to bring hope to the distraught crowd. “Nonviolent protest from Martin Luther King, Jr., from Mahatma Gandhi — I mean, this does change the trajectory of history.”
Finally, before questions, the speaker then turned to call out her Republican colleagues in the House, claiming their “[refusal] to stand up to Trump is one of the key problems” and that “they are only trying to swallow lies and erase history, as the White House is doing.”
“We can all see with our own eyes.”
“Republicans controlling the House, the Senate, and the White House continue to focus on the wrong things. And that’s what we’re pushing back on, whether it’s seizing Greenland or pushing anti-abortion legislation, or ignoring the affordability prices that so many people across our country are dealing with.”
“I was just talking with someone today who had to pay his first ACA bill. It’s gone up from $1,900 to $3,100 a month … So there’s a lot of work we could do — we should be doing. We have not seen an appetite for it among our Republican colleagues and the lawlessness and chaos can really seem insurmountable a lot of days.”
Highlighting some hopes for collaborations in the House, Scanlon brought up a recently passed bill requiring a release of the Epstein files and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s criticism of rising healthcare costs as a sign that the Republican front is cracking. She added that this might continue as Republicans “start paying a little more attention to their constituents and a little less to the White House” in light of the upcoming midterms.
“Hey, this crowd lived through COVID and helped their neighbors and stood up when it was necessary. We need to keep doing that.”
She then urged the crowd to contact elected officials who may disagree with them, to stand up for what they believed in, to have courage and hope against limited bipartisanship, and to contact her office, which is manned by human employees.
After listing some projects she had worked on in her term of service, including receiving more than $11 million in funding for local projects, she then opened up the floor to questions.
While the questions, drawn in a random order, began asking for positive advice, they quickly ramped up in intensity. One Media, PA, resident asked bluntly, “Clearly, decorum and playing by the rules is not working here, and I’m just wondering, where is the big bold action? And when are the Democrats going to have a strategy?”
“My biggest frustration is how disjointed this party is and how the party can’t get its act together and say something meaningful other than ‘Trump bad; pick us,’” he said.
After a break for applause, the congresswoman remarked, “Never heard that before!” before reiterating the importance of community advocacy, localized support, and bipartisan collaboration. Along with impeachment, she says, “Those are the tools we have.”
Perhaps what Scanlon did not predict from the polity was just how many people would ask for and applaud the idea that the Democratic Party needed to circumvent the law to stop the current executive leadership.
The only point at which a “Boo” could be heard was when one solitary man took to the microphone. He began, “I’m a little concerned that I may not make it out of here alive. Because I did vote for Trump in 2024.” The crowd erupted. Having waited previously with patience in anticipation of their peers and compatriots, the facilitators had to call the room to order to let him continue his question.
“You said a lot about divisive rhetoric, and certainly Trump is guilty of that, but honestly, it has been an hour. I haven’t heard anything unifying. So let me just ask you and attempt to find common ground: What do you see as Trump’s greatest accomplishments?”
At this point, his question was drowned out by laughter. By far, this request had received the widest range of response. “Wrong audience. Hardest question of the day,” she scoffed.
“Well, he succeeded pretty well in unifying the Democratic Party.”
“If you believe that the way forward for our country is to invest more wealth with corporations and those who are wealthiest, then that has been a significant accomplishment … He’s seriously limited wind, and solar, and other forms of energy when I thought the Republican Party was for all of the above … I’m sorry. I see what he has done as being very destructive.”
