- [Narrator] Funding for this edition of One-On-One with Steve Adubato has been provided by The Turrell Fund, a foundation serving children.

Hackensack Meridian Health.

Keep getting better.

NJM Insurance Group.

Serving New Jersey’s drivers, homeowners and business owners for more than 100 years.

Lincoln Tech.

Operating Engineers, Local 825.

United Airlines.

Eastern Atlantic States Regional Council of Carpenters.

New Jersey Manufacturing Extension Program.

And by The New Jersey Economic Development Authority.

Promotional support provided by Insider NJ.

And by NJ.Com.

Keeping communities informed and connected.

- This is One-On-One.

- I'm an equal American just like you are.

- The way we change Presidents in this country is by voting.

- A quartet is already a jawn, it’s just The New Jawn.

- January 6th was not some sort of violent, crazy outlier.

- I don't care how good you are or how good you think you are, there is always something to learn.

- I mean what other country sends comedians over to embedded military to make them feel better.

- People call me 'cause they feel nobody's paying attention.

_ It’s not all about memorizing and getting information, it’s what you do with that information.

- (slowly) Start talking right now.

- That's a good question, high five.

(upbeat music) - Hi, everyone, Steve Adubato.

For the entire half hour, we're gonna be engaged in an important public policy discussion with United States Senator, Andy Kim.

Senator, great to have you with us.

- Yeah, thanks for having me again.

- I know you have a ridiculously busy voting schedule.

The time we have, I wanna focus first on the Trump megabill, Big Beautiful Bill, whatever you wanna call it.

What's in it that causes you the most concern?

- Well, what causes me the most concern right now is just this is the single largest cut to healthcare in our nation's history.

Millions, upwards of 14 to 16 million Americans could very well lose their healthcare.

And I want people to understand it's not just about those that are on Medicaid or the Affordable Care Act.

I talked with the hospital system in New Jersey, and they were saying that because they get so much of their resources through Medicaid reimbursements, that could very well affect their ability to keep their doors open.

This is something that's gonna raise costs, it's gonna make things difficult for everybody.

And then you ask yourself for what purpose is this happening?

And the fact is, it's not about paying down the debt or our deficit.

It's about giving these tax cuts to some of the wealthiest Americans.

And that's just the wrong place to go when we have so many families right now struggling to be able to pay the bills.

- Senator, if the argument and response is, look, we're cutting waste, fraud, and abuse out of the federal bureaucracy, you say?

- Well, I say that that's not what they're doing.

And that's something that we see directly within their legislation.

It's been studied at exhaust, at ad nauseum in terms of just how this is affecting so many of the families that are most vulnerable.

Especially when it comes to Medicaid, when it comes to food assistance, these direct attacks upon these families.

It's not going after waste and fraud.

We see still no protections that can guarantee that people with disabilities or others won't be affected.

So there's a real reason to be concerned here.

- Senator, do this for us.

You were in the Lower House in Congress and the House of Representatives for several years.

You choose to run for the United States Senate perceived by many to be the most impressive and prestigious body, if you will.

Debatable, 'cause you're there, I don't really know.

Is it what you thought it would be?

- I would say yes, in some ways.

I will say I am blown away by some of the caliber of the people that I work alongside.

Not all of 'em, but a lot of 'em.

- Both sides of the aisle, Senator?

- Both sides of the aisle.

Yeah, like my very first, actually, this was even before I became a senator, but after the election, I went on a congressional delegation to the Halifax Security Conference.

And I sat next to Mike Rounds, the Senator from South Dakota, and had just a remarkable conversation with him, and watching him at that conference in terms of what the remarks he gave, he gave one of the most emotional and compelling arguments about why it is we should be supporting Ukraine funding.

Look, he and I have differences, but he is somebody of extraordinary caliber.

Somebody that brings a lot.

He's a former governor, and I could say that about a number of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle.

You have a lot of people, former governors, former attorney generals, people who have been public servants in a lot of different ways.

And I will say, I do appreciate that this body is one where the expectation is that I will build a relationship with all 99 others.

And that is not just on me.

Others are coming to me to get to know.

I've had a number of just one-on-one meetings, trying to find things we can work on.

There's a real decorum here, not to attack each other personally.

And that's very different than my experience in the House of Representatives.

So that is something that I find quite different here.

- Along those lines, the United States Senate has the constitutional authority to approve or not approve certain presidential appointments.

And I'm wondering, 'cause you've talked a lot about this, we have a series on vaccines.

The graphic will come up, Vaccines: What You Need to Know, it's a public awareness initiative and cooperation with the New Jersey Department of Health, who has a great website about this.

Where am I going with this?

I'll tell you.

In congressional hearings, Senate hearings of RFK Junior as a nominee at the time, saying specifically and precisely that he would not work to undo vaccine policy and the federal government as it relates to the CDC or other agencies dealing with vaccines.

He also responded to one of your colleagues who I believe, is a medical doctor, right?

Not a PhD like some of us, but as my kids say, a real doctor.

- Yeah.

- That being said, it's a long-winded question to get to this.

Do you believe RFK Jr. when testifying before the United States Senate and responding to those questions about vaccines, what he would and would not do, has broken those, the commitments that he made?

- I do think he's broken the commitments.

I do think that he's somebody that is pushing a very extreme agenda, and somebody, I'll be honest with you.

Not only sometimes he is breaking his commitments, he also clearly is not staying on top of what is actually happening there.

There have been an exchange that I've had with him where he doesn't seem to be aware of the full ramifications of the budget cuts that he is approving.

- For example.

- Well, for instance, I asked him in a hearing why he cut the World Trade Center Health Program.

This is something that is about providing healthcare to our heroes at ground zero that were there in the rubble.

They cut a bunch of the staff as well as some of the funding.

And I asked him why that happened, - And he said he wasn't aware that that was the case.

And then I asked him, "Why did you cut the National Firefighter Cancer Registry that which helps firefighters keep track of different illnesses and different symptoms?"

- Why was that shutdown?

- I don’t know about that.

- And he said, "What is that?"

He literally did not know what the registry was.

And actually, because I pressed him on this, the registry was turned back on later on in the day after my hearing.

But it shouldn't take that kind of public grilling and humiliation for him to have to endure that in order to be able to get these incredibly important programs up for our first responders and for others.

But it was very clear to me that he's not actually doing the work.

He's not actually interested in managing and understanding the implications of what is happening before his department.

And instead, he's spending his time again, pushing the disinformation, pushing this very extreme agenda on vaccine skeptics, as well as other things that he's been pushing.

- And again, go on the website of the State Department of Health, the Vaccine section is there, and it's what you need to know.

I'm gonna try to do this in a way that's not self-serving.

As we speak, it's the 15th of July.

The issue of federal funding of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides dollars to PBS and NPR.

I don't know what's gonna happen, maybe you do.

What do you believe the genesis of this is?

It's been proposed before, but it's never been more real than it is right now.

Senator, A, what do you think the genesis is?

And B, what do you believe the implications would be if in fact, the President and the Congress, the House has already approved it as we speak, it's before the Senate.

Don't know what's gonna happen.

If they kill funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and public media in the state and nation.

- What we see before us right now, just for the people to understand is something called a rescission.

The administration is trying to push a rescission package, which means that they can make cuts to funding that Congress has already appropriated and approved.

Now, the Constitution gives Congress the right to be able to set the budget.

So this is something that's, may try to make it end run.

Trump tried this in his first term and lost.

The only President who's done it successfully was once by George H. W. Bush.

So this is not a normal process.

Right now, they're trying to gut around $9 billion from foreign assistance as well as public broadcasting.

Now, again, this is not an argument about efficiency or effectiveness.

This is clearly areas where they see this as a weaponization.

They have heard this straight from the mouths of the administration, that they believe public broadcasting is something that has been pushing left wing propaganda that this is something that is directly attacked the president during the campaigns.

We see that with how they're attacking foreign assistance, that this is something that they, we've seen them go after USAID, called it a criminal organization, to say that the people working there are money laundering and other things of that nature.

Really trying to discredit and disrespect public servants who are trained.

They're trying to do national security.

So this is something that I worry about greatly in terms of ability to continue to have public broadcasting in New Jersey.

I grew up on it, I grew up on "Sesame Street", "Mr. Rogers", "Reading Rainbow".

My Kids, I got an 8-year-old and a 9-year-old grown up on this.

And I just find it to be just so disrespectful to go after in this way.

And frankly, also to just try to have this level of dominance over the legislature and for Congress and my colleagues in the majority side to be abdicating the power of Congress and giving it over to the presidency.

It's the absolute wrong thing to do.

- Senator, do you believe, you just talked about your colleagues and the Republicans control the Lower House and the Senate.

You said, talked about them abdicating that responsibility, the Supreme Court, the consistent six to three majority, if you will, the conservative many, several, three I believe, Trump appointees.

A lot of the votes on critical issues including birthright citizenship have been six to three.

Do you believe, and I know this is gonna sound somewhat philosophical to folks, but it's not, it's very practical.

That the so-called balance of power, three branches of government, judicial, executive, and congressional legislative.

That pretty much on a range of issues, President Trump is not being balanced by either of the other two branches?

- That's correct.

I mean, I don't think it is hard to see.

- That's not hyperbole?

- No, it's not.

I mean, I think what we see right now is the president, for instance, with this rescissions package, he is threatening Republicans in Congress saying that he will not endorse them or support them in their next election if they oppose this legislation.

- But that's not new senator.

- It's not new.

- Presidents have been doing that for years.

- It's not new, but the level by which it is happening, it's a level of domination that is being pushed upon.

We saw it earlier with Elon Musk when he was an ally of the president, threatening to primary challenge members.

And so the level of it, I mean, for me, what it has shown me is that the Republican party, at least, in its form in governance is not a party anymore.

It's been captured by this MAGA movement.

And so you see a level of domination there where colleagues of mine, republican colleagues of mine are scared, literally scared.

And even telling me that they're scared for their physical safety.

That is not normal.

Yes, we've seen an erosion of this balance power for decades now.

We've seen the presidency grow in greater power under both Democrats and Republicans.

But this level here of this executive branch defying the ability for Congress to be able to take the actions that it needs to on tariffs, for instance, clearly the president overstepped what authorities he has there, overstepping the authorities in terms of being able to shut down USAID or going after the Department of Education right now.

Two entities that were established by Congress in statute.

Those are the types of things that have gone far too far.

- You talk about immigration, mass deportation effort.

The vast majority or the majority of Americans support President Trump's immigration policies.

And he is saying, we're just doing what people elected us to do.

We're getting rid of those who don't belong here.

You say.

- Well, I say actually, I mean, it looks like in the surveys I'm seeing that that is not the case.

The majority Americans have not been supportive of his immigration.

I think they're supportive of the effort.

- They're trying and closing the border of limiting people coming into the country and is overall immigration policy, what are they not supportive of Senator?

- So I look and I think there's wide agreement that we wanna make sure that we can have sovereign control over our own borders, land, air and sea, and that we want to make sure that we are prioritizing when it comes to going after violent criminals, felons.

I think there's agreement on that.

But what we were seeing is an overwhelming amount of the resources being put towards going after everyday people, even rounding up some citizens in the mix, but going after for instance, again, I'm continuing to engage in a particular case in New Jersey, with a man named Karim Daoud from Hunterdon County.

Months now, I've saw him there at the detention facility, but months now that he's been detained, this is someone who's been here 30 years or so has a American citizen wife, an American citizen two kids, a restaurant owner.

And ICE has told me he does not have a criminal background.

That is not where we should be spending our time and our resources.

And I think the American people agree with that.

And it's not just that we see these efforts to go after legal immigration and legal migration, for instance, going after foreign students.

My father came here as a foreign student trying to innovate and build businesses here, that we benefit from being a magnet for global talent.

And right now that is being pushed away and it's making our nation and frankly our economy weaker.

- Shift gears dramatically.

We have an initiative focused on childcare, affordable, accessible quality childcare.

The graphic will come up for the First 1000 Days Policy Coalition.

In this budget, in the federal budget that was passed with no democratic votes by the way, in the United States Senate.

Or I don't believe in the house either.

What is in that budget, as you understand it, Senator, that impacts the ability of parents to find childcare that's affordable, accessible, for their children?

- So a couple things.

One is we see this continued attack when it comes to programs like Head Start.

Which is a program where, especially some of the families that are struggling the most, are able to get some support to be able to get their kid into childcare.

And it's not just good for the kid in terms of early childhood development, but it's good for the parents because they can get into the workforce and be able to try to build up their own resources.

Programs like that are important.

And I've seen with my own eyes across New Jersey, just how that's made a difference.

That's a big part of it.

But one thing I will say, is that a family that's struggling when it comes to paying the bills with childcare, that's also gonna be a family that's struggling to pay the bills when it comes to housing, when it comes to healthcare, when it comes to food and food insecurity challenges that we're facing.

So when we see the systematic effort that is squeezing people when it comes to healthcare, we see these drastic cuts to snap and food assistance, when we see these other efforts that are out there that are for instance, right now, these tariffs that are raising prices for American families and consumers, that's all just adding so much pressure.

I talked to this one mom and she was telling me, she was saying that like, it's so much that she feels like it's hard to breathe sometimes because of just the sheer amount of anxiety and pressure that she's under to try to pay the bills for her family.

And that squeeze from all these directions is what people are facing and what is being caused and frankly is accentuated because of the budget cuts that are out there.

- Senator, we have a few minutes left.

I'm gonna try something.

So the iconic photo of you in the aftermath of the horrific attack on the United States Congress, on police officers on January 6th.

But here's the thing I keep wondering about.

You were cleaning, you were trying to clean up, was it the next day?

- It was that night, late that night.

- It was that night, okay.

- When the actual vote took place to certify the election.

- Yeah.

- Why do you think so many supporters of President Trump, folks in the MAGA movement, millions of Americans who argue that they are law and order citizens, that they back the blue, our cops, don't really want to engage, talk about or think January 6th is really much ado about, not a lot.

Yeah, I think about this a lot.

I mean, big picture, what I'll say is we're less than a year out from our 250th anniversary as a nation, and I hope this next year is filled with reflection for us about how we got here to the 250 and what we would need going forward.

I have deep concern that we're a nation that's losing faith and losing track in the idea that we're part of something bigger than all of us.

And I think January 6th and what I've seen afterwards is really hitting that home.

In a survey I saw over 50% of Americans believe that people in the other political party are the enemy.

And that is an exceedingly dangerous world.

- What about we as the enemy of the people and the media as the president calls us?

They believe we're the enemy too.

- This effort to try to spread this conspiracy theory, pushing disinformation, whether it's about the media, whether it's about the deep state and going after public servants and- - Basically demonizing people is the, so we have different points of view but, I'm sorry for interrupting, Senator.

The need to demonize others who don't agree with us on an issue.

- What I see is a politics of grievance out there, trying to weaponize the anxieties that people are facing, people facing real problems of affordability and anxiety about what happens.

- They're real.

- But it's being weaponized and it's being said, okay, the reason why you are having these problems is because of this person or that person or that group and this business.

And we see it going after, whether it's about immigrants or it's about China, which we have legitimate concerns, but often it's weaponized to push national security or a public broadcast or the deep state.

We see how that's being pushed in that way.

- Or colleges and universities.

- Divisiveness.

Yeah, exactly.

I mean, and the attack and saying it's brainwashing our kids.

I'm a father, as I said, of an 8-year-old and a 9-year-old.

My little one just turned eight two days ago.

And I worry about what kind of America they're gonna grow up in, when you see this type of divisiveness that's out there I got about 15 years until they're out there entering the workforce.

So that's my focus in life right now, is trying to figure out how we heal this country - Before I let you go.

International affairs is always difficult for us to talk about when we're taping in the middle of July, this will be seen later because so many things are happening, scary things, unpredictable things around the world.

President came in and said, I can solve the situation with Ukraine and Russia first day.

He's saying he was joking.

Don't know what his real intent was.

Do you believe most Americans understand and appreciate that Vladimir Putin and the Russian army were the aggressors and the initiators in this, and that Ukraine and their leadership is simply doing what American Patriots did 250 years ago?

- I believe so.

I believe that the majority of Americans understand that.

I think that a number, though, a larger number than we would ever want is believing in some of the disinformation that's out there.

And frankly even though they could recognize what is happening, we are having divisiveness in our country in terms of what our role is.

What does it mean for America to be a global leader?

What I see with President Trump is, people ask me, he's this chaos of his foreign policy.

I actually don't see his foreign policy as chaos.

I see his foreign policy as a very coherent implementation of a neo-isolationism policy.

This- - What's that mean?

- Well, basically it's this idea that America first means America alone.

The idea that we don't need other countries.

He's tarrifing our closest allies.

Japan prime minister the other day gave a remarkably powerful speech that we should be worried about, where he said, now is the time for our nation to reduce its dependence on America.

So what we are finding is that, we have been for decades, the indispensable nation.

And yes, sometimes that meant that we were taking on too much that we shouldn't have, but it allowed us to project global power that benefited our economy, benefited our our nation.

We are now no longer the indispensable nation.

We are the unreliable nation.

We are the nation that other countries are trying to guard against.

And that's gonna have severe impact on our strength going forward.

And, again, my kids' generation growing up in a time when America will no longer be by far the most powerful country in the world.

And that's gonna change things for us.

- Before I let you go, 30 seconds.

Any reason to be optimistic about the future of our country?

- What I will say is that I worked in diplomacy in a lot of different nations, including authoritarian nations.

I've been there when countries have lost democracies.

We have a lot of bend before we break.

We have a lot of muscle memory as a society over 249 years of democracy.

So I do believe deeply in the resilience of America, we've been through a lot, but I had the great opportunity to be able to call a great man, John Lewis, a colleague of mine, he always reminded that we've been through tough times.

He reminded me that this is a historic time, which is hard to comprehend.

Like I don't wanna actually live through history.

I'd much rather have simpler, quieter times, where I can see my kids more.

But John Lewis told me that these moments in history are not defined.

Their ending's not defined, they're defined by those who step up.

And we're seeing a lot of people stepping up, running for office, fighting in government, stepping out and protesting, having their voices heard.

We need to make sure we keep that up.

- Thank you, Senator.

I wish you all the best.

- Thank you.

- I'm Steve Adubato, that's Senator Andy Kim, We'll see you next time.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by The Turrell Fund, a foundation serving children.

Hackensack Meridian Health.

NJM Insurance Group.

Lincoln Tech.

Operating Engineers, Local 825.

United Airlines.

Eastern Atlantic States Regional Council of Carpenters.

New Jersey Manufacturing Extension Program.

The New Jersey Economic Development Authority.

And by these public spirited organizations, individuals and associations committed to informing New Jersey citizens about the important issues facing the Garden State.

Promotional support provided by Insider NJ.

And by NJ.Com.

- You are your child's best advocate.

No one cares more about your child's health, safety, development, and wellbeing more than you.

Empower yourself with the vaccination information you need to make the best decisions for your child.

Hackensack Meridian Health can help.

Learn more about fact-based information at hackensackmeridianhealth.org/ vaccine-facts and always talk to your child's pediatrician.