Our first surprise was immediate: There was no protest outside the town hall in Columbus, Nebraska, a town of 24,000, as there have been at other Republican town halls. Republicans have been advised in recent weeks to skip these in-person events with constituents.
 
Flood greeted many of those attending one by one. It seemed a smart and polite way from the congressman to take down the temperature.
 
As he spoke to constituents, so did we. I walked along the line and asked roughly 100 people for their first names and where they were from.
 
All of them were from the congressional district, contrary to accusations from Republicans, including President Donald Trump, that paid outsiders are disrupting town halls. 
 
Once inside, the calm and laid-back crowd I found outside quickly expressed other emotions.
 
“Boo!” people in the crowd repeatedly called out when Flood defended the Trump administration or, more often, when he offered explanations for Trump policies that they simply did not buy. 
 
“I get it,” Flood said, acknowledging concerns about Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency in particular. “But we are making progress,” he insisted.

The crowd rejected that idea. Signs were not permitted, but one man managed to handwrite “LIAR” on a white sheet of paper.
 
At times, the crowd seemed uncomfortable with its own reaction. Some people both yelled and then tried to quiet themselves and others.
 
In the end, the anger was palpable, but I’m not sure Flood and his constituents were changed by it. 
 
When I asked, he told me afterward that he thought the anger was due to 24-hour news programs. I interrupted to say that it seemed clear the anger was real and not manufactured by some outside force.
 
He then gave his other answer for why there was so much backlash.
 
“People don’t like change,” he said.
 
Elsewhere in Nebraska

But change is coming to Cornhusker country, regardless. We spent time also working on another story about the effects of Trump’s actions on this red — and red barn — state.

We met Lindsey Nielsen, a fired veteran and U.S. Army Reserve officer who was terminated from the Food and Drug Administration for “poor performance,” despite her excellent reviews.
 
Her husband is also a federal worker and while she has been temporarily reinstated in the job, they are bracing for reductions in force at both of their agencies. They each expect to lose their jobs in the coming weeks.

“I did vote for Trump, just like many people around where I live,” Nielsen said. “I was definitely on board with some of the headlines that I was reading during the campaign. What happened afterwards, though, is not something I expected. I did not expect there to be such a massive, quick, rash cut to the federal government. I really expected it to be logical.”

There is no question this is a state that wants smaller government, but people here are reckoning with whether Trump’s moves, like firing thousands of federal workers, are doing this the right way.
 
One farmer we spoke with, Scott Thomsen, thinks Trump and Elon Musk are generally on track in terms of the cuts to programs.
 
“You hate to see anybody lose their job,” he told me as we stood near his pickup truck, “but at the same time, I think if it just keeps going the direction it's going, government [will] continue to get more bloated, more bloated, more bloated.”
 
When it comes to tariffs, he is more nuanced. Thomsen is worried about losing customers, especially in China where there are retaliatory tariffs in place — of 10 and 15 percent on produce and beef.
 
Thomsen generally has problems with government subsidies, but when it comes to making up for losses from tariff policy, he is on board. He remembers how Trump handled this in his first term.

“We've already been through this once,” Thomsen said. “We were subsidized by the government, basically the loss of what they thought the trade — the tariffs impacted the price and it ended up being a really profitable year for farmers.”

Looking ahead
 
The effects of cuts are just beginning to be felt in places like Nebraska, where there are few large federal headquarters.

But the debate is an old and well-known one. Now with the added twists of some neighbors worried about losing their jobs, others believe Trump will make life better for them.

TRUMP OFFICIALS TESTIFY AFTER GROUP CHAT LEAK

By Joshua Barajas
Senior Editor, Digital
 
Lisa Desjardins, @LisaDNews
Correspondent

The day after the report that a journalist had been added to a Trump Cabinet group chat on military strikes, Democrats were raring to go.
 
The security lapse became the focus of Tuesday’s Senate Intelligence Committee oversight hearing on worldwide threats.
 
Democratic lawmakers, led by Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, wanted to know why multiple national security officials were coordinating planned U.S. airstrikes in Yemen in a messaging app that could be hacked.

The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief and Washington Week moderator, Jeffrey Goldberg, revealed Monday that he was accidentally added to the group chat, which included security officials like CIA Director John Ratcliffe and U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, both of whom were witnesses in Tuesday’s hearing.

Warner, the ranking member of the committee, said in his opening remarks that the breach was “more example of the kind of sloppy, careless, incompetent behavior, particularly towards classified information.”
 
"That this is not a one-off or a first-time error,” he said.
 
NPR’s Tom Bowman reported that a Pentagon-wide email was sent a week ago warning about the app’s security limitations.
 
Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., grilled Ratcliffe on whether the CIA director knew that Trump’s special envoy was in Moscow when he was participating in the discussion of highly sensitive information on the group chat. Ratcliffe said he wasn’t aware.
 
Bennet then shouted.
 
“This sloppiness, this incompetence, this disrespect for our intelligence agencies and the personnel who work for them is entirely unacceptable. It’s an embarrassment,” he said. “You need to do better. You need to do better.”
 
When asked by Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., if the breach was a “huge mistake,” Ratcliffe said no.

Trump officials downplay the significance of the breach

Gabbard, who didn’t mention the incident in her opening remarks, declined to answer Warner’s question on whether she was on the chat. The incident is under review, she said.
 
Warner then turned to Ratcliffe with the same question. Ratcliffe confirmed he was in the chat, adding that Signal was loaded onto his computer soon after he was confirmed as the CIA head.
 
"It is permissible to use to communicate and coordinate for work purposes, provided, senator, that any decisions that are made are also recorded through formal channels,” he said.
 
Despite declining to say whether she was in the group chat, Gabbard later said there was “discussion around targets in general” when responding to Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz. Ratcliffe said that was “consistent with my recollection.”
 
The Republicans on the committee wanted to discuss topics beyond the Signal chat, such as Russia’s threats to Ukraine. Chair Tom Cotton, R-Ark., praised Trump for taking “decisive action” against the Houthis in his opening remarks, but didn’t directly address the breach. He warned generally about the politicization of the intelligence community. Some Republicans indicated they would ask questions about the text thread debacle during the closed-door portion of the hearing. 
 
Outside the hearing room, Trump defended his national security adviser, Mike Waltz, who Goldberg said had invited him to chat. The president told NBC News in a phone interview that Waltz has “learned a lesson, and he’s a good man.”
 
Trump also said Goldberg’s presence in the chat had “no impact at all” with the strikes.
 
The White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed that war plans were not shared in the chat, nor was classified material sent to the thread. She also called Goldberg a journalist known for “sensationalist spin.”
 
Before the hearing, Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., told Lisa Desjardins that “you should not put classified information on an unclassified system.”
 
China and Russia are “clearly on these networks,” he said. “You put people's lives at risk when you do this, so it's wrong. There's no ambiguity here.”
 
What now?
 
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, told us after the hearing that there needs to be “more investigation into the facts and circumstances.”
 
“It may be a surprise to some people that the intelligence community uses a commercial, encrypted app to communicate, outside of classified systems,” he said.
 
He didn’t answer a question on whether flight times for a planned attack would be classified info.

Meanwhile, there’s another hearing over worldwide threats on Wednesday — this time in the House. Expect Gabbard, Ratcliffe and FBI Director Kash Patel to face similar questions over the breach.

THIS WEEK’S TRIVIA QUESTION
By Ali Schmitz
Politics Producer
 
Long before smartphones hit the scene, President Rutherford B. Hayes had the first telephone installed in the White House in 1877.
 
But a telephone line at the president’s desk inside the Oval Office didn’t come until decades later.
 
Our question: Which U.S. president was the first to have a telephone installed in the Oval Office?
 
Send your answers to [email protected] or tweet using #PoliticsTrivia. The first correct answers will earn a shout-out next week.
 
Last week, we asked: Which U.S. president supported civil service reform and signed the Pendleton Act into law?
 
The answer: Chester A. Arthur. Though he was a beneficiary of the “spoils system,” which awarded government jobs to people based on political party loyalty, Arthur as president signed the Pendleton Civil Service Act into law in 1883.
 
Congratulations to our winners: Tim Burke and Ed Nickson!
 
Thank you all for reading and watching. We’ll drop into your inbox next week.