CASPER—U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman abruptly ended a town hall session here Tuesday evening and walked off the stage to booing and shouting from her constituents while others in the audience attempted to shout down her critics.
A series of impassioned questions regarding recent killings in Minneapolis at the hands of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal officers, as well as other ICE actions, prompted an escalating back-and-forth between questioners, the congresswoman and the audience at Casper College’s Wheeler Concert Hall while a half-dozen policemen stood guard.
A tall, dark-haired young man who said he was a Casper College student quizzed her about the killings. Hageman responded, “I haven’t talked about that. I spoke about the Laken Riley Act because it was one of the bills that we passed. I haven’t talked about what was going on in Minnesota.”
“Yeah. Why is that?” the student asked. “Why haven’t you said that you condemn the violence or given condolences to the families of the victims?”
“It hasn’t been the topic that we’ve been talking about today,” Hageman answered over rising jeers from the audience. “So I think what has happened in Minnesota is a terrible tragedy for the woman and the man who were killed,” she said, referring to U.S. citizens Alex Pretti, shot dead on Saturday, and Renée Good, shot dead on Jan. 7.
The student walked out of the concert hall, shouting retorts at the congresswoman as others applauded.
Casper resident Allyse Taylor continued the line of questioning, pressing Hageman about whether she adheres to the U.S. Constitution and whether she’s concerned about alleged ICE and Trump administration violations of the Fourth Amendment’s protections against warrantless search and seizure.
Audience members shouted references to a Department of Homeland Security internal memo that allegedly informed ICE agents they can enter homes without a judicial warrant.
“I think that I have to look at the investigation,” Hageman responded, prompting a chorus of guffaws. “If there were violations of someone’s constitutional rights, there is redress.”
“Then why is there no redress?” Taylor asked, and implored Hageman to demand transparency of investigations of the ICE killings. “They are killing American citizens in the streets, and you are doing nothing. You are not saying a single solitary thing to support constituents or to support the American people. As a constitutional lawyer, you should be infuriated. You should be incensed. Why are you not?”
Hageman then gathered her folders, waved goodbye to the audience and exited the stage through a side door while people booed and one man shouted “coward” and “chickenshit.”
Hageman touts accomplishments
Hageman, who recently announced her Senate bid to replace retiring Sen. Cynthia Lummis, began the town hall event by noting it was her first of the year, and that she intends to continue to make good on her promise to visit each of Wyoming’s 23 counties annually.
Her team allotted one hour for the town hall. Hageman spent the first 30 minutes recapping her recent accomplishments in Congress.
She voted in favor of the continuing budget resolution while helping to secure about $3 million for the Casper/Natrona County International Airport, $1 million for a Northern Arapahoe water treatment facility and more than $1.6 million for reconstruction of the Fort Laramie canal tunnel, which collapsed more than six years ago.
Hageman also touted her work to advance the Grasslands Grazing Act, sexual predator legislation and anti-abortion measures. She blamed recent winter-storm-related power outages in the eastern U.S. on Obama and Biden policies to steer electrical generation away from coal and toward renewable energy. Hageman tied the inordinate volume of truck-driver-related deaths along Interstate 80 in Wyoming to immigrants who can’t speak or read English and touted a measure to allow “18 to 20-year-old” truck drivers to legally cross state lines.
Existing laws present “a barrier,” Hageman said, adding that her congressional work will make sure “that our 18 to 20-year-olds are getting the training and can have the career — that really fabulous career — as truck drivers.”
Among the most common questions she’s asked, Hageman said, before taking questions, is “How do we keep more of our young people in the state of Wyoming?
“The key … is you have to have good jobs and you have to have housing — and housing prices across the country are astronomical.” That’s because of past policies that inhibit logging the nation’s forests, Hageman said, leaving housing developers prone to skyrocketing lumber prices from other countries.
It’s why, in the GOP-led Big Beautiful Bill, “We’re requiring the U.S. Forest Service to sell 250 million board-feet, and we’re also requiring that they enter into 20-year lease contracts with our timber companies — so that these companies can invest in what they need to, but they know that they’ll have those contracts in the long term.”
Rising housing and rental costs have outpaced incomes while new construction lags — which some blame on overly burdensome permitting, according to a recent analysis by the Wyoming Community Development Authority. The analysis also suggests that an aging population and youth out-migration are factors.
Continuation of contention?
About a dozen people were still in line to ask Hageman a question when she walked off the stage — about five minutes before the allotted time was up.
It’s not the first time Hageman has seen criticism and discord at her town hall events.
She described some audience members at a March 2025 town hall in Laramie as “hysterical” and was booed in Pinedale last year after asserting that the 2009 endangerment finding — the federal doctrine to combat air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions — was “based on false science.”
“I would prefer that people use diplomacy and be polite, because more people would have a chance to ask their questions,” Natrona County Commissioner Dave North told WyoFile after the town hall event. “There’s nothing wrong with asking questions. But being disruptive and not showing diplomacy, that’s where we run into problems.”
Taylor, who asked Hageman about constitutional violations, had a different take on the town hall event.
“I had hoped that, at least on the Second Amendment front, [Hageman] would display some sort of integrity in what she claims to stand for,” Taylor told WyoFile. “Especially in a state that is so big on gun rights.”
After agents killed Pretti, President Donald Trump and others in his administration suggested that the 37-year-old intensive care nurse shouldn’t have brought a gun while protesting ICE. Video shows Pretti did not brandish the weapon ahead of the shooting, despite misleading statements from some in the Trump administration.
“I had hoped that maybe there would be some sort of recognition,” Taylor added, “that that really critical right for so many people here was in danger of being violated. That there was some hypocrisy in the way that these federal administration [officials] are talking about it, that she would, at the very least, recognize that. But I prepared myself to be disappointed, to be perfectly honest.”
Hageman’s next Wyoming town hall event will be from 2-3 p.m. Thursday in Thermopolis, at the Hot Springs County Museum.
Look folks, the Hag needs to go. She doesn’t represent the people of Wyoming. Like the rest of her ilk, she rides on trumps shirt tail.
Gordon, the people of Wyoming obviously disagree with you.
“Are you not Entertained?”