Virginia Foxx Town Halls Checks & Balances North Carolina

Virginia Foxx Wants Reporters Banned From the Hallway Off the House Floor. She Has Not Held an In-Person Town Hall Since 2010.

The chair of the House Rules Committee says there was 'a lot of support' for throwing the press out of the Speaker's Lobby, where reporters have traditionally caught members between votes. When her own constituents organized a town hall and invited her, she didn't come.

MAGA Report Cards · Sep 18, 2026

There is a hallway just off the House floor called the Speaker's Lobby. It is lined with portraits of past Speakers, and it has traditionally been a place where a reporter can stand and ask a member of Congress a question while votes are happening — not at a scheduled press conference, not through a spokesman, but face to face, in the few minutes when members cannot easily walk away.

Virginia Foxx wants the reporters out of it.

On Wednesday, September 16, in an interview with 535 Media, journalist Paul Kane asked Foxx whether there were ideas she had heard on Member's Day that she had shared with Speaker Mike Johnson. She offered this one:

You might not like this one, but had a lot of support, was to not allow the press in the Speaker's Lobby. People are very irritated about the press being right off the floor, so there was a lot of sentiment on behalf of that.

Two things in that answer deserve attention. The first is that she is not describing her own idea alone — she says it "had a lot of support" and that there was "a lot of sentiment" for it among her colleagues. The second is the reason given: members are "irritated."

Not that reporters are in the way. Not that anything has gone wrong there. Irritated.

Who is saying it matters

Foxx is not a backbencher floating something at a microphone. She chairs the House Rules Committee — the panel that decides what reaches the floor and which amendments members are even allowed to offer. And asked what she had passed along to the Speaker, this is the idea she named.

She is also, by her own record, hard to ask a question anywhere else.

Foxx last met constituents at an in-person town hall in Statesville in 2010, and has not held even a telephone town hall since June 2015. Asked about that on Fox News in March 2025, she explained why: "It's just an opportunity for people to yell at their member of Congress."

People in her district responded by organizing a town hall in Boone and inviting her to it. She didn't come. The night ended with constituents speaking to a life-sized cutout of her.

So the shape of the thing is this. Sixteen years without a town hall. Eleven years without even a phone call. And now a proposal to clear reporters out of a hallway where somebody might still ask her something on the record.

What the Speaker's Lobby is for

The reason the Speaker's Lobby matters is that it is where accountability happens by accident.

A member who has just cast a vote walks out of the chamber, and a reporter is standing there. There is no press secretary to route the question through, no notice, no opportunity to decide in advance whether this is a friendly outlet. That is exactly why it produces answers that scheduled events do not. It is also, presumably, why it is irritating.

The hallway was closed to everyone but lawmakers and staff during the COVID-19 pandemic and reopened in 2021. It is also where Ashli Babbitt, one of the January 6 rioters, was fatally shot while trying to interrupt Congress as it certified the 2020 election.

The bigger squeeze

Foxx's idea did not arrive in a vacuum.

The Trump administration has been steadily narrowing press access at the Pentagon — new credentialing rules, reporters barred from the press office, escorts required throughout the building. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has argued the restrictions are needed to stop leaks of classified information. In August, members introduced the Protecting Pentagon Press Access Act to reverse them.

A ban throwing reporters out of the Speaker's Lobby would apply the same logic to the legislative branch, where the "national security" justification is not even available. Nobody has suggested reporters standing in a hallway are leaking classified material. The stated reason is annoyance.

This is also not the first time Republicans on this site have dealt with a question by removing the person asking it:

Pete Ricketts was asked about Mitch McConnell's weeks-long absence from the Senate, said "we are praying for him," and motioned to Capitol Police to block the reporter in a public hallway.
Organizers of two of Michael Whatley's public campaign events have called police on reporters trying to cover them, and his campaign declined to address it.
Nick Langworthy's office repeatedly failed to tell his own local community radio station that he was holding press events in their county — after three years without an in-person town hall.

Foxx's version is more consequential than any of those, because it would not be one member dodging one reporter. It would apply to everyone, and it comes from the member who chairs the committee that decides what reaches the House floor.

What the record shows

Virginia Foxx, who chairs the House Rules Committee, told an interviewer on September 16 that there was "a lot of support" for banning reporters from the Speaker's Lobby, the hallway off the House floor where members are questioned between votes. The reason she gave was that colleagues are "irritated" by the press being there. Foxx has not held an in-person town hall since 2010 or a telephone town hall since June 2015, and has said town halls are "just an opportunity for people to yell at their member of Congress." When constituents in Boone organized a town hall in March 2025 and invited her, she did not attend.