3.8.2025 Congressional Update and Q&A with Congressman Auchincloss

aen Claus's Congressional update and question and answer session today my name is Dana Hansen I am the congressman's district director so I am captain of his uh home team here in Massachusetts in the fourth congressional district and um we're so excited and really grateful that you're choosing to spend your Saturday with us today it's wonderful to see so many people here and um we're looking forward

to a terrific conversation before we get started just want to remind folks of where our Emer mergency exits are and also um the restrooms are just down the hall where you first came in and then you take a right in sort of that wide Atrium area uh want to wish everybody a happy International women's day today good to see everybody and um yes glad we have some women folk all folk for those

who celebrate love to hear it um and we're looking forward to um having the so I want to let folks know what what the format of this is so first we'll have the congressman give a very brief Congressional update what he's been up to um in Congress over the past few weeks and then we'll open it up for question and answer so you will see two microphones on either side of the aisle

so when that moment comes we'll just ask folks to line up flank on either side um and as I mentioned a couple of minutes ago this is a unique opportunity to have sort of an opportunity to ask the congressman a question so um if you have long opinions or deep thoughts on a topic that is amazing and wonderful and we do want to hear from you however this sort of um an imperson event is really

more um meant to be able to have everybody hear a question and hear the congressmen answer it in real time so you'll get to hear more of the congressman if the questions are really brief and um if you need a little reminder I'll be happy to do that in real time um so we'll we'll do that and then um I guess the last thing is uh right before the congressman comes in I

do want to say a special thank you to a daughter of Fall River a dery high school alumni Katarina Pereira is hiding in the the hallway they're probably going to be ushering out Congressman aen Claus Congressman can we get a big round of applause for Karina Pereira I had to I had had to do it um she was a member of the AV club so she's far more uh uh

qualified to be at a microphone than I am so without further Ado here is Congressman Jake aen Claus

good afternoon Fall River thank you for being here I am grateful to be joined this afternoon by uh our mayor Paul kugan by Senator Mike Rodricks by state representative Carol Fiola State Rep Alan Sylvia State Rep Steve wette state representative Justin Thurber uh City councelor Andrew raposo thank you all for your presence and most importantly thank you for your partnership I can tell you having done this job now for

four and a half years that uh Fall River is a team from local state and federal we are constantly in contact and collaboration figuring out how we can deliver for constituents so I'm grateful uh Paul Mike Carol Allen thank you for for being here I have three jobs as your Congressman the first is I got to deliver constituent services and you alert you deserve the best constituent

Services uh of any member of Congress I have to advance your priorities and I've got to represent your values on on constituent Services over the last four years I have worked in close partnership with local and state leadership in particular on delivering federal funds for the Waterfront development which holds promise to be uh housing for uh for Fall River citizens and to help Revitalize the Waterfront as

a place uh as a place to shop to live to dine and I'm going to continue to work to deliver federal funds both for the infrastructure and for the economic development along the Waterfront we have worked to help people get Social Security checks Medicare checks uh tax refunds we're your front door to Washington DC which can be a complicated place and I hope you know that when you call the office uh you're going to talk

to a person not to a a chat bot we're going to make sure that we take your case workk seriously and that we get you an answer right now we are fighting to keep the Social Security office here in Fall River open um I also work with the manufacturers and business owners in Fall River uh we've been able to deliver grants for manufacturing uh one manufacturer had a uh deal with the National Institutes of

Health to deliver personal protective equipment for a stockpile in case of further uh medical emergencies that Grant has been frozen in the last several months and we have been uh working with the manufacturer and with the NIH to see if we can restart that Grant and so I'm in constant contact as well with the business community in here in Fall River to ensure that you've got a thriving Economic Development sector

finally on the constituent Services front I know many of you are struggling with high energy bills right now now they have uh surged in recent months I can tell you that your state delegation is all over this and is working at this at the state house as we speak for my uh in my domain the best way I can help is by continuing to fund the low-income um Heating and energy assistance program

which is somewhat inaptly named because it's actually not just reserved for uh very low-income individuals it's open to many who are have a middle class salary as well citizens for Citizens and Fall River is the front door for uh the heating and energy assistance program and I encourage you that if you're if you're really hurting with your energy bills please work with citizens for

citizens to see if you're eligible for uh a grant on that front and I'll be fighting in Washington DC to make sure that we continue to fund it I also need to advance your priorities in Washington DC and often times that means working in a bipartison fashion uh we're in the minority right now in the house in the Senate obviously we don't have the presidency as a ratic party and so I'm constantly looking for

bipartisan ways to get things done that matter to Fall River for example the Dom Minimus loophole which is basically a loophole in our tariff system that allows for very lowcost textiles to Surge into the United States in an unfair fashion I've helped build a bipartisan consensus to close the Dom Minimus loophole and support uh the textile manufacturing industry in the greater south coast region uh Fall River

like many other cities and towns in Massachusetts struggles with uh opioid use and I have led three pieces of legislation all bipartisan to inct fentanyl at its source which is the Chinese Mainland 98% of fentanyl precursors come from China despite what the President says they don't actually really come through Canada they they come through oftentimes legal ports of Entry uh and we have put together

legislation that would sanction the manufacturers in China for their role in producing fentanyl precursors that would uh Levy uh fines on Ships coming to to Ports of Entry that don't have clear manifests and that would also put together a Joint Task Force counter opioid in the administration so that all organs of state power would be focused on preventing fentanyl from surging into

the United States we're losing 70,000 Americans a year to this scorge it's the most addictive chemical known to mankind and ultimately it's unfair to ask our First Responders our public health workers to deal with this tsunami at needs to be stopped at its source I also know that Massachusetts has struggled with the cost of of housing new migrants in the last two years and I was an early

and strong supporter of the bipartisan border security legislation that would have sealed up um much of the undocumented uh migrant arrivals from our Southern border unfortunately that was torpedoed last year by Congressional Republicans but I I remain committed to bipartisan immigration and border security legislation the issue has become deeply politicized and yet I refuse to concede that we can't both be

a nation of immigrants and be a nation with a strong border at the same time they are not mutually exclusive we can absolutely prevent uh chaos or disorder at the border but still have a wide gate where we welcome new Americans and appreciate the Vitality both economic and cultural that they bring to this country and I'm uh have been a a co-sponsor of numerous pieces of legislation that drive us

towards that outcome because the way it's been it conducted the last several years is not not acceptable finally uh I know so many of us struggle with healthcare costs across a huge number of domains when I talk to employers health insurance premiums are eating in to profits and to wages they can pay when I talk to municipalities health insurance premiums are eating into the services they can provide and

the empy employees that they can retain and of course when I talk to my individual constituents the outof pocket costs for prescription drugs the out of pocket cost for Primary Care or other hospital visits uh going up faster than wages are uh probably about twice as fast I have led several pieces of bipartisan legislation that are really is meant to take on the price gouging and rent seeking that the health

insurance corporations all of which are Fortune 20 corporations have been engaged in particularly around prescription drug pricing because the pharmacy benefit man managers that these health insurance corporations own are extracting hundreds of billions of dollars every year from our healthc care economy and they're not creating anything they're not adding any value back these are not the companies that

create new cures these are not the companies that are actually providing care through Physicians or nurses these are just middlemen and the middlemen have gotten very comfortable and very greedy over the last three decades because there wasn't enough regulation and oversight and we're building a bipartisan consensus to change that we got really really close in December we were literally within 12 hours of

passing muscular reform of the health insurance corporations to to lower prescription drug prices would have saved taxpayers $5 billion would have lowered your co-pays and then Elon Musk tweeted and he started tweeting about pbms and how it was you know blah blah blah and speaker Mike Johnson pulled it from the house floor couldn't vote on it then three days later Elon Musk tweets again you know what he asks he asks

what's a pharmacy benefit manager this guy is just chaos doesn't even know what he's talking about um and yet he's being allowed to run rough shod over uh our institutions and our way of life um and this leads me to my last point which is potentially my most important job right now in Washington DC in addition to delivering constituent services to you and to advancing your priorities is to defend your values and

to represent your values and I

I think that here in the Massachusetts forth from Fall River to to Brookline we believe in the rule of law not the not the law of the ruler Massachusetts is approaching the its 250th celebration of Lexington and Conquer we here in the Bay State we don't like kings we don't like presidents who think like they're kings and we're going to fight back against theu overreach I think we believe I think we

believe here in the Massachusetts forth uh in science and in Merit and in evidencebased policy not in corruption or nepotism or favoritism or oligarchy and so we're going to fight back against the politicization of the Civil Service we're going to fight back against the trouncing of career scientists or uh other expert policy makers who want to be able to deliver government services

or right regulations without fear or favor but based on what's best for Americans do they always get it right of course they don't always get it right no bureaucracy is perfect is there waste Fraud and Abuse in every bureaucracy of course there is but what is being done right now is not saving anybody any money when they close the office of pharmaceutical quality in St Louis a state-of-the-art lab that tests for

toxins in the pharmaceutical supply chain that doesn't save anybody money that that that that's just performative and what it does is it makes uh Americans less safe and increases cost and uncertainty for business so we're going to stand up for science for evidence for uh dedicated civil servants against the oligarchs who are trying to run this government for their own purposes and

finally finally I think we here in the Massachusetts forth believe in American Global Leadership we believe that uh since World War II America through a rules-based international order has has made the world more safe and more prosperous do we always get it right no we don't but until president Donald Trump I have always trusted American Americans to know that Ukraine is right and Russia is wrong

and we're not going to let this President we're not going to let this President sell out NATO sell out our allies sell out freedom and democracy these are I think our values these are I think the priorities that I'm trying to advance in Washington this is the constituent Services I'm trying to deliver and now I want to hear from you please about what values what priorities what constituent Services um

you want to emphasize and and any questions that you have for me again thank you for being here and sharing this Saturday with me than thanks Congressman okay so how this is going to work is as you can see we have two microphones on either side of the auditorium we have found that it's most efficient for us to get through more questions if we're already queued up if you have a Mobility

Challenge and you need us to run to you with the microphone uh Phil Donahue or Oprah style we can do that also um just wave your hand and we'll find you uh that's said I'm looking at the crowd and I'm seeing that we have a lot of questions so without further Ado we're going to quickly get it started with this lovely oh that's correct Congressman thank you glad that you reminded me we're going to do two

questions at a time so you'll ask your question here then sir you'll ask your question here and then he'll sort of toggle and answer both at at the same time again we're just trying to get through as many of these questions as possible thank you for that can I also ask Dana that we um please hold our Applause or any kind of feedback from the audience both because I think it'll

help us go through more questions more quickly and also because we want to make sure everyone feels like they can ask any question on their mind without you know getting getting feedback from the rest of the crowd love that very inclusive okay we'll start here thank you very much thank you Congressman my name is Carol Copeland Thomas I live in Lakeville Massachusetts and I am a

38-year diversity consultant I've had my business for 38 years it is now considered criminal or illegal which is absurd from my point of view and my corporate clients who I work with what are you doing and your team your colleagues in Congress to counter the executive order that was passed or was signed in January that makes Dei work work in Dei training illegal in federal agencies and now is spilling over into

private Industries Congressman thank you uh for being here in Fall River and my name is Steven Kamara I am a uh longtime activist uh over 60 years of promoting what I think is best for America since John Kennedy challenged us to do what we could do for our country um unfortunately our youth now are remembering quotes from this president that diminish our values that do not promote the kinds of hope that John

Kennedy provided for us what I particularly think and I have like a hundred issues and I'm going to leave it to you to address them to if I may fight fight fight for what's right I like seeing you on national television and uh what I want to say as our top priority in Fall River needs to be to maintain our social security office on North Main Street the most vulnerable are served by

that office office they are children disabled Elders who need a handson concrete place to go rather than having to deal with the internet to make things happen so please do what you can to make that happen and I think the local delegation and all forever needs to bring out thousands of people the way Nashville did saying save our social security office absolutely uh so I I think there is a really

unfortunate pitting of diversity and inclusion and and you know the oldfashioned word that I always had used pluralism being pitted up against this idea of Merit or excellence and and the president and many congressional Republicans are making it seem like if you are in favor of diversity and inclusion then somehow you believe that you know as you said the the air traffic controllers on the night of that

horrific crash on January 29th Were Somehow at fault and it was because they were Dei hires it's a really really regrettable uh tribalism that he's trying to f I don't think they're in contrast at all I think we want our civil service and we want our economy to to look like America more broadly and of course we also want Merit and Excellence to be rewarded and in fact diverse teams

both ethnically racially by Viewpoint perform better uh and the one thing I would stress is to these corporations is that it's not a legal to do diversity and inclusion training and if they think it is then they need to talk to their general counsel because it's not uh and these corporations that were saying one thing when Biden was president or saying another thing when Donald Trump is

President I think are telling on themselves they have to stand with their values regardless of the politics of the moment I think their consumers will remember where they were on these issues one area that I'm especially focused on just because the committee that I serve on has jurisdiction over Health and Human Services is making sure that the National Institutes of Health which funds a lot of basic research

particularly here in Massachusetts is uh not cutting off grants to people who are studying things like clinical trial diversity and uh the merits uh of of EX Healthcare equity and they just announced some changes yesterday that are moving in the wrong direction and I was on the phone with the acting director of the NIH pressing them pretty hard on that I think it's illegal they're claiming otherwise and like with

a lot of things with the Trump Administration we're going to find out in court uh Social Security 100% uh we got to keep this office open you can have my word that I'll be fighting very hard on that front but I also want to emphasize many of you probably watched his joint address and he stood up there and he made all these CLA about Social Security fraud um he was lying I I really want to

emphasize this lying about the Social Security fraud yes the database has many people in it with social security numbers who are deceased those people are not getting benefits uh and in fact Social Security is a pretty lean and well-run program uh again any big Federal program can you find instances of waste fraen abuse yes you can should we tackle them of course we should but in general this is actually a program

that is is one of the better run Federal programs and people of course really count on their Social Security checks it's not an entitlement it's an earned benefit people paid into it to get out of it and my concern about this is actually not the lies that he said it's the kernel of Truth within the lies because the kernel of Truth is the Republicans want to privatize Social Security they tried to do it during

George W bush Democrats fought back and we stopped him from from doing it but he's now lay it's the same crowd coming back around with their Maga hats on but they're going to try to privatize Social Security yet again under the guise of their so much waste Fraud and Abuse that we need the you know the the corporations to do it and yet again Democrats are going to fight back we're going to stop that from

happening okay um just again let's try to crisp everything up a little bit quicker all around just because I'm looking at the amount of people here morning afternoon I'm Dan Bryan B Coast Bank a local institution you affordable housing has always been very difficult to achieve in Massachusetts and certainly the last couple years it's become very difficult for young people to both find and finance a home within

their budget I'm wondering if there's anything coming from Capitol Hill that would help alleviate that problem and help people towards the American dream of home ownership y hi my name is Sarah Carlson I'm from Swansea Massachusetts and serve as a volunteer there on numerous uh boards um on July 4th 2026 the 250th anniversary of Declaration of Independence is going to happen and my big concern for anybody

serving in Congress and for the whole population is that on that 250th anniversary we may not have anything left to celebrate so my question to you is what are you and other members of Congress doing exactly to prevent the abdication of the powers you're given by the Constitution the power of the purse specifically um what are you doing to protect our con stition um on a day-to-day basis thank

you so on affordable housing I think the cost of housing is the single biggest economic challenge facing Massachusetts and the state has moved in the right direction with the MBTA communities Act and the reforms to land use and Zoning that I think will allow the production of more housing like any Market if you want the price to go down you've got to increase Supply and increasing the

supply of housing is an important step at the federal level there are two things that we could do and you know candidly I don't think either of them are imminent right now given the the composition of Congress but one is expand the low-income housing tax credit uh there's a bipartisan bill that actually passed the house last Congress did not pass the Senate that would expand a very successful 50-year program

to induce developers to build um deed restricted affordable housing it's been a pretty successful Federal program and this this bill expanded it the second thing that we can do is to offer uh developers lower cost Capital Loans not grants but loans um right now given the way interest rates stand there is a lot of permitted housing here in Massachusetts included that's not being built so for example in

the city of Boston there's 30,000 units of housing permitted but no shovels in the ground and it's not actually a zoning problem at that point it's a cost of capital issue it's a really good role for the government to offer lowcost Capital uh again not a grant but a loan that comes back in an evergreen fund to get more building going but ultimately in this country we got to get 10 million

units of housing built in the next 10 years or else the average American will have 40 to 50% of their household budget going to the cost of housing and that's just not tenable we're also a fan of adus adus are great uh multif family housing 2 to 10 unit construction is great we make it too hard to build that as well so all of it um zoning and zoning and cost of cap are the two

biggest levers that we have there um Power of the purse I think that's exactly right power of the purse it's not just 250 years ago it's 400 years ago in Great Britain Parliament literally cut off a king's head for trying to take the power of the purse from Parliament so uh that wasn't a suggestion by the way it was just a historical the point is is that um that is exactly what is at stake here the

president is claiming if you if you if you cut through all all the chaos and noise constitutionally the president is claiming two things he is claiming that one he is allowed to not spend money that Congress appropriated and told him to spend that's illegal we have a a law the empowerment Clause that says that's illegal but two and potentially just as dangerous he claims that he can spend

money that Congress did not appropriate through emergency power use so we've got to pass two sets of laws or enforceable Provisions one is saying no we really meant that about the empowerment Clause if we tell you to spend money you have to take care that the laws are Faithfully executed and number two is we have to re in the presidents IM use of emergency powers and frankly presidents

have been using emergency Powers inappropriately for 60 years but it's gone on turbocharge with with this guy and there's two pieces of bipartisan legislation the Republic act the article one act that would rein in that abuse of emergency Powers I would like to see both of those bills passed the empowerment Bill the the article one bill passed as part of any Appropriations package this year because

this is the leverage that Democrats have we're in the minority but the one time that they're really going to need our votes is to fund the government and we have to sell that leverage dearly welcome Congressman I am deeply grateful that you understand your responsibility as an elected official to be here and share information but more importantly to dispel disinformation unfortunately we are not seeing that

same commitment to truth across the board um people are afraid I understand it's very difficult to deal with the Fallout and the visceral reaction of someone who just finds out that their deeply held belief is not rooted in fact but I am wondering if there is a coordinated effort among federal state and local elected officials to call out the most egregious and dangerous disinformation out there especially in a

time when people no longer receive local newspapers or watch actual news hi Dave Wilder from Somerset thank you for being here and thank you for your service sir um there's a lot of concern about um our debt our national debt and back in about 1980 there are sufficient numbers of states that called for a Convention of States Congress has not acted on that and actually they might be

um brought to court and and sued for not um not doing their article 5 responsibility um representative Arrington and HCR 15 this year has a bill calling for what Congress should have done year decades ago about authorizing or calling a Convention of states to have the states propose amendments to um develop fiscal responsibility for the federal government so my ask is would you

support that kind of thing and would you pursue an article five Constitution um Convention of states that is our voice so first the question about truth and trust and I actually think this might be the Hallmark question of our time trust has has eroded since the year 2000 I think many of us can remember what it felt like after 911 and how much I think social trust there was and how

much trust people had in Washington and how it kind of felt like we were all in this together and and it's just been this downward slide ever since then the war in Iraq the Great Recession Co all of it contributed but we're now in a very low trust era and disinformation flourishes in the near term that means that that I feel like part of my job is to go everywhere and shatter Echo

Chambers so I'm on you know Tik Tok arguing to ban Tik Tok ironically I'm on podcasts and YouTube channels I'm on TV I'm on doing local news with Facebook bloggers I I will get out there and talk to everybody uh right or left and try to have respectful conversations and and put my point of view forward I think there's a much deeper reservoir of Common Sense and decency in the American

public than we give ourselves credit for actually I think about 70% of Americans are right there between the 40 yard lines but instead we just hear the the incessant howls of outrage on social media and cable news and it makes us think we disagree a lot more than we actually do and in the long run I think that means that we have to rearchitecturing our facts from because especially since

the year about 2010 social media has come to just dominate how people get their news and it is not doing us any favors it's corroding our civil discourse it's making our kids miserable um and Congress hasn't passed a single law about social media not a single one not since the 1990s when the only thing we passed was a law that said that they weren't liable for toxicity on their platforms that's the one law we passed

uh we got to get much tougher I think we should Levy a tax on digital advertising Revenue they make $250 billion a year on digital advertising Revenue alone just meta and and Google tax that Revenue send it into an endowment to fund local journalism to fund education to fund the things that can help build trust back up again in this country they'll still have plenty of money to do their Ai and all

the other stuff that they want to work on uh as AOS regarding the debt uh so my understanding about that Constitutional Convention idea is that that's expired that all had they had um Sunset Clauses in them but more direct you to the point uh there is no way I am going to support a constitutional convention called for by the Maga crowd right now I do not trust what that Constitutional

Convention would propose or what it would try to vote on um right now the goal needs to be to protect the Constitution that we have it's a really good one uh and uh just a reminder 30 minutes lots of people thank you um I'd like to thank Colton in your DC office for his boundless patience uh Court decisions like the Constitution itself are only as good as compliance or enforcement in

1830 the Indian Indian Removal Act was ruled unconstitutional and president Jackson defied that ruling no one stopped the forced removal of 60,000 people from their land directly resulting in 15,000 deaths you have joined with other Democrats in passing resolutions of opposition but State you have little power with a minority in Congress I'm outraged at these claims of impotence in a time of severe crisis

especially after the very real chance to stop this illegitimate government was squandered during the Democratic majority 117th Congress in the Biden Administration that was the moment to hold accountable Trump and all the republicans in Congress who supported the January 6 Insurrection nothing happened they maintained positions of power and this blatant and well-planned coup was allowed to progress you and

fellow Democrats rely on an adherence to the rules decorum and civility as if you are facing normal political circumstances but nothing is normal about a naked Power grab by billionaires who have proven that they flout the rules without consequences we are now forced to watch horrified as Democrats put up zero serious unified opposition after years of willful blindness to these dangers you've effectively

abandoned us to the whims of a tyrant the only question the only consistent plan I've heard from Democrats is to wait until midterms so the question is why should we vote Democrat again when we could instead put our energy and resources into creating a true Workers Party that will stand for us in times of Crisis and fight for our Our lives our rights and ability to support our families um I'm Mark conr I'm from Fall

River uh like many people here my wife and I pay federal taxes all year long we watch our debt increase dramatically every single year and then in addition to that last year I had to write another $14,000 in federal taxes still watching the debt increase dramatically my question is uh what have you done in the last four years to turn that around so that we can get ourselves to pay off

this debt and what do you plan on doing in the future he did uh so on the the question of of Democrats and claims of of impotence I don't I don't think democrats should claim impotence no would I ever do that we have levers of power here we've got over site roles for example right now we've got the Secretary of Health and Human Services an antiva Crusader who is refusing to

recommend the misil vaccine as we have measles outbreaks in Texas and Georgia and we're building bipartisan oversight on the Energy and Commerce Committee on which I serve to try to fight back against that because politicians can't be allowed to bring back a disease that scientists had cured um should should Congress in the 117th have done more to prevent Donald Trump from coming back I mean we did

impeach him and you could argue that we should have passed a 14th Amendment resolution that found that he had incited Insurrection and was thereby ineligible for running again in hindsight yeah we should have done that you could argue though that impeachment already had done already made that statement because of the findings of impeachment that Congress passed but the courts did not view the

fact view that as a 14th Amendment violation sufficient to keep him off the ballot and I agree that it he should not have been eligible for the ballot he incited Insurrection it was in violation of section three of the 14th Amendment uh and we probably had a 48h hour window after January 6 2021 where maybe if it had been a 14th Amendment finding and not an impeachment finding we could have

gotten the Senate to vote for it although you know counting on Senate Republicans do the right thing I think is never going to be a great bet um but right now what we have to face is the fact that we've got 18 months of of before the next election and we're going to have to use oversight and litigation and legislation at moments of Leverage to box in his Imperial instincts and then next November Democrats have to

take the house back and turn him into a lame duck as opposed regarding the debt so you're right $36 trillion of debt and right now we are heading towards an area where we're spending more on debt service than we are on the United States military which is not a tenable place for a great country to be in we absolutely have to reduce the debt what I'm going to contest though is the claims of this Administration that

they're doing that because what this Administration is claiming is that cutting usaid or cutting the NIH is reducing our debt federal employees account for less than 4% of our federal expenditures they're not saving anybody any money they're trying to create enough chaos and and noise to to screen the fact that they're really trying to cut Medicaid and they're trying to cut Medicaid in order to pay for tax cuts

for people who don't need tax cuts and that's going to explode the debt it's going to add to5 trillion to our debt in the next 10 years so I'm going to oppose that one because I believe in Medicaid and healthare and two because I don't want to expand debt but you are right we got to get the we got to we got to have hard conversations about how to re in

what actually drives our debt and what actually drives our debt is Healthcare spending as a country let's just be blunt about it if that's going to require trust and bipartisan negotiations this Administration is doing neither of those things right now hi Congressman Lisa Jones Health First Family Care Center this was an excellent segue into my question which is to thank you for being a strong

advocate for community health centers here in Fall River our community health centers care for one in seven residents and I'm wondering if you could speak to the conversation in DC around community health centers given that our funding ends at the end of this month thank you great question just a really quick question um I'm an independent but I vote mostly democ ratic our country I'm

watching the speech the other night Democrats don't look like they're on the same page it looks like there's a lot of infighting and disagreement where we need to join together and fight for the causes you're fighting for you have a closer look to that am I wrong and if I'm not what's being done to unify the party yeah not a great night uh you're not going to get a disagreement from me

there neither party looked very good uh and I don't I don't I don't agree with the sort of the the the t-shirts or the paddles or the name calling I don't think it makes Democrats look like they're organized or like we have a discipline message or that we're trying to uphold decorum and the rule of law in the face of somebody who has no respect for either um I think what you're going

to see is that the Democrats going into next year are going to find a consistent message and a consistent discipline focus on protecting Medicaid and resisting uh the tax cuts that would uh really I think 80% of these tax cuts would benefit the 1% Democrats are going to be Allied and unified in making very clear to the American public that yeah he gives a 100 minute speech and it's

very entertaining but he only spent two minutes out of those 100 talking about the cost of living and half of those two minutes were saying that the cost of living was going to go up and now he wants to take away health care for Primary Care for 40% of the kids in this country who rely on Medicaid for atome Care for Seniors and that's going to make insurance premiums go up he's going

to make home insurance uh excuse me that was going to make health insurance premiums go up he's going to make home insurance premiums go up with tariffs um so I think we're going to be able to draw a contrast between the chaos and Corruption of this Administration with the High Cost of Living and the attacks on Health Care uh but I agree the joint address to Congress was was a bad night

for American politics generally speaking community health centers I appreciate the question I'm a huge supporter of Community Health centers treat 10% of Americans for 1% of our Total Healthcare spending and I think we should try to make that one in every three Americans uh this is actually an area where I see glimmers of potential bipartisan progress because RFK is um totally wrong about infectious disease

but he's not wrong about chronic disease and about the value of primary preventative care and the Maha caucus actually supports Community Health Center funding which is a new position for republicans and we welcome from them to to that side I could see that we could get bipartisan consensus on Section 330 grants and expanding that funding we're going to do a speed round here because we have 20 minutes left

together and um we have long lines and I'm not sure we'll get to everybody but we are going to try try try okay I'll compress it too Dana hi there I uh appreciate you being here um thank you um my name is Eileen I'm PA River I'm activist I don't own a TV by choice so I do a lot of and spend a lot of time on the internet researching and and looking

at misinformation disinformation as the previous woman had indicated the newest one that concerns me at this time is all of this supposed legit information saying that President Trump is a Russian Act asset if that were true everything else would be negated at this point because how do we deal with that do you have any consensus about that in Washington yeah uh a Rec my name is John

Sylvia by the way live here in Fall River uh recent census of homeless conducted by the city of h River revealed that there are over 300 in homeless individuals in the city this while thousands of migrants are provided housing Medical Care food and transportation why have you allowed this to continue and why haven't you why have you not advocated for the homeless residents I just want to add one other

thing on top of that this city has changed a little bit Bristol County so I think if you want to work in a bipartisan thing constantly trashing the Republicans or the president is not going to help the situation so I've got strong relationships with state and local Republicans here in the Massachusetts forth and you're right Bristol County and indeed Fall River uh voted for Donald Trump and inside the

Massachusetts forth uh you know politics stops and it's about delivering for constituents and I'm able to do that with Republican state senators and Mayors and state representatives throughout the district and I take that obligation seriously I also have advanced bipartisan legislation on fentanyl on drug pricing on social media regulation on housing on China on Ukraine at every opportunity and I think

important it's important to have relationships across the aisle but I am absolutely going to stand up for the rule of law and the Constitution and I'm not going to let this President lie to the American people that's not political it's just my oath to the question about homelessness you know homelessness is a function really of two broad vectors one is the cost of housing and the other is is

mental health and substance use disorders and I've been a strong supporter of uh home home grants and uh the housing tax credit program both of which are designed to improve the production of affordable housing and also through SSA through the Substance Abuse and Mental Health assoc Agency at the federal level through opioid use um grants and um and expanded mental health treatment through our community health

centers mayor I don't know if you want to respond to anything about what Fall River is doing but the S Grant that he referring he use the mic use the mic the samon grant that he's referring to is the one that funds the fast team and a lot of our homeless services in the city of Fall River the number 300 is not Street Homeless a lot of those could be couch Surfers or

living in cars we address them every day uh I got to say coming through in that Jake has offered a lot of support both for that Samson Grant which is well over $2 million and funds us for four years and even at the state delegation is helping us on this scramble it's a brutal fight but we fight it every day so I'm and I'm not going to take his

time let me speak to them let me speak to the migrant issue yeah Fall River is not housing thousands of migrants but to the extent that Massachusetts is paying a lot of money for migrant housing there's no way around it that is not Massachusetts fault and in fact I think the state house has responded relatively ably to it that's congress's fault that's congress's fault uh Congress did not

tackle border security and immigration legislation as I said at the top of the hour I have co-sponsored and argued for multiple pieces of bipartisan immigration and border security legislation including bill by the way that would that the progressive left did not always agree with like I am willing to challenge my own party for us to get control of the situation because it was clearly not

under control we just don't we don't have a willing partner right now on this front uh tackling immigration requires trust because it's the most thorny political issue in Washington and and there just just isn't the trust speaking of trust Trump as a Russian asset no there's no consensus View and then I'm not going to weigh in on that um I'm not sure it's really all that um I mean

after that Oval Office exchange frankly we know where he stands I mean he's in favor of Vladimir Putin's propaganda and Viewpoint and he's echoing Kremlin talking points and what we need now is for Congress and the European Union to support Ukraine because the commander-in-chief won't do it the good news is there's 300 billion euros worth of Frozen Russian assets held in Brussels right now and the French and

the Germans and the belgians can unfreeze those Russian frozen assets and direct direct it towards Ukrainian defense Ukraine probably needs to spend um Ukraine probably needs about 20 to$ 40 billion do a year to have the kind of army necessary to guarantee its own security and that can be well provided for through the poetic justice of taking the Russians money um Kevin Kasa Democratic State

committee for the first Bristol and Plymouth District um I want to thank your parents and I um commend them and I encourage you to pass on the values that your parents passed on to you to to your children a Democratic Republic requires certain virtues uh Integrity honesty uh generosity uh courage and um those virtues are all the more important when the leadership not only in this this

country but in other countries in the world or the ascendant uh rule by way of force and fraud and vice Kevin I I love the compliments but what's the question here's my question um I had my father in a nursing home there was a spend down eventually he had to go on to Mass health I befriended some good people who were some of them Second World War veterans who were cared

for in that nursing home there were excellent people with very low pay doing incredible work caring for them and the idea that to give a a giveaway to billionaires that they would sacrifice those those who have come before us the greatest Generation or even the possibility that they can be provided a bit of help so they can be taken care of at home horrifies me so whatever you can

do on your committee defend the interest of the older generation thank you Kevin I will yeah Congressman I too want to thank you for your military service my name is Dr Paul reri I've been a general surgeon in this community for the better part of 26 years as we all know the with demise of steuart healthcare there are consequences to both patients and physicians in this state my question is

will there ever be a transparent investigation by the state of Massachusetts or the federal government for that matter to hold the steuart officials responsible for their unethical business practices and the public figures who were responsible for overseeing those business practices thank you let's do another two questions but then yeah you can come up yeah other two questions very quick Yes mine is quick

hi I'm Beverly Robinson I'm from Swansea unfortunately right now there's a lot of things that I fear but one of the things that I fear most is a lot in a lot of the cases the um the judges are ruling against Trump my question is I feel that he's going to defy everything my question is realistically what can someone do if he refuses to comply with what the judge has ordered let's hold on the Applause

they're not being shipped out yeah thank you um Carol why don't you address the steward speak in the microphone Steward was a horrendous bad actor in this community and in this region um with the help of the administration the legislature and a lot of oversight and I give a lot of credit to our secretary Kate Walsh who comes from a she's just an amazing um healthc care um expert

who's our secretary of Health and Human Services we were able to move move on from them and now we have brown Health covering the steward in our communities uh we passed legislation to prevent Private Industry private to come in and reenact what happened with Steward and uh we can talk further I don't want to take away from the from the SE from the congressman but we can talk further and

please reach out uh about your specific interest uh I don't think it's over I think what we're trying to do is legislate to prevent this from ever happening again so thank you for that thank you as long litigation right um the question about opioids I had addressed some of the work that I'm trying to do on preventing them from coming into this country in the first place which is by far I think our most

effective lever we there's only about two dozen manufacturers on the Chinese Mainland that make these fentanyl precursors and they also they all sell lcit pharmaceutical active ingredients also so they're very subject to sanctions because it's a relatively small part of their business and they're doing it frankly because the Chinese Communist party is inducing them to do it the CH the CCP is trying to pump

fentanyl into the United States uh so we need to sanction them we need to check the Manifest of the ships and find them if they're not compliant we need to get uh money laundering and law enforcement and uh our diplomats all on the same page through a Joint Task Force but then here on the front lines uh the mayor had mentioned the fast team for example that's funded partly federally because

combining law enforcement with Public Health and Social Workers uh really works and I think it helps us address in a more cost-effective and Humane manner uh this scorge the other thing I'll add is we finally have effective acute painkillers that don't rely on opiates and this has actually come from a Boston area company from vertex has finally delivered a really effective acute pain

drug that is non-addictive and yet um if you look at how it's scheduled under Part D under the Medicare plans that people rely on the co-pay is higher for that than it is for the and so we're now working on legislation to say to the health insurance companies no no way uh your co-pays for a non-addictive painkiller needs to be lower than the uh co-pays for The Addictive painkiller because that should

be the last resort is something as addictive as opioids one in 16 people who get prescribed opiates end up becoming addicted so it really needs to be the last resort um finally ma' to the question of of Judges ruling against Trump and him not obeying I mean that is the that is the Sword of Damocles hanging over all of our heads that is the ultimate question I will say we are

not in a constitutional crisis yet and I and I know that that statement might rub some people the wrong way but I was in the building on January 6 2021 when they were trying to hang the vice president and and you know beat the speaker of the house so I know what a constitutional crisis feels like we're not there yet and we have to be cautious about um saying that we are when we're 2 months

in to four years uh because otherwise we can desensitize folks to when we when we actually trip that w mostly in fact to my understanding almost entirely the administration is complying to this date with judges orders sometimes in poor Faith sometimes foot dragging but we haven't seen flagrant violations yet and should that moment come um what you're going to have to rely on is in some degree criminal

penalties for the bureaucrats below Trump who would be taking out who would be executing those orders that's what it would come down to basically is state and federal criminal penalties against people who who went along with the president's lawlessness and we've seen that be effective you've seen for example the stop the steel movement had a lot of people who went along with it and then face pretty significant

consequences after the fact in a way that has created some deterrence we have five minutes technically five minutes left together we're going to do three questions see how see if we can land that and see if we can do this really quickly thank you for being here Congressman my name is Katherine schner I'm live right here in Fall River and I work for an education technology publisher in Boston so lots to be

concerned about right now but my question for you right now is related to education Trump has made it clear that he wants to eliminate the Department of Education leaving us with no one to protect students with disabilities manage student loans or enforce federal anti-discrimination laws he's also threatening to withhold federal funds from States or individual schools who do not comply with his war on Dei or

colleges who allow what he refers to as illegal protests all a clear violation of our freedom of speech so this issue is really important to me I have kids currently in college and a mountain of student debt for them I also work for an educational technology publisher and I'm worried about the effect this is going to have on my industry can you share with me what Democrats are doing to protect education

as well as our first amendment rights hi my name is Nicole man I'm a substance boost clinician and social worker in this area for past 15 years right now I work in Elder Services um since Trump was Ed almost all I've been doing is Mass health Medicare Savings applications and frail Elder waivers what are you going to do to stop them from privatizing Medicare driving prices up to the point where people can't

afford their insurance Medicare you mean or Medicaid Medicare Congressman good afternoon we have a largely one-sided audience here but I'd like to ask you a couple of questions were you supportive of your party on Tuesday night when they refused to applaud for a 13-year-old cancer survivor and refused to applaud for the mothers of women their daughters who were raped and murdered by illegal

aliens and another thing seeing and a Gentleman earlier alluded to this I'm curious as to whether you would consider moderating your views a bit seeing that so many counties and cities Even in our state flipped to Donald Trump in 2024 he won 2800 out of 3,300 counties in this country and one more thing he is not cutting Medicare or Medicaid that is a lie that is a lie so hey hey we're not we're not going to

have feedback we're not going to have feedback everybody is allowed to ask questions and make their points of view heard uh so I guess I'll take the last first and it'll it syncs with the question that the previous um the previous constituent asked about which is privatizing uh Medicare and Medicaid so with Medicare there is Medicare Advantage where where that's already a public private partnership um

so I don't the the Medicare Advantage is a is a bipartisan program so I don't I don't know of any Trends underway for the further privatization of Medicare there's a public option and a and a the Medicare Advantage option what you may be referring to is Medicaid and there I'll also address the gentleman um they are trying to cut Medicaid let's just be 100% clear about that I am on the committee of

jurisdiction for this program I know how to do math and they're trying to take $880 billion out of Medicaid it it's it's not true um now listen folks folks finish strong here there's a qu the gentleman also asked about moderating My Views I've already talked about all the bipartisan legislation I have worked on whether it's fentanyl or drug prices or China or Ukraine um and I am ready for a

goodfaith conversation about Medicaid as well I've said this to the Republicans uh if you want to talk about provider taxes or you want to talk about improper billing of course we should have that conversation this is taxpayer dollars and we got to reserve the funds for people who really need it that is not What's Happening Here what is happening here is Donald Trump said I need $4.5

trillion dollars because I got to hook up my buddies for with tax cuts find me that money and the only place where in the federal budget where there's enough money to pay for those tax cuts if you're not going to touch the military which he doesn't want to do if you're not going to touch Social Security or Medicare which he's saying right now he doesn't want to do is medicate it's just

math so that's what they're going to try to cut and we are not going to let them do it we are going to fight back um the same goes for the tax cuts by the way I again on question of moderating My Views I I said to Republicans repeatedly privately and publicly if you want to just extend the tax cuts for the middle class we'll work with you on that and

we'll work with you on pay fors for it as well that would lower the cost of the bill by two-thirds we'd extend you know the raise in the standard deductible and the tax cuts that have saved the middle class you know $100 to $2,000 a year on average but we're not going to be behind a bill that gives 80% of the benefits to people making more than a million dollars a year there's just no world in

which that makes sense for the United States right now at a time when income inequality is already one of our great challenges so I'm ready to moderate My Views but I need people on the other side who are ready to moderate theirs um and then finally about education and and threats against education I agree with everything and I um the the the threats are coming full and fast on the

Department of Education the one thing to note is that while they are trying to dismantle the Department of Education what they are saying right now is that the title one program the idea funding program the office of civil rights all the the subjects that the the lady mentioned they all get put into different departments so my focus right now is protecting the funding and protecting the office of civil rights

regardless of you know what the more senior Department that they're nested under is Dana do we have time for one more we are we are gonna here's how this is GNA go we are gonna extend by five minutes I am not making any promises about getting to the end of our line we are going to try we have negotiated that there are four questions left here because the people at the end are going

to pair up but before we hop to our last four questions and I hope we can get to them I do want to remind everybody that you can always uh reach us um on the congressman's website you can call our office there's information up front as you leave today we have feedback forms we'd love to hear from you um so while the congressman does have to scoot and I'm going to be holding them up up here

for an extra 5 minutes so he really has to get going to Taunton um some of our staff will stay here um till the end and sort of talk to folks for a reasonable amount of time so with that let's go um right here quick thank you for your service Congressman uh Donald Trump said that he loves Jeffrey Epstein and also Diddy and RFK Jr invited OJ and Bill Cosby to his house our government is

being run by friends of Jeffrey Epstein and this cannot stand the Democratic Party needs to take a bolder position and call for the resignation of Donald Trump second part second part is Democrats are not talking about the root cause of why they lost which is they rigged the primaries against Bernie Sanders Elizabeth Warren said this Jesse Jackson said this so please address that

thank you con Diane Hanks from Swansea mats I've worked for the VA Health Care system for 26 years and every day myself and everyone on my team is waiting to get fired um and if they go ahead and get rid of 83,000 I think is the the new number of va employees that work in the healthare system the largest Health Care system in the United States there will be no health care for veterans and I'm

wondering what you would like to do about that and two more quick questions very quickly here and then very quickly there hey name's William Bradford from uh fall my concerns pertain to the LGBT community the aspects of safety Financial social aspects coming up on a pride season in June I work for social services with the LGBT community I also work for social services with the hom buiness

too thank you so he's going to start and then I'm going to elaborate thank you Congressman uh our question is basically what can we do on a day-to-day basis as Citizens to support you thank you and I just want to continue that quickly um I think the division and tribalism in America is tearing down our democracy I think we need to work together to repair this divide Fall River to me is Bell

weather for the country of the magas we switch from Blue to deep red here I've been in touch with a group called The braver Angels they bring Democrats and Republicans together in a safe space to listen and hear each other I'm hoping your office or someone can work with this and set something up in fall river that man I'm sorry he walked out we need to talk to each other and embrace each

other and I'm a proud mom of um an employee at the waterfront she teaches sailing for Fall River Youth and it is a wonderful program proud of those kids okay uh on the question about the our LGBT neighbors we've got to get the equality Act passed and while the equality Act is a Democrat L bill it actually doesn't need to be a partisan measure because super majorities of Americans including

majorities of Republicans agree with the basic premise of non-discrimination regardless of how you were born regardless of whom you love uh there should be no discrimination for housing for public accommodations for health care for employment um that is actually a unifying issue and uh I actually think that we can probably not in this congress with speaker Mike Johnson but we can get to a place where we've got

the same kinds of federal protections for the LGBT constituency that we were able to win in the 1960s and 1970s for black Americans in the civil rights movement and it doesn't need to be a polarizing issue I think I think you know Democrats need to introspect about about also about the way that we talk about this issue in general sometimes Democrats tend to moralize or be um or or condescend to voters who

disagree with us and we we can't do that um we got to we got to enlist people not lecture them and and that applies to a whole host of issues about how we can find common ground because to the to the L's point about braver angels as I said at the top of the conversation this country is tribal right now but it's not polarized if you actually look at people's opinions about tons of issues

70% of Americans are actually right there in the middle and I think Fall River is a microcosm of this um I don't think there are huge extremes across the country I think that social media and cable news have made people feel like we don't agree because they get paid more frankly that the more that we are outraged at one another it's an outrage as a service business model so the the great political project of the next

decade is this country tries to heal from and move past Donald Trump is going to be trusting one another as Citizens again um and events like this help us do that so thank you for coming out Fall River and for sharing your opinions and your comments uh I value them and as Dana said my staff will be here to take your feedback and to have any further conversations thank you