Fort Madison, Iowa
CNN
 — 

A room full of frustrated Iowans urged Sen. Chuck Grassley to stand up to President Donald Trump and push back against the executive branch during a Tuesday town hall.

In a tiny southeast Iowa city council chambers that couldn’t fit everyone who turned out, Grassley mostly listened to complaints about Trump and concerns about the sweeping overhaul of the federal government taking place since he returned to office.

“We would like to know what you, as the people, the Congress, who are supposed to rein in this dictator, what are you going to do about it?” one man asked Grassley. “These people have been sentenced to life imprisonment in a foreign country with no due process. Our government cannot do anything?”

The answers Grassley did offer hardly seemed to assuage the angst inside the room.

One person asked the senator point blank: “Are you proud of Trump?”

“There’s no president I’ve agreed with 100% of the time,” he replied. The tight and measured response drew groans from the crowd, where most of the seats were occupied.

Grassley, the chair of the powerful judiciary committee, appeared to side with Trump in the ongoing legal saga over Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man mistakenly deported to El Salvador. After someone else yelled out, “Are you going to bring that guy back from El Salvador?” Grassley said the case was outside the bounds of Congress.

When the same person shouted back, “The Supreme Court said to bring him back,” Grassley echoed the White House’s argument that the US couldn’t force El Salvador to return him.

“The president of that country is not subject to our Supreme Court,” Grassley said.

Asked about Trump’s tariffs, Grassley acknowledged the potential for pain to Iowa farmers, especially grain producers. He touted his bill that would limit tariff powers of presidents going forward.

“When you put something negative, like a tariff, on some country, they seem to retaliate against agriculture,” he said.

The senator promised to stand in the way of cuts to Social Security, but signaled support for work requirements on able-bodied people who receive federal food assistance under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. He also defended the Republican push to extend the Trump-era tax cuts, though he expressed openness to raising the income tax rate for top earners.

Grassley dismissed concerns about the SAVE Act, a bill to crackdown on voter registration that recently passed the House, noting that the legislation had little chance of making it through the Senate, where Republicans don’t have the 60 votes needed to end debate.

Despite the palpable frustration in the room, many attendees also expressed gratitude he was holding the forum while other Iowa Republicans have avoided similar town halls. When some members of the crowd shouted down Grassley or interrupted him speaking, several jumped to defend him, saying, “Let him finish.”

Grassley famously visits all 99 counties in Iowa each year. He started the meeting by acknowledging the increased interest this year in his activity and said his office has received more emails this year than it did in all of 2024. He worked off a list of topics he wanted to first cover, including the Farm Bill and rural health care, telling the audience that he was criticized during a previous town hall for letting questions about Trump dominate the discussion.

The more structured approach, however, didn’t alter the tenor of the event. All but one question asked was critical of the administration.

One person who attended Tuesday to thank Grassley began his remarks by saying, “I’m a rarity here: I’m a happy Republican.”