From WXXI news.

This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Well, our connection this hour was made last week when the new Trump administration tried to halt payments for federal grants and programs.

And chaos erupted almost immediately.

Here's how NPR reported it.

Quote, the Office of Management and Budget OMB has rescinded its call for a pause on payments for federal grants and other programs.

But the administration said that only the original memo calling for the freeze had been rescinded, not its effort to review federal spending.

The original memo sparked widespread confusion on Tuesday of last week, as recipients of federal assistance scrambled to make sense of what the order might mean for everything from Medicaid payments to funding for schools, hospitals and shelters.

As questions mounted, the white House tried to clarify which programs would not be affected, later specifying that the halt would not impact Medicaid and Snap.

The supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, end quote.

And that's how you know that while this new administration is moving quickly and doing a lot in a short amount of time, there's not exactly evidence that there is a grand plan in place.

This move sparked not only outrage among progressives, but swift rebukes from some Republicans who help administer some of these programs.

And so this hour, we want to discuss what states are doing or not doing in response to some of the administration's actions.

So far, President Trump has done some things that are certainly within his authority.

Tariffs and then not tariffs.

Pardons for January 6th rioters.

He's also announced plans for things that are outside his authority birthright citizenship, taking over Gaza and kicking out Palestinian residents, sending American citizens to foreign prisons.

The question becomes if he continues to try to go outside his authority.

Will the American government let him?

And what are the results?

Will the courts let him?

Well, the states.

My guest is our are both members of the New York State Assembly, one a Republican, one a Democrat.

They're going to talk about what they are seeing and how they are maybe contextualizing some of what the federal actions are so far.

Let me welcome them now.

Josh Jensen is a member of the New York State Assembly from district number 134.

Josh, welcome back to the program.

Thanks for having me.

And from district number 135, Assembly Member Jen Lunsford.

Thank you for being here as well.

Always happy to be here.

Happy birthday.

Member of the Assembly Jen lines for it is my actual birthday.

Cannot believe you're spending it on connection.

So here we are.

No better way, no better way.

so let me just start by asking both of you for some general thoughts.

And I want to say as well, that I was at the recent Chamber of Commerce breakfast where there was, a conversation about some of these issues.

And, you know, Josh, I'll let you speak at length.

but Assembly Member Jensen, you talked about Medicaid.

I'm sure we'll talk a lot about that this hour.

You also talked about, you know, maybe not overreacting and just kind of taking a breath and waiting to see there's a lot of hype.

There's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of heat going on.

How do you see what's going on right now?

Well, I think certainly we're what, two weeks, two plus weeks into the new administration and, you know, everything that's that's happened in some way, shape or form has been the fulfillment of a campaign promise by by President Trump.

And his administration decides the guy's a thing.

I don't think he's saying the guy's a thing, but I'm going to discard that one because I don't I don't really know how serious I'm taking that.

you can't really turn it into Club Med.

yeah, Gaza edition, but, he's fulfilling the campaign promises that he said.

Now, I think one of the things that that we've seen from President Trump's rhetoric is that he goes big and that is what has happened in the first 14 plus days of the administration.

I think it's it's a it's a version of shock in order to say, listen, we're serious about cutting wasteful spending.

We're serious about ensuring that we're rooting out where we perceive corruption.

We're serious about fulfilling what we told the American people we're going to do.

My hope is that as more and more cabinet, officials, some cabinet officials get confirmed, Congress figures out how they're going to go about doing their business, that we see, things start to, to level, start to equalize, and we can have real, honest conversations about these topics, about appropriate use of federal dollars, about the money that we're sending overseas, about our immigration policies and I think the president was very clear during the campaign he wanted to see these things happen, and that's what they're doing.

Okay.

Assembly Member Lunsford, there are monkeys with sledgehammers and none of them are talking to each other, is what I think is happening.

Last time the administration had grown ups that worked for them.

People who had been in these career positions, for the most part, they knew how things worked.

And I think in that capacity they were able to kind of slow his roll a little bit.

Now we're seeing people sometimes from wholly outside of government or from the legislature, who don't necessarily have a lot of experience in the execution of some of these programs.

people who are sycophants who are just saying, yes, sir, whatever you want.

And I think also people who have their own agendas that I don't know, that Trump even necessarily cares about, but they are saying, here's what you do next.

Here's what you do next.

But it's clear to me that one hand is not talking to the other.

And the freeze is the most, stark example of that.

There was a little footnote in that first memo that said that this doesn't apply to programs that provide individual benefits, and they intended that to mean Medicaid.

But Medicaid isn't issued as a direct payment from the federal government.

It's a block grant to states.

So it's in the pots.

They don't even know what they're saying.

And as much as courts now twice have halted that freeze, we're hearing in New York that we aren't having access to funding, that we are expected to have funding that's already been allocated, that cannot be unilaterally rescinded by the president because he does not have the power of the purse because of things like the word climate.

This is a great example.

We have a program in New York that, provides funding for farmers to do work around soil health.

It's an incredibly popular, very effective program.

Farmers love it.

I have to imagine the vast majority of people who utilize this program probably voted for Donald Trump, but it's called the Soil Health and Climate Resiliency Program.

So we got halted because of the word climate, whereas if it was called the Screaming Eagle, Star Spangled Banner or Soil program, it would be fine.

And this is where we are right now.

And I will tell you, my level of frustration is high.

I sense that.

Okay.

so let me ask a separate question to Assembly Member Jensen.

and I want to say I always enjoy talking about, philosophies of governing.

And, and Josh has talked a lot about this and been generous with your time to do that on the program.

In the past, I was listening to a conversation this morning with Yuval Levin, who is a conservative with the American Enterprise Institute, and he wrote a book about the Constitution recently.

And his his criticism of Republicans right now is that he keeps hearing Republicans in Congress say things like, well, it's our job to give the president the cabinet that he wants.

So we're going to vote for Gabbard.

We're going to vote for RFK.

We're going to pass these people through, even if we've got objections, because the president should get the cabinet that he wants.

And Yuval Levin is saying we have a separation of powers for a reason here.

And it is not just the job of Congress to block and tackle.

If the president is in your party, you have a legislating job.

It's not the same as the executive branch, and your job is not just to concentrate more power in the executive branch.

Your job is to assert your power.

And Levin is saying, where are the Republicans in asserting their power when they disagree or do they just see this as a red carpet role for a president trying to collect power?

How do you see it?

I mean, I think having checks and balances is critically important, whether it's at the state level.

Yeah, at the federal level, especially when you have government control that's wholly controlled by one party, whether that's the Republican Party or the Democratic Party.

And we're in a situation now where we live in a state where it's 100% Democratic control.

And in a country where a federal government is 100% Republican control.

And I think there needs to be checks and balances and co-equal branches of government.

and that it's not just the minority party that is the voice of opposition.

I also believe that in a functional democracy, you have to pick your battles.

And so my question for we'll see.

Members of Senate, you brought up the cabinet positions like, okay, we're going to confirm Bobby Kennedy to be secretary of HHS.

Is there a calculation that the Republican majority in the Senate are saying, okay, we'll confirm Bobby Kennedy, but then we're also going to use our role as that congressional check to say, we're not going to sign off on X, Y, and Z, but we're going to work to push on ABC.

And so I wonder how much of that calculation is part of the horse trading that is inevitably a part of government at every level of government.

Okay.

What do you make of that?

So I think that that's a that's a fair, assumption.

I think a lot of the work that's being done right now is being done behind the scenes.

Regular people mistake press conferences and tweets for work, but much of the work we do is stuff you don't see, not because we're being secretive about it, but because it happens on the phone or it happens in conversation or, not even horse trading, but like having conversations about what value there is in approaching this one issue versus another issue where you're going to see, a lot of pushback.

Direct, loud action is in the courts.

The courts are the immediate appropriate remedy here.

The legislature is very different.

I do wonder how many Republicans are reconciling the fundamental values of their party, which are so rooted in a letter of the law reading in a fundamental respect for authority in, you know, upholding institutions, how they're reconciling that with what they're seeing right now.

I'm not in the party and can't speak to that.

But I will say that I think that a lot of the things that are being done to help are things that just aren't going to translate into press releases.

Well, and I think to John's point about not everything is always happening in public press conferences, things like that, is that we also don't have a federal budget that got to get their key and got kicked down the road at the end of 2024, and they're in reconciliation right now to try to get a federal budget.

And when you look at a lot of the reexamination of how federal dollars are being spent through grant funding, that is also the federal budget is the biggest fight at the federal level.

And if you're somebody who wants to if you're a New York, state congressional Republican, it may be more advantageous for you to gear up for that fight to help preserve the social safety net that exists in and push for greater efficiency and effectiveness, rather than just blanket cuts.

And that's what I've heard from the members of Congress that I've spoken to, has been that, listen, we've got to pick our battles.

We we know how important a lot of these things are.

We also understand that there is an ideal that the administration wants to accomplish, and we have to balance all of these competing interests to ensure that our our constituents, our state, our nation ends up at a net positive for the most amount of people rather than seeing blanket indiscriminate action.

Okay, you know, again, I think that's fair.

I think a lot of people see horse trading as fundamentally unpleasant and odious, but that's also just how the world works.

Anybody who has a child, I horse trade every day to get a pair of shoes on.

You know, Josh has twins.

This is, you know, you say you don't want to do this thing, and I don't want to do your thing, but let's compromise.

And that means I give a little here and I get a little there.

And that isn't necessarily, like, dirty and secretive sometimes.

That's just how things work.

And it's things that are everyone wants.

Like, I would love to give more money to schools and I'd love to give more money to hospitals, but there's only so much money.

How can we figure this out?

And I think that especially with an administration that is so vain and, narcissistic and so needy in praise as the president is, you really do need to spend your political capital wisely.

I do not envy federal Republicans right now.

And I think, I mean, I, I think everybody who rises to the level of president or even a high government elected office has quite the ego to begin with.

Anyway, I think I think we're in a new stratosphere.

Well, that's, I'm just going out of the blanket statement that I think a lot of politicians have, substantial, egos.

and like those egos to be, maintained as much as possible.

Are you satisfied with how your party generally has reacted so far to this administration?

so when I think about what my party's doing, I'm hearing people saying, where are they?

It's been two weeks.

It's actually a very short amount of time in government.

And part of the reason the Trump administration seems to be moving quickly is because they're just not, first off, being effective.

And a lot of what they're doing, they're just declaring things that aren't legal at them.

Saying something doesn't make it so.

So it looks like they're moving at lightning speed, but there's also 1 million fights.

What do you pick?

So when I look at, say, for example, what our attorney general, Letitia James, has done, she has led cohorts of 22 states in several lawsuits already.

We are on our second or third stages of some of these, executive orders like birthright citizenship and the freeze.

That's where immediate action is being seen.

And that's not even just Democratic AGS.

You have Republican AGS in there, too, because this affects everybody.

I have seen, Chuck Schumer screaming about Elon Musk, and rightly so.

If we're going to bring people to the street and we're going to have protests like we've seen it, it should be over Doge.

That's where this energy should be going.

And I have people asking me like, what do I do?

What do I do?

Because they're all kind of looking for that one big thing button.

What do I push that gets me off the train?

There is no one big button.

And we're all going to have to do little bits and pieces.

So when I'm telling people to conserve their energy and pick their battles, I think the big public displays of opposition should be reserved for what we're seeing with Doge and the Treasury Department right now.

Are you comfortable?

Assembly Member Jensen with Elon Musk's role, Do I think that the richest man in the world is the most appropriate person to, unilaterally determine, whether or not something is worthy?

Yeah, that's what I'm asking.

Yeah, I, I don't think that's the optimal way of doing things.

I think I think we and I think this at the state level as well, I think we have to do a better job of closely examining every time we spend a government dollar to ensure that that money is being spent the most effective way.

My preference would be experts and people who understand the impact that those dollars have in the programs in which they're funding to be the ones working in collaboration with political appointees, with the administration, to determine that.

I think no matter the outcome, you come in like an occupying force ordering things to be opened, ordering things to do, whether or not the outcome is good or bad, that is a concern we want to have a process to determine these things.

You look at some of the grant funding that members of the state legislature get were able to, to direct to, to things in our districts.

Sometimes that takes years to go out because the state dormitory Authority will force those to be reviewed time and time again.

If there's even a minute change.

Examining things is not, inherently a bad thing.

I think there should be a clear, deliberate process.

And having the richest person in the world with 20 year old engineers who may have only experience in software design, may not be the best person to determine whether or not something is an effective use of government dollars.

I think I think your points an interesting one, because when it comes to the politics of it, it's almost a trap for Democrats to be like, oh, they're reviewing government spending.

It's terrible.

I mean, that's what the Republicans want to frame this as.

And sometimes Democrats are very good at falling right into the traps that Republicans that at the same time, it would be one thing if you said, I'm taking the smartest people I can find who have solved really complex problems elsewhere, and I'm going to apply them to government, which is what he's talking about.

And then as we discover inefficiencies over time, we'll let you know or or you can say what he said a few days ago, which is, how about we eliminate all federal regulations, we just declare them no more regulations.

And then when we find out we actually needed some will reinstate those three days after a plane crash.

Yeah.

And that's and I think this goes back to talking about checks and balances and co-equal branch of government.

A lot of these regulations have been made into law, by Congress.

And there was a reason they're in place.

You not just look at the plane crash in, in, in, Washington, but some of the stuff was after the plane crash in Buffalo, in the early 2009.

And so I think that's why I understand the need to move quickly.

But I also sometimes think taking time, asking questions does not show weakness, does not show a lack of purpose.

It shows deliberation.

And when we're talking about people's lives, we're talking about things that make a difference.

We need to know the true impact.

And if something's not having the return on taxpayer investment that it should be having, then maybe we should have a conversation about it.

But you can't figure or just eliminate it or just.

And so I think that's the question.

I think there probably are grant funding that is probably wholly inappropriate.

There's probably things that is a tremendous waste of money has got to be it's a huge budget and every level of government, not just at the federal level.

So I think we need to have these conversations.

I don't think it needs to happen within 21 days of the administration.

We've got four years to do this.

And I think you want to change the nature of how the state, the state being the U.S., spends money.

Let's have that conversation.

But let's make sure we're doing in a way that people know, like we're not doing it for political retribution.

We're not doing it, because we just don't like some of the wording.

We're doing it because we think we can spend the money better and more efficiently.

Okay.

You want to add to that?

Yeah.

So they're quite literally saying they're doing it because of the wording.

They're quite literally saying they don't like certain terminology.

They're doing it illegally because this is money that's already been appropriated.

And the executive branch does not have the authority to simply unilaterally say, this money doesn't go out.

That does not.

That's not the way the power of the purse works.

There's extensive Supreme Court jurisdiction on it.

There are, bills that have been passed.

Nixon tried to do this, and it was shut down in the 70s.

So not only is this illegal, there is no other area of government where we say, hey, I think this isn't working, so I'm going to arrest the legal process to stop it right now and then review a giant, complex system of things.

You can review things as they are happening, but you cannot retroactively stop funding and say it's being stopped because it's being reviewed.

I'm sure that in private business you can say, hey everyone, stop this policy.

Let's just stop performing this task and review it.

When you do that in a government, people die.

Planes fall out of the sky and bridges crumble.

Well, the terminology thing take climate because Florida did this a couple of years ago.

I think what they would argue is it's not about terminology.

We think there's way too much emphasis on a problem that the president doesn't sees as not existing at all.

But other members of his administration might say it's been overblown or has been manipulated for political purposes.

So if we see it in the language right now, we're we're cutting that funding and then we'll review whether it was a worthwhile expenditure.

Is that a fair way to describe it?

You can do that moving forward in next year's budget if that's what you want to do.

But when that money was already allocated and is already owed, no, you literally may not.

It is unconstitutional.

You cannot.

And here's the thing you don't like.

The words define hey everybody, start calling it workforce pipeline and that seems to solve the problem.

Put make your fonts red, white and blue.

I think they like that.

It is an arbitrary and crazy way to make decisions about the effectiveness of programs.

There was an article today in which they said they're going to allocate transportation funding to states that have higher marriage and birth rates.

What's look, I get you want to encourage marriage, but I don't know that transportation dollars are necessarily proven to be the most effective way to do that.

I, I wake up every day with a new fresh hill to confront.

He yesterday put schools in a position again illegally, to have to choose between being in violation of our state constitution or threatening their federal dollars.

That is what happens when you make these split second decisions about terminology.

And it's irresponsible and dangerous and people will die.

I don't know if your colleague next to you thinks it's a new, fresh hell every day.

Oh, I bet that how you feel.

I mean, listen, Jen already said I have six year old twins, so I. I have my own experience, but no, I no, I don't think we're in a new fresh out.

I, I can understand some of the frustration, especially on her birthday having to talk about this.

But I don't think we're in a New Rochelle.

I think we are in a new reality, which every four years we have a new political reality.

We have to deal with.

And every administration, whether it's President Trump, President Biden, President Trump, President Obama, President Bush since I've been an adult, there are things I like.

There are things I'm not so excited about.

We have to deal with what reality is.

And as a public official, as an elected official who represents 134,000 people, I have to make sure that when I advocate, when I use my voice, that the people have entrusted me to use, that I'm speaking up on the things that are going to have the greatest impact on their day to day life.

And for me, it's about being out there and hearing from the people that I represent and being accessible and saying, listen, if people have concerns, I can understand that.

I can respect that and just saying like this, and this is what the reality is, and this is what I think is going to be the result.

So a couple other points for I'll get some feedback from listeners, I promise.

And we are going to talk about you know, I know there's direct questions about, what could happen with Medicaid or Snap, etc.

and we'll get back to that coming up here.

A couple other things here.

your colleague brought up DEA.

Josh and I want to ask, and this is going to sound like really sort of like cheeky.

It's not meant to be.

Can you say?

We are going to have the most merit based government in history.

We are not going.

We're going to be color blind.

We're going to be merit, merit, merit.

And then put Pete Hegseth in charge of the of the most powerful military in the history of the world.

you know what?

I'm I'm really excited that Everton's on a winning streak.

in the English Premier League.

Senator, you're dodging the question.

Assembly member, do not, no, I don't want that promotion.

That's.

When I look at any agency, whether it's a federal cabinet office, state agency, the secretary, the commissioner is just one of a thousands of employees.

Now, do I know if our current defense secretary is the most qualified person to run the Defense Department?

I think you know, I think there's certainly people who would have a greater level of knowledge.

However, he is the defense secretary.

He has the trust of the commander in chief.

He definitely does to fulfill that role.

My hope would be that whoever holds that office, whether it's the current defense secretary, the next defense secretary, or the one after that, relies on the experts surrounding them to advise and recommend the things that are going to keep our nation strong and protect our interests, not just at home, but abroad.

You have also said this hour that Trump has this pattern of going really big or kind of hyperbolic, and everyone goes crazy, and then the reality ends up somewhere, you know, more in the middle.

Or maybe he exerts pressure to try to get what he wants.

I also want to ask you about that as a strategy though.

And here's an example.

So the tariffs and then not tariffs of this week had an impact.

We on Monday before his conversation with Prime Minister Trudeau and the pausing the Canadian tariffs back and forth, we talked to local wine producers who spent years trying to get their products into Canadian markets, and one of them is Lakewood Vineyards on Seneca Lake.

really lovely family, the stamp family.

I've known them for years.

And I talked to their brand ambassador, Chad Hendrickson, who was on his way to a meeting in Ontario three weeks ago.

They finally closed this deal with the help of the New York Wine and Grape Foundation.

And then Sunday night, overnight, they were told, don't bother, we're not taking your products.

And so I talked to him last night.

I said, okay, they pause the tariffs.

Is your deal back on?

He said no.

They said do not expect to sell in Canada.

We've been told, all the liquor stores that I've I've friends in Toronto.

He said they're sending me pictures.

They're still buy Canada.

No American products.

And the tariffs are paused.

So if this idea was we're going to win a concession.

What he won was, something that already happened in December when he wasn't president, plus the announcement of a fentanyl czar because of the apparent apparently naming a fentanyl czar stops fentanyl from flowing, as it typically does from Tuktoyaktuk, Canada, apparently so I mean, I now I'm being cheeky, but it's like are aren't there real impacts when you say this is we're going to go crazy here and then we're going to see what we get.

It doesn't mean that you get to go.

The world doesn't go back to how it was last week, right?

Yeah.

I've never read the Art of the deal, so I have not read it.

So I've not read it.

So.

Yes, there are ramifications.

There are negative side effects.

Sometimes that's what you have to give up to get what you want.

And when the president, the United States, is to try to negotiate for trilateral cooperation on border security, that is a calculation that to take the win on the left hand, he's willing to take the loss on the right hand.

Now, for producers who are going to be affected, that stinks.

There's no I can't sugarcoat that or it's it's tremendously unfortunate.

Can I say something about this because it was Canada Day this week in the Assembly?

By complete coincidence, I am part of the New York, Canada Task Force, and I had a meeting with the Consulate of Canada to New York, Tom Clark.

And what we were told after the whole tariff.

Oh, yeah.

While during the whole tariff thing, they were there from Monday to Wednesday.

It was a wild ride.

And, they did send armed officials.

They did have a mountain.

They had a mountain to, to intimidate us legislators.

So everyone was taking pictures with, and what he said was, you know, we have probably the best partnership between Canada and New York.

New York is the 10th largest economy in the world.

We do more trade with Canada in New York than they do with Germany, than they do with the UK, than they do with France and Italy combined, the New York Canada partnership is a $50 billion per year trade relationship.

There are a million people in New York that are employed either directly by Canadian businesses or in businesses that benefit Canada.

here in Monroe County, we do something like $800 million in, trade with Canada every single year.

And the damage to the American brand in Canada right now is incredible.

It is deep.

The anger is intense.

I am hearing from I have Canadian family in Ottawa and in, Quebec, and they're saying they have never seen patriotism from Canadians like they have seen this week rallying around Canada.

We are doing intense damage to our strongest partnership with one of the longest borders in the world that is widely considered the envy of the world in border control.

And an interesting fact about the fentanyl, any fentanyl that is found within 100 miles of the Canadian border is considered Canadian fentanyl, no matter where it came from.

And there was a large shipment of fentanyl that was literally being trafficked by two Mexican citizens in Spokane, Washington, which is 99 miles from the border.

And it was logged by the, DEA as Canadian fentanyl.

You're talking about our 51st state there.

How dare you?

But, but, but let me ask you this, though.

Josh is making the point that sometimes you do have collateral damage when you're when you're after big goals.

And sometimes it hurts, but sometimes it is worth it if you are pursuing something important.

Even the UAW, who did not support the tariffs that were announced this week for a number of reasons that Sinn Fein listed.

But they're not against tariffs overall.

They they don't mind it if we go after China harder, they don't mind if we go after Mexico harder.

And there are a number of manufacturers who say this president might be willing to kind of look a little crazy to get better deals and actually get more manufacturing done here.

And we've had we've lost a lot of what we make here.

So is there part of that?

Do you see any of that is saying this white House may be unpredictable and that may help us?

There is already a trade deal with Canada.

We did it in 2019.

It expires next year.

The whole purpose of a trade agreement is to avoid this scenario.

And because you have one side of this guy's mouth saying that this isn't about tariffs, it's about border control.

And then I want to know how much of this is economic.

And I will tell you, the Consulate of Canada said that to me.

If you can tell me why he's doing this, that would be a lot clearer for us now.

I think the white House is and Trump has said it is about border issue.

It's about fentanyl, it's about illegal immigration and it's about trade imbalance.

And he views he said he views tariffs as an unequivocal good that could pay for free child care for everybody in the country.

Or his corporate tax cut.

But it's strange then, to say that it's an unalloyed good.

And then five days later you go, oh, we avoided that one.

Which, you know, that's weird.

It it is fair.

some member Lunsford is right.

The last Canadian trade deal we signed was 2019, when Donald Trump is president.

Yep.

And then last week he said, I saw this deal.

It's the worst deal I've ever seen.

We don't like oh, wait till we find out who did this.

So I guess I'm I'm just wanting to clarify, though.

Do you think there's anything that anybody can do to get more manufacturing here?

Because one of the reasons I think this president, one, there's a lot of reasons he definitely convinced some Americans that we should not be getting our tails kicked in manufacturing around the world.

Well, I'll tell you that trade deals with Canada are not the ways to bring back jobs in Mexico or China.

Right.

But, you know, much of our manufacturing was lost to countries that are not, other countries that pay more to their employees than us.

But I'll say we have succeeded in bringing big manufacturing jobs to New York through shovel ready projects, through tax incentives.

There's all sorts of economic mechanisms that are proven to work.

And destroying the American brand in our closest neighbor and trade partner doesn't seem to me like a smart economic move for somebody who is trying to entice businesses to come here.

You're saying the person, if you're manufacturing who you're going to sell to, what this is the people we trade with, we're 90 miles.

We're 90 minutes from the border here in Rochester.

This is again, I think it is going big.

I think it is seeming tough.

This is a guy who we know makes deals with cabinet makers and then decides he's just not going to pay them and squeezes them in court to pay them pennies on the dollar.

That's his tactic.

Except there is no other Canada to go to.

There isn't competition in the market for Canada, so he is being incredibly shortsighted and destructive, and I think it's going to end up having economic ramifications for both countries.

There might be a second Canada might be Greenland.

We might get that.

So I'm not sure that's on the market.

All right.

I have to take our only break of the hour and let's, we'll get some of your feedback here.

I do want to make sure the lawmakers talk about things like Medicaid, different safety net programs that, some come from the federal government, some in the form of block grants to states and the states administer.

So if you're wondering about that, as there was a lot of questions about Medicaid and Snap last week, we'll talk about that.

And anything else that you want to talk about with two members of the New York State Assembly, Josh Jensen from district number 134, Jen Lunsford from district number 135.

We're right back on connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

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I'm the next connections.

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This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson Richard in Canandaigua on the line here.

Hi Richard.

Go ahead.

Now how do you do?

I'm going to be brief.

I just want to make a comment about, the discussion.

Overall, you're dealing rational with an irrational situation, and I'm tired of pundits doing this, talking about how it is evaluating a decision on the part of the Trump administration is as if it was backed by any kind of rational thought.

Now it's time to look at it's time to do a little bit of ad hominem and analysis and look at the motivation behind these people.

you know, why wouldn't why wouldn't a mob boss who want to break the FBI, what's Musk got against us?

I'd.

Who are these people?

What's the psychology of Trump's lying?

Why don't you talk about that instead of all the nonsense about all that?

It should have been this way because Canada is our neighbor, blah, blah, blah.

No, we've got to focus our attention on them.

The the personalities and the behavior of the individual people in this regime.

All right, Richard, I appreciate the phone call.

I will let Assembly member lunge for that first if you want to.

I have very limited control.

A state legislator over the psychology of Donald Trump and.

Oh, yeah, if only if only I could control that.

So I have to operate within a system of laws and abilities that I have, and that does constrain me quite a bit.

I will say that I think so much of what Trump does is motivated by basic capitalistic instincts.

He's lining his own pocket, he's trying to help out his billionaire friends.

But then I look at some of the immigration stuff and I'm like, between the tariffs and the immigration, how big?

AG has not come and given this man a poisoned apple, I cannot tell you because he is killing agriculture.

We trade so much corn and soybean across the border, we get all of our farm workers from immigration.

This is a wild crackdown.

If you view him as a truly money centered capitalistic like dragon on his hoard of coins, what's the immigration stuff about?

That's wild to me.

I mean, I think part of the argument there from his team is that they people who are undocumented, are taking jobs away from Americans who are unemployed.

And the focus should be on the Americans who are unemployed.

But that's not what big AG will tell you.

In fact, if you look at almost any of the, the farm worker or the brother, the, the farm bureaus, they always have a very pro-immigration policy.

They want us to have a broader immigration policy because so many of the workers come from overseas.

We don't have enough Americans to do the jobs.

Right now, here in Monroe County, we have some of the lowest, unemployment in the country.

So it's just counter to what the businesses in that sector would once it's it's a fascinating way to see where he's chumming the waters.

Assembly member.

Jensen I mean, because Assembly Member Lunsford brought it up.

So I'll go to the immigration question.

I think a lot of people, a lot of Americans are frustrated about what they're seeing at the border, and they're seeing that that illegal immigration people coming into the country illegally and then qualifying for legal status or trying to achieve legal status through, claims of asylum and the backlog in that has that.

And so when there's a push for greater enforcement of U.S. immigration law by going after violent criminals who enter this country illegally, I think that makes a lot of sense.

We have to get our immigration situation figured out and make it more merit based.

To your point, having about we need we need immigrants for our workforce.

We need them for our farmers.

We need them for their hospital, for our hospitality industry.

We need them to be nurses and aides in medical facilities.

We need them.

However, we have to make our immigration system more merit based, and the way to do that is not by going after people who may have entered this country illegally, but for ten, 15 years have been contributing members of society.

We also have to have an immigration plan that rewards the people who, yes, they may have come into this country illegally, but once they've been here, they've done everything the right way and we have to have a pathway to citizenship that recognizes their contributions as a member of society.

I don't think it's out of line to say, listen, you broke the law.

You've committed a violent crime.

We're going to get you out of here.

Do I think we should send them all to Guantanamo Bay?

No, I do not.

But I think we have to have an immigration system in our country that makes more logical sense.

But that doesn't make any sense when you consider the birthright citizenship executive order, because those people are American citizens.

When you consider that he shut down the Special Immigrant Visa program, where people are effectively U.S. military, who came here legally through a program that saves them from the harm that we put them in by having them ally with us.

What is that about it?

We and we should for that, for people who are allies in Afghanistan or in Iraq, who literally put their lives on the line to help American interests, we are betraying our promise to them.

If we do not fulfill what we told them we were going to do, we should be honoring our commitments.

And I think that's where things can get stuck in the muck a little bit is to say, listen, we have to.

And this is where I think across the board, we have to be clear about what our intentions are.

We need to be going after those people who are here illegally.

We need to ensure that asylum claims are held in a quicker fashion, that we know where these people who have come in crossed the border, whether it's the southern border, the northern border, once they crossed into our country where they've gone, but we also have to fulfill our obligation and understand that we are a place that is the envy of a lot of people in this world.

And the American Dream is something we want to achieve, whether that American dream is an American dream that's, administered by President Trump, President Biden or any president to come, and President Johnson, no president.

Listen, I'm already losing enough of me.

I actually I have one thought on that because I had an interesting conversation with our Canadian representatives that it is actually not illegal to leave Canada, and nor is it illegal to leave the United States.

You can leave it.

You can't enter the other country.

Which is why when you cross a border, you go through border control on the side of the country you're entering.

So to ask Canada for better border enforcement of the people walking out of the country is a little bit odd when you consider the duty is on the entering country to police the border.

Well, and I think.

I think one of the issues you come into is and you're not wrong in that, but when I read today an off the Empire report about the Canadians turning over, somebody they arrested who was essentially a, an eye for a coyote who's essentially helping to traffic those individuals.

And it was a pregnant Guatemalan woman or Colombian woman who drowned in one of the tributaries to Lake Champlain because she was illegally crossing the border.

He essentially helped to smuggle her over the border.

I think that's the type of enforcement that I think would make sense to put pressure on the Canadian Mexican governments to also try to stop the people who are utilizing illegal immigration for financial gain in their own countries.

It sounds like they did stop him.

They did.

But but it worked.

And that's that's how you know about it.

Because they stopped him.

But maybe we should be stopping more.

And that's and I think that's the I think that's part of the conversation, however, are we are I, I don't have anything okay.

So so let me, let me start back to where, where we are here, which is just talking about 148 cool.

Listen, you're the one who used the phrase monkeys with hammers in the first five minutes of the program.

She likes black licorice, so, I mean, I don't I question off her judgment ticket.

I like anise.

okay, so part of why we're here is just understanding how you're seeing the federal actions from the lens of people who work in state government and, Assembly Member Jensen, let me start with you on this.

So with Medicaid, number one, are you advocating that the federal government not cut it?

Number two, what are you seeing so far?

What do you want people to understand about Medicaid?

I think New York State's the way that New York state administers the Medicaid dollars, whether they're federal dollars or state dollars, the way we administer the funding in New York is wholly inefficient, ineffective.

Is it wasteful?

I think I think we don't get the return on investment.

We should when we have providers that can not through malice, but they can discriminate based on peer source.

That's problematic when we have a 36 month wait in at the Eastman Dental School for somebody to get a teeth cleaning because they're on Medicaid, that's problematic.

What I don't want to see is the federal government cut Medicaid because they don't see the result without understanding that there may be avenues to make it more efficient, more effective.

But that's also part of the conversation about why that social safety net needs to exist.

But also why we can make it more efficient by getting by having true wealth screening and have if people don't have an income amount that is appropriate for Medicaid.

Let's get them to the essential plan.

The essential plan is wholly funded by the federal government, which means we have to have an essential plan, which is the next step up that's actually funded.

We have to have a marketplace, a health insurance marketplace that is robust to get people to buy on the marketplace.

So my message to the federal government, and I hope to go down there at some point to to talk to people in HHS about this.

It's CMS is to say, listen, the Medicaid program in New York is critically important for New Yorkers of all races, all backgrounds, all regions.

We can do it in a more efficient and effective manner before we start unilaterally cutting programs or saying this thing or that thing is not eligible anymore, let's try to make it more efficient, more effective, and work with the state to do that.

That's what I'd like to see in our program.

So do you think the federal government could put pressure on states like New York to reform the program?

I think I do.

I mean, right now, a lot of the ways where funding increases for long term care is going to be through an MCO tax that got approved by the Biden administration right at the end of the administration, that waiver could be canceled, which would mean we'd have to find a contingency to fund those increases.

We look at the 1115 Medicaid waiver that was negotiated under the Biden administration.

That could be something that may have to be renegotiated.

so I think we have to there has to be a conversation from the state level to the federal level to show that this is where the money is going.

This is how we think it's effective, and a good use of that of these funds to get the return on investment that we would hope that that federal money coming to, to support Medicaid would have.

I also support the New York Health Act.

Thank you so much for a great argument, Josh.

I don't think for the record, I'm just saying was supporting the New Yorkers.

You don't want to discriminate and on payer source.

I agree we need greater access for people.

This is all lining up.

Everything's coming up.

Gentlemen, listen, you're not going to wrap him for $300 billion, and then I'm on board.

Oh, look, we're going to have a chat.

I got a plan, okay?

On Medicaid.

You heard your colleague there talking about the need to to make it more efficient in the state.

what are you seeing right now from the federal government?

And what do you do you agree that maybe this is a chance to reform it?

So Medicaid is I will tell you the scariest part of this for me.

of our $230 billion budget last year, $92 billion of that was federal money.

And the overwhelming majority of that $92 billion was Medicaid.

they have the most control over us when it comes to Medicaid dollars.

And, you know, when you start dangling people over a precipice and you're talking about their medical care, that is a very strong piece of leverage.

That's why we have laws like the Triber amendment that prevents that sort of leverage from being used in union negotiations, because it's cruel.

there are plenty of ways that our, Medicaid system could be, made more efficient, could, help more people.

We need to raise rates.

The reality is, people wait 36 months or more for dental treatment, because the delivery of dental treatment in Medicaid is below the cost of care, no one will take it because the we can't get more providers and we can't shorten those waitlists because dentists lose money on that proposition.

So we need to look at it.

I think on the whole, as a country, the way we deliver all health care is absolutely insane.

It is wildly inefficient to have multiple payers, to have different insurance companies, to have large hospital systems that can negotiate different rates than small providers.

And that's why a single payer plan is just the most efficient way to do anything.

but I don't trust the Trump administration to make those decisions, and I don't trust them to not, hold people's literal lives in their hands to negotiate other things they want like to have us, rescind laws around transgender youth, which I won't do.

So when you look at in this, I'm going to go back to the very beginning of our conversation where we talked to where I talked about we've we talked about the importance of checks and balances.

The reason there is a Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives is because of New York, when probably no other state besides California relies on federal Medicaid dollars as much as we do.

I'm going to choose to have faith in our federal representatives from both parties to make it very clear to Health and Human Services and to the white House that this money is critically important.

We cannot take.

And this is somebody who believes that we need to rein in state spending.

We cannot have a $70 billion hole in our state budget.

We can't.

People's lives will be in dire situation if that's the case.

My hope is, and I've had a conversation with some folks already, that we need to ensure that the white House understands that these funds are critically important.

But I also think it's indicative on the state and leaders in both parties to show why it's so important.

And that's what I hope there is bipartisan, unilateral, continuing to show that this is important and why it's not why it's important to do this.

So we don't have to go to a single payer, government run health care system in New York.

That's a whole conversation for another day.

Did you all hear from constituents last week with questions about Medicaid?

Was there anything that came up?

Yeah, yeah, I'm I've been I'm always in five years I've been very accessible to my constituents.

And I hear them on a range of different issues.

You Senator, you're dodging the question.

Did the white House order on on federal the freeze lead to more questions about Medicaid?

I had a lot of constituents reach out, not understanding what's going on.

And I think that's indicative where people get their news in small little chunks without a lot of context.

People were just confused.

And especially, you know, community based organizations.

We're hearing conflicting information.

And that's there's a lot of nervousness.

And I would imagine that most of my colleagues have that same nervousness and fear from people who were relying on federal dollars to keep programs operational.

Yeah.

yeah.

I mean, I did have all the context, and I was also confused.

I was actively in the, Energy and Environmental Conservation joint budget hearing asking questions of the Dec commissioner while the news was rolling out.

So the questions many of us were asking were, hey, so you know what's going on?

what what do you do if all the money goes away, you know, so I was having questions about everything from, you know, Medicaid and Snap to, housing and give funding.

And, you know, we have so many organizations that rely not just on direct federal programs, but on programs that are heavily funded through federal dollars that we then administer at the state.

This is, you know, potholes to pig farmers.

Every single, part of our state is touched by this.

I think we solved everything.

That's cool.

Yeah.

Done great.

So you see, the same time next year, maybe sooner, I hope.

Listen, these are two listeners, YouTube viewers and the WXXI news YouTube page.

These are two of your most accessible elected leaders.

Josh Jensen, district number 134 of the New York State Assembly.

Thanks for being here.

My pleasure.

Jen Lenz for district number 135.

Thank you for being here.

Happy to do and thank you for listening.

This week.

we we're right back here tomorrow.

My colleague Matt Turk's here.

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That's not political.

Go watch that.

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