Ask Governor Murphy: February 2025 Recap

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. WNYC's Nancy Solomon joins us now with excerpts from an analysis of and to take some of your phone calls about her Ask Governor Murphy call-in last night. She does that once a month and usually comes on with us the next morning. Just over three weeks into the second Trump administration, Governor Phil Murphy said the state is already facing challenges.

Governor Phil Murphy: This has been one of the most challenging professional stretches I've ever had in my life because this is hand-to-hand combat, minute-to-minute, not knowing what's around the corner.

Brian Lehrer: How are the Trump administration policies affecting New Jersey so far, and how is the state responding? We'll dive in now with Nancy Solomon, WNYC reporter and host of the Ask Governor Murphy monthly call-in show. Hi, Nancy.

Nancy Solomon: Hey, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: In your conversation with the governor last night, you laid out that New Jersey depends on $27.5 billion in federal funding for a wide array of services. We'll get into what the governor had to say, but first, can you lay out what New Jersey uses that money for?

Nancy Solomon: Yes. Just to put that number, it's hard to wrap your head around $27 billion. What does that exactly mean? Just in terms of context, think about the whole state budget, which is somewhere around $56 billion, give or take a billion. I'm not saying that this money is not part of that money, it's not half of the state budget, but as a comparison of how much money it represents, it is half of what the state spends. That's a lot of money, obviously.

What does the state rely on this money for? Highways, schools that serve low-income kids, state colleges and universities, mental health programs. The governor said there are 9,000 state workers who depend on federal funding for their jobs. Those aren't federal employees. That's a much higher number of people in the state who are employed by the federal government but just state employees who rely on federal funding. Then there are the research funds, which will affect both public institutions like the universities.

Also, big pharma is mostly located in New Jersey. Many of the big pharmaceutical companies are here. The governor said that he had met with some CEOs. He didn't say which ones and he didn't say which industries but about the research money cuts that are being proposed or have happened already.

Brian Lehrer: A big chunk of the federal funding for New Jersey also goes toward NJ Transit. Right?

Nancy Solomon: That's exactly right. $300,000 a month.

Brian Lehrer: A month?

Nancy Solomon: A month. The federal government funds things that New Jersey riders really care about. It might sound a little abstract to talk about signal and catenary wire upgrades, but those are the things that keep your train stuck on the tracks when you're trying to get to work in the morning. We have horrible problems with weather and the weather affecting-- It doesn't have to be like Sandy crisis weather. Just bad weather will slow down everybody's morning commute because the catenary wires need to be upgraded.

That's just one example, but there's all kinds of infrastructure; bridge replacements which also create bottlenecks on the tracks, equipment upgrades, electrification of buses, the new proposed bus station coming into the Port Authority. All of this stuff depends heavily on federal funding.

Brian Lehrer: In our Ask Governor Murphy debrief with Nancy Solomon after her monthly call-in with the governor, which took place last night, and if anybody has a call-in on the call-in or anything that we're raising, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. So much of this last night was about things the Trump administration is doing that affect New Jersey.

Here's another example. Musk, as we know, Elon Musk took control of the US Department of Treasury's payment system, at least for a time. I think that's been temporarily reversed by a court. Here's what the governor said happened in New Jersey when that takeover took place.

Governor Phil Murphy: Two weeks ago, when the monies were frozen, it was the night before we had a Medicaid payment that was going out for a billion and a half dollars. You hope that some amount of sanity, less volatility, more measured, a more responsible approach can take over here. That's what we're going to try to appeal. You really need some courageous Republicans right now. I don't mean necessarily in New Jersey, but I mean in Congress or other governors.

Brian Lehrer: What was the governor referring to there with respect to Medicaid payments, and was there a problem getting them out the door?

Nancy Solomon: Good question. I should have asked him and I didn't. I think the implication is that they were able to get the money, but there was a mad scramble for a period of time there. I know that Attorney General Matt Platkin is part of the lawsuit that got the temporary injunction against the monies being frozen. I think for now things have eased up a little bit. This fight remains to be seen how it's all going to play out.

Brian Lehrer: We heard the governor in that clip call on courageous Republicans. The governor was in Washington last week, I see, to meet with congressional Democrats. There are three congressional Republicans from New Jersey. He seemed to say in the clip, "Well, not necessarily the ones from New Jersey." Has the governor been able to get in touch with them and get any thoughts from them about what's going on in the new administration as it affects the state?

Nancy Solomon: He said that all three of the Republicans in the delegation were invited to the meeting. None of them came. He did say that Tom Kean Jr. responded that he had a prior commitment and couldn't come and that he had run into him in an event that night and had a chat with him. He didn't specify what they discussed or any kind of commitment that Tom Kean might have made to him. The other two Republicans are Jeff Van Drew and Chris Smith. Apparently, there's been no word.

You know what? I think this is really something when you think about it, the governor of New Jersey can't get the Republican members of Congress from the state to meet with him. That to me just is one of the many examples that we see day in and day out of how polarized the country has become and how quickly things are falling apart.

Brian Lehrer: Gary in Little Ferry, you're on WNYC with Nancy Solomon. Hi, Gary.

Gary: Thank you for taking my call. I'd like to know how much money the people of New Jersey pay into income tax. I bet you, it's a lot more than $27 billion. The whole system is set up where poor states like Mississippi get good deals. Rich states like New York, California, New Jersey really get shown the shaft. It's not like it's a two-sided thing. Every time, the media is very biased. I hate Donald Trump. He's a traitor in my mind. The media has a left-wing bias and doesn't look at the whole issues.

Brian Lehrer: Gary, thank you very much. On the issue that he raises, this is a perennial, Nancy, as I'm sure and an irony in that it generally is the wealthier states that contribute more to the federal budget than they get back from it, who are more for federal spending and the poorer, which happen to be in most cases the red states. I think he cited Mississippi as an example that pay less into the federal treasury than they get in services, and they tend to be the most against federal funding.

Nancy Solomon: Yes, exactly. This does get brought up a lot. I don't have the numbers at my fingertips, but we definitely send Washington more than $27 billion than we get back. True.

Brian Lehrer: Let's see. I think I have some numbers here. These are from, and credit to our producer Amina Srna, who just looked these up, some numbers from Rutgers. This is a 2021 analysis of 2019 tax revenue, but that's still pretty recent. It says New Jersey's federal tax contribution of $140 billion is responsible for 4% of total federal tax revenue. Then it says New Jersey receives the fourth lowest return on its tax dollars, 75 cents for every dollar paid to Washington.

Does the governor ever talk about that? Like, we're getting a raw deal here? Trump likes to talk about the-- what do you call it, the balance of payments, what we import versus export with respect to other countries, and he'd like to see it more even. The governor could be making that case about New Jersey getting ripped off the trade deficit on the federal level. The governor could be making that case. I don't know if it's in New Jersey's interest or not, but does he ever do that?

Nancy Solomon: He has mentioned it a few times. I wouldn't say it's something that he hammers on a lot. He also brought up, and I think it's relevant, he'll bring up other things going on in red states and how they also-- Last night, he mentioned at various points that red states are going to be hurt by these federal cuts just as much as blue states. He will make those comparisons. He has talked about how much that we're a donor state, but not a ton. I've never heard any proposal of what's to be done about that.

Brian Lehrer: Let's move on to the governor's comments on immigration from Ask Governor Murphy last night. A couple of weeks ago, the governor sparked some controversy, especially in conservative media, for saying he wanted to house an immigrant on his property. Nancy, can you just set up what the governor said and what the context was? I think an undocumented immigrant was the point. Right?

Nancy Solomon: That's how people received the message. It was really quite muddled. This was at a meeting with Blue Wave New Jersey, so progressive Democrats, and Murphy said that he and his wife had discussed helping someone that they know who is an immigrant and allow them to live in the apartment over their garage.

Let's just pause for a moment and point out that their garage isn't like most people's garages. It's like a carriage house that is probably twice the size of most people's houses. He kind of muddled the whole thing because he said that this person's immigration status was not where they wanted to be. What does that mean?

Brian Lehrer: That could mean anything. Right?

Nancy Solomon: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: There's a broad swath of immigrants that could apply here, like somebody who is here legally and is applying for permanent residency status but that hasn't come through. Right?

Nancy Solomon: Exactly, yes. I think what he was thinking about and what he was saying are two different things. He acknowledged last night that he didn't articulate himself well because what-- He said a little bit of it on the air. He said a little bit of it during one of the breaks, that the person he was talking about fits into a very large class of people of legal immigrants in New Jersey who are afraid.

Even though they're legal, they're afraid to go to their kid's school, they're afraid to go to their kid's soccer game, they're afraid to make a call to the police, or to go to a hospital. He says where he was coming from in expressing this, but he didn't articulate it that well.

Brian Lehrer: Maybe that's on us a little bit too in the media. If he said he's housing somebody whose immigration status is not what they would like it to be, and then it got out there as, oh, it looks like he's housing an undocumented immigrant, but the governor cleared up his comments on your show last night. Let's take a listen. This is 40 seconds.

Governor Phil Murphy: There are some categories of people who are in the country right now who shouldn't be here, and I have no quarrel with that. Somebody whose asylum case has been adjudicated in the negative and they're still here, I'm sorry, there's not a lot of support for you staying, or someone whose asylum case has not yet been adjudicated but they've committed a serious crime, I'm sorry, you're going to have to go. The problem is, this fear is infecting multitudes of those categories, including people with completely clean status, in many cases with US passports, American citizens.

Brian Lehrer: The governor went on to clarify, the person he wanted to house on his property was a US citizen but part of an immigrant community. Were his comments last--

Nancy Solomon: I don't know if he said US citizen. I think he might have said here legally.

Brian Lehrer: I see.

Nancy Solomon: Or documented. Something like that. I forgot to check that, but I think that's the case.

Brian Lehrer: Right, okay. The governor told you last night that New Jersey is leading when it comes to "aggressive legal action" as he put it, to protect immigrants in the context of what he just said about categories of people who are in the country right now who shouldn't be here, and he has no quarrel with that. What's the state doing?

Nancy Solomon: He talked about what's called the Immigrant Trust Directive. This is a policy that was developed by the previous Attorney General during Governor Murphy's first term, shortly after Trump took office. Basically, it's a policy-- The Attorney General's office is in charge of all law enforcement in the state. Police departments ultimately report to the Attorney General, even though it's a little looser than that.

The policy basically limits local law enforcement from helping federal immigration authorities to do sweeps and arrest people. That policy also applies to state police. It applies to correction officers in the prisons and jails. The idea is that the state was not going to use its law enforcement apparatus to aid the federal government in wide-scale sweeps of immigrants trying to pick up people and deport them.

Brian Lehrer: In that context, on Wednesday, US Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that the Justice Department is suing the state of New York over immigration enforcement, specifically over New York's Green Light Law, as it's called, which allows driver's licenses to undocumented individuals. As the federal government targets states over undocumented immigrants and any kind of shield law potentially, any indication that New Jersey might be in their crosshairs?

Nancy Solomon: I don't know if New Jersey's in the crosshairs. I think that's a reasonable thing to expect. I don't think New Jersey's policies are all that different from New York's. The governor did say specifically that Attorney General Matt Platkin is working actively through the courts to protect the state and its residents against anything that's deemed unconstitutional. For Instance, he cited that during the first term of Trump, the state won 70% of its cases against the Trump administration. He's proud of that and believes that that is one of the paths to resistance at the moment.

Although he also noted what we all know, which is that the Supreme Court has drastically changed. One of the other things he said, I guess that's relevant to this, is he called on New Jersey citizens who live in Republican congressional districts with those three congresspeople we talked about to call their Republican Congress members. Those are really the two avenues right now. There's legal and there's political.

So far, we've seen no breaks from the Republican Party in Congress. What he was suggesting is let's put pressure on at least the three congressmen we have in New Jersey to get some Republican pushback on some of this stuff.

Brian Lehrer: Calling on the public in their district if they disagree with their policies to put that pressure on. Eric in Maplewood, you're on WNYC with Nancy Solomon. Hi, Eric.

Eric: Hi. Good morning. I didn't want to move away from this conversation about withholding the federal funding. We are a donor state, and so my question is, did the governor mention anything that he can do to reciprocate? Is there a way to withhold what the state contributes to the federal budget and use those monies then to shore up our infrastructure and keep New Jersey transit running, et cetera, et cetera? If it's a $26 billion with a B withhold, can we then just say, well, we're not going to contribute that $26 billion in our federal contribution?

Brian Lehrer: A federal tax strike. That piece of data that you brought up at the beginning, Nancy, has struck a chord in our listenership. We're getting a bunch of calls like Eric's and texts to that extent arguing, well, wait a minute, we have leverage here. We can withhold federal tax dollars if they're going to put other pressure on the state like this. Of course, it's really individuals who pay the federal income tax and corporations. It's not like it's something that the state legislature could decide to do. It would take a lot of individual defiance of people who would be committing what, under the law, might be tax evasion.

Nancy Solomon: Yes, exactly. The governor didn't say anything about this last night, and I've never heard him articulate anything in this area. It's individuals who pay that money to the federal government, and obviously, individual action against the IRS is very difficult because of the law. Historically, there have been taxpayer-organized strikes against paying one's taxes. Certainly, if you got a huge number of people in New Jersey to participate, that would give people a little bit of, I think, legal cover because how are they going to go after everybody? That's a very big thing to suggest and to pull off.

Brian Lehrer: It'd be interesting theoretically to see what would happen if there was a mass withholding of federal income tax payments as an act of civil disobedience and whether people would actually be prosecuted for tax evasion, but I think that's a world we're not living in. Last thing before you go because this is the other thing that some people have reacted to from our conversation. Here's a text. It says, "No ding--" This is on Murphy and the immigrant who he housed. "No ding. Defend Governor Murphy. He dared ICE to come to his house and get the person."

We looked up the exact quote so we could get this straight. His original quote to Politico, I think it was, and he said, "I don't want to get into too much detail, but there's someone in our broader universe whose immigration status is not yet at the point they are trying to get it to." Not yet at the point they're trying to get it to. Then he said, "You know what, let's have her live above our house, above our garage, and good luck to the feds coming in to try to get her."

He certainly implied that the person would be subject to ICE detainment, and he did dare ICE to come and get the person who would be living above the garage. I know it's muddled, but there was that point of standing on some kind of principle.

Nancy Solomon: Yes, except there really wasn't a person staying above his garage.

Brian Lehrer: [laughs] Who actually couldn't even afford it.

Nancy Solomon: Yes. He's got a perfect setup for holding off the feds. He's got a state police-protected piece of property that is gated. It just wasn't a real thing, and I think that's what he got dinged for, number one. Number two, you can hear it in people in the-- Brian, in the calls, you know people are upset, they're afraid. I'm not just talking about immigration. There's a lot of distress right now about what the Trump administration is doing, and they want Governor Murphy to be out there fighting for them.

Maybe it's not so clear what he can do, and it's difficult, but what happened from that episode was that he became kind of a-- He was thrown into a news cycle in which the conservative media just totally beat up on him and the Trump's border czar threatened to investigate him. Of course, 24 hours later, it was gone, but it's not what you want your governor to be doing. You don't want them to become the laughing stock or the target of the conservative messaging on this. You want them to disrupt that messaging and do something positive.

Hey, I'm not trying to ding the governor either so much. He's in a very, very difficult position, and he admits that he didn't articulate himself well and that it was a mistake.

Brian Lehrer: Nancy Solomon will be back with another Ask Governor Murphy next month and back on this show the next morning, we hope. Thanks for today, Nancy.

Nancy Solomon: Thanks for having me, Brian.

 

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