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three of my colleagues, White House Correspondents Maggie Haberman and Zolin Kano -Youngs, and Congressional Correspondent Katie Edmondson.
It's Friday, February 28th.
So friends, welcome back all three of you to the roundtable.
Zolan and Katie. Thank you for being in our Washington studio.
Good to have you. Thanks for having us.
Thanks for having us, Michael.
Thank you, Michael.
I didn't even say hello to you yet.
...have to decide how to respond.
Among them, Maura Healy of Massachusetts.
Healy is a former civil rights lawyer who, in 2014, became the nation's first openly gay state attorney general.
In 2022, she won the governorship, and while she may not have the same national profile as some of her colleagues, like J .B.
Pritzker of Illinois or Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, she's known as being deeply influential in the party behind closed doors.
So as part of a series of conversations I'm having with Democrats, I wanted to talk to Healy about how she views her role as the governor of a blue state.
Two of those deals, and you've all been carefully selected because of your relationship to these deals.
The first deal was with Congress.
And there was a lot of drama surrounding this one, as there often is with Congress.
Maggie, just to start, what was this?
Trump has been very focused and his aides have been very focused in the White House on trying to get through some kind of a bill through Congress that reflected what he campaigned on.
Not an executive action, which is pretty much to find this president.
Correct. Trump has taken a number of executive actions.
He's very proud of it.
But you can't do everything that way.
Spending has to get passed through Congress, at least in this form.
So this House bill was sort of a half man, half horse of Trump's campaign promises.
That's a very intriguing metaphor.
Katie, can you explain what this half man, half horse thing was that ends up before Congress?
Yeah, I mean, the campaign promises that Maggie highlighted are really tax cuts.
It is extended. The address by Stephen Miller for about 15, 20 minutes.
And then later the president came out and began by recounting that he's got the highest approval rating of anybody this early in his tenure, that he won the election not once, not twice, but three times and then continued with a litany of conspiracy theories and false information.
So it was unfortunate because I'm there as governor thinking, let's have a conversation about maybe where we can work together, right?
How can we focus on the needs of everyday Americans?
But unfortunately, we didn't see any of that.
What was also upsetting is that we saw him attack another governor.
This is something that— The governor of Maine.
The governor of Maine.
Now, this follows—remember, a few weeks ago, he attacked Illinois and Governor Pritzker.
He attacked Governor Hochul in New York recently.
He's now very gratuitously, in a way it seemed very manufactured in the moment, attacked the governor of Maine.
And we should say this was about transgender rights and about his executive order to do with transgender rights.
And then he called her out.
Right. And then she responded basically that she would follow the laws of her state and the federal government and that she would see him in court.
And that didn't seem to go down well.
No, and it was it was about transgender rights.
But in order to get to the levels of spending cuts we're talking about, we're going to have to cut programs like Medicaid.
And so you had some deep concerns from lawmakers who represent districts where a lot of their constituents rely on Medicaid.
At the same time, you had these ultra conservative.
And let's get everybody's eye off the ball.
So let me go pick on this particular governor about an action that she hasn't even taken.
She has not even taken an action around transgender issues.
And yet he manufactures something.
And she appropriately says, I'm going to follow state and federal law, Mr.
President, which I think.
This plan seems to many to require touching the third rail of American politics, which is potentially cutting these two huge health programs that millions and millions of Americans rely on.
Well, I don't want to get us into the weeds too much, but the way a budget resolution is structured, lawmakers aren't required to lay out the specific policy changes that they want to make in order to hit these spending targets.
But it does instruct individual committees and say, look, you need to go and find, you know, X number of dollars of cuts when we build this legislation that we're ultimately going to put to the floor for a vote.
And so in this particular resolution, lawmakers have told the committee that oversees Medicaid and Medicare spending, we need you guys to find, in this case, $880 billion in cuts.
Over 10 years, right?
Over 10. 880 billion over 10 years.
And there's only so many ways that you can actually reach those cuts.
And for a program like Medicaid, right?
And just as a reminder, this is the government program providing health insurance for low -income Americans.
Bless you for explaining that.
That's now a program that could be on the chopping block here in this saga.
Well, let's talk about how that tier - In particular after that exchange, you know, I feel a lot of anger.
I feel anger for the people I am elected to serve, and I think a lot of us feel that.
And so as governor, I am focused on delivering for people here.
How do I lower their costs?
How do I build more homes?
How do I lower taxes?
How do I make sure that kids are educated, that our communities are safe, right, that our veterans are taken care of?
And in the face of margins, we saw Democratic leaders actually bring back a number of their lawmakers who have been ill, who have not been at the Capitol.
Or who just, I think I saw this, had a baby like a couple weeks ago.
Yes, a month ago, had a baby.
Come back to the Capitol for this vote, trying to ratchet up the pressure.
Speaker Johnson, as he walked out onto the House floor, said, I have the votes.
Meanwhile, I was texting with a Republican who had said they were going to oppose the resolution because it added to the deficit.
And they said, by my count, there's three of us who are going to oppose it, which would doom it.
And it turns out they both were kind of right.
Right. Speaker Johnson was able to push this resolution across the finish line in the end.
But it took about an hour.
We saw him and some of his deputies really working over about three, four Republican lawmakers.
These were all ultra conservative lawmakers who said they didn't want to vote for this resolution because it would add to the deficit.
It looked for a while like Johnson was not going to be able to get them to flip.
But then something sort of notable happened, which is that the Republican leadership spirited some of these defectors off the House floor.
And when that happened, I thought now are researching the cure for your child if they get cancer or researching the cure, the treatment for Alzheimer's are no longer going to have access to that funding.
That's outrageous. Governor, one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you is because I am interested to know how Democratic governors are seeing this moment and how to maneuver in the second Trump era.
Until now, you've been not as publicly combative as perhaps other governors have been.
And I'm wondering if that's because Donald Trump is seemingly more willing to be punitive or is it because his policies have been popular I mean, what are you weighing when you're thinking about how to talk about this administration?
Look, I was attorney general throughout the Trump -1 presidency and joined and led many cases suing him.
So I'm not unfamiliar with the way he operates.
It's incredibly important for AGs to continue to be in the courts.
They, like we, back during Trump -1, are having success.
0 .5 trillion dollars.
And then we are going to cut spending by two trillion dollars.
So essentially, you are looking at a piece of legislation here that is going to add to the deficit by 2 .5 trillion dollars.
And for a lot of lawmakers, that's a big number.
Yeah, it's a big number.
And this is where and Zola and Maggie, I'm curious what you think.
We know where many members of the Republican Party stand on this.
House Republicans have ousted speakers over.
I am curious if you really do think that how the AGs are operating, if it's the best way, because, for example, you were accused of politicizing the A .G.'s office by jumping into national issues.
It's something that is often said about A .G .s.
And that was in the first Trump administration.
Then under Biden, you had Republican A .G .s adopting that model, you know, going after things that Biden did.
And now again, we have these group filings from multiple states targeting executive actions.
It's become this kind of pattern.
And I'm curious, do you think that AGs should be getting in these federal fights so consistently?
I think the premise of that question is totally off.
Tell me why. And I think the notion that these are quote political fights is totally off.
When I brought suits as an attorney general and when other AGs I worked with brought suits, because a lot of these were multi -state suits.
Why were they multi -state suits?
Why were a bunch of AGs joining in the same lawsuit?
It's because there was some action taken by Trump during Trump one that hurt people in our states.
As attorney general, you're there to represent the people of your state, to protect their interests and to protect their rights.
So when somebody like Donald Trump illegally cuts off access to health care violates the law.
Of course, your AG can and should sue.
That's not a political issue.
That's an attorney general doing his or her job vindicating the rights.
So Republicans do the same, obviously, during the Biden administration.
And they would argue that they were doing the same thing.
Many of the president's own supporters rely on to this administration.
Right. Can I just add as well?
In 2018, Democrats were able to coalesce around a message that was focused on the attempted repeal and replace of the Affordable Care Act, right?
And that was an incredibly salient issue.
And we saw in 2018, Democrats take back the House after campaigning pretty narrowly on that issue.
And a lot of Democrats that I've spoken to in the past few days think that they have a real opening to use that playbook again, this time on cuts to Medicaid potentially if - If they happen.
If they happen. And there's a real excitement and, I think, energy around that message that, as Zolan pointed out, we haven't seen from Democrats in quite some time.
Got it. Back then, Republicans touching the Affordable Care Act backfired for them.
Democrats hope that if they touch Medicaid now, it will backfire once again.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
Okay. So that was the congressional deal -making this week.
When we come back, we're going to talk about the international deal that the president struck.
We'll be right back.
This is A .O. Scott.
I'm a critic at The New York Times.
These days, there are so many movies and books and television shows and songs that it's hard to make sense of it all.
At The New York Times, what the critics do is sort through as much of that as we can to come up with advice.
with recommendations to guide you toward the speaking up too.
And that's really, really important because, um, I think it's been overwhelming for a lot of people.
I mean, it's only been a month, right.
And, and people have been hit with a lot.
I did seem to catch Democrats by surprise.
I mean, we have seen Democrats take a beat and have trouble coming to an agreement about what kind of resistance or opposition they're going to pose.
Um, you've talked a little bit about what's happening publicly.
I'm curious what has been happening privately because one of my colleagues reported that you were part of a group of Democratic governors in January who privately urged Senator Chuck Schumer to fight harder or at least differently against Trump.
And I'm curious, like, what you were wanting to see that you weren't seeing.
I thought at the outset it was very important for before around this very table about a theoretical deal that Trump had wanted to make with Ukraine that would require Ukraine to basically compensate the U .S.
for all the military assistance that the U .S.
has given Ukraine in this war against Russia.
It started off as very theoretical and notional, but now it's becoming an actual reality, and Ukraine's leader, Vladimir Zelensky, is now headed to Washington to make it official on Friday.
Zolan, how did this all start and become what it now is?
So we've talked about how President Trump's approach to foreign policy can best be described as transactional.
And we got some examples of that early on when after coming into office, you know, when it came to aid for Ukraine, it started out as sort of amusing over having an exchange side.
Right. I mean, I'm a governor.
That's not my call.
What I can tell you is we need leadership that is aggressive, that is proactive and that is speaking to everyday Americans.
I mean, I think part of the question part of I don't mean to elide anything.
I'll say that, you know, I think part of what got the Democratic Party in trouble this last election is the fact that there was a perception that leaders within the Democratic Party were not actually seeing and feeling people's pain.
I think there's a perception that and I think it lived out to a certain extent among Democratic leadership that they just didn't have their finger on the pulse.
You know, they're talking about issues that weren't bread and butter, core economic issues that resonate.
They allowed themselves in some ways to be caricatured as only caring about X, Y and Z issue, which isn't true, by the way.
One of the reasons I wanted to talk to you is that I was told by quite a few Democrats that you are very influential in the party beyond your state.
And so as you have been having these conversations about moving the party forward, I did want to get your temperature on just the Democratic brand writ large because polling is showing that the Democratic brand is really underwater.
regardless of what's happening with Donald Trump and what's happening in the White House.
The losses were steep in the last election.
You are the governor of a solidly blue state.
What was your big takeaway about why the Democrats did so badly?
You know, Trump said it himself, and it's really true.
Ukraine basically has no cards to play.
Trump has rejected the idea of NATO membership for Ukraine, and Trump also does not want to provide security guarantees for Ukraine.
And he wants Europe to do it.
And that is going to require a heave of the wheel by Europeans.
And we'll see what that looks like.
So the new deal that is being negotiated.
Because the first one kind of got rejected.
The first one was rejected.
And then other iterations of it were rejected.
And then the Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnik, jumped in.
And that complicated matters.
Yeah, how did we get to a deal?
So what is now there, because of various forces, is a smaller deal in terms of what the U .S.
will get. Trump keeps saying $350 billion.
My understanding is the actual number is smaller than that.
but it still does not include a security piece.
And that was clearly a red line for Trump.
And Zelensky clearly realizes that and is taking what he can get.
But that doesn't seem like a deal the president of Ukraine would sign, and yet, Zolin, he's about to arrive in Washington and sign it.
So at some point, he decides that even though he's not really getting anything from it, it's still somehow worthwhile.
Why? Well, for one, I mean, a late version of a U .S.
proposal did vaguely say that the U .S.
would support Ukraine's security.
But then Trump came around the next day in a cabinet meeting and said essentially that was going to be the responsibility of European nations that are closer to Ukraine.
Zelensky's in a really tight spot here.
I mean, he knows Ukraine has been relying on a lot of U .S.
aid. And, you know, he's now...
...years ago that he needed to be active on the border, that he should take executive action on the border.
I knew that as an attorney general and as a former prosecutor.
There were things that could have been done, and I wish that he had done that.
So I also think it's important to fight back.
When there was all this talk and denigration of DEI, I don't know why the response wasn't, you know what?
It's actually good to have women and people of color in the military.
It's good to have women and people of color in the workforce.
It's good to have women and people of color going to colleges and universities.
Like, what's wrong with that?
And put it back on them instead of it being a lot of foreign policy wings of the Republican Party, sort of the traditional Mitch McConnell intervention.
