ST. GEORGE, Utah — Decorum ruled Congresswoman Celeste Maloy's first live town hall in St. George in nearly two years right up until the very end, when the subject of how to stop the chaos in Washington came up.
The Wednesday night town hall, hosted by Americans for Prosperity Utah, filled the St. George Chamber of Commerce building. The hourlong event had been planned for months before recent national events gripped the country.
When one attendee suggested stopping chaos must "start at the top," tensions flared.
"To stop all the chaos, you have to start at the top. The top has to flow that message down," said Ken Bouvier, a town hall attendee.
"I'm going to disagree with part of the premise of your question. I don't think it has to start at the top. Let me ask you this. How much control do you think I have over what any president from my party or another says?" Maloy responded.
Yelling ensued after her response.
Maloy addressed the fatal shooting of ICU Nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis during the event.
"I'm also upset about what's happening in Minnesota. My general baseline of what government should do is not kill its own citizens. And so we've got to do an investigation. We've got to get to the bottom of what's happening there," Maloy said.
There were a few outbursts in the hour-long event until the end. Maloy mostly discussed with the host before giving the last fifteen minutes to questions from attendees.
Before the start, about 40 to 50 people lined the sidewalk asking to be heard.
"She hasn't been listening to me as far as I'm concerned or the people that she's supposed to represent in the government, which is defiling the Constitution on a daily basis," said Heather Smith, who was protesting at the town hall.
Smith also expressed personal concerns about potential Medicaid cuts.
"For me, the Medicaid cuts were personal because I needed it in order to get health care in college when my dad lost his insurance and I'm scared for not having that," Smith said.
Inside, Maloy said she prefers the process of trying to get legislation done over being fixated on outcomes.
"I always remind my staff, like, calm and nerdy. That's our brand. We're calm. We're nerdy. Give people good information. We don't flop in," Maloy said.
"I do represent downtown Salt Lake City. And I spent a lot of time in Salt Lake City and West Valley City, which are traditionally Democrat strongholds in Utah. I do take that seriously. I belong to the Republican Party, I believe in the Republican platform, but I represent a lot of people who are not part of the party, and I'm doing my best to make sure I represent people who disagree with me," she said.
It was Maloy’s first in-person town hall in St. George since August 2024. She has had severall tele town halls that she says actually accomodates thousands more, including ine scheduled from this Saturday.
Maloy stressed the appropriation bills before Congress and said she was confident that Congress could avoid another government shutdown. Some Congress members and the public are talking about taking a stand over ICE funding.
"Six of the 12 appropriations bills are signed into law. So in October, we had a complete government shutdown. There were no appropriations bills that had been passed. Here we are in January, six of the 12 have passed through whole houses. And the six that are left obviously are the bargaining chip right now. But I'm confident that we'll get them done. We may have to make some changes to one of them," Maloy said.
"The reason that I don't think we're going into another shutdown is that we're already halfway funded. I think we'll get most of the rest of it there. Even if we don't get absolutely everything done, we will be almost all the way there, which is very different than where we were in October," she said.
A member of the audience expressed worry about a shutdown, noting she didn't receive a paycheck for 43 days during the previous government shutdown while Congress members were still paid.
"Yeah, we get paid. It's required in the Constitution. It's not fair. I agree with you there. It's not. But what am I personally doing? I'm talking to senators. I'm working with my committee chairman and making sure that our colleagues understand why the things that are in these bills are so important. And some of them actually do address the problems that people want addressed. But I am sorry that you didn't get paid for 43 days. That is no way to run a country. And I think we need to be saying that more often," Maloy said.
Earlier in the week, the Congressional Western Caucus picked Maloy to be its new chair, following the death of its previous leader, California GOP Rep. Doug LaMalfa.
"I'm really excited about this opportunity. Obviously not the way it came about. Doug LaMalfa is a good friend of mine. He asked me to be his vice chair and I assumed that you know maybe three or five years from now I would take a run at being the chair and this was not something I had at my time for this year," Maloy said.
"You know, if we all live good lives, that's what we all hope people remember us for when we're gone. Not which policies we pass, but about how we treated people, how we made people feel," she said.
Maloy disputed the characterization of a bill she introduced that aimed to transfer management of certain federal lands to local control.
"When the Natural Resources Committee, which I'm on, was working on our title of the One Big Beautiful Bill, I offered an amendment that would dispose of specific parcels of land, sell them at fair market value to local governments. And the reason that worked in the One Big Beautiful Bill is that it's a reconciliation bill, and reconciliation is a revenue bill. And so if you sell them at fair market value, that's a revenue generator, and it fits in there," Maloy said.
She addressed criticism about the timing of the amendment.
"The biggest thing that people ask me about is like, it was a midnight amendment, you offered a midnight. It was actually 11 p.m. Part of the reason is because it was a 17-hour hearing. If I could have offered it earlier, I'd gladly done that," she said.
"We had maps, and it took a little while for people to find the maps. So most of them were here in Washington County, and they were parcels that were for infrastructure, water reuse plans here for some roads, for some trails, for the airport, and they were just little pieces here and there that added up to a few thousand acres, and then three in Beaver County," Maloy said.
"But what happened is because we did it quickly and I learned a lesson from that. In the absence of good information, rumors abound, and a lot of people got really upset, especially kind of the hook and bullet crowd, who were worried that we were selling fishing and hunting lands. And once that genie was out of the bottle, we never could quite get it back in," she said.
Maloy also discussed the Bureau of Land Management's decision to approve the Northern Corridor Highway through the Red Cliffs Desert Reserve in northern St. George. Conservationists have criticized it as going through an area for the endangered desert tortoise.
"The argument I hear the most often is that if we build a road through the tortoise preserve, it's going to create a precedent. There's really no such thing as precedent with Congress. That's a legal term for judges. Like Congress can create a tortoise reserve and build a road through it, and it doesn't mean that the next one has to. Everything's a first impression for Congress," Maloy said.
"I have been up to my eyeballs in that long enough to know that when Congress created the reserve, part of that negotiation was a highway. And we do have good science about what a tortoise-friendly highway looks like, where tortoises like those craggy ravines. You put the highway up high over those ravines, tortoises can go back and forth just fine," she said.
Ultimately, one constituent asked that Maloy do more against President Trump.
"The country is ready for you to take control. For you to say, I'm in Congress, damn it. Listen to me. I told you you have to spend this. You didn't spend it. That's not okay with me. And we'll follow you. We'll support you. We will give you money for campaigning. We'll make you the next senator," he said.
"We want to be proud of our congressperson. The way to get us there, be Republican, do that, but be a congressperson so you can't ignore me. You can't shut me out," he said.
