Jane Hamilton -- Calling Bryan Steil. What 285 days taught me about Trump era | Opinion

Calling Bryan Steil. What 285 days taught me about Trump era | Opinion

In this essay, author Jane Hamilton takes us through 285 days of calling Congressman Bryan Steil in the hopes of sharing her perspective, and understanding his, during the second Trump administration.

Jane Hamilton

Special to Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Jan. 20, 2026, 5:03 a.m. CT

· A constituent describes her experience of regularly calling and writing to her representative, Congressman Bryan Steil.

· The author attended one of Steil's in-person town halls and observed his interactions with constituents.

· Despite feeling dismissed, the author continued her attempts to engage with the Congressman on various policy issues.

· The writer ultimately decided to stop contacting her representative after feeling her efforts were futile.

Right after the inauguration of President Donald Trump last January, I began calling my representative, Congressman Bryan Steil. I’d never called an elected official before, and rarely written them letters, but in this new era, even if it was a futile exercise, I decided to hold out hope that calling Monday through Friday, with occasional weekend rants, was possibly a meaningful action. Conveniently, every day there was a new outrage from the current administration, a new issue of grave concern. 

I sometimes used the script of Five Calls, the site that provides advocacy data including information about pending legislation, with legislators’ federal and state phone numbers. If I’d already spoken on previous days about the issues I thought most pressing, I’d say to the aide, “Good morning. I’d like to remind Congressman that he has been supporting a would-be autocrat for X number of days.”

The aides in Steil’s office nearly always answered. I imagined that being on the D.C. office front lines had become more taxing following Trump’s election, the job requiring patience and forbearance. The men and women in Steil’s office were generally polite, although once a surly young man, as I thought of him, hung up on me. Note to self: do not ask the aides what they themselves think of matters such as deportation. Their task is to enter the callers’ opinions into a database in order to tabulate constituent sentiment.

I did know that the effort of writing my own scripts was wasted, that my sentences were ultimately nothing more than one pixilated checkmark. Still, the calls had become a ritual, and also like a bodily function, something not to skip in the course of 24 hours. I did always speak in a voice that may have sounded falsely chipper because, well, I was falsely chipper.

 

Rep. Bryan Steil's office was responsive, if often a bit oily

The response of Steil’s team to my concerns, the emails that appeared not long after my calls, was impressive.  His is a well-oiled machine, if sometimes a little unctuous. For instance, when I objected to the razing of the East Wing, and the pay-to-play donations, Steil, or his aide who’s channeling him, was kind enough to give me a history lesson. 

He wrote: "The White House is one of the most important symbols of American democracy and leadership. Maintaining and updating its structure is essential to preserving its historical significance while ensuring it meets modern standards…You may be interested to learn that, since 1948, every president has made renovations to the White House, including a $376 million renovation project during the Obama administration. "

I wrote back to say that, as he might be interested to learn, the Obama project was a much needed infrastructure upgrade that took place over four years with Congressional approval. The other repairs that improved their living quarters were funded by the Obamas themselves, and yes, there were some donations for the basketball court, and for the upkeep of the kitchen garden, but the Obamas have not to date been credibly criticized for a pay-to-play scheme.

By and by, I began to feel as if I had an epistolary relationship with Steil. And, as one does with a pen pal, I began to think about his life, about the no doubt untenable pressures of the job, about his careening back and forth between Janesville and D.C., about tough decisions he must make which might involve moral crises. Maybe because I’m a novelist, and my job involves making imaginative leaps I felt, even if I was only talking to his aides, as if he and I were coming to know each other. Yes, it sounds a little crazy, but in fact he had become part of my everyday life.

Steil had courage to hold in-person town hall in Elkhorn

In August, I went to his townhall in Elkhorn. It was courageous of him to show up, doing what only a handful of his conference members had the starch to do, bucking their leadership’s admonition to conduct townhalls only by phone. The Congressman came bounding up on the stage of the high school auditorium. Bright, trim, handsome. In business casual — this man who some of my neighbors refer to as “an empty suit.” 

He had to have known that he would most likely be facing a crowd, 200 strong, of angry constituents. I admired the fact that the questions weren’t screened, the names of speakers pulled from a hat. Every chosen person was polite, articulate, knowledgeable, each person first expressing gratitude for Steil’s willingness to appear in the flesh. They asked pointed questions about the salient issues, including immigration, tariffs, the rule of law, the disregard of science, the obliteration of public service. 

 

Steil glided through his responses, often noting that disagreement is healthy, and that both sides present would have to respectfully disagree. In several of his answers, he blamed former President Biden for the problem at hand. The audience went berserk with disgust, shouting and booing. The small minority in the audience, (as I perceived it) his supporters, yelled back. 

The Congressman held all of us together with admirable fortitude, reminding us to listen to each other. One of the women who was appointed to speak said that she worked as a mediator. She advised him to never again blame Joe Biden for the ills that the President and Congress have brought down upon the American people.  The audience went berserk, that time with approval.

In Steil’s comments about the event in the following days he said there were a small group of protesters, that the hecklers, as he called us, were a minority. We “hecklers” clearly were the bulk of the audience, and all but one of the question-askers was critical of the Administration. I wondered, did he mean that because in his view we were a minority there was no reason to actively consider our opinions?

Despite dismissal as mere 'heckler,' I continued to call and write

Whatever his meaning, I continued to call and to write. His newsletters and emails often almost said what might be construed as the words of someone who is trying, with maybe all of his powers, to deliver substantive aid to his constituents. Like some of Steil’s remarks at his town halls, my above sentence is also something of a triple salchow.

He, after all, got President Trump to deliver FEMA dollars after summer flooding in Milwaukee. He purports to support Veterans. Still, a friend who works at the VA, who does not want me to be specific about his job or location for fear of retribution, reports that the VA services have been severely degraded and that morale has never been worse.

Steil acknowledges that climate change is real and yet he has voted to bring back coal, voted to roll back oil and gas regulations, and nowhere that I can find in his statements does he support renewable energy. 

In my "friendship" with Steil, I’ve invited him to visit our local Chevy dealership, to talk with the EV salesforce.  Preposterous, I know, for a crone to expect a response to my invite.  But shouldn’t he see firsthand how DOGE and the 'Big Beautiful Bill" have impacted our town’s businesses? 

I’ve invited him to our coffee shop, to hear at ground level how the tariffs as well as climate change have made the price of beans skyrocket. Recently, I asked his aide what it took for an ordinary person to get a meeting with the Congressman. 

I told her I’d come to Washington. I’d meet him anywhere in his district. I did mention that I was writing an essay about him. I may have explained that I wasn’t a journalist, that I wrote fiction. “Oh,” she then said, and it sounded as if she were putting her hand on a receiver, an awkward muffling. When she returned she said she’d get back to me, which, not surprisingly, has not happened.

This is what I'd like to ask my Congressman in-person

What do I want from a conversation with Congressman Steil?  It’s simple, even if naïve: I want to hear what he thinks. I want to talk, human being to human being. I wish this even as I understand that for him it is impossible to speak frankly to any of his constituents. In his communications he is obviously trying to thread the needle between his MAGA base and the likes of me. 

In a meeting, Congressman Steil, I’d like to ask you, a lawyer by training, what the rule of law means to you?  You recently said in a phone town hall that no one is above the law. How, voting as you do, and remaining in silence, can you make that statement with a clear conscience or even a straight face? 

There is no mention on your Facebook page or your Website, as of Jan. 13, of either Venezuela or Minnesota, and at the least, how the rule of law figures in those ongoing unbearably tragic situations. I want to ask you if you have seen the videos of Renee Good’s shooting, Congressman? Have you seen innocent, peaceful people, many of whom are citizens, getting zip-tied and hauled away, including children? Or, like Speaker Johnson, do you not watch or read clips that might offend your worldview?

I want to ask, respectfully, Congressman, how you, as a Catholic, square the recent statement by the American Bishops condemning the cruelty, the inhumanity of Trump’s mass deportations. Does your religion, in your view, support your gung-ho deportation stance, or do you have an ironclad capacity to compartmentalize? Are you aware that  people are being disappeared?

I want to ask what line Trump must cross for you to stand up to him. (Are there any further lines, I shudder to ask?)  Or, are you merely waiting for your more courageous colleagues to come forward?

I want to know if you love your job and your supposed power so much that you can’t tolerate the thought of being primaried. Or, understandably, are you worried that you and your fiancée will face death threats from your MAGA constituents if you speak out?

There is the possibility, I know, that despite all that this administration has destroyed, you feel you are doing real good in the world by promoting Trump’s policies. Please tell me who, in your estimation, has profited from the President’s initiatives?

On day 285, I decided to stop calling Congressman Steil

On day 285 of the current administration I decided to stop calling you. I told your aide (the surly young man)  that I was no longer going to call, and that yes, I knew the staffers would miss me, but that, sad to say, I’d pretty much given up on the Congressman. So, goodbye!

When Steil decides that it’s the right time to jump ship, as surely he will have to do, I’d like him to know that my invitation to the coffee shop still holds. Would he have interest in learning how a novelist considers his inner life? Nah, not a chance, but, even without the calls, I still stand in wonder at what, if anything beyond his own self-interest, goes on in the mind of a person who appears to be an empty suit. 

Jane Hamilton's most recent novel is "The Phoebe Variations."