From WXXI news.

This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour will be made at the end of this month, when the federal government's funding will run out.

You might recall the heated debates from six months ago when Democrats had to decide whether to stand against the new administration's agenda and shut down the government, or if they should vote to extend the funding and keep government running.

Many Democrats wanted to make a statement to shut it down.

Senator Chuck Schumer became the key Democratic voice calling for government to stay open and for Democrats to vote to fund it.

Schumer said that he knew his position would be unpopular, but he made his choice based on courage and principle.

And Senator Schumer contended that if you shut down the government, there will be chaos in that chaos, the courts could shut down.

And what do authoritarians do in a crisis?

They consolidate power and potentially abuse it.

Schumer worried that if the courts are shut down, we could see the Trump administration totally unobstructed in pursuing whatever it wanted.

Writing for The New York Times, Ezra Klein contends that we now see that the Trump administration is doing exactly that anyway.

Even with the courts open and with Congress ostensibly sentient.

Klein writes, quote, in about three weeks, the government's funding will run out.

Democrats will face a choice join Republicans to fund a government that President Trump is turning into a tool of authority, authoritarian takeover and vengeance, or shut the government down.

And then he goes on to say, not a single argument Schumer made then is valid now.

Trump is not losing in the Supreme Court, which has weighed in again and again on his behalf.

Instead of reprimanding Trump for his executive order unilaterally erasing the 14th Amendment guarantee of citizenship to all born here, it reprimanded the lower courts for imposing a national freeze on his order in the way they did.

It has shown him extraordinary deference to the way he is exercising power.

End quote.

And Klein concludes that he has come to feel the Democrats cannot just greenlight this administration anymore, saying, quote, I want to be very clear about what I am saying.

Donald Trump is corrupting the government.

He is using it to hound his enemies, to line his pockets and to entrench his own power.

He is corrupting it in the same way the Mafia would corrupt the industries it controlled.

You could still under mafia rule, get the trash picked up or buy construction materials.

But the point of those industries had become the preservation and expansion of the Mafia's power and wealth.

This is what Trump is doing to the government.

This is what Democrat Democrats cannot fund.

This is what they have to try to stop.

End quote.

So now it's all eyes on the Democrats, all eyes on Senator Schumer, all eyes on a party that has not come together on a singular message or a plan on what to do as the political minority.

President Trump has no trouble advancing his agenda, and it explicitly includes penalizing cities and states that didn't vote for him.

He moved the Space Force command from Colorado to Arkansas, and he is sending federal forces into American cities while tweeting pictures of himself personally bombing Chicago.

Meanwhile, red cities and states with even higher crime rates are ignored.

Just yesterday, President Trump claimed that if you could only remove domestic violence from the official crime statistics, many red cities and states would look a lot better, maybe close to a 100% improvement.

Let's listen to what the president of the United States says about recognizing domestic violence.

Now it's more than 87%.

Virtually nothing.

And, and much lesser things, things that take place in the home they call crime, you know, they'll do anything they can to find something.

If a man has a little fight with the wife, they say this was a crime scene.

So now I can't claim 100%.

But we are.

We are safe.

Saying you can walk to a restaurant.

You can walk to the white House.

If you work there, you can walk to the Capitol.

And even the Democrats say, I can't believe it, but they don't want to admit it.

But I can't believe it.

We could do the same thing in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles.

We did it.

We saved.

We saved Los Angeles.

So at some point, the shock wears off.

The president of the United States just publicly complained that when men fight their own wives at home, it can become a crime.

That bothers him.

Ezra Klein and others are asking Democrats not to be numb.

We wanted to know what one of the leaders of the local Democratic Party says about this.

I'll be pressed.

Berg is executive director of the Monroe County Democratic Committee and is back in studio with us.

Welcome back.

Thanks for being here.

Thanks so much.

Happy to be here.

It's, it's it's been a little while, and I want to start with this.

I, I don't remember six months ago.

It's all a blur of six months ago.

Were you on Senator Schumer side, or did you want to see Democrats stand against the continuing the operation of the government?

So six months ago, I certainly was having, you know, the same emotional reaction that most people were having about how challenging it is to have, the government funded and moving forward on a path that I clearly just 100% disagree with.

I, you know, I did have the opportunity to speak with, Senator Schumer staff.

And, you know, I listened to their arguments.

They made a lot of good points about the courts.

And, you know, kind of just keeping things, moving in general and that if we shut down the government at that time, Trump would just go and do whatever he wants.

Well, clearly that's the line has shifted.

Reality has shifted.

And Trump is mostly doing whatever he wants.

And Doge is no longer as much of a factor.

Or as Rick Klein acknowledges, that, you know, that, as as as scary as those cuts were, the reality is now that Republican officials leading these departments don't want their staff fired.

They are holding on to the folks that they have because they want to continue to see things operate.

They don't like getting blamed when things don't happen at all.

And so, you know, I'm not terrified of them firing at everybody, but clearly we're going to continue to see, a really, concerted effort to push the government towards more conservative values and more conservative actions.

That sometimes are not within the bounds of the law.

And that's really challenging because when the courts have told Trump now, he either ignores it, appeals it, and delays, or the court writes their ruling in such a way where they're acknowledging that what's happening is illegal.

You know that that's what the court said in California, that using the National Guard for domestic law enforcement is not legal, and that the training that the troops were being given on Posse Comitatus and whether or not they were allowed to do certain things was wrong.

The judge stopped short of saying, get out of the city, which is a challenging factor, because if they had said that and they didn't leave, what happens then?

And if by leaving it out, you know, they're not saying that you're allowed to continue doing this, but they are, you know, leaving that camp.

But that part of the conversation about who's going to stop this?

How is it going to continue?

Working very differently.

So one of the things that I have been thinking about is that while the courts are maybe not the most effective at stopping Trump from doing something, they are still documenting and doing the analysis of how his actions line up with the law and the Constitution.

And from a historical and legal perspective, I think that that is still highly relevant.

So if a shutdown occurs and the courts shut down, what happens then you know, we're going to be relying on, you know, just legal scholars to provide commentary on whether or not something is legal.

And at the end of the day, that does not hold the same weight as a, as a judicial ruling.

Sure.

And so but do you support the Democrats?

Standing for a shutdown, saying that we are not going to continue to fund the government if it's operated this way?

I, I would agree with that.

I think that as required is 100% right.

There need to be a set of policies identified by Congress on what are the absolute bare essentials that we have to have in there in order for the government to even viably operate?

You know, our how can we change, you know, what needs to go in so that Ice agents can't, you know, can't and won't go out in the streets masked without badges, without providing any information, without providing warrants, snatching people off the streets.

We have to figure out a way to say, you can't do that.

Immigration enforcement is going to continue to happen for the rest of our lives in some way, form or fashion.

The question is, what should it look like?

And where do we draw the line between this is an acceptable form of, of government action versus this is clearly authoritarian fascist overreach that we have to make sure is not legally acceptable and that Democrats are are 100% rejecting.

Right.

There can be no complicity in what is happening.

And I fear and I think as our clients fear is that if the budget is allowed to be passed without a fight, without some sort of indication on what are the black lines that the Democratic Party has to hold, that people will just continue to see the Democrats as just another version of the Republican Party, without the same leadership, without the same drive, without the same specific policies.

And that's a real that's a that's definitely a problem for us.

Maybe the most sober argument against shutting the government down is that we could end up being in the spiral of shutdowns every time there's a new party in power, that this just becomes a political game that Republicans could say, well, we'll never fund the government if a Democrat's in power or we think Democrats are bad for the country.

You know, Trump talks about that all the time.

Yeah, I JD Vance talks about it all the time.

So we're never going to find it.

I don't even care what the agenda is.

We're never going to find it.

And if Democrats do that this year that that sets that spiral in motion.

What do you think?

I would agree with the caveat that Republicans have never needed a push to change the norms of government before.

It's never taken the Democrats saying, oh, we're going to do something for the Republicans to be like, you know what?

We're going to this this turning time.

It's our turn to, you know, not appoint somebody to the Supreme Court or to not pass a budget.

So I think that the Republicans are just as likely, come October 1st, to treat a Democratic president with that level of disdain and hostility, regardless of whether what we do in Congress right now.

That being said, it would certainly strengthen the argument that the Republicans would make to the public about this is the norm.

The Democrats set this in motion.

But I don't think it's actually going to impact their decision making one way or another.

Listeners, I'd like to hear from you.

I mean, this is, this is going to heat up in the next few weeks as Democrats sort of reengage with the question of what you do about this.

And do you fund the government or do you let it shut down?

It's 844295 talk.

It's toll free.

8442958255263 WXXI if you call from Rochester.

2639994, you can email the program connections@kci.org.

If you're watching on the news YouTube channel, you can join the chat there.

And let me start with an email from Charles.

Charles says, here's an alternative theory.

Schumer wants the government funded because if it does shut down, people will realize that what Democrats say is essential and what actually is essential are very different things.

I will apologize for being a little bit rude, but that's laughable.

We have we have run this experiment many, many, many times, unfortunately, just in my lifetime.

And every single time the American public makes it incredibly clear that while there might be corners of the government that they could do without, the vast majority of operations are essential to them, regardless of whether or not we consider them essential in in a government shutdown, we're not going to give up our national parks.

We're not going to give up flying.

We're not going to we don't want our food to not be inspected.

I all of these things are essential.

And whether or not, it, you know, it makes a good talking point to say like, oh, you're not going to miss the government.

I'm sorry, but but you will like the roads won't get paved, things won't get done.

And at the end of the day, you're, you have nobody else to go to to solve those problems.

Your neighborhood association is not going to fill in the potholes, effectively, both because they're in your neighborhood, and they're not going to get it done.

But also what happens when you drive on to the highway and you want to go, you want to go somewhere else.

You're going to rely on random other people and other places to do that stuff.

No, it's the government's job to make sure all that stuff is functioning.

So I'm sorry, but that is a ridiculous premise.

Well, so one of the things that Klein stresses is that you got to have a plan.

If you're going to do this, you at least have to have a cohesive idea as a party for what you're going to say to the American people when government shuts down.

Yeah.

What are the steps taken necessary to reopen the government?

Where are those bold lines that you described that have been crossed that you say cannot be crossed?

And what are some of the policies that you think have to be, adopted before you would change this?

And I think, I'm very curious to hear where you think we need to go.

You know, as a country, you're you are a Democrat.

Republicans think we need to go in very different directions.

Republicans are very happy to see the president sending federal forces into Chicago.

And then in the end, Republicans who live there, they have not blinked one bit at what the president said about domestic violence.

No, no, they have his annoyance that when a man hits a woman at home, it's a crime.

And that that there's more of that happening in the president's view, in red states, and that just makes red states look more violent.

But it's not more violent, because that should be a private business between a husband and a wife.

I mean, that's a fundamental difference between Democrats and Republicans.

Just because a party leader who's a Democrat says something does not bring that I'm falling in line and believing it, echoing it or anything.

But every time Trump says something, 99% of the Republican Party, you know, jumps over themselves, trips over their own feet to go be the first person to agree with him and to talk about how right he was on something.

So I, I am not I personally don't worry too much about while Trump can do this and everybody will fall in line and Democrats don't have their their one set of talking points.

It's true.

But we're a big tent.

That's the point of the Democratic Party.

We're meant to be available to everybody.

And there is going to be a wide variety of opinions, of opinions.

What is actually the, the purpose of the government and, and where are the bounds of the law supposed to be placed?

However, what makes us different is a strong commitment to every single one of our civil liberties and our civil rights.

The Republicans are more than happy to toss anyone's look at any one of those out of the window.

When Trump says.

But when Trump says to, Democrats will not do the same.

So is that where the bold line is?

And do you think that that works in selling to the American people?

I, I wish I knew what sold to the American people.

I think that, you know, it's hard for me to, to, really get a good idea of what's going and going to grab that national media attention.

Because Trump is so good at just throwing a problem up every day, you know, it's today, it's domestic violence isn't a problem.

Okay?

Is every Democrat in the country now supposed to spend 24 hours screaming about how domestic violence is a problem, and how husbands should not be beating their wives?

Are we going to give him that power to just dictate what we talk about in what we do, or are we going to continue to fight in every corner of the country in the way that we have been?

You know, there are more protests happening now than ever before in history.

Every single weekend I go out and I see stuff happening every day.

When I'm driving home from work, I see people on the overpasses of the highways protesting in a way that they have, I've never seen in my entire life.

But the reason I ask about that and Hoover, I'll take on one second.

We're going to get some of your feedback in just a moment here.

The reason I brought up the president's comments yesterday about domestic violence is I will admit that for me personally, even for me, that was shocking.

And there isn't a whole lot that shocks anymore.

One of the challenges, for people who feel like we are in a weird place is you become inured to it, things start to feel normal.

And I was even shocked to hear him say, you know, when a husband has a little fight with his wife, you know it.

It gets included in the crime stats, and he thinks that counts against him and that we, you know, we should probably view that differently.

I went away.

I, I couldn't believe I was hearing the president of the United States lament that he was personally negatively impacted when we counted as a crime.

If you strike your wife in an argument, I, I thought that that would move more of the needle of people being shocked and I was wrong.

Yeah.

I mean, I think some people are shocked, but I guess a lot of people are like, yeah, you know, it's Trump and Jeffrey Epstein.

Come on.

Like we have this huge prime example.

We know Trump is connected.

And yet almost all of the Republicans in the House and in the Senate want to put their head in the sand and pretend like he's this great saint, who's probably, you know, a an informant.

You know that.

That's why he was involved with Epstein is because he was informing on Epstein to the FBI.

Okay?

That means he committed the crimes first.

Let's start there.

Why not start there when, you know, we'll move on from that?

But, my point being, he cannot he cannot shock me anymore.

Like, he he cannot shock me anymore.

Nothing.

He says nothing he does seems out of bounds of what you can expect from him.

Because he views himself as a dictator.

He wants to have sole control of everybody and everything around him.

If he says jump the question supposed to be how high it's not supposed to be, well, do you have the authority to tell me to do that?

And when he you know, that's why we have been if there are many Democrats out there who have been talking about the danger of allowing the National Guard and the military into our cities because what happens when he tells them to turn violent?

How many of them just follow the order, and how many of them question it?

All right, let me get a phone call.

This is Hoover in Pittsford.

Hey, Hoover, go ahead.

Hey, Evan.

Couple things.

I want to make a statement first, I got two questions for your guests.

If you're going to pound the president, pound him fairly, I don't I don't particularly love this guy, but I like some of the things he's doing.

And you're going to find, Bill Clinton and his buddies are all part of Epstein's college ratio.

You know, you're you're just barking up the wrong very, very anti Bill Clinton.

Just so you know.

Yeah I don't think our guest is a big Bill Clinton fan over.

Okay.

Maybe it does have some merit to be on your show.

But this was billed as a program for talking about shutting down government and what the electorate and the taxpayers need to know.

So far, I haven't heard a thing from your guest about that.

He's it's all he's doing is talking in a political sense and not talking about government.

So my question is, hey, what's your experience?

And local government?

I work for the Republicans.

I work for the Democrats in local, county and state government for over 20 years.

So I want to know what your background is and how can you tell me what your party should be doing for all of the people in Rochester, Monroe County, and then we'll answer that one first.

I don't want to get too far off here.

Hold on one second, Hoover.

I'll let him answer.

I didn't bring avian to speak for every Democrat.

Obviously.

Executive director of the Monroe County Democratic Committee.

He's one of the leaders of the local party.

He's speaking for himself.

Is that fair to say?

Yeah.

No, that's 100%.

Okay.

I just say so.

So whoever wants to know your credentials in government, go ahead.

Sure.

I mean, I started interning in politics when in high school, for the local Democratic committee.

Most recently, I worked for the county, county Board of elections before moving over to work for the party.

If you want to learn more about me, you're welcome to go to Aivi press Burg PR iceberg.

Com, the resume on there is not entirely up to date because I recently changed jobs, but, that'll give you a good background on on who I am, what my values are, and where I've been.

Okay, so.

All right.

Hoover next.

Go ahead.

So what what are we going to do about shutting down the government?

It needs to serve the citizens of Rochester and Monroe County.

How are you going to articulate what parts of government should be shut down when and for how long, and what will be the firecracker that will turn it back on?

Because, you know, this seems to be a a, a cosmetic conversation about pounding on, a political matter and not, I want to hear your programs.

I've been usually are the best around this, but this one is not.

And I just wanted to register my objection to how this guest is handling this program today and, try and bring him back to the topic that, made me turn it on in the first place.

So thanks for taking my call it.

I'm going to listen while I'm making lunch now.

Thank you buddy, I hoover.

I appreciate it as always.

I mean, I and I don't mind a little criticism.

I think you're to be to be fair and to be blunt, I think you're confused about some of the point of this conversation.

The point of the conversation.

Absolutely.

And we are going to talk about what happens when a party decides you're going to stand in the way of government functioning.

That's not a trivial matter.

And Hoover is right.

We have to talk about that.

And Abby and any Democrat who wants that to happen has to confront that.

But where I think you're a little confused is this isn't about piling on one man.

This is a question of asking if we have reached a point where things are different, are we in an actual era of authoritarianism?

That's the question.

And if we are, is it a duty of a party to not allow that authoritarianism to go forward?

It's also important for me as a journalist to ask, if you believe that we are in an authoritarian era and you want to block it, is your action of disrupting the government, going to concentrate more power and authority in an authoritarian stance, which is what Senator Schumer has argued, as he knows.

So this isn't just about piling on one guy or pointing out some, you know, flubs or things people don't like about Donald Trump.

This is about asking if we are fundamentally in something different, even different than the first Trump term.

That's the question.

And if we are if we are in a different era, what do in the world you do about that now?

Hoover, if you think, look, he's I don't really love the guy, but I like some of the things he's doing.

You know, he's a politician.

There's a lot of politicians I don't like.

I didn't like Bill Clinton.

Then.

In your view, Trump is one in a long line of flawed politicians.

You haven't reached the point of making you something fundamentally more threatening or different.

That's fine.

That's your view.

Abby is not in the same place.

So the reason the Democrats feel like they may, some Democrats may feel like they're going to stand against this government is because we're in an authoritarian era and that things are fundamentally changing.

Is that a fair description?

Yeah.

I mean, you know, that's why I wanted to have you on the program to see if you actually think that's where we are.

Sure, sure.

And, Hoover, I would like to apologize if I've been, ruining your lunch hour.

So, I am sorry about that, but what I would say is, let's let's take a step back.

Let's remember what a government shutdown is and what would cause a government shutdown.

The Republicans in the Congress are going to put forward a spending package.

Democrats in Congress likely will not be included in any of the conversations about what should be in that spending package, just as it would be reversed if Democrats were in power with a large enough majority in order to get us across the line.

So Republicans don't have that.

They do not have the votes in the Senate that they need in order to pass a spending bill without Democrats support.

So the question is, what does the law need to say in order for those Democrats, whether it's 7 or 47, to vote for that spending package in good conscience, I have not looked at what has been put out so far.

I'm not even sure if there has been a real spending package put forward yet.

My gut tells me that I will find a a lot of things in that package to be absolutely unacceptable.

As an example, as an example, cutting Medicare, cutting Medicaid, as an example, trying to hire 10,000 new Ice agents with no qualification.

But Medicare and Medicaid is part of a process that if you don't win politically savvy, your party may lose.

And you may.

We didn't lose enough to give them the numbers that they need to do it.

Without us.

They don't have 60 votes in the Senate without Democrats voting.

So to say that Democrats are going to shut down the government is one perspective.

The other perspective is that the governing party is not going to do their own due diligence to put forward legislation that can fund the government.

And if it was 20 Republicans refusing to vote for it and ten Democrats who were on board, the conversation would not be, why are Democrats shutting down the government?

It would be, why can't the Republican Party get all their votes in line?

But that's a little spin.

Even Ezra Klein is saying Democrats may have to decide we're shutting down the government.

Sure, they might have to choose to not vote for a bill that they find objectionable.

Right.

Or we're not saying or during an administration that is behaving in an authoritarian ways that are antithetical to what this country is supposed to be about.

Sure.

That's the Klein argument.

It is.

It is.

And I think that it's a little bit, I think Ezra's argument is more political than legislative.

Yeah.

Which I think is the gap between what he talks about and what Schumer and, and Jeffries talk about.

Correct.

And that's where I am willing to bring this conversation back to the government side a little bit more.

If you want to talk about what the tools are of legislation, we can do that.

But but part of what Hoover is saying is now you've got to contend with actually shutting it down.

And what are the services we're going to lose?

Who's going to be hurt by that?

Trump decides in a shutdown.

Yeah, we know this.

The president gets to decide what services continue running in which fashion as quote unquote essential.

Yes.

During a shutdown it would be 100% in Trump's hands then as to what happens and what doesn't.

But but okay, I'll grant you that.

But he would have to shut some parts down because the funding wouldn't be there to carry on, as we are sure.

So something so what do you think is getting cut?

What do you who do you think is getting hurt?

That's what Hoover wants you to grapple with.

Sure, sure.

And that's a hard question, Mike.

My guess is that the, you know, national parks gone immediately.

Yeah.

You know what happens there, how long they're shut shutdown.

That's a hard question.

He's already talking about trying to sell them off.

So, like, there's always nuance in this conversation about is it going to stay?

Well, just because we fund it doesn't mean he's not going to do something else okay.

What else?

Infrastructure.

Infrastructure is certainly going away.

We're I can imagine that he would stop inspecting most food around the country, baby formula.

You know, medications are certainly not going to get looked at as closely.

All of those things are absolutely terrible.

I, I will not disagree with that.

There's no question in my mind, the, the the opposite side of that is what does the bill have to say in order for Democrats to say that they can vote for it based upon the people that elected them?

And I think that if we have a bill that has extreme cuts, has extreme raises in military spending, in a spending in other places like that, that the majority of Democratic voters would say, we don't want this bill to become law.

And if the Republicans can get it across the threshold on their own political power, with their own votes, they win.

But we're not going to help them do it.

I will also just say Hoover.

On the subject of Epstein and Bill Clinton, I thought that was a little bit of a weird non-sequitur.

I don't know a lot of Democrats who are like, cover up Epstein.

Bill Clinton might be hurt by this.

I think there's a lot of people who are like, if he is in that, if he's in there, he's in there like enough.

And maybe Hoover feels like, well, that's hypocritical.

Clinton has been one of the leaders of the party for for decades.

And we know, about his foibles.

Okay.

You can have that.

You can certainly have that view.

But you cannot also say that it was consistent to say for the last ten years or five years, really, as Republicans have done about Epstein, we want the list.

We want the list, we want the list.

And now we don't want the list.

We want the list covered up.

And Trump was probably just an informant being the white knight trying to save the day, even though he's in those videos with teenage girls sitting on his lap.

That was probably just a ruse.

And the birthday card that the Wall Street Journal published yesterday is fake.

I mean, that's a big jump, man.

That's a big.

But I also would really just like to point out I am not a Democrat because of who the national leaders are.

I am a Democrat because of who my neighbors are, because of who my community members are, and what because of the people who are directly around me, what their values are.

The national leaders are going to do what they're going to do, and we're going to agree on hopefully nine out of 12 issues.

But if if we start falling below that, then yes, absolutely.

I would advocate for them to be replaced.

But just because they say something does not mean we're falling in line.

And frankly, I have never viewed Bill Clinton as a leader of the Democratic Party.

So I you know, I'm 27 for for anybody who doesn't know, I was born during Bill Clinton.

And I have never viewed him as a leader of the National Party.

And I've never met a Democrat who does.

They might think positively of him due to some things or another, but nobody is like, let's go see what Bill thinks, and we're going to do that, or let's protect Bill Clinton because of the Epstein that's I just yeah.

Sorry.

What we'll we'll try not to get up down that rabbit hole more when we come back.

I'm gonna take Robert's call in Fairport.

Robert.

Hang on.

We'll take a call right after the break.

We've got some, a range of comments from listeners with very, a wide range of views on whether the government should shutdown and what the Democrats should do.

Avi Pressburger is the executive director of the Monroe County Democratic Committee, and he is in studio today just talking about what the Democrats have to decide in the next few weeks before the federal funding runs out.

And the question is, should they once again, as Senator Schumer wanted six months ago, join with the Republicans, pass the funding bill, keep the government running, or stand up and say, we've seen enough.

It's too authoritarian.

It is going in a very dark direction, and we're not going to stand with it, even if that means shutting parts of the government down.

So let's take that break.

We'll come right back to your feedback next.

I'm Evan Dawson Wednesday on the next connections in our first hour.

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This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson, Robert in Fairport.

Next on the phone.

Hey, Robert.

Go ahead.

Yeah.

Thanks for taking my call.

Hey, earlier in the, session here, your guest commented about, the National Guard being deployed to cities and so on and so forth.

And, you know, we've had that in New York State.

We've we've got National Guard that went, to patrol the subway system in New York City.

We actually have National Guard that are being prison guards in the Southern Tier.

If you go down to Elmira Horseheads area, you know, a lot of the hotels there are filled with National Guardsmen who are serving at the Elmira Correctional Institute.

So I think that, your guest is missed that the other thing, too, just to mention about these protests, your guest, the too young to remember the Vietnam War, those protests were far larger.

Can I ask you a quick question, Robert?

Nope.

He's gone.

All right.

Thanks, Robert.

Go ahead.

What do you think of.

Sure.

All of those, uses of National Guard that Robert just mentioned, are directed by our governor, which would be a vastly different legal status than the president doing something.

Okay.

Thank you.

Robert.

So some of your the feedback from listeners, Linda, writes to say, how would a government shutdown, per your discussion today, play in favor of a possible would be dictator president or she says, dictator Trump?

And how would it work against that, if at all?

How likely is it that Trump wants the government shutdown by the Democrats?

Thank you.

First of all, there's a couple of questions in there.

And and they're good questions from Linda.

Number one.

So are we talking about probably the national parks closed.

That's just for starters for what happens at the National Front, the FDA okay.

But but you start with the parks.

Imagine the Trump administration hangs a sign on every park for people show up shut down by the Democrats.

I mean, you're definitely going to see that, right?

Sure.

Linda is thing number one, strategically, politically, how likely is it the Trump not only wants it to to be able to throw it against your party, but also to say, hey, that concentrates more power for me and I will do more of what I want with even less of a check on it.

Sure.

So I've thought about that a lot since the first shutdown.

Or it's the first, the first time that we had this kind of earlier this year.

And, and at the time, I, I certainly was of the opinion I, you know, that I thought Trump probably wanted to shut down.

What I think I have seen since then is that the Trump administration likes to do small but aggressive things every day.

They like to test the limits of what they can get done and what the people will tolerate bit by bit.

And what a government shutdown does is it forces more of it to happen all at once, and it forces the national conversation to be exclusively about what is the purpose of our government and where should we be spending our money.

And when immigration enforcement continues to happen at the scale that we're seeing it.

But you can't go to a national park.

FEMA's not providing any support.

The like all of the Department of Energy, Commerce, all of these places are shut down.

Businesses are struggling because they can't get the resources they need from the government.

It will put up.

It will put pressure on the Trump administration to move the needle in one way or another.

What happens?

We don't know.

That's what happens when you're dealing with a lunatic who can never keep his mind straight.

Is that you don't know how they're going to react to you?

But I think that we need to find a way, whether it's a shutdown or not, to really keep the conversation focused on how poorly Trump is treating the American people, how much he is violating our rights, and how he is actively tanking the economy for everyday people while patting the pockets of our billionaires.

Your party has a lower approval rating than Trump, and part of what some callers are wondering is, could a shutdown be pinned on your party and would it politically backfire?

It might that unfortunately, that's a gamble that we're going to have to take.

It's either going to come back on us for not shutting down the government or for shutting down the government, or maybe we can, you know, maybe people will accept the fact that Trump is president.

And at the end of the day, what happens falls on his head.

I don't know.

That's a really hard question.

I think that that at the end of the day, that's why you don't see Democrats all across the country clamoring for a shutdown.

It's because we don't know what the impact will be.

There are good reasons to think that it might be helpful in, consolidating the conversation on an on topics and attention that is better for us.

And there is a good chance as well, that it simply furthers Trump's agenda, that it gets blamed on the Democrats for standing in the way of the legislation getting passed, and that it's worse for us.

I looked at back to the feedback from the audience.

Charlie in Seneca Falls on the phone.

Hey, Charlie, go ahead.

So, the billionaires don't want a government.

They don't need it, and they own the Republican Party.

As far as I'm concerned, the bulk of the people who are active Republicans anymore grew up under Ronald Reagan.

Who?

Oh, I'm from the government.

I'm here to help the glass.

Fine.

So they expect the government to be a dystopian mess.

Republicans have the white House, the House and the Senate.

If the Democrats are unable to attend a government shutdown, the Republican Party or the Trump Party, then we need a new a whole new party.

And I am a registered Democrat.

I'm an active Democrat.

But if we can't get this straight and say it's you guys, Claudia Tenney, you're not working for our district.

Then whatever.

Let's come back and become the Whigs or whatever we would have been or the new Progressives, because if we can't do this, we're worthless.

That's it.

Charlie, thank you for the phone call.

And before I let Abby respond, this lines up a little bit with some of what we are hearing from others.

Alex says, how do we reconcile the divide between effective local leaders and incompetent federal leadership?

He says, to be clear, I still stand by every vote I've cast for Summer.

Brooke or Harry Bronson or Jen Lunsford and most of City Council.

But he says moral leadership has been lacking, in his words, to say nothing of the truly limp resistance from Schumer and Jeffries who steps up and how so Alex is saying he he thinks there's a stronger party locally.

He thinks it's weak.

Nationally, Charlie is saying if the National Party can't make it clear what a shutdown, who's to blame for a shutdown, and he doesn't think it's the Democrats, then you need new leaders anyway.

What do you say to all this?

Yeah, I mean, those are all really good points.

I would say I definitely agree.

I think our local party, is quite strong.

We've had a lot of local action happening recently.

We're launched.

We've launched, nine constituency caucuses.

To help bring more people into our community and into our work.

And, and there's a lot of stuff happening, at the local level, my main push back.

And I'm not going to say that I disagree, but my main push back on the idea that our state and federal leaders are not doing a whole lot would be a simple question.

How often do you watch C-Span because they are on the floor giving it to the Republicans almost every single day.

They are in committee hearings.

They are on the floor giving passionate speeches about what is important to their communities, getting it on the record and, whenever possible, forcing the Republicans in the room to at least listen to the things that are challenging for their communities.

What happens outside of those halls is much harder for our democratic leaders, and for anybody to really make sure you see, what the the media covers and what they choose to cover, oftentimes is more in line with Trump's agenda than the Democrats.

More often than not, it is an issue that Trump has picked for the day.

Or it's a scandal that he has chosen to deflect to.

And the things that the Democrats are talking about and doing are not breaking through.

And that is a failure in many ways, because if you don't have people listening to you, if you don't, if people don't know what you're saying and what you're doing, then it is not hitting hard in the way that it needs to.

But they are fighting.

I would I would encourage you all to go and really check out what they're doing in their legislative bodies because, it's not nothing.

They are working.

So a couple of emails with similar tone, the direction of the party right now and who the party is prioritizing Ben in Rochester says, I think it's time for moderates and progressives to focus our anger on the Democratic Party.

We need to elect representatives who are more in touch with the day to day reality of working class Americans.

Democrats and Republicans are two sides of the same coin crony capitalism.

I don't see how we get out of this without a concerted push to eliminate corruption in Washington.

And Delton says, my deepest disappointment with the Democratic Party has been their inaction and unwillingness to listen to more of the progressive voices.

I understand the rationale behind trying to keep our institutions functioning, but we are past that point.

The courts aren't protecting our systems, and Democrats have so far been unwilling to take any sort of decisive action.

Establishment Democrats need to stop pushing aside the AOCs, the madness, or anyone trying to actually change things.

What do you think, Abby?

I agree, I agree wholeheartedly.

I think that whoever wins the primary is supposed to get the party's support, and that all of the local leaders, in that area are supposed to jump on board.

I think that anybody who doesn't do that is going to likely face some issues, in their next reelection campaign.

so let me push you a little bit on that part.

Part of what you're saying there is, like, if you win the primary, you deserve the party support, whether you're a moderate, whether you're progressive, whether you're Mamdani or whether whoever.

I hear Ben and Delton saying what they're saying is more like, look, in this debate about how what the Democrats need to do generally now to win in 2026 to 1 in 2028, to get there, to get the public believing them again is not to tack to the center.

A lot of people are saying, tack to the center, don't go too far left, don't go extreme.

They're saying go to the left, go where Mamdani is, go where more of the working class wants you to go.

Don't stay in the center.

What do you think?

I think that a lot of the party is going in that direction.

Do you think that that's a way to win?

I think the way to win is to be where the people are.

Where I'm at.

You know, if I've said it once, I've said it a million times.

We're a big tent party.

That means that we're going to have moderates.

That means we're going to have progressives.

That means we're going to have people who shift with the wind a little bit.

And that's what we're here for.

If you can't deal with having people who are not in the same part of the political spectrum as you, around you, then then the Democratic Party is going to be a really challenging place for you.

But I think that what most people see and what most people feel as a the wall of the party is either too moderate or it's too progressive.

It's you're you're hearing the parts of the party that you disagree with the most, because that's what the internet and that's what the media feeds you, and that's what sticks out to you.

But because we're a big tent party, you have that representation in other places.

If you want the party to be more progressive.

We have those local leaders.

We have those state leaders, we have those federal leaders.

If you want the party to be more moderate, we have all of those leaders as well.

The problem for everybody is that nobody is at the top calling all the shots, and it's because we will not listen to one person.

I, I can't say that enough just because you are the party leader, you're the whatever does not mean you get to dictate what Democrats think.

And that's ultimately where this messaging divide in the party comes from.

But if you're not a little bit more cohesive, you might get you might keep getting rolled.

Absolutely.

And that's a real problem that we have.

But it's, it's a function of who we are.

We are a big tent party.

We believe in keeping everybody at the table as much as possible.

We believe in making room for people and making progress whenever possible.

Sometimes that means that we get to do big programs, that we get to really shift the needle and move things forward.

Other times, it's a ten year plan or a 20 year plan on how we're going to revitalize our infrastructure and how we're going to make the changes that we need to make.

People don't notice the 20 year plan.

They just don't.

And when a road takes a year to build, you don't ask the question of what went into it.

You just get annoyed with the traffic and that's fair.

But you have to act.

But if you really want the government to be the best it can be, you have to ask the question, Will where is the road supposed to go?

Who is it going to impact if we put it there?

What neighborhoods are we displacing?

That takes time.

And that's ultimately what the Democratic Party is about, is doing things well and keeping everybody involved.

So yeah, there are going to be progressives.

There are going to be moderates.

There are always going to be people that we all disagree with in our tent.

But it doesn't sound like you think the party should just go left.

I don't think we can I how could we possibly just go left when we have national leaders who have time left in their terms that aren't there, that I just I don't see how that's supposed to happen.

All right, Kathy and Sheila says Ezra Klein.

And people like him only care when they are personally affected.

Until the Democrats are willing to stand up to the worst humanity can do, such as war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank.

None of us believe they would stand up for lesser crimes.

That's Kathy, she says.

Gaza is is really the litmus test for the party.

What do you think?

I can certainly be sympathetic to that perspective.

I think that the world is much more gray than that, and there are a million different places that we can draw the line, and we can always be trying to get ourselves to a better position.

So while I can understand why somebody might feel that without certain policies or perspectives being put forward, and highlighted, that nothing else is valid.

But unfortunately, I again, it's a big tent party.

And we have to work with what we can and there are a million different areas, of, of work to be done.

So just because we can't accomplish everything in one arena, or we can't even begin to do the work in one arena, doesn't mean that the work in other places isn't valuable and important.

I would just say to Kathy, I mean, Ezra can do his own PR firm.

He doesn't need me.

I think it's a little strange to say he doesn't care about Gaza.

I mean, it was one month ago.

If you missed his program, when is it genocide?

He had Phillipe Sands on his show.

And Phillipe Sands is one of the leading legal scholars on genocide worldwide.

It's worth listening to that if you want to, get a better perspective of where, Klein is on on that.

But maybe I missed something.

Kathy, certainly.

Send me an email if you want to follow up.

So down to our last couple of minutes here, Avi, as you point out, your party is in, is in a tough spot.

You feel strongly about what has happened in the last six months and what your party should do.

But if Senator Schumer stands up again and says, look guys, we still we have to remember that authoritarians benefit when you shut more down and you concentrate more power in their hands.

And we're not going to do that.

That plays into Trump's hands.

Is he going to take a beating in his own party?

I mean, what's going to happen with Schumer?

I'm sure he will.

I mean, the writing's on the wall with with as a reclines article.

Right.

Like there are going to be people who, who disagree no matter what.

And there are going to make it known.

Democrats are not afraid of of speaking up.

And, saying what's on their mind.

So, yeah, he's he's going to get beat up one way or another.

Okay.

Where do you expect the party to end up on this?

All over the place?

I hate to say it, but I'm going to, you know, going back to the big tent, there are going to be Democrats.

No, no, no.

Really strong.

No, no.

So let me rephrase.

That's fair.

There's going to be a wide range of opinions.

What do you think Democrats in Washington are going to do about a possible shutdown?

Geez.

I'm not I'm not too much into that kind of political forecasting, but.

Okay.

What I will say is that, Unless the conversation, unless the specifics of the bill, are real ugly and really well presented.

I think that Democrats in Washington, are going to find it really hard to to say we're shutting down the government.

I want to say I respect your desire not just to get into predictions, and I would like to avoid that.

I'm more just asking if you think the temperature has changed in six months about this issue, about government shutdown and about what Democrats have seen from the Trump administration.

2.0 and it sounds like you think that that it has changed.

I think it has changed some I don't think it has changed dramatically.

But there's also still time, unfortunately.

Thank you for being here.

Of course.

Thank you for engaging with our listeners.

Of course.

Please come back sometime.

Please have me, Abby, press Berg is executive director of the Monroe County Democratic Committee.

We always appreciate the time.

Thank you, Abby, and from all of us at connections.

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