COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Callers are getting busy signals and voicemail inboxes are full at many U.S. Senate offices as people try to reach out and voice their opinions on President Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks, executive orders and moves to dismantle various federal programs.
A memo distributed to Senate staff on Tuesday said there was a higher number of calls than usual and that some callers were having trouble getting through.
“The Senate is experiencing an unusually high volume of inbound calls. External callers may receive a temporary busy signal when phoning a Senate office,” according to the memo obtained by The Associated Press.
The influx of phone calls — which some in the Senate say are at unprecedented volumes — come as Trump and ally Elon Musk are working to shrink the federal government during the president’s first weeks in office. They are shuttering agencies, temporarily freezing funding and pushing workers to resign, all while staffers with Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency infiltrate departments in a stated effort to root out fraud and abuse.
Some progressive nonprofit groups, including Indivisible, are among those urging disgruntled people to reach out to their lawmakers by phone and in person and are calling on Democratic lawmakers to “shut down the Senate.”
One popular post making the rounds on social media urged opponents of those actions to call their lawmakers six times a day, every day — two calls each to their two senators and two to their House member. “You should NOT be bothering with online petitions or emailing,” it said. The post urged use of a smartphone app that would make the task of making multiple calls per day easier.
Caitlin Christman, an institutional support contractor in Wisconsin furloughed last week from the U.S. Agency for International Development, said it took her four attempts over five days to successfully leave a message for her senator, Republican Ron Johnson, after dealing with an overloaded voicemail box, grainy recorded greetings and a busy signal.
“I wanted to express my concern with dismantling USAID without any sort of review, and to relay my experience with its work, which I believe has been in our country’s best interest,” she said, noting that she expects to be fired later this week.
Meryl Neiman of Ohio Progressive Action Leaders sought to draw attention to the fact that they were having trouble reaching both her state’s senators — Republicans Bernie Moreno and Jon Husted — by phone or in person at their field offices before Wednesday’s nationwide protests against Trump and Project 2025, a hard-right playbook for American government and society.
Both senators are close with Trump’s vice president, JD Vance, and were with him as recently as Monday, during a tour of the 2023 derailment site in East Palestine.
Those frustrated by Trump’s actions shared similar stories with the AP of being unable to reach their lawmakers. They seemed to be experiencing particular barriers to connecting with the Senate offices of Trump’s fellow Republicans, who may be more inundated than Democrats because Republicans hold the chamber’s majority and are more likely to have the president’s ear.
Lawmakers were frustrated, too, as they seek to maintain operations amid the barrage. Senate voicemail boxes only hold about 1,000 messages before becoming full and needing to be catalogued and emptied.
Moreno’s spokesperson, Reagan McCarthy, said helping Ohioans in need is his top priority.
“While the Senate has been dealing with an exceptionally high volume of calls, our office is committed to responding to each and every Ohioan in need of assistance and working through all requests as quickly as possible,” she said in a statement.
