Social media is rampant with posts documenting blowback against Rep. Josh Brecheen that occurred at town hall meetings early this week in Bartlesville, Muskogee, Pryor and Tahlequah, contentious confrontations that devolved into a shouting match in Cherokee County.
Brecheen came to Sallisaw Wednesday evening to promote President Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” (OBBB), but with a conspicuous law enforcement presence — four Sallisaw police officers and four Sequoyah County deputies as well as Sheriff Larry Lane — the only protests consisted of restrained mutterings, rolled eyes and shaken heads from a smattering of Sequoyah County voters.
Before returning to Oklahoma’s 2nd Congressional District to conduct 20 town hall meetings in four days, Brecheen on Saturday posted on social media a claim that the Oklahoma Democratic Party “is launching a coordinated effort to instigate their base into co-opting our town halls with inorganic protests.” He then warned attendees that “if you attend our town halls to ‘get angry’ and ‘make noise,’ you will be asked to leave and subsequently removed by law enforcement should disruptive behavior continue.”
“I have no desire to engage in strife with anybody,” Brecheen said Wednesday, laying out his guidelines for the town hall, “and so if anyone in the room decides to get in strife and becomes uncivil and we can’t dialog and rationally talk to one another, then I’ll just stop and we just won’t go forward.”
Brecheen told the more than 50 attendees that at his Tahlequah town hall meeting earlier in the day, “people decided to just scream and yell, and I just said, ‘I’m not going to do that.’
“I hope what’s been happening the last couple of days is not people from Oklahoma, because I have a greater expectation of the standard that we set the way we treat each other,” the congressman said.
Brecheen then acknowledged that town hall meetings often utilize the 10-80-10 principle. “It’s that 10% of the people are going to hate you; they don’t know why,” he explained. “10% of people like you; they don’t know why. And then you get a chance to impact 80% of the people who haven’t decided if they like you or not.”
Strife before Sallisaw
When in Bartlesville to begin the week, Brecheen was asked if he agreed with the executive order the president recently signed making it illegal for Americans’ to exercise their First Amendment rights by destroying the U.S. flag in protest. The military veteran asking the question then proceeded to stand up and destroy an American flag, prompting calls from audi- ence members for him to be expelled from the town hall meeting. Brecheen was also asked about healthcare fraud and reductions in services and healthcare provider reimbursements, a concern he talked around and did not answer.
In Pryor, Brecheen was booed, heckled and confronted throughout the meeting, and a voter hounded the congressman about $500 million in American assistance paid to Israel, as well as an instance where an Israeli official in Las Vegas “was trying to rape a kid.” The official was jailed, but then returned to Israel the next day without being arraigned. The voter then charged that Brecheen is getting paid by Israel to ignore transgressions, at which time Brecheen ended the questionand- answer session. In Nowata and Muskogee, tensions ran high, particularly because Brecheen engaged in a filibuster-style monologue about everything from Israeli defense systems to OBBB, which limited the time available for questions to which constituents wanted answers. Attendees complained that Brecheen “wasn’t truly answering the questions asked,” instead “talking around the questions and around our concerns, and not really pinpointing the issues.” At one point, a man was expelled from the meeting when he challenged Brecheen about National Guardsmen being deployed to Washington, D.C.
In Checotah, Brecheen devoted the first 44 minutes to ballyhooing the OBBB. He then allowed each constituent 90 seconds per question. When asked why the top 1% of Americans aren’t paying their fair share of taxes, Brecheen invoked Scripture regarding tithing. Another voter expressed his frustration about not being able to talk directly to a legislator, and that calls from constituents are screened and calls are not returned.
The contentious meetings came in the wake of U.S. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson — “the speaker is my friend,” Brecheen crowed — recommending representatives avoid conducting town hall meetings, which most of Brecheen’s colleagues have done.
Ballyhooing the BBB For those who came to Wednesday’s town hall not knowing — or not caring — about tax accounting, Brecheen conducted a crash course in the U.S. tax code, at least as he claims it pertains to the OBBB, assuring his audience that they will reap the rewards of permanent tax benefits. In addition, he claimed that American taxpayers will pay zero taxes on Social Security benefits, in particular, and will realize the largest tax cuts in history for the middle class and small businesses.
Utilizing 30 giant posters, Brecheen campaigned that the OBBB “is the principal legislative vehicle for the America First agenda” by:
• Reining in Washington’s out-of-control spending
• Rooting out waste, fraud and abuse
• Unleashing economic growth
• Taking a meaningful first step to restore the fiscal health of our country, helping our make America safe, strong and prosperous again Brecheen emphasized that “the largest tax increase in history” was set to occur on Jan. 1, 2026, which “was not an option.”
The OBBB claims to result in “more money in your pocket” through:
• No tax on tips, overtime or car loan interest for new American-made cars, as well as additional relief for seniors
• Effectively eliminates taxes paid on Social Security for 88% of seniors
• Permanently extends the standard tax deduction
• Permanently extends small business deductions for familyowned farms and 30 million other small businesses
• Enhances tax relief for families, primarily through expansion of tax credits
• Expands health savings accounts
• Eliminates fraud and waste in Obamacare, and blocks access to taxpayer-funded health benefits for illegal immigrants Brecheen’s oversized posters then compared mandatory versus discretionary spending from 1965 to 2024, pie charts that showed mandatory spending increasing from 34% to 74% for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, military and federal civilian pensions, veterans benefits, required interest payments on the nation’s $37 trillion deficit, SNAP, TANF, unemployment insurance, Supplemental Security Income and salaries for federal officials, including members of Congress and the President.
Conversely, discretionary spending that is decided annually by Congress has decreased from 66% of the U.S. budget in 1965 to 26% in 2024. Discretionary budget spending includes defense, education, transportation and scientific research. The Trump Administration has targeted the Department of Education, Department of Transportation and scientific research funding for elimination, which increases funding for the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security, which includes the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Benefits for Oklahomans
Brecheen’s presentation further claimed that, for Oklahomans, the OBBB will:
• Increase wages by an inflation-adjusted range of $3,100 to $5,600
• Allow families with two children to realize higher take-home pay of $6,700 to $9,300
• Benefit 600,000 seniors with increased tax protections
• Benefit 67% of workers with no-tax on overtime
• Extension of passthrough tax deductions for small businesses Brecheen then claimed that the “OBBB reverses the reckless Biden spending spree” associated with Medicaid, and that the OBBB “does not cut Medicaid,” and protects Medicaid for “truly needy Americans.”
Brecheen did not miss opportunities to attack and discredit “California’s Medicaid tax scam,” while also throwing under the bus the Congressional Budget Office, whose estimated economic growth figures are contrary to projections by the Trump Administration.
Additional benefits claimed in Brecheen’s presentation of the OBBB include:
• “The greatest single investment in border security” with $165 billion to Homeland Security
• Funding to complete the border wall, and hire more than 18,000 new ICE and Border Patrol agents
• “The greatest single investment in military readiness” with $150 billion in targeted national defense funding
• Generate tens of billions in revenue through oil, gas and coal lease sales, and defunding the Green New Deal
• Ending subsidized wind and solar energy
• Cutting waste, fraud and abuse by eliminating PBS, NPR and USAID As was the case cited at the Nowata and Muskogee town hall meetings, Brecheen allowed limited time for questions from constituents. For the most part, Brecheen’s responses to the seven questions that did not challenge his OBBB assertions or demand accountability were generally not specific.
