On the morning of September 23, 2025, Craig Goldman spoke at a Leaders in Government breakfast hosted by the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce at the City Club downtown. He had been in Congress about nine months.

His message to the room, as reported by the Fort Worth Report, was that he wanted to hear more from them. Asked about workforce training, he said:

"You have to tell us how we can help you benefit the local economy, to help supply that workforce."

Then he told the business leaders to lean on his staff harder:

"You're keeping them employed because they need stuff to do every single day. So challenge us."

Outside the building, about two dozen people from the Fort Worth chapter of Indivisible were standing on the street with signs reading "Shame." A handful wore the red cloaks from The Handmaid's Tale.

They were there because they had already tried to challenge him, the ordinary way, and could not get through.

"No response from Craig"

The organizer, Sabrina Ball, told the Fort Worth Report that she and others had repeatedly tried to reach Goldman's office to set up a discussion or a town hall about federal funding cuts, tariffs and immigration. It's impossible to reach the congressman, she said.

"No response from Craig," Ball said. "When I heard that he was speaking at this breakfast, it's like, 'Hey, well, here's the perfect opportunity (because) if he doesn't see us, at least the people that are coming to the breakfast will see us.'"

At the event, Goldman said it was not clear to him what the demonstration was aimed at. As of the paper's deadline, his office had not commented on the protest.

Two dozen people in his own district, in red cloaks, holding "Shame" signs, on the sidewalk outside the room he was speaking in. It was not clear to him what it was aimed at.

What was clear to him

Inside the same room, Goldman was specific and fluent about the constituencies he does hear from.

He talked about the first bill signed into law in Trump's current term by any freshman — his — which repealed federal energy conservation standards for commercial refrigerators and freezers. "My first time in the Oval Office was with a bill signed by the president," he said.

He described the reach of his committee assignment: "Eighty percent of the bills that make it to the House floor go through our committee."

He talked about the trip he had taken to Israel the previous month with other members of Congress, where he asked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the Fort Worth-built F-35. Netanyahu, per Goldman, called it "a floating command center in the sky." The other members of the delegation made fun of him, he said, because he asked every military leader they met about the F-35.

His reason was straightforward and, on its own terms, entirely legitimate: "It's the number one employer in my district, in Congressional District 12. People, not only from Tarrant County but Parker County, go to Lockheed Martin every single day to help build the F-35."

That is what a member of Congress paying attention sounds like. He knows who employs his constituents, he flew across the world and asked a head of state about their product, and he took the ribbing for it.

He has simply never brought that attention to a room where anyone can ask him a question back.

A year with no town hall

Goldman did not hold a public town hall in his first year in Congress. Constituents on r/FortWorth were asking each other in early 2025 whether their representative had held one at all.

The chamber breakfast was not a town hall. It was a ticketed event for the business community, and the questions came from that room. There is nothing wrong with a member speaking to the chamber. The problem is when that is the only forum, because the sorting is automatic: the people who can afford a seat at the City Club get "so challenge us," and the people on the sidewalk get "it was not clear to him."

The gap shows up in his record. He sits on Energy and Commerce, and his signature legislative work has been repealing energy efficiency rules — including a bill now in the Senate that would cancel up to $14,000 in home appliance rebates for low- and moderate-income households. Business groups asked for those repeals. The households on the other side of them did not get a hearing, and there was no room where they could have asked for one.

The money runs the same direction. Three outside groups spent more than $1.4 million to elect him in 2024 — led by Defend American Jobs, the cryptocurrency industry's super PAC, at $725,091, and Conservatives for American Excellence, funded by billionaires Ken Griffin and Paul Singer, at $601,856. TrackAIPAC's tally of FEC filings, as of July 5, 2026, puts pro-Israel PAC money to Goldman at $171,025. Only about 1% of his fundraising came from small grassroots donors, ranking him 284th of 440 House members on that measure.

The ask is not complicated

Goldman is running for a second term in November. He is a fourth-generation Fort Worth native who served twelve years in the Texas House before this. Nobody is asking him to stop meeting with the chamber, or to stop advocating for Lockheed Martin, or to answer a question he doesn't have the intelligence briefing for.

The ask is one advertised public meeting, in the district, where anyone from Tarrant or Parker County can walk in and say what's on their mind — the same invitation he extended to the City Club, extended to everybody.

He told the business community to challenge him. Some of his constituents took him up on it before he ever said it, and are still waiting for a call back.

We deserve better.

Source

Bob Francis and Cecilia Lenzen, "Goldman asks for input while protesters call for town hall," Fort Worth Report, September 23, 2025. Independent expenditure figures from the Federal Election Commission; pro-Israel PAC total from TrackAIPAC (via fec.gov, July 5, 2026). Photo: Maria Crane / Fort Worth Report / CatchLight Local / Report for America.