- Thank you to Rhode Island for putting your trust in me.

I won't let you down.

(crowd cheering) - [Crowd] Gabe!

Gabe!

Gabe!

- Gabe Amo made history in 2023 by winning election as the first person of color to represent Rhode Island in Congress.

The Pawtucket native was 35 at the time.

He emerged from a field of 11 Democrats to land the seat vacated by David Cicilline in the First Congressional District.

Now Amo and other Democrats find themselves on the outside looking in when it comes to power in Washington, DC.

President Trump continues pushing the bounds of executive power with unquestioning support from most Republicans in Congress.

But Trump faces headwinds on issues including the economy and the Jeffrey Epstein files and Democrats fared well in a series of elections across the country in November of 2025.

So how does Amo see the way forward for his party heading into the midterm elections?

And are there any effective checks on President Trump's push for steadily more power.

I'm Ian Donnis and that's just some of what we talked about in this episode of "One on One."

Congressman Gabe Amo, welcome to "One on One."

And since you have a birthday this week, happy birthday to you.

- Well, thanks for having me on, and thank you for your birthday wishes.

- Congress appears unlikely to vote to extend the healthcare tax credits before they're due to expire January 1st.

This has put some wind at the back of you and your fellow Democrats.

How do you expect Republicans to try and turn this issue to their advantage ahead of the midterm elections?

- Well, look, the state of play here is for 15 years, Republicans in Congress have been trying to undercut, undermine, and undo the Affordable Care Act without any real solutions.

And so this week, I'll be heading back to Washington, advocating for the discharge petition that I'm on, along with the entirety of the House Democratic Caucus to try to get four more Republicans to show some courage and support this discharge petition.

So it hits the floor and we get a three-year extension on the Affordable Care Act enhanced premium tax credits.

We can do that now.

You see a lot of proposals coming up from Republican colleagues who've had 15 years and now they're doing turning in late work to try to put forward a plan.

Speaker Johnson said this week, he'd have a plan.

The American people, Rhode Islanders are hurt.

There are going to be 15,000 people in the state who will just not be able to get healthcare on the marketplace.

They'll drop out.

- We've seen how Republicans are pretty good at playing political hardball.

They were able to bring about a conservative majority on the Supreme Court.

They were able to peel off a couple of Democrats to end the government shutdown.

Surely they're gonna try and work this healthcare issue to their advantage.

How do you, yeah, and you Democrats will, if they do that, you'll have to respond.

So how do you expect Republicans to do that?

- There is no advantage in 22 million Americans losing their healthcare.

There is the same voice and concern in Rhode Island's First Congressional District that exists in Republican districts across the country.

This is not a win, nor is this a political tool or football.

The solution is come to the table, extend the enhanced premium tax credits, let people get the healthcare they want.

Stop the cuts, save healthcare.

That's what we're asking for.

And I don't think that they're in a good position, that's why they're in a bind.

They are twisting and turning every which way to avoid this problem.

They even caused a government shutdown.

So the fact of the matter is we'll keep advocating and the American people want the subsidies extended.

I just saw a poll this morning.

58% of Americans want the premium tax credits extended.

- Congressman Amo, you mentioned how thousands of Rhode Islanders will be affected if these healthcare tax credits expire January 1st.

Health insurance premiums will go way up.

If that happens there, is there anything that you and your fellow members in Rhode Island's congressional delegation can do in the short term to offer some relief?

- Well, the fact of the matter is the Republicans control the White House and Donald Trump, they control the US Senate and then control the House.

So that really does tie our hands and they're gonna harm the entirety of our healthcare system because let's be clear, everybody will pay for the uncompensated care that we see.

So I'm working very closely with HealthSource Rhode Island to get people to at least go in and talk about the options where they might exist.

But these are impossible choices for Rhode Islanders, choosing between their health insurance and housing and their energy bills and groceries.

This is tough stuff and we're gonna keep advocating to see the better angels maybe appear for our Republican colleagues.

- Democrats have high hopes for the midterm elections next year.

There were some encouraging results for your party from elections in November.

What effect would it have on President Trump and his ability to pursue his agenda if Democrats do retake the House next year?

- Yeah, well, across the country, we're seeing that the American people are feeling really betrayed by Donald Trump.

So the impact here is Donald Trump sort of headed for the hills.

He has already called the affordability question where people are struggling to pay for their cost of living a democratic hoax.

And so we are going to continue to focus on the three Cs: care, that's healthcare; costs, lowering the cost of energy, grocery prices, et cetera; and corruption, which we see from Donald Trump.

So he is afraid of the midterms.

- The question is how it will affect the president and his agenda if your party retakes the House?

- It will torpedo his agenda.

They have only been able to focus on one thing.

HR won the Big Ugly Law that is a handout to billionaires and cuts a trillion dollars from our healthcare system.

He is also afraid of the oversight that Congress will provide.

The fact of the matter is one Democrats have the House of Representatives, we are gonna be calling in administration officials to get an explanation and autopsy on some of the most horrific actions that have taken place.

So he does not want Democrats to be in charge of the House and Senate.

And we're going to work very vigorously to make that the case.

- The Trump administration keeps ramping up military pressure on Venezuela, even while facing backlash over some military strikes on boats off the coast of that country.

At the same time, President Trump has pardoned some major drug traffickers.

What do you think his driving purpose is in focusing so much attention on Venezuela, which does have an authoritarian ruler in the form of Nicolas Maduro?

- Yeah, look, I'm no friend or supporter of Nicolas Maduro.

But starting wars, this interventionist streak that seems to run counter to everything this president who is seeking his peace prizes from any corner of the world, any organization he can get it from, these are all contradictions of this administration.

Look, I believe some of it is tied to oil.

I do also believe that this set of actions that we've seen in the Caribbean are a violation of not only norms but illegal actions and violations of war, of war crimes that we see in Congress is the authority that de declares and authorizes war, not the White House, not Secretary Hegseth.

And we have seen really horrific consequences of them taking the law for granted.

- You are the vice ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

If Democrats retake the house next year and your influence grows on that committee, how will you use that to hold the Trump administration accountable on foreign policy?

- Well, the two key areas: One that I have been laser focused on is the real and very horrific destruction of our foreign aid apparatus.

We saw impacts here in Rhode Island with Edesia Nutrition based here.

And we have seen inconsistencies with the administration's claim that we would still be able to carry out a fundamental mission when they illegally closed USAID.

I also want to look very hard at the corruption that exists when you see the president's son-in-law and nepo baby, frankly traveling around the world, gallivanting in the negotiations of deals that are also enriching him and Trump's other billionaire friends.

We have seen them all grow in wealth over the past 11 months at a staggering pace.

So we need to have oversight on all of that intervention and who is benefiting from it.

- The president's cabinet recently applauded him when he called Somali's quote, "garbage," and said they "contribute nothing" after coming to the US.

There's a widespread view that guardrails have vanished against this kind of talk for the right side of the political spectrum.

If the disappearing of these guardrails is a problem for America, how do we come back from that?

- Look, as a son of two West African immigrants, my dad from Ghana, my mom from Liberia, to hear the president call people from Africa, people from a country in Africa and Somalia garbage is heartbreaking.

I revere the Oval Office.

I got to work for two presidents of the United States, one of the greatest privileges of my life.

And to hear that is a real big problem.

Now, how do we come back from it?

One, we have to move past the Trump era.

We need to minimize his voice.

He tries to capture our attention every single day in this attention economy.

We cannot let him win.

Fact of the matter is the fundamental hearts of the American people are good.

We can't let him distract us and convince us of otherwise.

He has gone from dog whistles to dog barks, and we can't let that be the case.

And so I appeal to my neighbors.

I appeal to the people that I work for in the First Congressional District.

Let's not use that same rhetoric.

Let's not minimize the importance of the voices of our leaders.

And let's try to show love and appreciation for our fellow Americans and people who come here who want to fulfill the American dream.

- President Trump faces some headwinds on different issues these days.

His approval rating is not so hot.

But the brand of your party, the Democratic Party, is also very damaged.

And how do you see the way forward for Democrats?

What do Democrats need to do differently to be more successful as a political party?

- Well, look, when you lose a major election, you are going to feel it and it will hurt.

Democrats, we lost the White House.

We didn't win the House or the Senate, and that hurts.

But at the same time, that should bring us new resolve in the face of what we see with Donald Trump.

But we can't just rest on our laurels and say, being in opposition to Trump is everything because that's part of the problem.

We need to put forward a positive vision of what we want in our country.

I focus on those three Cs I mentioned.

What does a healthcare vision in our country look like when people aren't making difficult decisions between prescription drugs, grocery prices, housing prices, and all of the challenges that they have to get the healthcare that they deserve?

When you look at the macro situation, with cost people are working harder and not getting ahead.

Also the corruption that we see, it seems like some people are better off, but we're not all thriving.

So we have to put forward a positive vision there.

We have to build homes in this country.

We have to do everything we can to combat the threats that we face from things like AI.

We have to make sure that the economic futures of our communities are tied to real progress for everybody, not just a few.

That's a positive vision.

So Democrats, if we're proximate to people and we deliver a good message and actually do the things we care about, then that will change the narrative.

- Real progress for everybody, you know, that's like mom and apple pie, no one's against that.

What does that look like under a democratic program?

- Yeah, what it looks like is a few things.

One, I am very fixated on housing as a way forward for people.

Look, if you look at recent statistics and the age of a first-time home buyer that is climbing to 40, that makes it very difficult to grow wealth the way that many people did in the 20th century.

That's not a reality for a lot of people.

When we think about the economic opportunities in jobs and wages, that's making sure that when a student graduates from high school in Rhode Island, that they have a multitude of pathways forward.

Whether it's straight to jobs that are high skilled, high wage jobs that they can get through training or if they have a college career on the horizon, that they're not saddled with endless amounts of debt.

That is a real vision for everybody to thrive.

And of course, when you think about some of the things that we are afraid of in the future, right?

You know, when you hear about AI, we talk about all of the threats, how do we have an agenda that incorporates technology that is mindful of the negatives, but also helps us unlock our possibilities with AI?

- Immigration was one of the big issues, propelling support for President Trump last year.

Your former boss, President Biden, was slow in responding to immigration and an increased flow of immigrants over the border.

The "New York Times" had a recent story calling him catastrophically slow in responding to this.

How do you explain that?

- Well, look, I think the Biden administration made errors as it related to the immigration challenges that we are now experiencing as a result of Donald Trump going radically in a direction that frankly nobody really asked for, right?

Secure border was an important thing, and that is unquestionable and that was a place to start.

But what we've seen with Donald Trump is an immigration enforcement that borders on terror, that has masked men in communities, that violates places like schools, churches, hospitals where they should not be people who have been in this country for decades being targeted.

And then a spate of inhumane conditions in detention facilities and a lot of mystery around the policies and practices.

- So let me ask you about that.

There was some recent incident in Providence that got a lot of attention where a teenage 16-year-old intern in the court system was apprehended by masked ICE agents in a case of mistaken identity.

It took the intervention of a Superior Court judge to correct the situation and demonstrate that this person was not the suspect that ICE was looking for.

Not everyone has a Superior Court judge who they can lean on to help 'em.

So if your critique is right and the Trump administration's approach on immigration is wildly excessive, what can be done to unwind that?

- Yeah, look, this is an area where we have great difficulty.

It is shameful what happened to that young person.

And to your point, the ability to have a Superior Court judge is not accessible to everybody, we need real comprehensive reform.

And I know we have talked about comprehensive immigration reform in this country for a long time.

But the negatives that are permeating the entirety of our country because of this action is going to be something we feel for a long time.

Everything from our labor supply and think about all of the people who power our economy, who are all of a sudden under fear and threat, think about all of the legal immigration which the administration is attacking: legal immigration.

There was a "New York Times" story just this past week about cancellations of naturalization ceremonies and all of the disruption to people who have made their way through the process.

We will not be the city on a hill that people want to come to from around the world for technological innovation, for contributions to science.

So that this is something that I am focused on, but we also need to have an ability to pass laws that undo this work.

This is why those midterms are so important.

But ultimately taking the White House, because the executive branch does have a tremendous amount of power as it relates to immigration and that work in the executive branch.

- Speaking of power, President Trump has aggressively pushed to expand presidential power.

The Republicans in Congress go along with him.

He has worked to weaken trust in institutions including the judiciary and the media.

The conservative majority in the Supreme Court generally seems inclined to go along with him.

So how worried are you that there will be accountability for President Trump if things get more extreme?

- I'm very concerned.

I'm very concerned, right?

Because he's got on the Supreme Court three justices that he put on there who he expects work for him and they've got this long running pulled to the unitary executive theory, right?

This is a theory of actually first formulated under President Reagan.

And that Trump has pushed for that, says that, you know, all the powers to run the executive branch lie and are vested in the President and no one else.

And so you see the impacts that this will have on things like the markets who fear that the President can arbitrarily replace Federal Reserve Board members.

You look at the judiciary that is under threat when he attacks them on Truth Social or X or whatever the platform is, who are in fear.

And this is a big problem.

And this is something that I have deep concern about: the silence and complicity of my colleagues in the Republican Conference in the House and the Republicans in the Senate is enabling him.

The President joked recently, I think this was reported, that he is not only the president, he's also the Speaker of the House.

That is something that should inspire real concern.

Now, I'm not a fearmongerer, but that the system of checks and balances, the loyalty to the oath taken for the Constitution and the protection of the rules and responsibilities therein should be paramount.

And so, I am calling on my colleagues in Congress to join with Democrats.

This is not a partisan issue.

This is about preserving the institutions and ensuring that they last beyond the people who are in them now.

- We have enough problems with the budget here in Rhode Island because due to a structural imbalance, there's a deficit at the start of every legislative session in January that has to be balanced by the time lawmakers wrap up around June or so.

How do you expect federal funding under the Trump administration to change the situation this year?

- Well, there will most certainly be an impact.

As you know, in the Big Ugly Law, that HR one we see cuts to SNAP to the tune of nearly $200 billion that will affect us here, including the consequences of the error rate formulation and what that will mean for the benefits here.

And then of course, the big enchilada is really the cuts to Medicaid, which while aren't dictated specifically in HR 1, that's how they get around saying, "We didn't cut it."

Because they didn't cut it.

But what they did cut it for individual states, but they cut it as a whole.

And so they passed it on to states, killing $1 trillion of funding in our healthcare system that is going to make it difficult for the lives of people in our jurisdiction.

And in addition, we'll make the work of the legislature very, very difficult this year.

But look, I have spoken with the speaker, I've spoken with the senate president, I've spoken with the governor.

They are currently going through their regular process to see what they can maintain and how they can make sure that the vulnerable, people with disabilities, or kids.

All of the benefits that the folks receive aren't negatively impacted too much, but there will undoubtedly be some impact.

- You mentioned the food assistance program known as SNAP.

This has been in the news a lot, a lot of efforts by the Trump administration involving this.

How do you see the outlook moving forward to keep that kind of money flowing?

- Well, look, this is one of the most cruel parts of the Trump agenda: the basic needs being impacted.

They were willing to go to the Supreme Court during the government shutdown that they caused to stop people from getting SNAP benefits, that's heartless.

And so what I see here is more red tape, right?

The same red tape that we'll see in the provision of Medicaid.

We'll see in SNAP.

What I continue to see is a decreasing value in of the base benefit, right?

SNAP is about $7 a day.

That is not enough to sustain people.

Hunger will grow.

We have seen the demands on places like the Rhode Island Community Food Bank, and so many of its partners grow.

I've gone to food pantries across the state.

Just on Saturday, I was at St.

Raymond's Church in Providence and saw the lines are growing.

When you talk to people, they are dealing with something that is growing as a problem.

And frankly, without federal action to, for example, expand SNAP, we should not be going backwards.

We should be expanding it.

We are going to see more hunger.

- What about the anxiety of many Americans that they're not doing well or their children will not do as well as previous generations.

That seems to animate at least some support for President Trump.

And yeah- - But he hasn't done anything to fix it.

- But your former boss, President Obama, held the White House for eight years.

Joe Biden was there for four years.

How come Democrats haven't been able to make more progress that would alleviate that concern?

- Yeah, look, I think we have done some of the work.

The Affordable Care Act is a historic piece of legislation because remember the uninsured population in this country was very high: 30 million people.

There are people who got healthcare for the first time.

And because you had 15 years of attacks on this piece of legislation, it has sometimes had difficulty, but it's actually more popular than it's ever been.

Similarly with President Biden, I think, you know, his economic record was not something that I think he was able to vigorously put out to the American public, how we came back from the COVID-19 crisis to see people's lives be better because they were still dealing with the inflation and higher costs.

So we have had a stream of successes, but we cannot just expect people to know them on their own.

And so the fact of the matter is Donald Trump has done nothing to make an economy where everybody can thrive.

That is a clear fact look at every statistic.

And in fact, he is making it harder for the future, leaving us with deficits, with this Big Ugly Law to the tune of $5 trillion.

That is not what I believe.

Ultimately the people who support him will support him on in the future.

You are already seeing them starting to flee him in support of him of late.

And I think that will continue.

- Like your colleagues, you are a member of a number of congressional caucuses we're coming into the holiday season, so it caught my attention that you were part of the Congressional Toy Caucus with the giving holidays ahead of us.

How do you evaluate the quality of toys in America this year?

- Well, as to paraphrase, a politician ran for governor of New York several years ago, the toy costs are too dang high.

And the fact of the matter is the tariff agenda driven by Donald Trump is going to leave a little less under the Christmas tree this year, or at the Hanukkah celebration or at the Kwanzaa celebration for people across this country.

And so that is unfortunate, and I don't believe that it needs to be this way.

Haphazard tariffs, whether they're hitting local manufacturers that I just visited with in Pawtucket, or whether it's hitting the stockings of kids across the country, those tariff costs are unnecessary and Congress needs to assert its role and will continue to stay focused on reducing those costs for people across this country.

- You know that little kids don't have the ability to vote?

- I do, but that's who we're working for, working for the future.

- Congressman Gabe Amo, thank you so much for sitting down.

- Thanks for having me.

- Thanks for watching "One on One" with me, Ian Donnis.

You can find all of our past interviews on the YouTube channel for Ocean State Media.

We'll see you next week.

(gentle bright music)