SAN LUIS OBISPO — The Trump administration’s controversial deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia has sent the United States hurtling into a constitutional crisis, U.S. Sen. Adam B. Schiff told hundreds of Californians at his first Senate town hall Tuesday.
Inside a brightly lit gymnasium at a San Luis Obispo community college, Schiff said that the Trump administration had already ignored a U.S. Supreme Court order to “facilitate” the Maryland man’s release from an El Salvador prison after he was mistakenly deported.
The looming question, Schiff said, is how the country will respond if the Trump administration defies another Supreme Court order temporarily barring deportations under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.
“The reason why this is a constitutional crisis,” Schiff, a Democrat, said, “is there’s no clear answer to that question.”
As the audience roared approval and drummed their feet on the gymnasium’s bleachers, Schiff told voters to “continue to take to the streets to make our views known, to make our voices heard, to tell those in power that we are watching what they’re doing.”
Co-hosted with Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-Santa Barbara), Schiff’s town hall was his first since being sworn into the Senate.
The event drew nearly 2,000 RSVPs, Schiff’s office said. Hundreds of mostly white, older constituents spilled over from Cuesta College’s performing arts center to an overflow room in the campus gymnasium.
Normally sleepy affairs, town halls hosted by Democrats this year have become venting sessions for liberal constituents fed up with President Trump, billionaire Elon Musk and what they see as a lack of action from their elected officials.
Democrats have tried to channel their constituents’ anger into action while still managing expectations, explaining that, with Republicans controlling the U.S. House of Representatives, the Senate and the White House, there’s only so much they can do.
When one voter asked Schiff and Carbajal about the looming threat of cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, Schiff walked the crowd through the process known as reconciliation, which enables some spending bills to pass the Republican-controlled Senate on a simple majority vote.
Republicans in Congress have instructed the committee that oversees Medicaid to cut $880 billion.
Although Trump has said he doesn’t support cuts to Medicaid, the program that provides healthcare for the poor, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has said that reductions of that magnitude would be possible only through slashing eligibility or coverage.
“There are limits to what we can do,” Schiff said of Democratic lawmakers. “We can delay the reckoning by using all the tools we have, but we cannot put it off indefinitely.”
The audience was far calmer than at the most raucous town halls held during the first weeks of the Trump administration, where rage boiled over into shouting matches and heckling as Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency slashed through federal agencies and departments.
Schiff’s staff chose questions submitted by audience members, which touched on a wide range of topics, including environmental protection, government corruption, the war in Gaza, and whether Congress can undo the confirmations of Cabinet appointees such as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Several other California lawmakers, including Inland Empire Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Redlands), Orange County Rep. Derek Tran (D-Orange) and San Fernando Valley Rep. Luz Rivas (D-North Hollywood), had town halls scheduled this week, too, during a two-week break from Congress over the Easter and Passover holidays.
Lawmakers have tried to use the events to pressure Republican members in swing districts to vote with the Democrats to block some Trump administration agenda items — or, failing that, to increase public pressure so vulnerable lawmakers lose their seats in the 2026 midterm elections.
“We’re trying to flip the three or four vulnerable Republicans to come to our side,” said Carbajal, whose congressional district stretches through the counties of Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo.
Amy Vernetti, 57, who lives in Cayucos and recruits executives for technology startups, came to the town hall hoping to hear a message of hope and unity that would assuage her “anger and confusion” over what she described as corruption by the Trump administration.
“If this year has shown us anything, it’s that this system may not be capable of withstanding criminals,” Vernetti said.
There were massive protests after Trump’s first inauguration, but this time, “it’s taking a while to get the momentum going,” said Alexandra Kohler of San Luis Obispo.
Kohler, who brought her 18-year-old daughter Emily to the town hall, said she hoped that politicians like Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who broke records with a 36,000-person rally in Los Angeles this month, will help breathe life and fight into the Democratic Party.
Emily Kohler, a high school senior and one of the few young people in the audience, said she was worried that so far, resistance to the Trump administration has mostly been led by older people.
People her age, she said, “mostly feel more helpless, more resigned.”
This story originally appeared on LA Times
