January 29, 2025

At a news conference Tuesday afternoon, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt did not provide a clear answer about whether Medicaid federal assistance was included in the ‘federal assistance pause’ that was to take effect Monday at 5pm.  But soon after that press conference the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) distributed the second memo we sent to all members (attached) stating the spending freeze didn’t/doesn’t apply to Medicaid.  And by the end of the day (and just shy of 5pm) a federal judge had temporarily blocked the implementation of the pause until February 3, and two lawsuits had been filed in federal court.    

Here’s what the White House says about the Medicaid quagmire states across the country faced yesterday as they attempted (and often failed) to draw down federal assistance:

“The White House is aware of the Medicaid website portal outage,” Leavitt wrote on X. “We have confirmed no payments have been affected — they are still being processed and sent. We expect the portal will be back online shortly.”  

Also yesterday House Leader Hakeem Jeffries called an “emergency meeting” of House Democrats for later today (Wednesday) to plan their response to the spending freeze, which will include legal actions, he wrote in a letter to lawmakers Tuesday. “The Republican Rip Off is an unprecedented assault on the country, the Constitution and the Congress. Millions of Americans will be hurt.  By necessity, we will combat the extreme funding freeze with a forceful response on all fronts,” he wrote.  

More than 79 million Americans are covered by the Medicaid insurance program.  Later today I will contact the offices of the members of the NYS delegation in Washington, offering our support and assistance as our representatives plan their next steps to ensure nothing like what happened yesterday can or will happen again.  The next deadline we have to focus on is February 3 when the order issued by the federal judge who issued a temporary restraining order, is scheduled to end.

Today’s NY Times Upshot columnincludes a comprehensive list of potentially impacted federal programs.  I have pasted a Gift Article link to the NYT list directly below and the full article is further down in this email:

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On Thursday morning (1/30/25) at 9:15 sharp the NYS Council will host our weekly Member Support and Public Policy discussion via Zoom.  We will be joined by Rosie Dawn Griffin, Esq.,  a partner at Feldesman Leifer, LLP.  Rosie has a strong background in immigration law. She will provide information and practical (informal) advice to NYS Council members as they prepare for the increasing possibility of an unannounced ‘visit’ from federal immigration enforcement officials who are showing up at healthcare and other settings across New York.  Please join us for this important conversation at 9:15 sharp this Thursday morning.  

In the meantime, the Legal Aid Society has published a new resource document for impacted populations and advocates entitled “Know Your Rights” document here:  

https://legalaidnyc.org/news/critical-resources-immigrant-communities/

Here’s the link to join the call tomorrow morning:

Jan. 30, 9:15
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86270941266?pwd=OUFFSTRSaWZDOFRVNk8xUHBXY3Z5QT09

Meeting ID: 862 7094 1266
Passcode: 619723

One tap mobile
+16465588656,,86270941266#,,,,*619723# US (New York)

Adams, Hochul defend ICE expansion of illegal immigration crackdown to New York City

Federal agents, led by new DHS secretary, made heavily publicized arrest in country’s biggest sanctuary city Tuesday.
By Emily Ngo, Politico01/28/2025 01:31 PM EST

NEW YORK — President Donald Trump expanded his show of force on illegal immigration to the country’s largest sanctuary city early Tuesday, with the backing of embattled New York City Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul.Newly confirmed Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem descended on New York City for the heavily publicized arrest of an undocumented immigrant wanted for violent crimes.

The action sparked swift responses from the state’s leaders, and Attorney General Letitia James said she is monitoring “the increased presence of ICE across New York City.” The Democrat separately promised “imminent legal action” against the Trump administration’s sweeping pause on federal funding.

Several hours after the pre-dawn raid in the Bronx, Adams, a former police captain with a warming relationship with Trump, said in a statement that the city “will not hesitate to partner with federal authorities to bring violent criminals to justice — just as we have done for years.”The Democratic mayor said he “directed the NYPD to coordinate with DHS’ Homeland Security Investigations and other federal law enforcement agencies — as allowed by law — to conduct a targeted operation.”

Images and video circulated by Noem and her team revealed an individual with kidnapping, assault and burglary charges was taken into custody. Several federal law enforcement agencies took part.NYPD officers were present for the operation as part of a Homeland Security Investigations, or HSI, task force conducting criminal investigations, a police spokesperson said. Sanctuary laws in New York City limit broader local police cooperation with federal immigration officials.At noon, Adams acknowledged the enforcement action, saying he had “directed the NYPD to coordinate with DHS’ Homeland Security Investigations and other federal law enforcement agencies — as allowed by law — to conduct a targeted operation.”The mayor added, “Our commitment to protecting our city’s law-abiding residents, both citizens and immigrants, remains unwavering.”Adams has met with and vowed to find common ground with Trump, while pledging to uphold sanctuary laws the Republican president has assailed. Adams’ public appearances have been limited this week because, his spokespeople say, he is feeling unwell.

The tone of Adams’ statement was markedly different from that of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson at a Tuesday news conference.“I’m standing with the full force of government today to demonstrate that Chicago is a welcoming city regardless of who’s in the White House,” Johnson said, flanked by the police superintendent and his management team.Democrat Hochul has, like Adams, approved of the removal of violent criminals.“I want to be clear, there has always been ICE raids in the state of New York, even in the past, and this is not a new dynamic,” she told reporters Tuesday. “My understanding is that they had specific names of people who committed crimes, serious offenders, and those are exactly the people that we want removed from the state of New York.”

The scope of Tuesday’s operation beyond the Bronx arrest was not immediately known. Adams said the arrested individual was wanted in connection with several violent crimes in New York and in Aurora, Colorado.The raid came as Democratic states and cities are preparing their response to Trump’s freezing of “all federal financial assistance,” a broadening of his administration’s curtailing of the functions of government and a shifting of federal purse strings further away from Congress.

“Just like the Jan. 6 pardons, this decision is lawless, dangerous, destructive, cruel; it’s illegal, it’s unconstitutional,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said, previewing a legal challenge by Democratic attorneys general including James.

Democrats are dealing with Trump’s wide-ranging and wide-reaching directives on several fronts.Before Tuesday’s New York City operation, federal immigration agents had recently begun arrests and raids to varying degrees in Chicago, Atlanta and other Democratic-led cities. ICE has labeled them “targeted” operations.ICE has reported hundreds of arrests each day since Trump’s Jan. 20 return to the White House, where he launched a slew of executive orders and directives cracking down on illegal immigration. The president is reversing a Biden-era policy restricting ICE enforcement at sensitive locations like schools and expanding expedited removal procedures. He is also seeking to stop birthright citizenship, a move that immediately drew legal challenges.Federal border czar Tom Homan, who was on the ground in Chicago with TV host Dr. Phil for an operation there over the weekend, has vowed to focus on sanctuary cities that protect immigrants and said those detained may include people without violent criminal records.

Public defenders with the Legal Aid Society responded to the New York City operation by launching a Know Your Rights resource hub on ICE arrests and detention.

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Kennedy Senate Confirmation Hearings begin today.  The first hearing is scheduled for 10:00 a.m. ET on Wednesday and the second hearing is scheduled for 10:00 a.m. ET on Thursday 

How To Watch RFK Jr.’s Confirmation Hearing Live

To watch Kennedy’s confirmation hearing, viewers can look to the Senate Finance Committee website on Wednesday and the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee website on Thursday.——————————

Freezing the government

NY Times, The Upshot, 1/29/25

President Trump believes that a deep state held him back in his first term. Now, he wants to go through the federal government and its many functions, line by line, to make sure he gets his way — on diversity, climate change, immigration and more.

Yesterday, the Trump administration tried to freeze a host of federal grants and loans while it figures out whether these priorities align with the president’s agenda. The directive subjects programs to “ideological litmus tests,” my colleague Nicholas Nehamas wrote. It says government money should not “advance Marxist equity, transgenderism and Green New Deal social engineering.” Moments before it was set to begin, a judge suspended the freeze; a ruling will follow next week.

The president is trying to strip any policy or program that he and his allies might call “woke.” He has already moved to bar transgender people from the military and to prevent the government from paying for transgender children’s treatments. He revoked a 60-year-old order that bans hiring discrimination in federal contracting and ended D.E.I. programs for the federal work force.

Lawmakers often say that “personnel is policy.” Trump is taking that view seriously as a way to ensure that his new policies are actually enforced, after some federal employees admitted that they secretly undermined his first-term agenda.

So the president ordered federal employees to report on colleagues who try to continue D.E.I. efforts. He has dismissed officials who he believes oppose him. Yesterday, his administration offered millions of federal employees payouts to resign. It promised to impose “enhanced standards of conduct” to judge if workers are “reliable, loyal, trustworthy.”

The funding freeze is also part of an effort to enforce Trump’s agenda across the entire government. By looking at each agency on a granular level, Trump can see if everyone is doing what he wants. The rest of today’s newsletter breaks down what may happen if the freeze goes forward.

‘Temporary pause’

If the freeze proceeds, some programs that Americans rely on will shut down, though the administration called it a “temporary pause.

They include:

The administration said it excluded some major services — Social Security, Medicare and food stamps, for instance — from the freeze. “Any payment required by law to be paid will be paid without interruption or delay,” the Office of Management and Budget said.

But the freeze might be illegal. The Constitution gives Congress power of the purse, meaning that its members decide how the government spends its money. The president has some leeway (say, in picking contractors), but he typically can’t decide to withhold money. The Supreme Court has rebuked past efforts by presidents to “impound” funds in this way. In 1975, it ruled against Richard Nixon when he cut off some environmental protection funds.

When the administration issued the directive on Monday, officials across the government wondered if it would affect them. At first, the White House sent agencies a giant spreadsheet of affected programs, asking officials to explain if any violated Trump’s executive orders. Then, the administration rushed to clarify that it exempted some big programs, like Medicaid and Head Start.

But in the pandemonium, states reported yesterday that Medicaid payments were frozen. Providers who care for young children said they couldn’t access Head Start funds. Gov. Jeff Landry of Louisiana, a Trump ally, issued a statement asking the administration to take steps to avoid “jeopardizing the financial stability of the state.”

Trump views unpredictability as a virtue that keeps his opponents guessing. In this case, maybe the cuts related to wokeness or climate change will scare federal employees into acting cautiously — to avoid getting on their boss’s bad side.

But that unpredictability also has another effect: As Trump moves quickly, some government services — and the things they pay for, like schools and policing — might not always function as Americans expect.——————————-

Q&A: State Senate health chair on Trump’s impact in the new legislative session

Ethan Geringer-Sameth, Crain’s Health Pulse, 1/29/25

Lawmakers concerned with health care spending are heading into state budget negotiations with a cloud over their heads as federal cuts to Medicaid and other health funding streams loom under the Republican governing trifecta in Washington.

Although it’s unclear when the cuts will come, how much they will be and what programs could be affected, Gov. Kathy Hochul last week unveiled a $252 billion executive budget proposal that raises Medicaid spending 14% to $35.4 billion. And while the state was given permission to reap an expected $3.7 billion from a tax loophole on health insurers known as managed care organizations during the waning days of the Biden administration, that funding is one-time, which means lawmakers will have to return cup-in-hand to a much less sympathetic administration or find other ways to pay for existing services in the coming years.

Crain’s spoke with state Senator Gustavo Rivera, a Bronx Democrat and chair of the powerful Health Committee, about some of the critical questions at the outset of the legislative session.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Federal approval for the managed care organization tax is a one-time payment that could lead to a fiscal cliff down the road to pay for existing services. Do you have a game plan for plugging that hole in the outyears?

Certainly I’m glad, first of all, that it was approved before this administration started, because we knew that we were not able to get it under this one…It is great that we got it, but I think that there’s other things that we need to explore. We need to not only explore it, but think about where those expenses are going to be, because ultimately we’ll want them to be as investments, not just expenditures.

What are some possible avenues to explore?

Let’s tax the wealthy. That’s something I’ve been pretty consistent on. I think that we need more revenue overall, particularly to make up for what will be cutbacks from the federal government. The depth of these, the extent of them, or the timing of them are still up in the air, but we know they’re coming. They’ve made it very clear…I know that we’re not going to be able to make up everything that the federal government gives us. Now, I recognize that, however, we need more revenue so that we can have a conversation about what we can cover.

You introduced a bill in September that would stop the transition to a single [Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program] broker and allow more fiscal intermediaries to participate. Since then the state has awarded a contract to Georgia-based Public Partnerships LLC and people are enrolling in the new system. What exactly can change between now and the April 1 deadline to complete the transition?

The entire thing can change. We actually can pass a bill that basically restructures the program. It gives a different timeline. It restructures the program oversight, the types of things the Department of Health can do to make sure that they crack down on bad actors. I still think that it’s actually something that needs to happen, because I do not believe that this is a transition that’s possible by April 1. I just don’t think that that’s the case.

What would this mean for the PPL contract? Would it have to be nullified?

Certainly, PPL could be one of the fiscal intermediaries, but not the single one. They would probably have to put another proposal forward.

The contract has been granted. What can be done to change that, legally speaking?

I’ve not looked at the contract in detail, but I know that it exists because of statute, and we could change statute. I’m sure there are ways for the contract to be terminated by either party. It’s the way the contracts work.

The president issued an order repealing a policy that limited immigration enforcement in hospitals and other so-called “sensitive locations.” Is there anything the legislature can do to protect patients and loved ones from immigration raids while they are seeking medical care?

Absolutely, not only medical settings but across the board. There’s a bill that my colleague, Andrew Gounardes, carries, which would make it so that there’s no cooperation between state agencies [and federal law enforcement]…I believe that we need to defend New Yorkers. We know most poor, working class folks, particularly many, many undocumented folks, people who might be at risk of these dragnets by the federal government, are in the city of New York and get served by public institutions.

What about in private hospitals?

I haven’t spoken with every single one, but I’ve not gotten any indication from any of these folks that they’re not on the same page as I am.

But is there anything that statutorily can be done to affect that one way or the other?

I couldn’t tell you at this moment.

Democrats have increasingly embraced Gov. Kathy Hochul’s push to expand involuntary psychiatric commitment and treatment for New Yorkers with severe mental illness. Where do you stand on that? Do you think there needs to be more flexibility to allow for these types of involuntary or court-ordered treatments?

I think that the real conversation needs to be about making sure that we actually have somewhere for these folks to receive services. Just arresting someone, regardless of whether they are homeless, whether they have a mental health issue, whether they have a substance use issue, doesn’t solve anything. Arresting somebody does not solve anything. Because if we put someone through a system and we don’t actually have services for them, if we don’t have a bed in a psych ward, in an institution, if we don’t have that, then it doesn’t matter…some of my colleagues, particularly some of my more conservative colleagues, could give a shit about where these people wind up as long as they’re not in the streets, as they say.