U.S. Rep. Andy Harris fielded constituents’ questions Tuesday during a live telephone town hall, most of them pressing the powerful Republican for answers on actions President Donald Trump and his adviser Elon Musk have taken.

Just over a dozen of the thousands of callers Harris said were listening in got a chance to speak with him. Harris opened the floor to callers, but questions were screened by his team.

They asked him: Why does he support Trump and Musk? Is America really going to make Canada the 51st state? Do you support taking action against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for texting military military plans on a commercial chat app? Will you protect Social Security checks? What’s going to happen to Medicaid?

Harris confidently, and for the most part, patiently answered their questions for an hour, deftly moving from one subject to the next.

Here’s generally what he told them: People in his district elected Trump. Musk has fueled significant scientific discoveries. The U.S. is not going to make Canada the 51st state, but we may want to explore mineral rights deals with Greenland. Hegseth didn’t know a journalist was on the chat. No one will touch Social Security. Republicans want to slow the growth of Medicaid.

A man who said his name was Gardner from Havre de Grace, identified himself as a therapist. He’s seen an uptick in mental health issues since Trump took office, he said.

“All I hear is you, kind of, denying what is happening in your community,” the man said.

He said federal workers whose job it is to help people with mental health issues — therapists, nurses, social workers — were potentially going to be fired and leave people, including veterans in need of mental health care, without resources.

“You are causing pain by supporting this,” he said. Gardner demanded that Harris do his job and “protect people who voted for you and the ones who didn’t.”

Harris said it wasn’t his job to protect the entirety of the federal workforce.

“If people were satisfied with the federal government they wouldn’t have elected Donald Trump who promised to come in and increase the efficiency of the federal government,” the congressman said.

Harris said he empathized with people who had lost their jobs. “It’s painful to watch the rightsizing of any organization,” he said, adding that jobs are frequently lost in the private sector.

Harris became flustered when one woman, who said her first name was Allison, questioned his defense of the president and Musk, who is not an elected official.

“What are you doing to protect, not just your constituents that voted for you, but all of your constituents’ data that he has accessed?” she asked.

He eventually muted her because she peppered him with more questions.

Harris said Musk needed the data to weed out waste, fraud and abuse. Having birthdates was key to finding people who have aged out of Social Security by hundreds of years and were still receiving checks. The acting commissioner of the agency has said there are flaws in the data, but that “these individuals are not necessarily receiving benefits.”

A caller, identified as James, called those working for Musk “idiots” because they’ve stripped medical research funding for the National Institutes of Health.

“Congressman Harris, wake up, OK? This is important,” the man said, tension rising in his voice.

Harris said the government is “not in the business of helping Big Pharma” and justified the administration stripping overhead costs.

Democrats and Republicans have held town halls, both by phone and in person with constituents who’ve raised concerns, sometimes angrily, over the Trump administration’s mission to remake the federal government.

Harris, a Trump backer and chair of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, has supported the new administration’s efforts to shrink the nation’s government, cull the federal workforce, and drop the Department of Education. He also supports Trump’s deportation efforts.

Harris’ district includes all of the Eastern Shore, Cecil and Harford Counties, as well as a portion of Baltimore County. Democrats comprise just one-third of the registered voters in his district and Harris won nearly 60% of the vote on his way to winning an eighth term last year.

But since Trump’s second term began, some activist groups on Maryland’s Eastern Shore and Democrats in Harford County have ramped up protests, goading him to engage.

It’s not as if Harris has never held town halls, he’s just not doing them as often and in response to his constituents’ demands. Harris visited with voters at a banquet hall in Cecil County in August 2023, where he shared his concerns over the climbing national debt, according to the Cecil Whig.

His in-person events haven’t always been cordial. A Baltimore Sun headline described one 2018 town hall as “raucous.” Harris told one woman asking why anyone would require an AR-15 automatic rifle that law abiding citizens have the right to bear arms. “It’s not the ‘Bill of Needs,’ it’s the Bill of Rights,” he said.

Fast-forward to Trump’s second term and leaders from the Cambridge and Eastern Shore Indivisible, a Democratic-aligned group, have ramped up efforts to get Harris to face them at an in-person town hall.

They’ve sent him email invites and asked less directly by picketing his campaign and speaking events. They’ve nicknamed him “AWOL Andy” and have put his picture on a giant milk carton, the word “MISSING” above his face. But Harris hasn’t taken them up on their offer.