Over the past few weeks, Republican lawmakers around the country holding town halls have faced angry questioning and booing from their constituents who are upset with mass federal layoffs, among other controversial moves by the Trump administration. Now, after a series of (televised) tense confrontations, Congressional Republicans have been advised to hold their historically in-person town halls online.Its hard not to note the irony here: The same party thats requiring federal employees to work in-person full-time has suddenly learned to embrace the conceptual power of a Zoom meeting (aka, remote) conducted from a distance. All it took, apparently, was some in-person criticism from their own voters.In response to the onslaught of hostile instances, the chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) encouraged members to host town halls on Facebook Live and other virtual platforms, ABC News reported. Remote meetings would give them more control over the event, such as being able to screen questions in advance and conceivably have the ability to mute a particularly agitated constituent, or 10. The news comes after Kansas Senator Roger Marshall was booed at a town hall he held Tuesday in a hospital. At a Texas GOP town hall on Saturday, a raucous crowd continually heckled Rep. Keith Self. And a few weeks earlier, Georgia Rep. Rich McCormick faced intense criticism at a town hall in Georgia, where a constituent told him: We are all fricking pissed off.After the NRCCs meeting, House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters that many of the disruptions in the town halls came from professional protestors. There is no evidence that this is true.The move to take town halls virtual has elicited backlash from voters because they want their local representatives to hear their anger, feel their pain, and be held publicly accountable for what this GOP administration is doing. Several petitions have circulated urging these lawmakers back into the public eye, to stop hiding behind a screen. One, asking Senator Thom Tillis to hold a Charlotte town hall, has garnered more than a thousand verified signatures at press time. And several similar petitions are popping up on Change.org, a site that allows anyone to create and post a petition and circulate it online to acquire a requisite number of signatures. In a Tuesday morning X post, former vice presidential candidate Governor Tim Walz offered to host in-person town halls in lieu of Republican lawmakers who are now refusing to.If your Republican representative wont meet with you because their agenda is so unpopular, maybe a Democrat will, Governor Walz wrote. Hell, maybe I will. If your congressman refuses to meet, Ill come host an event in their district to help local Democrats beat em.