Highlands Current Audio Stories

Scheduled for June 28 at John Jay High School

Rep. Mike Lawler, a Republican whose district includes Philipstown and parts of Dutchess County (not including Beacon, which is represented by Rep. Pat Ryan), has scheduled a town hall for Saturday (June 28) at John Jay High School in Hopewell Junction. It is the fourth of four town halls he said he would hold, following those in Rockland, Westchester and Putnam counties.

Tickets are available online at eventbrite.com. The event begins at 6 p.m.

In the list of conditions for ticket requests, Lawler's office writes: "Unfortunately, due to security concerns and threats made against the congressman, his family and our staff, there will be additional security measures put in place to ensure everyone's safety…. If our office has information indicating that you are actively planning to disrupt the Town Hall, or if you have disrupted prior Town Halls, you may be denied entry."

According to the other terms, attendees may be asked to provide proof of residency in District 17; no bags, signs, noisemakers, bullhorns, megaphones or face coverings will be allowed; questions can only be asked by the person whose ticket is called and must be limited to 30 seconds; and except for members of the press, no flash photography or audio or video recording will be allowed.

Deadline is Monday (June 23)

Although other home-energy assistance programs offered by New York State have closed for 2024-25, the application for cooling assistance such as an air conditioner or fan is still open, although the deadline is Monday (June 23).

Eligible adults who are over the age of 60 and meet income requirements can receive up to $800 per household for the purchase and installation of an window or portable air conditioner or a fan, or $1,000 for an existing wall-sleeve unit.

You may be eligible if:

Your household's gross monthly income is at or below the current income guidelines for your household size as posted in the table at otda.ny.gov/programs/heap (e.g., for a family of four, the maximum monthly gross income is $6,390) or

You receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, Temporary Assistance (TA) or Code A Supplemental Security Income (SSI Living Alone), or

You received a regular benefit greater than $21 in the program year or received a regular benefit equal to $21 during the program year and reside in government subsidized housing with heat included in your rent, and

Your household contains at least one individual with a documented medical condition that is exacerbated by extreme heat, or

Your household contains a vulnerable member based on their age (60 years or older, or under age 6) which meet all other component eligibility criteria, and

A member of your household is a U.S. citizen or qualified non-citizen, and

You do not have a working air conditioner, or the air conditioner you have is five years old or older, and

You did not receive a HEAP-funded air conditioner within the past five years.

To learn more, Dutchess County residents can call the Department of Social Services at 845-838-4800 and Putnam County residents can call the Department of Social Services at 845-808-1500. For information about other home-energy assistance programs, see otda.ny.gov/programs/heap.

Air conditioners are also available to from New York State to residents with persistent asthma who are members of the Essential Plan. Persistent asthma means you experience asthma symptoms (such as shortness of breath, wheezing, coughing attacks, chest tightness or chest pain) much of the time or need a daily medication for asthma to control symptoms. Units are available until Aug. 31, or until funds run out.

Installation cannot exceed $900 for a window or portable air conditioner or $500 for a standing floor fan. For an existing wall sleeve unit replacement, installation cannot exceed $1,100. Cash benefits are not available. See info.nystateofhealth.ny.gov.

Wet weather spoils plans, but heat is on the way

Today (June 20) is the first day of summer, but if you feel like you've been stuck inside more often than not during the last seven soggy weeks of spring, it's because you probably have.

Jesse Stacken, a weather monitor who is part of the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail & Snow Network (CoCoRaHS), has recorded rainfall at his Beacon home 31 out of 50 days since the beginning of May. He's seen measurable precipitation 14 of the last 15 weekends, dating to March 16.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 3.72 inches of rain is normal for May in Beacon. Stacken measured 10.29 inches, "so we doubled it and then some," he said. Normal rainfall for June is 4.47 inches; Stacken's gauge had seen 3.54 inches through Thursday, including a Wednesday downpour that dumped nearly an inch in 45 minutes.

In Philipstown, CoCoRaHS monitors Joe Hirsch and Heidi Wendel have measured 24.12 inches of precipitation from Jan. 1 through Thursday, including 8.66 inches in May and 3.23 in June. During the same year-to-date period last year, the Nelsonville residents had seen 26.78 inches, with 4.33 inches falling in May 2024 and 1 inch in June through the 19th.

The rain has flooded fields and set production back at Common Ground Farm in Wappingers Falls. In addition to losing about 200 feet of kale - a third of what had been planted - and tomatoes to flooding, Rhys Bethke, Common Ground's farm manager, said it was difficult this spring using a tractor on wet, compacted soil.

"If you can't get the fields prepared in time, you don't have crops in time," Bethke said. Fungal and bacterial infections have also been more common because they thrive in wet conditions.

Foot traffic, particularly on the weekends, has been down on Main Street in Cold Spring, said Fran Farnorotto, the owner of The Gift Hut. "There are a lot of things that are impacting sales," she said, "weather being one of the issues."

Ben Noll, a meteorologist who grew up in Orange County and now lives in New Zealand, tracks weather for The Washington Post. He noted via email this week that rainfall in the Hudson Valley has been close to average in 2025.

January through April saw below-average precipitation, but May was the "big, wet standout." June could end up having above-average rainfall, as well, he said.

And while it's felt cool lately, temperatures in April, May and June were slightly warmer than the long-term (1991 to 2020) average. But because the climate is changing quickly, Noll said, people have grown accustomed to above-average temperatures. When conditions are more "old normal" than "new normal," it may feel cooler than it really is.

"The polar vortex, which is responsible for keeping cold air locked up in the Arctic, has been more disturbed than normal this year, allowing strands of cold air to surge southward in the central and eastern United States with greater regularity," Noll said, adding that the same pattern led temperatures to reach near 80 degrees in Iceland in May, a record for that country. "That pattern is finished now and we're about to see a big, warmer and more humid change in our weather."

Indeed, we are. Temperatures are expected to reach 98 degrees on Monday and Tuesday. Rombout Middle School in Beacon will dismiss students at 11:15 a.m. both days; the district's four elementary schools will dismiss at 12:10 p.m. The Regents week schedule at Beacon High School, which is air-conditioned, is unchanged.

Here's why extreme heat is coming. The jet stream is about to be pushed north of the U.S., Noll said, creating a "heat dome" effect. "This essentially lumps our weather into the same basket as Florida, Texas and the rest of the South," he said.

Noll's outlook for the rest of summer is hot and humid, especially at night, "because of extremely warm ocean temperatures in the western Atlantic and Gulf." He predicts that downpours will never be far away, although "I expect there to be plenty ...

Project raises concerns about flooding

A proposal by the Hoving Home in Garrison to relocate a section of Philips Brook is projected to reduce flooding along Snake Hill Road but is raising concerns that it will aggravate overflows on Avery Road and raise water levels downstream.

Sondra Shah, a water resources engineer with Inter-Fluve, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Beth Greco, Hoving's president and CEO, on June 10 introduced an application for a wetlands permit to the Philipstown Conservation Board.

Shah said that, using a $1 million state grant, the Garrison treatment program for women plans to remove a 10-foot-high dam built to create a swimming pond and shift 800 feet of the brook flowing across its property between Avery and Walter Hoving roads north.

Despite multiple repairs, the dam and the stone walls constraining the brook as it heads west to Constitution Marsh have suffered extensive damage from storms, which are occurring more often, said Shah. Water released by the dam's failure could damage downstream properties, making the structure a risk to public safety, she said.

"There's leakage through the dam, failure of the masonry and the reservoir is filled with invasives like knotweed and phragmites," said Shah.

Along with the dam, some sections of the stone wall will be removed, as will one of the footbridges crossing the brook and one of its three weirs. Dirt excavated for the new channel will fill 300 feet of the brook's existing pathway and the two remaining weirs.

Inter-Fluve has applied to the Army Corps of Engineers to release some of the sediment impounded by the dam downstream.

The new channel will be wider and shallower than the existing one. Boulders will be placed along its bed to create "step pools" - areas of deeper water whose goal is to slow the water's flow and reduce erosion of the banks. The pools also provide "resting stops" for fish and oxygen-rich water during periods of turbulence, said Shah.

Inter-Fluve, which is also seeking a permit from the state Department of Environmental Conservation, will cover the new bank with native plants. In addition, said Shah, the reconstruction will avoid two areas of "archeological sensitivity" identified in consultation with the State Historic Preservation Office, which considers the property eligible for the National Register of Historic Places.

According to Inter-Fluve, modeling shows that the project will reduce flooding on Snake Hill Road without increasing the risk of flooding downstream of the site. "Rivers are supposed to flood, and that's typical, but this [existing] channel with the stone walls is highly undersized," Shah said.

While flooding along Snake Hill Road is projected to lessen, the configuration will send "additional flow" to a culvert on the Avery side of Hoving's property, according to project documents. It will also raise the brook's elevation downstream by 1 inch during a 10-year storm and 2 inches during a 100-year storm, according to Shah.

To address Avery Road, Hoving has received $200,000 to redesign a town-owned culvert and is planning to apply for another grant to underwrite its reconstruction, said Greco, adding that Hoving is "not going to flood our downstream neighbors. We won't do the project. We'll figure out something else, if we can't."

Andy Galler, who chairs the Conservation Board, requested that Inter-Luve create additional modeling to show how the reconfigured brook will affect residents living below Avery Road - "probably across Route 9D."

Two Avery Road residents, Marianne Sullivan and her husband, James Hoch, also expressed concerns. In addition to more flooding on their street, Sullivan worried that releasing the sediment impounded by the dam would harm trout downstream. Hoch said that heavier flooding on Avery could damage the septic fields of its residents.

Hoch said that he felt "comforted" while reading the project documents before the meeting, but "now I'm a little worried, because I see this as movi...

Cold Spring fan hooked for decades

The blockbuster Jaws was released 50 years ago today (June 20), and although Cold Spring resident Courtney Clark wasn't born until a decade later, it didn't stop her from becoming a megafan of the ocean thriller.

"I've watched it at least 100 times," she says.

Based on a novel by Peter Benchley and directed by Stephen Spielberg, Jaws is set in the fictional New England island community of Amity, where a great white appears at peak tourist season, terrorizing residents and visitors. After the predator has claimed three victims, Police Chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider), marine biologist Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) and shark hunter Capt. Quint (Robert Shaw) head out in the fishing boat Orca to confront the menace. The hunt does not go well.

Clark first watched Jaws when she was 10, in Pleasantville, when her family rented the video. "My mom finally decided I was old enough," she recalls. "I was scared, but I didn't appreciate all the nuances I've come to love about the film."

Within a year, Clark saw it again, in a friend's darker, scarier basement. By her mid-teens, she was hooked, watching it about three times a year. That habit continues four decades later. "I watch it as much as my husband Dan will tolerate," she says with a laugh.

Clark says her favorite line in the 124-minute film is when Quint, aboard Orca, offers a toast to Hooper and Brody: "Here's to swimming with bow-legged women."

She can recite much of the movie's dialogue from memory, except for Quint's "Indianapolis" speech. In the monologue, one of the movie's most gripping scenes, Quint recounts in grizzly detail the story of the USS Indianapolis, which was torpedoed by the Japanese near the Philippines in July 1945 during World War II and sank in 12 minutes. Only 316 of 890 sailors survived in the shark-infested waters.

Clark feels the movie, which cost $9 million (about $54 million today) to make and grossed $478 million worldwide ($2.9 billion), stands the test of time, even after half a century. "It's always as exciting as the first time I watched it," she says. "Even though I know every scene and what's coming, it's still shocking. I still find details I hadn't noticed before.

"I love its style, the '70s, the outfits; it's a little slice of life of that time," she says. "It's so perfectly made; every shot is like a work of art."

Her favorite scene is when the shark attacks young Alex Kintner in a rubber raft near the beach. "The camera pans, you see people walking by, and it keeps going back and forth between Brody's face and the water. The feel of that scene is amazing."

Her scariest scene: When they find fisherman Ben Gardner's boat, badly damaged by the shark. Hooper goes into the water, and Gardner's head pops out from a hole in the side of the boat.

Her favorite character: "Brody, Quint and Hooper are all incredible, but I relate most to Hooper; I appreciate that he's a marine biologist."

Events behind the scenes also captured Clark's imagination. "The making of Jaws is as iconic as the film," she said, adding that The Jaws Log, by Carl Gottlieb, the film's screenwriter, details what went on during filming, most of which was on Martha's Vineyard. Clark finds it especially amusing that producers toyed with trying to train a shark to play the central character, rather than building a mechanical double.

Gottlieb's book describes how residents coped with a movie crew disrupting life on the island and how the filmmakers dealt with a fake shark that rarely functioned as planned.

Ironically, those difficulties may have contributed to the movie's success. There were so many problems with the shark, nicknamed "Bruce" after Spielberg's lawyer, that it appears on screen for only four minutes. "The fact that they had such limited footage makes it much more suspenseful when you actually see the shark," Clark says.

Unlike many critics and fans, she enjoyed all three sequels: Jaws 2, Jaws 3 and Jaws: The Revenge, with Michael...

Editor's note: Beacon was created in 1913 from Matteawan and Fishkill Landing.

150 Years Ago (June 1875)

A Matteawan judge fined three drunken young men from Newburgh $25 [about $730 today] for throwing coal at pedestrians.

According to the Matteawan correspondent for The Cold Spring Recorder: "This village is a very peculiar place and most miserably governed. Our people support over 60 gin mills - most of which are running full blast on the Sabbath."

A Fishkill Landing resident was selling his trotting stallion, Nicotine.

The body of a female newborn was found in the back of the ladies' waiting room at the Fishkill Landing train depot.

John Falconer, of the Seamless Clothing Co. in Matteawan, was building a second factory to make Brussels-style patterned carpets.

Commodore Thomas Ramsdell installed a buoy between Low Point and the Fishkill Landing dock to mark a sandbar where vessels often went aground.

Three Matteawan boys were brought before Justice Schenck for playing ball in the street. One was fined $1 [$30] and the others were dismissed.

A Fishkill Landing trustee obtained arrest warrants for three men accused of racing their horses on Sunday, in violation of village ordinance.

A bull and three cows died on a farm near Fishkill from an unknown disease. Before dying, the animals threw back their heads and walked in circles for 12 to 14 hours.

Smith Van Buren, a Fishkill Landing resident who was the son of former President Martin Van Buren, was confined to the Hudson River Hospital for the Insane in Poughkeepsie with dementia. [Van Buren died the following year, at age 59, and is buried at St. Luke's Church.]

George Peattie, while drunk, came into Drewen's barbershop in Fishkill Landing and attacked James Gogswell as he sat in the chair.

Zebulon Phillips, 80, a farmer near Fishkill, was killed when he fell off his roof, which he was repairing.

125 Years Ago (June 1900)

James W.F. Ruttenber, editor of the Newburgh Sunday Telegram, was found guilty of publishing an obscene newspaper based on gossip printed in his Feb. 4 issue. The jury deliberated for less than 10 minutes. Ruttenber had been indicted in Dutchess County because the Telegram was distributed in Fishkill Landing and Matteawan. The judge sentenced the editor to 15 days in jail and a $15 fine [$575].

The offending paragraphs, by an unnamed Fishkill and Matteawan correspondent, included a report that "a Landing girl sent word to a young man in town that he could see her disrobe for 10 cents. Of course, the young man was unnerved by so sudden and cheap an offer. Still, there is no telling what she will do next if he doesn't accept her proposition. Take her up, George, before she changes her mind." He also wrote: "Poker as it is played on Cedar Street does not always require a pocket full of money. I am told that the females in the house are sometimes put up as an equivalent."

Clarence Chatham Cook (below) died at his home at Fishkill Landing at age 72. The Harvard graduate gained fame in 1863 with critical articles on American art in the New York Tribune. "He treated most of the work of American artists with merciless sarcasm and injured his influence by his extreme verdicts," according to one obituary. Cook later caused a stir when he suggested that many of the statues from Cyprus in the newly opened Metropolitan Museum of Art were fakes. He created an art periodical, The Studio, and in 1878 published a book, The House Beautiful: Essays on Beds and Tables, Stools and Candlesticks.

Two brickyards at Dutchess Junction employed about 100 Black men who migrated each year from Virginia and North Carolina. They ate in squads of 25, with one man appointed to cook in a camp kettle. Many brought their fiddles and banjos from the South.

The residents of Fishkill Landing voted to install sewers.

James Greene, of Fishkill Landing, was admitted to West Point as an alternate after a candidate from Kingston failed the entrance exam. He was the son of Maj. Henry A. Greene, w...

Fishkill wants water, sewer and smaller units

New York State is reworking its development plans for the former Downstate Correctional Facility just outside of Beacon, including a 15 percent reduction in housing at the 80-acre site, after negotiations with the Town of Fishkill.

Supervisor Ozzy Albra said in an email to residents on May 30 that he and other officials have met with Empire State Development and Conifer Realty twice since the state awarded development rights to the Rochester firm. The result of those meetings, he said, is that the mixed-use development will have about 1,100 housing units, 200 fewer than first reported.

The town is also pushing for municipal benefits such as the extension of water and sewer facilities to the site, Albra said.

The state development agency announced in June 2024 that Conifer, which has offices in New York, New Jersey and Maryland, had been selected to convert the former maximum-security prison into a residential campus with community space.

The project was said to support Gov. Kathy Hochul's campaign to build 15,000 housing units to address a statewide shortage, as well as recommendations made by the Prison Redevelopment Commission, an advisory panel the governor created to consider repurposing closed prisons. The first phase of construction in 2026 was to include 375 housing units, with at least 20 percent set aside for households earning less than 80 percent of the area's annual median income ($97,056).

Albra at the time called the idea a "bad deal for the taxpayers" that, if built as proposed, would overwhelm Fishkill.

A Conifer representative this week confirmed the reduction in housing units. Muammar Hermanstyne, its vice president of development, said in an email that Conifer had signed a contract with New York State "giving us site control." If a preliminary proposal is approved, he said, Conifer could bring an application to the Fishkill Planning Board as early as this fall.

Hermanstyne did not respond when asked who would need to approve the preliminary proposal, writing only that Conifer looks forward "to providing more details as we continue working with the community and local officials."

An Empire State Development representative seemed to contradict part of Hermanstyne's statement, calling Conifer the project's "conditional designee." The company is finalizing a development plan with Empire State and the Town of Fishkill, "at which point a binding development agreement can be executed," the spokesperson said. Until them, the state's request for proposals at the site "will continue to be an open procurement."

Hermanstyne said Conifer has agreed to limit construction to 2½-story buildings because the nearest fire department, in Glenham, does not have a ladder truck.

In a statement released last year, the Glenham Fire District, which for years served Downstate prison through a contract with New York State, said its boundaries would need to be expanded to include the redeveloped site. The department relied on tanker trucks because the surrounding homes use wells for their water, while Beacon provided water and sewer service at the prison.

Until Conifer and the state "figure out proper fire coverage," the project "isn't going to go anywhere," Albra said on June 3.

In addition to asking New York State to extend municipal water and sewer service to the site, the supervisor said he will advocate specialized housing, such as for seniors or veterans, and smaller units, to keep from overwhelming Glenham Elementary, which is part of the Beacon City School District.

In a letter to Hochul last July, the Beacon school board said its four elementary schools, including Glenham, are "already at or near capacity." While the district lost 675 students between the 2012-13 and 2023-24 academic years, according to state data, recent initiatives to reduce class sizes would suffer from a sudden influx of students, officials said.

Citing Hochul's support of walkable communities, Fishkill al...

Philipstown organization gets a triple boost

Seamus Carroll and his wife, Marie Wieck, began shopping at Foodtown in Cold Spring when it opened in 2003 following a fire that had destroyed the previous supermarket at the location, the Grand Union.

Like other customers, they started accumulating 10 points in Foodtown loyalty awards for every dollar spent. The points could be redeemed for grocery gift cards.

Three months ago, the couple became the first Foodtown customers to reach 1 million points, according to the store manager, Mike Wilson.

Carroll said they decided to push for 1 million in 2008, when they hit 100,000. "It became a family joke," he said, noting he would scold his daughters if they cashed in points to get discounts at the checkout. "I told them we were saving for 1 million; they laughed at that."

When they hit the mark earlier this year, Carroll sent a photo of the receipt to his daughters, who live in England and China, respectively. They responded with smiley faces, he said.

This week, Carroll and Wieck donated their points to the Philipstown Food Pantry, which operates on Saturday mornings at the First Presbyterian Church in Cold Spring. The pantry redeemed the points for $1,150 in Foodtown gift cards. The supermarket donated another $350 in cards for an even $1,500.

"We thought this would be a way to leverage the gift cards, prompting others to donate," Carroll said. "It's a reminder that you can give points to the food pantry [at the customer service desk]; I'm sure people forget this option."

The food pantry will receive another unexpected gift on Saturday (June 14) when Donna Anderson delivers a $1,017 donation from Philipstown Senior Citizens of Putnam County, which disbanded at the end of 2024.

Food Insecurity Widespread

Even amid wealth, many people struggle to make ends meet. An annual report by the United Way known as ALICE (for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed) "is an alarm bell for what we see every Saturday" at the Philipstown Food Pantry, said Kiko Lattu, its coordinator. In May, the pantry provided food and other necessities to an average of 71 households each week.

The United Way argues that the federal poverty level does not accurately reflect the number of people struggling financially to meet basic needs. Using census and other federal data, it calculated for its latest report, released in May, that 38 percent of Cold Spring/Philipstown and 35 percent of Garrison households don't earn enough to cover the costs of essentials such as housing, food, transportation, health care, child care and a basic phone plan.

"Even more troubling, 51 percent of seniors and about two-thirds of single-parent households in Putnam County are likely struggling," Lattu said.

In Putnam County, the United Way calculated that a single adult needs at least $54,180 annually to meet basic needs, or $135,660 for a family of two adults with two children in child care.

In Beacon, the United Way calculated that 42 percent of the city's 8,367 households struggle to meet a basic survival budget for Dutchess County of $40,296 for a single adult with $114,996 for a family of two adults and two children in child care. By contrast, the federal poverty level is $14,580 for an individual and $30,000 for a family of four.

Anderson, who served as president for the final two years, said the club was formed in 1974 and at one time had more than 100 members. But by last year, the remaining members voted to dissolve the club and donate its fund balance to the pantry because many seniors suffer from food insecurity.

Anderson was a vocal advocate for establishing a county senior center at the redeveloped Butterfield Hospital site. After the Philipstown Friendship Center opened there in 2018, she said the need for a seniors' group diminished.

On June 1, a Nelsonville family - Karen and Ryan Peters and their daughters, Callie and Sadie - set up a table outside Foodtown to solicit donations for the pantry. In less than three ho...

Plans for environmental education complex in doubt

An ambitious plan to transform an abandoned paperclip factory at Dennings Point in Beacon into an environmental education complex is in doubt because Clarkson University has left the site.

A representative from the state parks department, which partnered with the university because it owns the land, confirmed last week that Clarkson, which operated the Beacon Institute of Rivers and Estuaries (BIRE) at the site, "elected to leave the facilities" in October.

Clarkson had operated its BIRE Water Ecology Center in a renovated, 19th-century brickworks building and started transforming the factory into the Beatrice G. Donofrio Environmental Education Complex. A representative from Clarkson said that the university "concluded the multi-year research we were doing at Beacon and decided to withdraw from the site." Clarkson said BIRE will continue to provide programming to K-12 schools.

The Water Ecology Center, which hosted lectures and classes, has sustainable features such as a green roof, natural ventilation and composting toilets. It received LEED Gold certification as an adaptive project.

State parks said it has not determined what it will do with the two buildings, although it does plan to update the HVAC in the Water Ecology Center. The agency is also responsible for the repaved walkways, new benches and informational kiosks installed last fall.

Clarkson announced its intention in May 2020 to transform the paperclip factory into the Donofrio complex. The exterior shell was completed in 2021, the same year that BIRE moved from its offices at 199 Main St. in Beacon into the Water Ecology Center.

In 2022, state parks announced it would make a $3.2 million investment in the site; a representative from Parks said on Friday (June 13) that because the project did not move forward, those funds were reallocated. However, state parks has since completed a $1.2 million project to improve the steel structure and add solar panels to the roof.

When the project was announced in 2020, Michael Walsh, then the president of BIRE, said the former factory was in good shape. "The majority of the building is salvageable," he said. "The concrete floor meets 100-year flood standards, and the structural seal is sound."

Fields questions about Social Security, military parade

Rep. Mike Lawler, whose district includes Philipstown, held a town hall on June 8 at Mahopac High School, the third in a series of four he has promised constituents.

After being introduced by Kevin Byrne, the Putnam County executive, Lawler spent two hours fielding questions about the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which passed the U.S. House, 215-214, with Lawler's support and is being amended by the Senate.

In addition to tax cuts and an increase to the cap on deductions for state and local taxes, the legislation contains changes to programs like Medicaid and food stamps that are expected to lead to a loss of benefits for some enrollees. Lawler also fielded questions about Social Security, cuts to foreign aid and the estimated $45 million price tag for a military parade being held in Washington, D.C., on Saturday (June 14), which is President Donald Trump's birthday.

Below are some of Lawler's statements and a review of statistics he cited.

"We [New York] spend 83 percent more on Medicaid than the average of the other 49 states."

According to data from KFF (formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation), Medicaid spending in New York totaled just under $98 billion in 2023, second only to California. The spending was 83.77 percent more than the average for the other 49 states.

However, the average does not account for each state's population. Wyoming, for example, has 588,000 residents, compared to 20 million in New York. It also means using costs in states that, unlike New York, opted out of a provision in the Affordable Care Act to expand Medicaid so that more people qualify; the federal government pays 90 percent of the additional cost.

Alternative methods to measure Medicaid spending among the states include per-capita or per-enrollee. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, New York ranked fourth in per-capita Medicaid spending in 2022 ($11,203), behind North Dakota, Minnesota and Pennsylvania. The national average was $8,919. New York placed third among states in Medicaid spending per enrollee in 2021 ($9,688), according to KFF. Virginia and Minnesota had the highest per-enrollee spending.

"If [the Tax Cut and Jobs Act] expired, it would have been about a $4,000 increase in taxes on the average family in our district."

The Tax Cut and Jobs Act, passed in 2017 during the first Trump administration, expires this year. If it is not extended by Congress, taxes will increase in the 17th Congressional District, on average, by $3,530, according to the Tax Foundation, a think tank founded in 1937 that analyzes tax policy.

Drilling down to specific income levels with a calculator created by the Tax Foundation (dub.sh/tax-calculator), annual taxes would increase by $933 for a single person without dependents who earns $50,000 annually, and by $2,622 for an individual earning $100,000.

Taxes would increase by $5,091 annually for a married couple with two children and a household income of $150,000; the same couple earning $250,000 would owe $9,320 more. Those scenarios omit 401(k) contributions and other deductions, but the calculator can adjust for those, as well as other household sizes.

"There are over 3 million people in this country who are able-bodied adults, without dependents, who refuse to work."

Lawler is referring to Medicaid coverage. A provision in the House's version of the One Big Beautiful Bill requires that able-bodied recipients between ages 19 and 64 who don't have dependents work at least 80 hours monthly or be participating in a "qualifying activity," such as job training.

The work requirement would increase the ranks of the uninsured by 4.8 million people by 2034, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Although the CBO did not specify why people would lose coverage, Republicans have equated the figure with people who chose not to work.

According to the KFF, 64 percent of the 26.1 million adults between ages 19 and 64 receiving Medic...