Wyoming Republican Representative Harriet Hageman has once again found herself facing an angry crowd while attempting to defend a Trump administration policy.
The congresswoman tried to justify the government’s planned repeal of the Environmental Protection Agency’s landmark “endangerment finding” to a crowd of voters at a town hall event in the rural town of Pinedale, Wyoming.
The Endangerment Finding is a determination by the EPA that greenhouse gases in the atmosphere pose a threat to public health and welfare, requiring action to reduce emissions. It is based on extensive scientific evidence linking such gases to climate change.
“The endangerment finding is absolutely based upon false science,” Hageman claimed.
Her comments were met with a chorus of boos and heckles, with locals shouting, “No!” and others chanting, “Lie, lie!” as she attempted to press on.
“CO2 is not a pollutant,” Hageman shouted over the crowd. “As far as the validity and the science that was the foundation for that, they cooked the books.”
“It was well attended with a spirited crowd and I welcome the opportunity to have meaningful discussion,” Hageman wrote in a statement posted to Facebook about the Pinedale town hall meeting. “As your representative, I am here to listen, answer the tough questions, and fight for Wyoming’s values in Washington.”
Video of the incident has yet to surface online. However, this is not Hageman’s first dressing down from a crowd. In videos posted to social media in March, Hageman can be seen trying to tell a crowd at a town hall in Laramie, Wyoming, that “DOGE is not dismantling Social Security.” The boos received in that video are so passionate that she struggles to be heard.
Wyoming overwhelmingly voted in favor of Donald Trump in the 2024 election, with the Republican candidate winning 72.3 percent of the vote. However, according to the local publication WyoFile, Sublette County—where the most recent town hall took place—has been struggling with poor air quality thanks to the region’s pioneering use of hydraulic fracturing and directional drilling in its natural gas fields.
According to University of Wyoming polling, 86 percent of Wyomingites now believe that climate change is real and want action taken—something the Trump administration’s hardline approach to repealing emission standards and expanding fossil fuel production directly clashes with.
Hageman’s failure to read the room in her latest town hall suggests she and other Republicans may continue to have a hard time selling the administration’s policies to their constituents, whose interests they are supposed to represent.
