Governor Shapiro on Big Court Win Against Trump

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Speaker 3 Let's talk with a governor who's fighting back and winning against some of these Trump executive orders, freezing funds, which would have caused big problems in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Speaker 3 Governor Shapiro, welcome. Hey, Ben, it's great to be with you.
And by the way, I just want to say thanks for having me back on. I know you're Mr.

Speaker 3 Big Time now, but you remember who was there in the beginning. Now y'all are number one.
Congratulations. I'm so proud of you and your brothers, but I'm glad you didn't forget us little people.

Speaker 3 Thanks for having me back.

Speaker 3 We will never forget. We appreciate all the work you're doing in the Commonwealth, and I appreciate that.

Speaker 3 Let's talk about the lawsuit that you brought against the Trump administration's funding freeze.

Speaker 3 There was about $2.1 billion that you identified that was in the lawsuit that you filed of funds that were supposed to go to the Commonwealth that were blocked. That's why you brought the lawsuit.

Speaker 3 And you've accounted for what, all 2.1 billion now after fighting back. Tell us about that.
Yeah, we won.

Speaker 3 Look, I mean, this really comes down to a simple thing that our kids learn in middle school, right? A deal is a deal. That's it.

Speaker 3 The federal government made a deal with Pennsylvania to invest $2.1 billion in our Commonwealth. A whole lot more than that, but that's what was frozen.

Speaker 3 And understand, Ben, this was money that was going to things like fixing old,

Speaker 3 old abandoned minefields where we were having sinkholes. We actually had a woman die in Western Pennsylvania, fell into a sinkhole.

Speaker 3 It was capping orphan wells that were leaking methane into our communities, which was speeding up climate change and having really adverse health risks in the community and so much more.

Speaker 3 And so I talked to the federal government and said, yo, y'all can't do this. You've got to give us the money that is owed to us.
Remember, a deal is a deal. They refused.

Speaker 3 And so I I had no other choice but to take them to court. I sued them.
But I kept talking to them during that process and ultimately made very, very clear I wasn't going away.

Speaker 3 Pennsylvania was going to get its fair share of federal funding and what's been promised to us. And we were able to get them to unfreeze all $2.1 billion that had been taken away from Pennsylvania.

Speaker 3 I'm really proud of that. And I'm grateful to the people whose voices were raised up demanding that the federal government do what they they were legally required to do.

Speaker 3 And as a result, the good people of Pennsylvania are protected. Look, you've got a lot of bipartisan support there in the Commonwealth.

Speaker 3 You visit blue areas, purple areas, red areas, and you got pretty good support even in some of those ruby, red, and red areas.

Speaker 3 They're being impacted by a lot of what we're seeing, though, from the Trump administration.

Speaker 3 And we've been following a lot of these town halls in ruby red areas where people, Republican voters, people who are at least identifying as Republican voters on camera and independents and others are just saying, you know, we're losing our jobs.

Speaker 3 This is hurting us. I saw Maga Mike Johnson speak yesterday, Speaker of the House, and he's like, no, this is fake.
This is all astroturfed.

Speaker 3 These are just activists and it's not, it's not really what the what Republican voters or independents are thinking. You got a beat on what's going on in the Commonwealth and what's happening?

Speaker 3 You You know, literally, Ben, just a couple hours ago, I was up in what we call the northern tier of Pennsylvania. You can't get any further north, otherwise, you're going to be in New York.

Speaker 3 And these are really conservative Republican voting communities. A lot of voters voted for me there, but by and large, these are communities that overwhelmingly supported Donald Trump.

Speaker 3 And two things were brought up to me by folks there, folks in the media and folks just when I got pulled aside who were wanting to talk to me. One, they said, Thank you for protecting us.

Speaker 3 Thank you for making sure that we are seen. This was a member of the LGBTQ community who came over to me and said that.

Speaker 3 The other thing is, people are really worried about the impact of these federal cuts on their communities. Let's talk just for a moment about Medicaid, right?

Speaker 3 They're talking about cutting Medicaid in Washington. I get $30 billion a year coming to Pennsylvania to pay for Medicaid.
There are 3 million Pennsylvanians who get health care through Medicaid.

Speaker 3 There are 13 million total Pennsylvanians. 3 million of them are on Medicaid.
And by the way, Ben, a high percentage of them are in these rural communities where I was just a few hours ago.

Speaker 3 I've made clear to our federal officials that a cut to Medicaid directly hurts your constituents here in Pennsylvania. It would have a devastating impact on these rural communities.

Speaker 3 I'm going to do everything I can to both educate our lawmakers, to help them understand that cuts to Medicaid are going to harm our citizens, especially in rural Pennsylvania, and hold them accountable if they make those cuts.

Speaker 3 If they even cut 10% out of Medicaid, that's a $3 billion hit.

Speaker 3 And that's something that is going to be very difficult for us to make up here in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania through our state budget.

Speaker 3 Now, there might be some people out there going, well, I mean, the federal government, what's their their role in sending money to Pennsylvania or any other state? Well, here's the thing.

Speaker 3 Folks in that rural community where I just was, they pay federal taxes and they want that money to come back to our state.

Speaker 3 Nearly every state in the nation gets, you know, somewhere between 30 and 40% of their overall annual budgets from federal tax dollars, from federal money that comes back to their states.

Speaker 3 The idea that that's going to be cut and we're going to make it harder to build roads and bridges, cover kids with autism, protect our veterans, just to name a few things, that is really, really concerning to me.

Speaker 3 And we've got to push back on that. And so, you know, if Mike Johnson thinks that this is just made up or astroturfed or whatever you said,

Speaker 3 how about he shows up in some of these rural communities in Pennsylvania and actually listens to the real concerns on people's minds?

Speaker 3 By the way, the people that voted for a Republican representative who made Mike Johnson Speaker, the people who voted for Donald Trump to make him president, they don't want to see their communities be harmed.

Speaker 3 And these cuts that they're talking about would be really devastating.

Speaker 3 When I've been following some of these town halls and meetings in some of these red rural communities, one of the things I hear often also is: why is Elon Musk and a group of 19 to 25-year-old guys, some who refer to themselves as Mr.

Speaker 3 Big Balls, going through our social social security information, medical records, tax records, and doing it so cavalierly and then saying, hey, you should trust us because we're billionaires and billionaires are the most trustworthy people.

Speaker 3 So let us just have all of your information.

Speaker 3 And I hear people saying, look, Go then and testify in front of Congress, go under oath, and tell the American people what you're doing, but we don't want our privacy being invaded by these people.

Speaker 3 Are you hearing that?

Speaker 3 Yeah, and look, protecting privacy is a fundamental responsibility I have as governor in overseeing a government that serves the needs of 13 million Pennsylvanians, protecting people's privacy, their health, their safety, and ensuring that we have proper protocols in place to protect their interests.

Speaker 3 You know, look, I hold the president accountable. He decides who he's going to surround himself with.
He decides who he is going to empower.

Speaker 3 And I want to make sure the people he surrounds himself with, the people he leans on to help lead this nation, are people who actually give a damn about the American people, protecting their privacy, protecting their interests, looking out for their needs.

Speaker 3 That's what I want to see. And I hold the president accountable to that.

Speaker 3 Let's talk about your budget. You've been posting on social media some of your priorities like this.
This is a photo that you posted. Let's invest in our child care, teachers, teachers, and staff.

Speaker 3 Now, as I said before, you've got bipartisan support, but governor,

Speaker 3 isn't this, is this woke?

Speaker 3 Is this woke? I mean, child care, Medicaid, healthcare, helping people. You know, I'm being facetious, of course, but you're saying what the priorities are in the Commonwealth.

Speaker 3 Yeah, look, you know what it is? It's common sense. You go out there, you talk to moms and dads and caregivers.
You talk to business owners.

Speaker 3 You talk to chambers of commerce and labor unions, and you talk to them about the concerns they have about workforce, right? Who's going to do the jobs we need, not just today, but well in the future.

Speaker 3 And you ask them, what's holding you back? Well, for many, it's childcare.

Speaker 3 You know, if parents don't have a safe and reliable place that they can drop their kids off at and go to work, well, they're not going to go to work.

Speaker 3 because they're going to be home caring for their kids or making other arrangements.

Speaker 3 We know that if we can build out a child care system that is available to all, we talked about rural communities before, especially in those rural communities, we know that we can have greater economic productivity.

Speaker 3 Let me offer, I'll nerd out on you here for a quick second. We have the need to put about 25,000 more kids in childcare in Pennsylvania.
This is a need that parents have identified.

Speaker 3 Well, to do that, we need to fill 3,000 open early learning teaching slots.

Speaker 3 And so, my budget does a common sense thing, which is to say we're going to give $1,000 stipend to childcare workers to either retain them or attract them into this really important field.

Speaker 3 This is something that's been endorsed by Republicans and Democrats alike.

Speaker 3 And it builds on the work we've done on childcare by tripling our child care tax credit to reduce the cost for families trying to avoid childcare and actually giving businesses a tax write-off when they pay for their employees' child care costs.

Speaker 3 So we're trying to come at this in a bunch of different ways.

Speaker 3 Funding the providers, putting money back in parents' pockets to be able to afford child care, and helping businesses support their employees.

Speaker 3 This is a common sense thing we can do to attract more people into a really, really necessary field. It's going to help us grow our economy and have really good outcomes for our communities.

Speaker 3 You know, and finally, I know how patriotic the people are in the Commonwealth. Two very disturbing developments I've seen in the Trump administration on this, I mean, I could probably 2000.

Speaker 3 But number one, veterans being disproportionately impacted by the terminations within the federal government, 30%, 40% of federal government workers are veterans or the spouses of veterans.

Speaker 3 And then Donald Trump having the United States join in access of evil, like with Russia and North Korea, to vote against a resolution condemning Russia's unlawful invasion of Ukraine.

Speaker 3 We know that there's been a lot of hard-working factories in the Commonwealth who have been building some of the weaponry as well to defend Ukraine. So I know it's an issue that hits close to home.

Speaker 3 It does. So let me address,

Speaker 3 you know, on both of those fronts. Pennsylvania is proud, the proud home of nearly a million veterans.
And these veterans deserve better than what they're getting from the Trump administration.

Speaker 3 Veterans are getting laid off, and veterans are going to see their programs that they rely on for health care and other things get cut back on as a result of the budgets that are going through Washington right now.

Speaker 3 Veterans deserve better. And by the way, here in the Commonwealth, we are looking to hire some of those laid-off veterans for really critically important jobs that we have.

Speaker 3 From a broader national security perspective, and Ben, we could spend hours on this, but I think this is a critically important point that we need to start talking about more.

Speaker 3 I don't hear enough people talking about this.

Speaker 3 When Donald Trump took the oath of office, he took the oath of office to be president of the United States and be the leader of the free world, as presidents have been for many generations, stretching back even before Ronald Reagan and the changes that came there.

Speaker 3 He went from being the leader of the free world to now, in just one month, wanting wanting to be a leader of a single hemisphere and leaving China and Russia in charge of the other hemispheres.

Speaker 3 That is deeply, deeply dangerous for America's national security interests. It is deeply troubling to see a president retreat in the face of Vladimir Putin and President Xi.

Speaker 3 We need a president who's going to stand up for America's interests, who wants to be the leader of the free world.

Speaker 3 He has demonstrated nothing but weakness when it comes to national security over the course of his first month in office. Ben, we need to talk about this more.

Speaker 3 America's national security is at risk as a result of these decisions the president has made. And I'm very, very concerned.
I'm concerned about how he's treating our veterans.

Speaker 3 And I'm concerned about our national security going forward.

Speaker 3 Well, as your constituents say, I can say also, the Midas Mighty is happy that you're out there, though, fighting back, pushing back. And we hope you'll come back on the show.

Speaker 3 Let us know everything that's going on in the Commonwealth. We appreciate you, as always.
Governor Josh Shapiro. Thanks, Ben.
Great to be with you. And sincerely, congrats on all your success.

Speaker 3 I'm really proud of you guys. And, you know, thanks for remembering us little people who were there in the beginning.

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