On a Saturday in May 2025, about 250 people filled The Barn Resort in Adams County, Pennsylvania, for something they called The People's Town Hall. They had invited their elected officials. Two of them — Senator Dave McCormick and Representative John Joyce — didn't come.

So the organizers put out empty chairs, and the chairs became the story of the night.

"The most striking aspect of the meeting was the absence of officials whose support for Trump-era policies is contributing to our country's economic decline." — volunteer Tony McNevin

The invitation was not a partisan ambush. Organizer Bettye Baker opened it by saying: "It matters not if you are a Democrat, a Republican, Independent, or of no political persuasion; you are welcome here." The crowd that turned up leaned Progressive Democrat, the Gettysburg Connection reported, and community members stood up and talked about how federal budget cuts had hit their families and their livelihoods.

Joyce, a dermatologist who has represented Pennsylvania's 13th District since 2019, was not there to hear any of it.

He was invited to a real one first. He said no.

The empty chair wasn't a stunt aimed at a man who'd never been asked. Indivisible Blair County invited Joyce to an in-person town hall early in 2025, and, according to group president Carol Taylor, he refused.

What he does hold instead, occasionally, is the telephone version. Taylor's description of how those work: his staff "cherrypicks" the questions.

That is the whole difference between the two formats. On a phone town hall the host chooses which caller gets un-muted, screens what they'll ask, and nobody can follow up when the answer dodges. In a room, a constituent who doesn't like the answer can say so, out loud, in front of neighbors and a reporter. One of those is accountability. The other is a broadcast.

What his constituents have resorted to

By late October 2025, they were standing on the sidewalk.

About 15 people gathered outside Joyce's Blair County office on Sixth Avenue in Eldorado on a Wednesday afternoon with signs. The Altoona Mirror's William Kibler was there.

"Joyce is invisible to us. He does not respond to anything we say to get his attention." … "It makes it seem like he's hiding from us." — Denice Rodaniche, Altoona

Kirk Dodson, a retired Hollidaysburg Area School District history teacher, said he wanted to ask Joyce where he stood on releasing the Jeffrey Epstein files, and why the congressman "is so willing to roll over for" Donald Trump. Someone who got through medical school, Dodson said, should know better.

They were not all treated kindly. One motorist stopped in the road for half a minute to insult them through his passenger window. Another delivered an obscene gesture. "There's always someone," said demonstrator Bill Kelley of Tyrone, who added that he'd rather people "be in dialogue."

The Mirror tried to get Joyce's side. It exchanged texts with a spokesperson, followed that spokesperson's instructions on how to obtain a comment — and none was forthcoming that evening.

Then it happened again, and he did it again

On Wednesday, January 14, 2026, about 20 people stood in light rain outside Joyce's Altoona office for a vigil over ICE, the second Indivisible demonstration in a week. A retired Catholic priest joined them. A nurse who moved from New Orleans wore a mask and declined to give her last name, because in her words sharing her politics in a "historic red area" had gotten her "iced out socially."

Whatever you think of their politics, these are constituents standing outside their congressman's office in the rain because they cannot get a meeting.

The Mirror left a message with Joyce's office asking for comment. It didn't hear back.

That is twice, on the record, that his hometown newspaper asked his office to say something about his own constituents, and twice that it published without an answer.

This is a choice, and it is a common one

Joyce isn't unusual. He's typical, which is the problem. Across the country, Republicans have settled on the same posture: skip the room, run the phone line, and wait it out.

A Pennsylvania colleague, asked to name a recent public town hall, named none — and said showing up at the weekly protests would not be "productive," because he does not intend to "show up and get called names … and basically be a piñata", dismissing his critics as "the same 40 people that write nasty things on my social media." In Florida, constituents printed a member's face on a "MISSING" flyer, and his office answered that telephone town halls let him reach thousands "efficiently and effectively across eight counties at a time". In New York, three years of no in-person town halls escalated to a local radio station reporting that his office kept failing to tell it when he was holding news conferences in its county.

The calculation is identical everywhere: in a safe seat, the cost of never answering a hard question is zero, and the cost of one viral clip is not.

What he isn't answering questions about

This is not an abstract complaint about accessibility. Joyce chairs the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee — the committee that writes health care and telecom policy — after serving as that committee's vice chairman. He is a physician. And the Joint Economic Committee's House minority staff has estimated that 22,857 people in Pennsylvania's 13th District will lose health coverage by 2034 — 16,657 losing Medicaid and 6,200 losing Affordable Care Act coverage. That total counts both the cuts in the 2025 Republican budget law and the enhanced Affordable Care Act tax credits Republicans let expire at the end of that year.

Those are the people who came to that Barn Resort in May and sat looking at his empty chair.

We deserve better.

Sources

Adams Residents Confront "Empty Chairs" at People's Town Hall — Leon Reed, Gettysburg Connection, May 5, 2025. Protest held at U.S. Rep. John Joyce's Blair County office and ICE protesters rally outside Rep. John Joyce's Altoona office — William Kibler, Altoona Mirror, October 30, 2025 and January 15, 2026. Photo: Altoona Mirror / William Kibler.