>> Major funding for "Chat Box with David Cruz" is provided by the members of the New Jersey Education Association, making public schools great for every child.

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Hey, everybody.

Welcome to Chat Box.

Hey, everybody, welcome to Chat Box.

I'm David Cruz.

Listen, the world is weird, folks, and it's getting weirder.

Our hope today is to hear from some less weird voices in our search for sanity and maybe even some context.

We'll talk with two state senators from opposing parties about their tour to promote civility.

That's in our second half, but we begin today with the state of things in D.C.

and beyond, and how it all impacts us here, with the junior senator from New Jersey, Andy Kim.

Senator, good to see you again, man.

Welcome.

Yeah, thanks for having me back.

So, things are really, really weird, right?

I mean- It's a mess.

And not in a good way.

No.

No, not at all.

I mean, this is an embarrassment to our country, to our democracy.

This is not how a government should be run, how Donald Trump is just pushing congressional Republicans to just walk away from these negotiations.

Speaker Johnson canceled, you know, the remaining sessions of the House of Representatives that were already scheduled before October 1st.

He's canceling them.

You know, these are the types of things that are just an abdication of leadership, and I hope the American people see that.

Can you quantify it, say, from when you were sworn in, not that long ago, to today?

I mean, the weirdness meter and the danger meter has gone up a lot, right?

Well, look, just in general, what we see now is just a continued effort to just undermine our constitution.

I mean, we are in a constitutional crisis moment.

We as a government right now do not have three equally functioning branches of government, and that should be alarming to everybody.

This is the founding fathers setting forth how our government should be run as we are approaching the 250th anniversary of our nation.

To know and see it break down like this is just abysmal.

And I say that not just as a senator, but I say this as someone who worked in the federal government as a civil servant.

I've worked through multiple shutdowns before, not getting paid for the work that I was doing.

I've worked under both Democrats and Republicans.

And what we're seeing right now is an absolute failure by Donald Trump, that also-and the Republicans that are controlling both the House and the Senate.

They own all of this mess.

I want to talk about the looming shutdown in a minute and its impact on New Jersey.

But we've been talking about the reaction to the Charlie Kirk killing.

I know many people say it's a complicated issue, but is it?

Can you say murder is wrong and also acknowledge that the person who was murdered stood for some horrible, ignorant things?

We should be able to hold space for that mindset, no?

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, violence in any form should be condemned.

And this is something that should have no hesitation by anybody.

And yes, in our country, you should stand up for the right for people to have free speech, including speech that we disagree with, sometimes even vehemently disagree with it.

But we should protect their ability and their right to be able to say that.

And yet that those are not two ideas that are, you know, that are unable to be connected in.

And I think that that's what we're seeing right now.

We are becoming a country so fractured.

The tribalism is so ingrained that we're losing that sense that we're part of something bigger than all of us.

And our own political identities are now surpassing our identities as Americans, our identities as family members, as I've seen families being pulled apart by our politics.

And, you know, this is so sad and something that I hope, you know, gives us pause and recognize that we are on the wrong path as a country right now.

Yeah.

Changing hearts takes a little longer than we have today.

So let's get to a couple of policy things here.

Can you explain why there's another shutdown looming, and as bipartisan a way as you can?

What money are we talking about now that's holding all of this up?

Yeah, well look, what we're seeing right now again is the Trump administration trying to dominate and just completely control a separate branch of government.

We're seeing the Article 2 branch executives literally just trying to derail Article 1 and our legislative process.

There's a reason why our founding fathers gave Congress the ability to set the budget.

It was to act as a check to be able to foster the type of dialogue necessary for a democracy.

And Trump has no interest in this.

He says that he doesn't want the Republicans in Congress to deal with the Democrats.

He canceled negotiations.

He just literally canceled meetings that were going to help negotiate this ahead of the deadline.

And look, if you even take Donald Trump's word at this, a couple of years back before he was president, he said that a shutdown should be blamed on the president because the president is the one that should be bringing people together.

And I agree with that.

I think a president should be able to bring people together.

And Donald Trump is doing the opposite of that, and he will be responsible for this if it turns into a shutdown.

So, but what is it that's on the table right now that is pointing everything to a shutdown?

Because I think, you know, most folks at home, they're like, "Didn't we just deal with a shutdown two months ago?"

Yeah, it seems like we're always on the precipice.

And like, look, a couple things here.

One is that Donald Trump has shown absolute disregard for our laws, has not moved forward to be able to spend the money that Congress has authorized in the past.

We see these rescissions happening.

We have no assurances, and we've been seeking, but we have no assurances that if we pass a budget out of Congress, that Trump will abide by this.

In fact, his OMB director, Russell Vogt, someone who I think is exceedingly dangerous, he's somebody that continues to flaunt saying that what Congress passes doesn't have to be followed by the executive.

So it's just one of those situations of why are we going to push forward on this unless we can get those assurances.

Right now, we're about to see- What's the impact- Mm-hmm.

I'm sorry.

What's the impact on New Jersey?

What's it going to mean if there's a shutdown?

Well, look, what I will say right now, first and foremost, is that many New Jerseyans are going to have and see an unbelievable increase in their health care costs starting.

You're going to see those numbers starting October 1st.

You know, we have huge premium increases for those on the Affordable Care Act in the marketplace.

These are going to go multiple fold.

For many others, including those in private insurance, we're going to continue to see that.

That's something we know is looming.

This is a catastrophe that we know is about to hit.

What we're trying to do is be able to get and continue some of the support that we've been providing to be able to help manage costs for so many families.

And this is -- these are families that are already struggling from the increased cost due to the tariffs and other disastrous policies that Trump has been pushing.

So that's what we have been trying to address.

If we end up going into a shutdown, what we're going to continue to see is just decreased services for the American people.

We're going to hopefully be able to try to avoid, but we could see challenges -- difficulties when it comes to our air traffic controls, other types of issues that are going to be really meaningful to people.

So, you know, we should do everything we can to avoid a shutdown.

A lot of bad stuff.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm running out of time here, but I wanted to get your take on the president's U.N.

speech.

In any other era, I mean, wouldn't this be condemned internationally, a speech like that?

I mean, you know, he told countries that they're dying.

Yeah, I mean, I got some text messages from leaders from other countries just absolutely, I mean, they just basically said, is this really what your country believes?

And it is really an abdication of American global leadership.

You know, we were a country that were able to pull the world together after World War II and try to be a force that is providing greater stability and peace.

What we see here is Trump just insulting other nations, burning some of our closest alliances, and continue to act so irresponsibly and reckless in a way that is going to really jeopardize our global leadership for decades to come.

So as someone who worked in national security, I spent a lot of time there at the U.N.

in previous General Assembly sessions.

I have never seen anything quite like how disastrous of a speech that was by President Trump.

You talk about having gotten calls from some world leaders.

What is the U.S.

standing in the world now?

I mean, I feel a lot like the other governments are laughing at us, but, you know, he just - the president was received pretty well when he visited the U.K.

Yeah, well, look, a lot of countries feel like they have to put on a show for Donald Trump for fear that they're going to be retaliated against.

So, you know, there's one thing in terms of how they're going to try to present to him in the same way that we see big corporations, you know, bowing down to Donald Trump, because there's a chilling effect right now in that way.

But behind closed doors and in my conversations, a lot of other countries and their leaders call America a rogue state right now.

You know, they say that they have to actually protect themselves from us.

They need to distance themselves from us.

We are no longer going to be considered the indispensable nation.

We are considered the unreliable nation.

We are the nation that other countries have to hedge against, and they want to divest from us.

They want to try to move their supply chain away from us.

They want to reduce them to places where they feel like Donald Trump is able to hang things over their head and bully them around.

That's not leadership.

And that is something that we're going to pay the price for quite some time to come.

And I hope we can change this soon.

Meanwhile, as we try to wrap up here, no end to the killing in Gaza.

You know, it's not talked about much now in the national news, but it resonates here in New Jersey for sure.

Here's another issue where context and nuance get thrown aside.

Yeah.

And it should be talked about because it's such an absolute catastrophe.

It's a situation that on a humanitarian level is just absolutely atrocious, the level of violence that is happening.

And it is making everybody less safe, including Israel, making them less safe.

It is making them a pariah state.

And it is something that is not going to lead to their long-term security.

And it's not just Gaza.

I will just also say what's happening in the West Bank is enormously dangerous.

The level of violence there has been increasing.

It would be seen as an even bigger crisis if it wasn't for just the magnitude of the disaster in Gaza.

But the challenges are across the board there.

And this has to be something that people take on in a much greater way.

I'm continuing to push and I hope that we can put the pressure upon Trump as well as Netanyahu and other leaders in the Middle East to be able to come to an agreement here and stop this violence.

All right.

Senator Andy Kim, good to see you, man.

Thanks for coming on with us.

Yeah, thanks for having me again.

All right.

What the world needs now is love, sweet love.

Well, love is in short supply out there, as you may have noticed, but maybe civility is still within our reach.

That's the hope of a tour just announced by Senators John Bramnick, a Republican, and Joe Cryan, a Democrat.

It starts this week with an appearance at the Eagleton Institute.

But before all that, they're here with us for some polite conversation.

Senators, welcome.

Good to see you both.

I take it, Senator Bramnick, that this was your idea.

How did this come about?

Senator Cryan gave me a call after the murder of Charlie Kirk, and he brought it up.

And of course, I've always been interested in civility.

And the only thing bad about this tour is, Joe's really smart, and he'll probably out-debate me.

But I got some good substance on my side.

But it started with Joe's phone call.

That's a Republican trick, Cryan.

Don't go for it.

He's lowered expectations.

So what was what was your thinking about this, Senator Cryan?

Why the call to to Bramnick?

And, frankly, the call was in the evening, 9, 930 or so.

I was watching the Kirk assassination coverage on CNN and really felt as if it was a moment that the crescendo in what we're doing and the dialogue, looking at the phone, frankly, looking at Twitter X and saying, wait a minute.

And you know what?

John and I have chatted about this in the past a little bit.

As you know, John's been a leader in dialogue and in process and in policy, as opposed to vitriol kind of conversations.

So we discussed it, and John's kind of run with it, and I'm really pleased.

Hopefully, what we do, David, out of it is, we give folks a chance to not only hear people, but to listen to, because I think so often in this process, we might hear folks, but I'm not sure we actually listen and process it.

And that's kind of the idea.

And, Bremnick, were you particularly friendly with Cryan?

I know your districts are -- I don't know if they're adjacent, but they're close to one another.

We both represent Union County.

Yeah.

When I say friendly, I would say yes.

So, we just -- We haven't spent a lot -- a lot of personal time together, but when I -- I've been on committees with him.

Yeah.

And when he starts asking questions, they're very substantive.

He doesn't really -- he treats witnesses with respect, but I got to -- he asks very insightful questions.

So, this should be very interesting.

So, what are you trying to say to audiences here?

And how is this going to work?

Is it a debate, Senator Cryan?

Well, here's what we've discussed so far, David, and it's fluid, right?

We've only -- as we all know, the Kirk assassination and the time frame is so fresh in our minds, especially after the service over the weekend.

The idea is we'll have a moderator in each one and we'll pick certain issues that we'll open with where we disagree.

And we will open those up and show the fact that we fundamentally both on philosophical sides and others disagree.

A couple of them John can talk about.

And then we'll do is open it up to Q&A.

And we're excited.

Eagleton as you know is the cream of the crop in terms of a great way to start in terms of the intellectual minds of the state young people and kind of hopefully having a discussion and a debate about policies that they bring up.

So the idea is is that hey we can actually talk about this without me trying to denigrate John or the Republican Party or any any other part of the process and try to convince folks one one one mind at a time one mouth at a time two ears at a time that we can actually have a dialogue that's focused on policy and process.

So, Senator Bramnick, purposeful disagreement in the interest of demonstrating civility.

Yeah?

Well, people now pretty much go to their app or to their cable channel, and they stick to that channel or that app, and basically being fed exactly what they want to hear with respect to their positions.

They normally don't hear respectful debate because respectful debate is boring on television.

I've been asked, I should say asked not to come back, but I've been asked to get back on because I was too interested in debating the substance of the question.

And we have a lot of what I call soundbite warriors, right?

They begin a discussion on immigration, and then when it gets into the real substance, they go, "Oh, you hate Trump," or, "You hate Biden," and you never really get into the nitty-gritty of how to fix the problem and where the substantive issue is.

And that's what we're hoping to do, get away from, "Oh, you're a Republican, you're a Democrat."

I get that all the time.

Somebody at dinner with somebody goes, "Oh, he's a lib."

I guess that's liberal, right?

Or, "He hates Trump."

Or, "Oh, my God, he loves Trump."

Stop!

What's the-I always say to these people, "What is the issue?"

So, Senator Krayon, what's the goal here?

I mean, there's no-it's not a debate in the sense of, oh, this side won or the other side won.

I mean, it's sort of like-is it a sparring match?

You know, if we have issues that come before us that we fundamentally disagree on, hopefully it is a sparring match on issues.

What I don't want to-I think I know what both of us don't want is we don't want to see things denigrate the way they are today.

You know, the story, David, that you asked about when I started earlier, I was watching CNN on the Kirk coverage and decided to, with my wife, the next day, watch Fox News on the same coverage.

And I will tell you, it was significantly different.

And it's just an instinct to -- I will be candid -- hitting 600 on Verizon and throw it on CNN for coverage.

I actually had to find my Fox channel.

But understanding, you know what, you have to start learning different perspectives.

You have to hear with both ears.

So the idea is, look, I hope we have some really engaging debates.

I hope that there are issues that are brought up that we fundamentally disagree on that we haven't spoken about.

We've spoken about five or six just so that we can have an ability to kind of kick off the conversation.

But I know both of us are really looking to engage the folks that are kind enough to join us.

And hopefully they walk away with what we walk away with, a different point of perspective, but a respectful one.

There's a move on.

- Go ahead, Senator.

- The way we do this may be something that a student hasn't seen before.

So if they haven't seen a lot of intellectual discussion on a substantive issue, maybe they've learned from television or from whatever they, on their app is that, oh, just scream at each other and don't really talk to each other because you don't really see a lot of this today.

There's a move on to classify speech and identify it as hate speech or racist or anti-Semitic.

What limits would either of you accept to free speech in the interest of civility?

Well, in law school, we learned very clearly you can't scream "fire" in a theater.

So unless it has imminent danger to the public, free speech is really important.

Let the public airwaves and the public decide what they believe in.

But unless it is threatening behavior, there is a statute for harassment when I say, you know, intentional infliction, you know, of some sort of threat.

Otherwise, free speech.

Yeah.

That's the lawyer.

That's the lawyer.

Yeah.

All right.

No kidding aside, you know, you know what, David?

John brought it up a little bit earlier.

We tend to label, right?

We start with labels and we draw opinions of folks even before we've heard their first breath, right?

Just whether or not what political party they're in.

And that's almost institutionalized now in our society that we've come to these kinds of positions where we start from.

What I'm hopeful for, and I agree on the free speech piece, what I'm hoping for is now we call it civility.

What I'm really hopeful for is that we move where we're starting from, that we move to a place that we can actually kind of ask a question that we don't know the answer to without feeling foolish, that we can kind of understand somebody else's point of view and say, you know what, that makes sense.

I don't want to lose this point, David, and I hope it's okay to say.

I mentioned to you the Fox News thing and taking a look.

I looked at my Twitter, which I know is X, X feed, in terms of how many people have just hard-lined that are part of my feed that it's all about anti-Trump all day, every day.

And everybody has a view of the president, I think, at this point.

But you have got to be able to at least understand and listen to the other side, or you just can't get there from here.

- Yeah, I'm running out of time.

I need really short answers from you guys on this, even though it's much more complicated.

The shooting death of Charlie Kirk is something we've been talking about.

It's even made its way into the governor's race.

I have to say that I heard very few things in my admittedly limited exposure to Charlie Kirk that I would describe as civil.

I mean, let's all agree, assassination is no response to hateful speech, obviously, but was Charlie Kirk civil?

And do we have to accept what a lot of people describe as hateful speech in the name of civility?

I got really short time.

Let me start with you, Senator Cryan.

No, you don't have to accept it, but obviously couldn't agree with you more on the assassination piece.

But the idea of this is that we learn to understand it.

Bramnick?

Well, Charlie Kirk said things, many things that I really disagree with, and I don't think it was in the best interest of the country or my party.

But he's allowed to say it.

And to kill somebody because you don't like what he's saying, that's the end of democracy.

All right.

I can't let you guys go without giving me a prediction on the governor's race.

Let's start with you, Bramnick.

Cittarelli, by how many points?

First of all, all the polls aren't supporting Jack right now, so I think I'll just pass that question on to Senator Cryan.

All right.

Senator Cryan.

Sherrill, by how many points?

Sherrill, by five.

Our base gets motivated and folks realize how important this election is, not only for New Jersey but the country to send a message.

See that's guts there, Bremnick.

I was gutsy.

I was very gutsy.

I said I saw the polls.

You know, do you believe in polls anymore?

>> I do.

You do.

Cryan doesn't.

>> Well, polls have changed.

Republicans under polls, Trump under polls, and Democrats need to be aware of that fact as well.

Disaffected Democrats also under poll.

All right.

Good.

A month ago, guys on.

Ready on it.

All right.

Senators John Bramnick, Joe Cryan.

Bless your efforts, guys.

Thank you for coming on with us.

Thank you.

>> Thanks David Finally, today, I know you've heard WNET, which operates NJPBS, is ending its contract with the state at the end of June.

Someone else, hopefully, is going to run the state's public broadcaster in 2026.

How could something like this happen?

Well, I could share my theories, but it wouldn't change a thing.

Let me say this, though.

The journalism that takes place here, the in-depth coverage of things that are really important, brought to you by knowledgeable people from here, that continues.

Calling out the hypocrisy and malfeasance in state houses and city halls, that continues through the end of June and beyond.

Don't believe everything you read in gossipy websites with vested interests.

Reports of our demise are greatly exaggerated.

So if you thought you were rid of this news team, sorry.

And that's Chat Box for this week.

Our thanks also to Andy Kim for joining us.

We're on Bluesky now.

Follow us there at DavidCruzNJ and scan the QR code on your screen for more Chatbox.

I'm David Cruz for the entire crew here at Gateway Center in downtown Newark.

Thanks for watching.

We'll be here next week.

I hope we see you.

Major funding for Chatbox with David Cruz is provided by the members of the New Jersey Education Association, making public schools great for every child.

Promotional support for Chatbox with David Cruz is provided by Insider NJ, a political intelligence network dedicated to New Jersey political news.

Insider NJ is committed to giving serious political players an interactive forum for ideas, discussion, and insight.

Online at InsiderNJ.com.

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