WASHINGTON — House Republican leaders on Tuesday told rank-and-file lawmakers not to hold public meetings to avoid getting yelled at by their constituents.

Republicans have been stung by voters at town halls complaining about billionaire Elon Musk’s attacks on federal agencies and Republican proposals to cut Medicaid benefits.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) claimed the angry constituents at Republican town halls over the weekend and during a recess last month are not actually constituents, but rather paid provocateurs.

“Democrat activists who don’t live in the district very often will show up for these town hall events, and they’ll go in an hour early and fill all the seats, and so the constituents and the people from the community that are actually represented don’t even get the seat,” Johnson said at a press conference Tuesday.

“There are people who do this as a profession. They’re professional protesters,” Johnson said. “So why would we give them a forum to do that right now?

The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that in a party meeting before the press conference, National Republican Congressional Committee Chair Richard Hudson (R-N.C.) had told Republican lawmakers that none of them should be doing town halls.

Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.), who faced hecklers at a town hall in January, told HuffPost last week that senior lawmakers had advised him not to hold such events but that there hadn’t been a formal directive from party leadership.

It’s unlikely that anybody protests at town hall events as an actual profession, but it’s true that liberal groups like Indivisible and MoveOn can organize people to attend town hall meetings. Indivisible co-director Ezra Levin told HuffPost that if Republicans don’t hold town halls, local Indivisible chapters will organize their own “empty chair” events in lawmakers’ honor.

Levin and Republicans themselves agreed the spectacle of town hall protests recalls the anti-Trump backlash that occurred in 2017, the first year of Trump’s first term, which preceded a Democratic takeover of the House in the following year’s midterm elections.

Johnson said Republicans should still meet with constituents, just not in person.

“We’ve been encouraging our members to communicate directly with their constituents,” Johnson said. “There’s lots of different ways and forums to do it. If you can do it in telephone town halls, you can have small subgroups of people in different industries and segments of the community. We find that to be very, very productive and more productive than if you just go to an open forum right now.”

Responding to the GOP directive online, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) called it a shame.

“If your Republican representative won’t meet with you because their agenda is so unpopular, maybe a Democrat will. Hell, maybe I will,” Walz wrote. “If your congressman refuses to meet, I’ll come host an event in their district to help local Democrats beat ’em.”