{"id":144962,"date":"2025-03-28T17:02:44","date_gmt":"2025-03-28T17:02:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/?p=144962"},"modified":"2025-03-28T17:02:47","modified_gmt":"2025-03-28T17:02:47","slug":"hundreds-show-up-for-self-described-empty-chair-town-hall-for-sen-thom-tillis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/?p=144962","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Hundreds show up for self-described &#8217;empty chair&#8217; town hall for Sen. Thom Tillis&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"\"><a href=\"https:\/\/abc11.com\/post\/hundreds-show-described-empty-chair-town-hall-sen-thom-tillis\/16065856\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">ABC11<\/a>: &#8220;Hundreds of people packed Raleigh Brewing Company on Friday night, with more sitting outside listening over speakers, for a self-described &#8220;empty chair&#8221; town hall for Sen. Thom Tillis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">&#8220;Listen to your constituents and do what is right for the working people of North Carolina,&#8221; said Anna Ruderman, a co-founder of Bull City Indivisible, one of the groups that organized the event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Organizers said they extended several invitations to Tillis regarding the event, asking him to attend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Attendees voiced frustration with funding and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/US\/agencies-federal-workers-fired\/story?id=118901289\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">job cuts<\/a>\u00a0at the federal level, which has affected departments including the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/US\/irs-layoffs-underway-country-millions-prepare-file-taxes\/story?id=119015161\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">IRS<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/abc11.com\/post\/va-cuts-nc-durham-fayetteville-veterans-affairs-employees-terminated-trump-elon-musk-us-reps-respond\/15957557\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs<\/a>\u00a0to the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/abc11.com\/post\/department-education-layoffs\/16008462\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Department of Education<\/a>, criticizing Tillis for supporting the efforts of President Donald Trump&#8217;s administration and the work of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the government agent working to cut government waste, fraud, and abuse.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ABC11: &#8220;Hundreds of people packed Raleigh Brewing Company on Friday night, with more sitting outside listening over speakers, for a self-described &#8220;empty chair&#8221; town hall for Sen. Thom Tillis. &#8220;Listen to your constituents and do what is right for the working people of North Carolina,&#8221; said Anna Ruderman, a co-founder of Bull City Indivisible, one&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-144962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newsstory"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=144962"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144962\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":144963,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144962\/revisions\/144963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=144962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=144962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=144962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}