My sister Jill Zarin Reunites w RHONY Gals in New Show on “E”- “The Golden Life”

WEXLER: Oh, it’s wonderful to have you on Thane. So I don’t know if you’ve been reading lately, but there were two articles that struck me in the last week. Adam Lipdak wrote a big piece in the New York Times about how the abundance of these unsigned decisions, I’m going to call them decisions because that’s really what they are, without full legal opinions, is undermining what he considers to be the overall arching authority of the Supreme Court, not to mention the public support. And then there’s been this kerfuffle about the fact that Katanji Brown Jackson last week wrote a dissent, and I forget which one of the many Trump things that they’re dissenting to was this particular dissent, in which she was so angry, I think it was immigration, that she said something like, wait for it, as colloquial slang in the opinion, and that apparently garnered more hullabaloo than anything else. And so I really wanted to ask you, Thane, because I know you’re a Supreme Court watcher. What’s going on? And if you have any sort of data, statistical data, how many opinions are the Supreme Court writing without getting to the merits and telling us why? What’s happening there?

A Shrinking Docket

ROSENBAUM: Well, first of all, Lisa, you’re on to something. The Supreme Court ruled on about 56 cases this year to final decision on the merits. In the last number of years, they have plummeted the number of cases they actually decided and heard. They used to hear between 70 and 100. So the last few years, they’re under 70. So you could be saying, well, what are they doing? That seems like they’re doing less work. Most people don’t realize that over 8,000 cases come before the court for review, and the court only hears under 100, right? So whenever people say things, I’m to their next door neighbor, you’ll see I’ll take you all the way to the Supreme Court. That’s ridiculous. You can’t get yourself in the Supreme Court. People say this silliness, the Supreme Court only hears a few scores of cases a year out of the 8,000 people who would like to come before it. But you’re raising a different point. Which is to say, they may have fewer cases they’re deciding on the merits, but there’s something that’s called the emergency or shadow docket, and the emergency shadow docket is where a case is brought before the Supreme Court on an emergency basis, oftentimes leapfrogging over all the cases in the lower courts, asking the court to render some kind of quick decision, a very fast track, but quick, usually not on the merits, usually procedurally. Those decisions do not get briefed. Those decisions receive no oral argument, and the opinions are unsigned. That’s a big difference.

WEXLER: Big, huge.

Concerns About Transparency & The Ketanji Brown Jackson Dissent

ROSENBAUM: You know, no, we don’t know what they’re really thinking because they don’t write an opinion. They don’t sign their names to the opinion, so we don’t know who’s where. It doesn’t get argued with in front of them, and there are no briefs. It’s just boom.

WEXLER: So what do they do? So how do they do this? Like, what’s this about?

ROSENBAUM: They do this on a justification that some irreparable harm is taking place and that the case below is still working its way through the system. But in the meantime, let’s provide some guidance, some decision to just allow this to move forward. So this has happened a lot in the Trump administration because of his many executive orders that have been challenged. And so the case that you were talking about really was the birthright citizenship case where Katanji Brown Jackson was saying, among other things, that we’re just ceding too much authority to the executive branch and that we’re not playing our role as the separation of powers and the oversight of the judiciary. She’s saying, you’re all capitulating for political reasons to Donald Trump. Well, you can imagine the people who are conservative on the Supreme Court, who were, some of whom, three of whom, were appointed by Donald Trump, do not like being called that they’re a bunch of sheep, you know, that they’re patsies, you know, and Chief Justice Roberts, although he was selected by George W. Bush, he’s an institutionalist. He wants the Supreme Court to remain independent. He doesn’t want the impression that they’re just in the pocket of the Trump administration. So that’s why Katanji Brown Jackson didn’t earn any friends with those dissenting opinions in which she went off ramp. You know, she did, normally they have much more collegiality toward each other. They may not like each other personally in some instances, but they don’t express it in their opinions. So, you know, at one point, she, Justice Barrett, a fellow Supreme Court justice female, you know, said in her opinion, she essentially said that Justice Jackson is ignoring 250 years of constitutional precedence and doesn’t seem to understand, you know, like really biting, like, Ouch.

WEXLER: Wow.

ROSENBAUM: Like a real, like, you know, literally saying, did you not go to law school or what? What’s up with you? So that became like a new feud, like, whoa, that became public. She was literally saying, I don’t think you understand the Constitution. I don’t think you understand what we do here. And it may be true, some of that, but it’s not that she doesn’t understand the Constitution. It says, Ketanji Brown Jackson is the most progressive of the three liberals, right, that would be Kagan, Sotomayor and Jackson. She’s to the left of them. And she’s saying, the hell with you guys. I got to stand up for the political philosophy. Now, I know that this is a very controversial thing for me to say, because she would deny that she’s saying that. But that’s really what she’s really doing. She’s really saying, I need to stand up for not just a political philosophy, but for the importance of this court as a check against the power of the executive branch. So, you know, what can be done about this? Well, the Adam Olipetek article said, the Supreme Court could stop doing that. You know, they could just go, we don’t, we believe that we don’t get involved unless we can brief the case, argue the case, and sit around for 12 months writing the opinion.

WEXLER: Yeah, thinking about it.

Why So Many Executive Order Challenges?

ROSENBAUM: People forget, these opinions go through 50 drafts. They go back and forth, they argue with each other, the clerks go over them, they make notes. These things are treated like books, and so that’s what people don’t understand, that the shadow docket, this emergency docket, is really different. You go from very thorough and meticulous thinking, to something that looks off the cuff, just do that and let’s forget about it. And so the reason it happened is because so many of the executive orders were challenged in this new administration. So for instance, 40 of the cases, 40 cases, were filed against Donald Trump to try to stop him, block his various executive orders. Nothing like that has ever happened before. You know, presidents come into office and they issue executive orders. And you kind of, and sometimes they would retract the executive order of their predecessor and put something else in place. But never before have they all been challenged like this. On the other hand, it’s also true that Donald Trump made radical transformations in the political culture of this country. And so because of the radical nature of it, you can imagine that’s where all those cases came from. And that’s what’s going on.

WEXLER: Okay, that’s a fantastic analysis, Thane Rosenbaum. It’s wonderful. And then the Supreme Court, their justification is that they think that the district courts in trying to respond to these challenges are too heavy handed and extending their jurisdictions far beyond their district court jurisdiction. And so that was the Supreme Court’s excuse for saying, well, this is an emergency. We’ve got to make it clear that the district court can only make decisions affecting the parties to the lawsuit or their own district or whatever they want to say, right?

The Birthright Citizenship Dispute

ROSENBAUM: Well, it’s that. That’s very good, very well said, Lisa, and explained. That’s what’s called universal or nationwide injunctions, where a single judge sitting in Boston basically goes, I don’t like the fact that this policy is being implemented by President Trump immediately. I don’t know if it’s constitutional. It’s going to take a while to get this thing to trial or wherever we’re going. In the meantime, I’m blocking it. And guess what? I’m not just blocking it with the two people before me now in my courtroom. I’m blocking it for everywhere in the United States. So that’s what was called the Birthright Citizenship Case, which had nothing to do with Birthright Citizenship. It had to do with the Supreme Court basically saying no single federal judge who is unelected with lifetime appointment has the power to enjoin a new policy of the administration nationwide. You can do it in your courtroom, but you can’t do it around the country. So that’s where one area that this, but remember that decision was an actual decision by the Supreme Court. That case was originally a shadow docket case, and they took it out of the shadow docket and argued it and briefed it and decided it, did it very quickly on a fast track basis. So that case is a little different because that one is on the merits where the Supreme Court took a real look at it and said, we-

WEXLER: But it’s on the merits only as to jurisdiction. It wasn’t on the merits as to whether or not the executive order itself could stand. That’s where I criticize them. I think they made a mistake. It’s my opinion.

ROSENBAUM: I think I remember you telling you that once, and I would say you and I will be talking about this again, because eventually they’re going to hear the merits. Eventually, it’s going to come back. So we’re going to have this conversation again, as you said, but they could have already done that. They could have just taken care of it immediately. But the other issue had to do with many of these other, well, you were right initially. Most of those cases dealt with immigration, where the president said, I got a mandate, I won. Part of my mandate, a huge part of it is immigration and enforcement and deportation. And I’m being checked repeatedly by these lower court judges. And so what has happened in the emergency docket was where they lifted those implementations. We’re saying, we don’t know whether or not this action by the president is constitutional, whether it exceeds his Article 2 powers under the Constitution. We don’t know that. That’s going to get worked out. But in the meantime, if he wants to deport people, good luck to him. He can do it. And that’s where the shadow docket stepped in. They said, we don’t know if it’s constitutional, but we know this, that we can’t stop him right now, that he’s the new president and he has the right to undertake these new policies.

WEXLER: And that’s what Katanji Brown-Jackson really objected to, because for her, she’s already made up her mind on this. She’s already said in her own mind.

ROSENBAUM: Yeah. And she’s saying, she’s of the view, these, you know, undocumented immigrants have rights. And we’re, you know, trumpling all over them, trampling all over them, you know…

WEXLER: Trumpling. That’s a new word. I think you made up a new word that people will use. That’s a good word for people.

ROSENBAUM: Trampling all over them, and in doing so, you know, they’re being denied due process under the law, as the Trump administration was going. Well, they’re not citizens. They’re not here illegally. They don’t get the full panoply of constitutional protections of everyone else. So that is a fundamental fight about what rights illegal immigrants have, and Katanji Brown Jackson’s position clearly is that these policies by the Trump administration are so extraordinary that they can’t be set in motion immediately, that there needs to be some injunction because we think he’s exceeding our authority. And some of the other justices in the Shadow’s Docket, it said, no, you can’t stand in his way. He’s the new president and there he’s policies and they may not be constitutional, but they can’t be stopped. They can be stopped eventually, but not on an emergency basis.

Public Trust and Accountability

WEXLER: Thane Rosenbaum, thank you so much for this comprehensive look at this. I think it’s an important conversation. The Supreme Court is a bastion of unaccountability for some would say very good reason. That’s why it’s there in the Constitution. And their approval rating numbers have gone down precipitously. I think the Clarence, you know, the, what’s his name, Clarence, oh, Thomas, Clarence Thomas scandals about, you know, the money that he received and the favors he received. I think all of that has gone into a lot of skepticism of the neutrality of the court, which is very unfortunate. And, but it is a bastion of unaccountability. They’re going to do what they want to do. And, and no one can really change them. In other words, they’re just going to do that. Really, nobody can and nobody will. They’re just going to go back doing their thing. What it is, it’s the way we’re set up. So, but I think it’s really important to pay attention to all of this because we’re living in a time right now where people believe that the president, some people believe the president is going to the border and beyond of executive authority. We all grew up learning about checks and balances. Congress has been written off as being able to be an effective balancer for a long time. So people have gone to the courts now for decades. Thank you, Thane Rosenbaum, for this important insight. We really appreciate you being on the show today.

ROSENBAUM: Thanks Lisa.

WEXLER: CBS. News, Thane Rosenbaum, legal correspondent.

CCM on Affordable Housing: Joseph DeLon on The Lisa Wexler Show – 7/15/25

Published on July 18, 2025 by Lisa WexlerLeave a comment

Introduction to The Connecticut Conference of Municipalities

WEXLER: Joe DeLong joins us now. He runs the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, which may not be an organization that you have ever heard of. It certainly doesn’t trip off the tongue in terms of that long, rather wonky name. But the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities in its own way is rather influential in terms of policy. And Joe DeLong, welcome to The Lisa Wexler Show. I want to ask you, we spoke with Laura Hoedick a while ago, right after the CCM decided to issue that letter, which I thought was a bombshell, after deciding that they would oppose a housing bill 5002 in the midst of a very controversial conversation the state was having over whether or not the governor would veto it. Welcome to the show today. Tell us a little bit about the organization and what you do.

DELONG: Thank you, Lisa. Our organization, quite simply, is just a collective of all of the cities and towns all across the state. You know, whether they’re Democrat, Republican, whether they’re urban, suburban, rural, they come together into one umbrella through CCM to find ways that we can help them operate more effectively and more efficiently. And, you know, we’re a very broad organization. We not only do political advocacy, we do group purchasing for towns and cities. Most of the towns and cities get their property casualty and workers’ compensation liability insurance through our organization. We do a lot of training and workshops. Just basically anything that’s where cities and towns need support that they can’t support on their own within their own local budgets.

Political Balance & CCM’s Legislative Role

WEXLER: And obviously, looking at Connecticut as a whole, you’ve got a lot of towns and cities that are run by Republicans and you have a lot that are run by Democrats, right?

DELONG: Absolutely. And then we have a lot that are town manager forms of government, those are actually non-partisan CCO-run communities.

WEXLER: Okay. So is it fair to say that you don’t often take a stance on a specific piece of legislation like 5002? Was that an unusual thing that CCM did?

DELONG: No, I don’t think it’s necessarily unusual. I think what was unusual about 5002 is that almost everybody, I don’t want to say everybody, because there’s certainly people who are going to be outliers, but almost all of our members agree with the goals and agree with the mission. But 5002, all these different components were put together so late in the session, because you had a bill that really moved through session with nothing in it. It was sort of an empty shell. And then all these components were put into it at the last minute. And I think that it took people a moment to sort of regroup and realize what that would mean for their communities. And while I think a lot of our members think that there’s a lot of value in that legislation, there were some things that they just felt needed to be vetted a little further. And there were some perhaps unintended consequences with pieces of that legislation that we felt needed to be worked out.

WEXLER: So are you in fact working them out? We’re chatting with Joe DeLong of CCM. Are you behind the scenes meeting with the governor’s staff, Matt Ritter’s staff, maybe some Republicans? Because we keep hearing this word consensus, which, you know, is an ideal state, but rarely achieved in politics. Are you meeting with people right now to talk about something that you could get behind?

A Call for Thoughtful Collaboration

DELONG: Yes, yes, we are. And I will say this. There, in an issue like this, there is no consensus. There will never be complete consensus. But what we can get to is something that is A, workable, and B, achieves what the proponents are setting out to achieve. And that’s really the goal. I’m very optimistic that we’re going to get there. I don’t think we’re as far apart as perhaps some articles or other people may believe that we are. But if we have time, Lisa, let me give you, like, one just really good example.

WEXLER: Yeah, I like the details. I’m very into details. Let me hear.

The “As of Right” Conversion Challenge

DELONG: Sure. So here’s where good intent meets major challenges. After COVID happened, we had multiple office complexes that became empty. People went to more hybrid environments. They, you know, we don’t need as much commercial office space as we used to need. And so a lot of that commercial office space can be and frankly should be, there’s an opportunity for it to be converted to affordable housing units. But the bill makes the entire building as of right to a builder. So a builder can come in, a developer or the person who owns the building, and it’s no longer essentially falls under commercial zoning. The entire building can be converted to residential. Now, in a lot of cases, that makes sense. But here’s where it doesn’t make sense. And here, what’s interesting is this is more of an urban issue. Everybody hears about the lower Fairfield County towns. These are the urban communities that are saying, well, wait a minute, this is problematic. If you take a downtown building in a commercial zone, and you don’t at least allow for the first floor to be commercially zoned, you essentially push all of the business out of a business district. And now you have these residents who are living in these buildings top to bottom in a downtown that’s no longer a vibrant downtown, because the downtown doesn’t have any businesses anymore. So it doesn’t have any place for these people to work. It doesn’t have any place for them to walk to go to a restaurant, or walk to go to the grocery store or a chocolate factory. And before long, you’ve turned a vibrant downtown that you were intending to help people, and you’ve turned it into a place that really resembles more like the projects. And that’s what, you know, folks are saying, hey, wait a minute. We can, if we just had the ability to say, the first floor has to be retained for commercial, so we can keep commercial activity going into downtown, and they want to make everything from the second floor up as of right, that’s probably workable. But these are conversations that were never afforded the ability to take place. When this legislation was being contemplated and put into action.

The Parking Problem in Small to Medium Towns

WEXLER: And the other piece of that, of course, is parking. You may have a much more intensive parking need for residential than you would for commercial.

DELONG: Well, and the parking side of this challenge gets a little more out of the urban areas. What I just talked about that as of right on the commercial to residential sort of an urban issue or a more commercialized district type of issue. But the parking issue really impacts small to medium sized towns the hardest. Because what happens there is you try to develop this housing around a lot of times near your center of town or your green space. Well, if there’s no parking afforded for those people, the first thing they’ll do is they’ll park all of their cars down around the town greens. And what is that parking space for? It’s for people coming to support the businesses.

WEXLER: That’s right.

DELONG: So now the businesses don’t have parking. So the way that communities react to that, when that mistake is made, they start enforcing parking. You can’t enforce it during the day, because, unless you’re creating metered parking, because you don’t know who’s a resident and who’s a visitor. So what they do is they start putting the parking enforcement at night. They say you can’t park here between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. or you’d get towed. That’s to get the residents out of that parking area. Well, many of our streets outside of those greens are very, very narrow. They weren’t built to handle those types of cars. So then you push those parking, off in the narrow streets and residential areas. And the next problem you have, other than people being very upset by that, is emergency services vehicles can’t get down the streets anymore. And so those are things that, by the way, it’s not fear mongering. Those are mistakes that other areas have made, that have caused commercial districts to go into bankruptcy, that have caused people to get hurt or loss of life because emergency services vehicles couldn’t get to an emergency. So there are solutions to that. You don’t have to create massive parking garages. You don’t have to have four parking spaces for two bedroom apartments. Those things are crazy. But you do have to have the ability to find the balance to make sure that you’re not doing things that put people at risk or put businesses out of business.

WEXLER: We’re chatting with Joseph DeLong, who is the leader of the CCM Connecticut Conference of Municipalities. Didn’t I see today that Governor Lamont did sign into law though, something that gave some commercial, as of right, to residential. Did you see that today? There was something that he did that he was able to, that was passed by the legislature, that David Bednar has issued a press release this morning, of course, it’s not in front of me now, that had to do with some kind of allowing some as of right transfer of commercial to residential. Do you know what I’m talking about?

On Public Discourse and Policy Missteps

DELONG: I’m not completely familiar with what that would be, but I will tell you there’s a lot of good as of right legislation that makes sense. This sort of gets us out of our land of steady habits and pushes away from some of our NIMBYism tendencies. And I think our organization is actually supportive of that. We put out a pretty massive housing reform proposal a few years ago. So this is something that we, as an organization, certainly don’t want to be a voice of no one. There are people out there or groups that probably do want to be a complete voice of no one, are very resistant to change, and that’s fine. If that’s their positioning, that’s certainly not our positioning. But we also think that sometimes, you know, municipal officials, well-intended municipal officials who have something to offer from a voice of reason of what can work and what can’t work are shut out of these conversations as if they’re the enemy. We have a tendency, and not just with housing, but a whole lot of issues, to say that we’ve identified an issue, we think it’s a terrible issue, and if you don’t support our solution to that issue, you’re again solving the issue.

WEXLER: Isn’t that terrible? You’re right that you’ve said that very well, Joe. You’ve said that very well, and it’s so not true. And then people go underneath it, and then they do real name-calling, you’re a this, you’re a that, and then you get personal and nasty, and then people’s backs go up, and it’s not nice, it’s not right. It’s not true either.

DELONG: Yeah, it’s not a good way to develop public policy. And in the end, what scares me about it, Lisa, more than anything else, because I do care about this issue, I think it’s important for Connecticut, is if you don’t get it right the first time, because there’s an opportunity right now, like this is one of those things people are talking about, there’s a window here, there’s an opportunity to do it the right way. If you rush a decision and you don’t do it the right way, and there are all of these negative implications that come out, because they weren’t listened to or they weren’t well thought out, what happens is in a few years the pendulum swings very hard in the opposite direction. All the provisions get stripped out, all the opportunity is lost, and it’s all for nothing.

830G: Reform vs. Repeal

WEXLER: So let me ask you this, Joe DeLong, let me ask you this. We have this, and this is just reminding me of this, but you’ve heard this many times, this 830G. Right now in Westport, there’s a very controversial redevelopment of the Saugatuck area. The developer is calling it the Hamlet. People think that’s a misnomer because it’s a very radical, dense redevelopment of that area, which is the train station, which everybody in Westport uses. And there are people that are opposed to it because it doesn’t at all resemble the original rendering that was proposed to the PNZ a couple of years ago, which is how they got them to change the zoning to begin with. But they have said, if you don’t approve this, we’re coming in with an 830G, and we’re putting in 12-story buildings, and you’re gonna be able to do nothing about it, and the judges are gonna support us. What does CCM have to say about 830G? Do you like it?

DELONG: I think, again, it’s something that’s well-intended and has had an impact of doing some good things. It has driven some communities in a direction to do things that otherwise they may not have done. With that being said, like all things, there are examples like you just gave where 830G is abused. It is abused by developers, abused by others. I fall in that middle ground of I don’t necessarily support, or we as an organization have never taken a position to support the repeal of 830G. But I think certainly, if there’s an opportunity, much like we’re doing on these other housing issues, to bring reasonable minds to the table and talk about the areas where it’s been abused and hasn’t worked well, and how that could be modified, I think that’s a conversation that’s always valuable to take place.

WEXLER: It would be nice if that happened because that cudgel, that threat, that thing has adversely affected a lot of communities. While you say, and you may be right, that it’s for some communities to suck it up and build things they wouldn’t otherwise build, I think well-meaning people would like to see things built, but they would still like to see setbacks and they’d like to see landscaping and they’d like to see certain things that they traditionally insist on from every developer. And they can’t insist on that. And that’s a trouble.

DELONG: Well, you know, if we’re not careful, we’re going to get to a point with these developments, too, in downtown areas and other areas where there is no green space associated with them.

WEXLER: That’s my point.

DELONG: And that just does not work well for communities. And by the way, it doesn’t work well for the health and welfare and well-being of the residents who end up living in those buildings as well and trying to raise families in them and have no access to any green space anywhere around them. That’s not a good way to raise a kid.

WEXLER: No, it’s not. And it’s not what people move to Connecticut for. That’s the thing. You have a lot of places in the world you can move to for a lot of asphalt. One of the reasons people choose to sit in Connecticut and be in Connecticut is because the perception is that it’s a beautiful place to be. So we want to keep it beautiful, right?

DELONG: No question about it, Lisa. Well said.

WEXLER: Joe DeLong, thank you so much for joining us from CCM. We’ll keep abreast of everything you guys are doing. Thank you so much.

DELONG: All righty. Thank you. Have a great day.

Was Raul Valle Overcharged? Frank Bevilacqua on The Lisa Wexler Show – 7/14/25

Published on July 17, 2025 by Lisa WexlerLeave a comment

WEXLER: I think it’s fair to say that many people in our community who were following the trial of the killing of James McGrath and the stabbing of three other people in what was described as a fight between two groups of young men that ended in the stabbing with Raul Valle having a knife and stabbing all of these people. I think that many people in our community were shocked to see that the jury by an 11 to 1, as we found out later, did not convict on any of the charges, whether the top charge or the intentional charge or the lesser charges. Prosecutors saying in court last Wednesday that the state intended to file the lesser charges against Valle, which they were entitled to do because when a jury does not either convict or acquit, it is a mistrial and in a mistrial it is not double jeopardy and a prosecutor can try again. But they cannot try again for the more serious offenses for which Raul Valle was charged. Joining us now is Frank Bevilacqua who is a criminal defense attorney of many years. He’s now a criminal defense, public defense attorney for Stamford where he practices regularly. He was with the law firm of De Pampalas and Valerie for many years in private practice and he’s very very knowledgeable on all this. Frank Bevilacqua, welcome back to The Lisa Wexler Show today and thanks for coming on.

BEVILACQUA: Good morning Lisa. Thank you for having me.

Understanding Specific Intent

WEXLER: Yeah, so Frank, I want to begin at the beginning. Do you think that this case, from the beginning, that the prosecutor created the correct indictment based on the facts as you saw them to be?

BEVILACQUA: No. The young man was 16. You have to show specific intent to murder someone. This was not an issue of that. I believe he was overcharged, the young man. And what he was facing was a lot of years, 40 years with the, what he was looking for. And kudos to the attorney that represented him. He did an excellent, excellent job. The elements didn’t fit the allegations for the charge.

WEXLER: So talk to us about the elements, because apparently the jury foreman came out and said that that was an easy, that was easy, that the entire jury, 12 of them, believed that the top charge did not fit. So what are the elements of specific intent? What would it have taken to do that?

BEVILACQUA: He had to have the intent to cause the death of another person, a person. He did not have that intent to cause the death of that person. And let’s, before we begin, it’s tragic. A young man is gone. There’s no denying it. But the charges did not fit the allegations and the elements were not met.

WEXLER: Well, what if somebody in a fury, in a fear of self-defense, which I know that they say they never even got to, but what if as a legal matter, if someone in a self-defense intends to inflict as much harm on someone else in that moment of, in that moment of adrenaline because they’re trying to defend themselves, is that equivalent to specific intent in terms of murder?

BEVILACQUA: No, because that would be in the affirmative defense that he was trying to protect himself.

WEXLER: Okay. Okay. So let’s go back a minute. The jury said that they, at least the foreman said, the jury said that it was frankly relatively easy for them to not convict on the specific intent. As a prosecutorial decision, do you find as a criminal defense attorney that prosecutors do this a lot? In other words, that they charge something for something that the facts don’t meet more than that the facts do meet? Is this a common thing?

BEVILACQUA: It’s not common per se, but I’ve seen it quite often. I’m going to leave it at that. I’m going to be politically correct. It happens more often than we would like. Sometimes it’s prosecutors using that as a negotiating tool. But in this case, I mean, we have a body and it’s tragic. And they should have narrowed down the charges. I don’t know what the offer was, or even if there was an offer before they went to trial. But this prosecutor was looking for 40 years.

WEXLER: He was. He actually said that the offer was 40 years.

BEVILACQUA: Yes, so that’s ridiculous.

WEXLER: That was ridiculous. You think that’s ridiculous, that was too long?

BEVILACQUA: Yes, ridiculous on the fact pattern. And obviously, you know, my compliments to the defense attorney that he helped to pick a jury that would find that the elements were not met.

Manslaughter vs. Murder

WEXLER: Well, it was 11 to 1 on the lesser charges. Let’s talk about the lesser charges. What do you need to convict for the charge of manslaughter, Frank?

BEVILACQUA: Bear with me. Manslaughter is, manslaughter in the first degree, with intent to cause serious physical injury to another person, causing a death of such person. So obviously, the elements didn’t meet that. That’s manslaughter in the first degree. The element of defense was he was just trying to protect himself. So he’s not trying to cause a death or physical injury. He’s just in an intoxicated state, swinging a knife around. And, you know, it could be more reckless than manslaughter.

WEXLER: It was surprising to me, and I’ll just say this, it was surprising to me, that the jury did not convict on a charge of reckless indifference given the fact that four people were stabbed in this melee, in this frenzy, where only one person had a knife.

BEVILACQUA: Right. Well, there was a lot of people-

WEXLER: At some point when you hit skin and you keep going, do you not, I mean, what does reckless mean?

BEVILACQUA: That’s, that’s, that’s a, I leave that question for the jury.

WEXLER: You leave it for the jury.

BEVILACQUA: In the deliberation room, because each and every person has their own meaning of it. Is it, was it reckless or I don’t know what this jury pool did. Did they put themselves in the position as the young man?

Juror Decision & Defense Tactic

WEXLER: I think they did. I think they were very empathetic to him. It sounds to me, Frank Bevilacqua, criminal defense attorney, that it was a smart decision by Kevin Smith, the defense attorney, to put his client on the stand.

BEVILACQUA: Oh, brilliant. Brilliant. They could backfire immediately, but it was a brilliant decision. But based on his decision to do that, obviously, Kevin Smith is one of the finest defense attorneys out there. I’m going to start with that. He is well thought out of every case I’ve ever witnessed him have. So he is a smart man. He had a team of people working with him. I’m positive because that’s how he works. And if he felt the truth prevailed by having this young man testify and having chosen the jury pool he had. But simultaneously, the prosecutor was in the jury selection too. It wasn’t one-sided. The prosecutor felt the jury pool was for his benefit also. So, you know, you have to know.

WEXLER: Well, I mean, it was 11 to 1. We don’t know who the one is, and it’s irrelevant who the one is.

BEVILACQUA: No, it doesn’t matter at this point.

WEXLER: It doesn’t matter at all. But the fact that it was 11 to 1 would indicate not really a deadlock jury 5 to 7 or something like that. I think it indicates from the prosecutor’s point of view, he probably thinks he’s a pretty good shot at a retrial, getting a conviction.

BEVILACQUA: He could try, you know, that’s their prerogative. I don’t know this boy’s family, the child that passed away, that died. But I, you know, I’ve just been reading the papers there. They have a civil attorney that’s going to be trying to pursue this. I mean, the bottom line is the civil attorney could get a judgment against this young man and the family, his parents, or the property owners, or the host of this party, or the stores that sold the alcohol, so on and so forth. He may go after everyone, but it’s not going to put Valle in jail if he wins a civil judgment.

WEXLER: Right. And it’s a much lesser standard anyway.

BEVILACQUA: Right. Preponderance of the evidence, yeah.

WEXLER: Yeah. Right. It’s preponderance of the evidence. So the question was whether or not the jurors thought that this met the test of whether or not Raul Valle was extremely different to human life. And the jury deadlocked. And they deadlocked not only on James McGrath, which was obviously the fatal injury, but also on three other people who were stabbed. They deadlocked on all of them.

Witness Credibility & Immunity

BEVILACQUA: Right. You know, I did hear some of the testimony of some of the witnesses there. And I don’t really give them much credibility that were for the state.

WEXLER: Tell me why you say that.

BEVILACQUA: You know, the young man that alleged the knife was in his car, every statement he made was self-serving. The young lady that said, I don’t know why he did this. I was standing over in a certain section and I saw something going on. There was a melee. I don’t know if she was consuming alcohol or not consuming alcohol. When you have so many witnesses with so many stories, it poses a problem. Well, which one is the truth? Which angles the truth? Who had a clear vision of what happened? Who was there from the genesis of this confrontation? Who was standing next to Valle when this was going on? Who was watching Valle get beat up and stomped? The poor boy that died, what was his involvement in this? So there was too many parties there. The video that I was able to see online, like everyone else, there was a melee. So you don’t know what’s going on there or who had started it either. Who started the melee?

WEXLER: The jury foreman, Stulman, said there was caught a lot of conflicting testimony about did he ask for the knife? Did he know there was a knife? Did someone just throw the knife to him? And he also said that the immunity deals given to De Silva and Snyder, Snyder was the one driving the car, De Silva was his friend, Raul Valle’s friend, that he jumped out of the car to try and protect. They said that the immunity deals were, quote, a factor but not a significant one that wouldn’t have changed our decision because, quote, he said the jurors, as you’re saying, Frank Bevilacqua, found it hard to credit much of the testimony from witnesses. They didn’t, you’re right. They were looking at, I guess, they were looking at other things that they thought were more reliable indicators of what happened that day. But they also, they listened to everybody, but in the end, it seemed like the jury wasn’t persuaded by any one in particular. Except obviously, they were persuaded in general that Raul Valle did not specifically intend to kill anybody. They were very persuaded of that.

BEVILACQUA: Right. And that comes from his attorney, Kevin, not from any of these witnesses. Because let’s face it, the witnesses were for the prosecution. And whenever you see a witness for the prosecution have some sort of immunity deal, my eyes, they have zero credibility because everything they’re going to say is to help them avoid a trial, a prosecution, a conviction and jail time. So, it’s to me that’s, I consider anyone for the testimony for the state that has a deal is a hired gun. Bottom line, I never give them credit.

WEXLER: Is the jury always entitled to know if a witness is testifying and has received a deal from the prosecutor? Are they entitled to know that?

BEVILACQUA: I don’t know about entitled to know it, but as a defense attorney, I want them to know it. I want them to know it because I want them to listen to their testimony carefully and how self-serving it could be.

WEXLER: Will most judges let that in? Will most judges allow the jury to know it?

BEVILACQUA: They should. Yes, they should. They should let that in. That’s pre-trial motion practice.

WEXLER: I see.

BEVILACQUA: You want that in. I mean, it’s the same with, you know, do you give, when you’re voideering the jury pool, well, do you, will you give the testimony of someone from law enforcement any more credits than a lay person? And why is that?

WEXLER: I see.

BEVILACQUA: So then, you know, oh, so then you consider law enforcement incapable of not seeing what actually happened or their testimony not being exactly right or their testimony embellished to benefit the state. Then who would want that juror? Because they’re giving them better, more credit than a lay person. Same difference with, in my eyes, a witness for the state that has immunity. You’re going to give them more credit? Because now, whatever they say, they can’t, it’s not going to be held against them. And they’re not, they were part of this melee, but, well, because they’re testifying on my behalf, they were a lesser person to the melee, so we don’t want them, we want whoever had the knife in their hands, so we’ll take your testimony. You know, this is a bright jury pool. It was good, it was good, and it was, listen, no parent wants to know their child died in vain, and no one’s held accountable for it, and my heart goes out to the family of the poor boy that died, it’s sad, but my heart also goes out to any person that has to spend the next 30, 40 years in jail under an offense and charge that didn’t fit the allegations. That’s even worse.

WEXLER: Frank Bevilacqua, criminal defense attorney, associated as part of the Criminal Defense Bar Public Defender’s Office, longtime private practitioner in this space with his thoughts on the Raul Valle case, 203-333-9422. Frank, when you heard the jury verdict, having followed this, were you surprised by the jury verdict, yourself personally surprised?

BEVILACQUA: I’ve never not been surprised by a verdict. Guilt or innocence, it always blows me away. I’m always, I’m always taken back.

WEXLER: You have such respect for the process, huh?

BEVILACQUA: Right, exactly. Yeah. I never know what’s going to happen.

WEXLER: Yeah, yeah.

BEVILACQUA: You do your best, you pick your best jury, you can. You prepare, prepare, prepare, prepare. You make the best closing argument you possibly can, and you sit back and you leave it for the jury, because when they go in that room, there’s nothing else you could do.

WEXLER: We don’t have 12-person jurors for most of our trials, Frank. We have them pretty rarely.

BEVILACQUA: I know. We have them only for murder trials.

WEXLER: So my question is, if this is a retrial on lesser charges, but still manslaughter or reckless indifference to life, will that be a 12-person jury or will it be a 6-person jury?

BEVILACQUA: No, 12-person.

WEXLER: It will be 12. Okay. Okay. So even though it’s not the specific intent top charge, it’ll still be a 12-person jury. Okay. And did you ever start yourself in your career, Frank, as a prosecutor? Were you ever a prosecutor?

BEVILACQUA: No. I had an opportunity to do that when I was starting out in New York, but I chose not to.

WEXLER: You’ve always thought that criminal defense is where your heart is?

BEVILACQUA: Exactly. I mean, everybody talks about defending the Constitution, but we do. Our job is to defend the Constitution and the rights of citizens, you know. There are times when punishment or, I’m going to say, accountability for your actions should be found, but you can’t do it with a bazooka when a pea shooter will suffice.

WEXLER: I’m sure you get asked this all the time. How can you defend these people that do such terrible things?

Oh my goodness, Lisa, it’s, you know what? I defend the Constitution first. And every citizen’s right.

When I defend a client, I’m defending them because I’m defending you and the public at large. That’s number one. And then you get to meet some of these individuals that are charged with offenses and some of them, you know, they have some sad background stories. Who? Drug abuse, no family, left in an orphanage, left on the street, started drugs because when their dad got out of jail, he turned them on to drugs. They were hungry. They just, they found no way out. They have zero religious convictions. So I come across some very sad individuals. And mental illness is rampant.

WEXLER: It’s a big component.

BEVILACQUA: Huge, huge. And they just don’t know any better, or, and primary problem is lack of education and lack of self-respect and lack of the will to succeed and role models that in their life that are the worst possible role models you could find, which is sad.

WEXLER: Well, to me, that explains a lot of nonviolent crime and a lot of sort of accidentally happenstance where you end up in a situation where you’re not handling it right. It doesn’t explain to me the crimes of, the violent crimes of sexual assault, things like that.

BEVILACQUA: Well, then that goes to mental illness, because a lot of the people that…

WEXLER: That’s true.

BEVILACQUA: A lot of the individuals that perform sexual acts and sexual assaults, you dig deep enough, they were victims of it at one time or another, male or female. So it’s a sad situation. Very sad. It’s heartbreaking.

WEXLER: But you would rather be, every single day, when you get up in the morning, Frank Bevilacqua, you would rather be defending the rights of these people and of the Constitution than prosecuting them.

BEVILACQUA: Right, because I’d rather be… I’m zealous. We know each other for years. And if I’m going to be doing my job, I’d rather be getting somebody that may or may not be guilty of a crime off than putting someone that shouldn’t be in jail in jail. I couldn’t live with myself if I did that. I would feel terrible if I put somebody in jail that shouldn’t be in jail. And I see, you know, I go to a lot of conferences and I speak with a lot of inmates, you know, that may have been in jail for decades. And, you know, the DNA evidence comes finally out and, oh, they weren’t, that wasn’t him. He didn’t do it. He couldn’t have been there. And to know they spent maybe 10, 20, 30 years in jail on something they didn’t do, how sad.

Reflection on Justice

WEXLER: We have so much injustice in this world. That’s one kind of injustice which is horrific. And I remember there was a movie many years ago called The Wrong Man made with Frank, Hank Fonda, Henry Fonda, and he played a guy who looked like the guy who really had done the crime. And the movie, which was a brilliant black and white, was all about how they picked him out of a line up and how the process, and he was sort of a near, you know, he was sort of a guy who didn’t have any resources to defend him, nobody to really speak up on his behalf, but he hadn’t done it. And they just kept prosecuting the wrong man. And you’re watching the nightmare scenario when Hollywood used to make good movies. And your empathy is completely with this wrong man. And you’re hoping against hope that he’s not going to end up in jail. And at the very last, like minute of the reel of the movie, they find the guy that really did it. But in real life, it doesn’t always work out that way. At the same time, I don’t know if you saw the New York Times last week published a study, not that they had done, but someone else had done, that showed that 50% of murderers in America go unprosecuted, unsolved. One out of two. So if you actually kill somebody, intentionally, your chance of getting away with it is a shocking 50%, shocking. So it goes both ways.

BEVILACQUA: It does. It does.

WEXLER: And I don’t know where that leaves us in terms of trying to find justice in the world. Maybe justice isn’t in the criminal court system. Maybe it’s a karmic spiritual thing, and people do end up paying in a different way, not necessarily with jail, for things that they do against other people. Maybe there’s another way that they get their so-called just rewards. I don’t know. But the criminal justice system usually isn’t the way.

BEVILACQUA: No, it’s not. It’s a flawed system all the way around. But it’s the only system we have at this point.

WEXLER: Tom from Fairfield, welcome to the show. We’re chatting with Frank Bevilacqua, who was a local criminal defense attorney. The general subject has been the Raul Valle case. I invite your comments and thoughts or questions. Go ahead, please.

TOM: Oh, that’s fantastic to both of you. This is very entertaining radio, I bet. The question I have for Bevilacqua and yourself, one of the jurors that I found interesting in his Kinnicka Post when he had the interview on TV, said that we went back and forth, but we didn’t see that intent to kill. I mean, when I saw Bevilacqua, the gentleman talking about counting the ribs and where to exactly stick the knife. How many murderers or people on trial for murder have you ever had that said, well, the jurors said later, well, it didn’t count to where exactly where the knife would have went to Pierce’s heart. When somebody is doing that and the knife is playing around, you think they are actually going to watch which one is going to be a serious kill and which one is going to be injured? I found that either they are too astute or they are not logical. They are not an educated jury. I don’t know. How do you find that?

BEVILACQUA: Well, first and foremost, my murder trials didn’t involve knives. They all involved guns. I can’t answer that.

At the juror, you know, when somebody is swinging a knife around, they are swinging a knife around. I don’t know anybody, you know, a perfect shot. It’s like what I call cutting a diamond. You need that perfect shot to cut the diamond, and that’s what happened there. There is no, you can’t measure. I’m not going to use the term lucky. It’s just it was just the perfect shot.

WEXLER: It was unlucky. It was terrible. It was one fatal thing in the heart. It was horrible. It’s unlucky. Oh, awful.

BEVILACQUA: No, it’s awful what happened to this poor family and this poor boy that’s gone.

WEXLER: But I know what Tom is saying. But I know, you know what, Tom? I know what you’re saying, because I read that, and it looked like the jury felt that their interpretation of the instruction by the judge, which we call the charge, was that they had to find that Raul Valle intended to specifically aim his knife in such a way as to kill and pierce the heart of James McGrath in order to find him guilty of murder. I hear what you’re saying, Tom, that seemed awfully specific to me, too. So, Frank Bevilacqua, do you have any thoughts on, generally speaking, what does specific intent mean? That’s what Tom is getting at.

BEVILACQUA: Elements. Tom, you and I are having an argument, hypothetically. I’m working in my yard, I’m chopping weeds with my machete, and I charge at you with that machete after the argument, straight for your heart. That’s specific intent. I want to drive that machete right into your heart.

WEXLER: I see. Okay.

BEVILACQUA: And that’s specific intent.

TOM: And this, yeah, in this case, Raul went back to the car and asked for the knife. He was giving the knife to a fistfight.

BEVILACQUA: Well, it was that, that portion is disputed.

WEXLER: Yeah, that’s the thing, Tom. There was a lot of dispute about that.

BEVILACQUA: And you have to keep in mind, the person that said that’s what he did was the person that got immunity.

TOM: Right, right.

BEVILACQUA: So you have to be weary of every individual that gets immunity on a trial such as this.

TOM: Yeah, I don’t want to say an eye for an eye, that kind of thing. But one man, one young man is dead, and one young man, I mean, I don’t think he’s going to go free. I defer to your expertise. I mean, the lower… The lower charge that they were dead last time, they’ve got to- they can’t just settle for civil, can they? Are they going to go back and go for…

WEXLER: They are going to go back. They’re going to try and impanel a different jury. They’re going to try and present the facts maybe slightly differently, and they’re going to try, and maybe they’ll have a different prosecutor. Frank Bevilacqua, is it definite that it would be the same prosecutor? Who makes the decision about that?

BEVILACQUA: Well, the office supervisor, but I can’t see why they would pick a different prosecutor.

WEXLER: Okay, okay. So the prosecutor will give it a second shot. He’ll give it another try. I’m sure that there’s a lot of pressure from the family and the community to try and convict this boy of something with respect to what happened. It doesn’t mean it’ll happen, but I think they’re going to try again.

BEVILACQUA: They probably will, and he’s a smart prosecutor. There’s no denying it. It’s just, I don’t know, it just shouldn’t have been to this extent. It shouldn’t have been to this extent.

WEXLER: Frank Bevilacqua, thank you so much for joining us.

Breakthrough Cell Therapy Stops Cancer By Stealing Its Nutrients: Dr. Nadav Ahituv on The Lisa Wexler Show – 7/14/25

Published on July 16, 2025 by Lisa WexlerLeave a comment

Reimagining Cancer Treatment Through CRISPR and Cellular Competition

WEXLER: One of my favorite things to do is to speak with brilliant people who are doing extraordinary things because we know that we are living in a time of tremendous innovation and brilliance. And the CRISPR technology is a game changer. It’s spelled C-R-I-S-P-R. I don’t know why people don’t know about it. When I talk about people, they’re like, they give me the glazed look. I don’t know why people don’t know the word CRISPR, but they should. It’s basically slicing and dicing our DNA. It’s a revolutionary approach to ground breaking research as well as possible real life ways to fix some of our dreaded diseases. Joining us now is Dr. Nadav Ahituv, who is a Press Professor at the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences and the Director at the Institute of Human Genetics at UCSF. And he’s focusing on trying to tackle cancer from the point of view of the CRISPR technology. And he had apparently a breakthrough recently that we really want to hear about. Dr. Ahituv, welcome to the Lisa Wexler Show. Shalom, Baruch HaBah, hello, welcome, hi.

AHITUV: Hi, thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.

WEXLER: By the way, do you know Arnold Craigstein, Dr. Craigstein?

AHITUV: Yeah, he’s a faculty member in my university. He’s a good friend.

WEXLER: He’s a good friend of mine too. He used to live in Westport. Yeah, he’s a very dear friend. I know him, I don’t know, 35 years, he and his wife, Sally. And he went over there from the New Haven area and from Columbia to be there. So I was wondering if you knew him. Anyway, I love him very much.

AHITUV: Yeah, I know him well.

Rethinking Cancer Therapy: What If We Could Starve Tumors Instead of Poisoning Them?

LW. So, okay. So I’m looking at this amazing headline, Dr. Ahituv, and it says, Breakthrough Cell Therapy Stops Cancer by Stealing Its Nutrients. What are we talking about? What have you discovered? Or what do you think you’re onto with fat cells? Tell me.

AHITUV: Yeah, so since the 1930s, from work from Otto Warburg who won the Nobel Prize, and it was observed that cancer cells eat differently, so to speak. They’re much more hungrier. They need a lot more sugar. They need a lot more fatty acids than irregular cells. They need a lot to eat in order to grow quickly and expand. And so there’s been a lot of work on trying to basically combat cancer by fighting their sort of hungry needs. And so there’s been a lot of drugs that people have tried to develop that stopped a lot of the metabolism, a lot of the ability of cancers to eat. But usually these have a lot of side effects, and very few have actually made it to the clinic. And so we decided to look at this in a sort of a different way, being sort of an outside the box way. And the idea that we came up with was instead of fighting in those drugs, how about if we have cells that need to eat a lot, if we build other cells that are sort of bullies, that need to eat even much more, and put them near the cancer cells, could they basically outcompete them and starve them to death? And the cells we chose that are great candidates for this are fat cells, because fat cells, if you program them, they will be very hungry and will need a lot of reagents to grow, and so it will work beautifully in the lab, and we managed to very nicely suppress the cancer by basically making much more hungrier cells than the cancer itself.

WEXLER: So wait a minute, I’m imagining everything in my life comes down to the movie Fantastic Voyage where they went inside the body, and the white corp rustles got attacked with the submarine, remember that? Anyway, so, right, it was great. So what you’re saying is you have these cancer cells and they want to survive, and you have fat cells and they want to survive, and the urge to eat is higher in the fat cells. You can ask my fat cells, I guarantee they’d beat anybody, okay? They don’t want to go away. So my fat cells are against my incipient cancer cells, and the fat cells are going to win, but what are they going to do? Are they going to eat the cancer cells themselves? Like, how do the cancer cells disappear?

The Science: How Fat Cells Become Cancer’s Competition

AHITUV: Yeah, so what we did here, so normal fat cells are basically, they won’t do that. And so, I guess I can, the first thing to explain is that we have two types of fat cells in our body. One is our brown fat cells, they’re more around the neck, and they’re the good sort of fat. They burn energy into heat, and as we age, they become less active. That’s why we like to move to Florida to retire and so forth. And then we have white fat cells, that’s the most abundant cell type in our body, throughout our whole body. And if we have more of it, we’re obese, we’re prone to diabetes, to cancer. But what’s beautiful about fat is I can take a white fat cell, and if I upregulate a specific gene, I can make a white fat cell more of a brown fat cell, that now starts burning energy to eat. And for that, it needs to eat a lot of reagents, a lot of food in order to do that. And the second beautiful thing about fat is that everything is there in the clinic to play with it. I can take it out via liposuction, that’s routinely done, and I can put it back via plastic surgery. So a lot of plastic surgery is done with fat. And so what we thought is we could take advantage of both of these attributes. So I can take out fat from a patient. I can upregulate a gene to make it now, instead of white, become brown. So now it starts eating tons of reagents and tons of food to grow. And then I can put it back after I take it out, right next to a tumor, and now it starts out competing because it’s a completely different fat cell. It’s now a fat cell that needs a lot of food to grow. So I sort of engineer it to become something that out competes the tumor.

WEXLER: And so what you’re saying is over time the tumor is going to starve itself to death and start to shrink simply by the fact that it’s next to some fat cells that weren’t in its neighborhood?

AHITUV: Exactly. And fat cells are engineered to basically out compete and basically take the food from the cancer. So we specifically made them do that.

Proof of Concept: Mice Models and Human Tissue Experiments

WEXLER: What animals did you do this in?

AHITUV: So we’ve done this in mice, in quite a few cancer models in mice, including breast cancer and pancreatic cancer. And another thing that we’ve done that was nice to do because we have the hospital nearby is we’ve done it also from mastectomies for breast cancer. So there’s a lot of fat in the breast. And so we could take the cancer from the patient and grow it on a dish and then above it, where they don’t touch each other, we can take fat from that same patient and grow and change it to become brown to out-compete the tumor. And then we grow both of them in the same media. So now they’re fighting for the same food and we can show that that works very nicely there. And so we’ve done it for very different types of breast cancer where we can take, again, fat from the same patient and do this in a dish and show that it works.

WEXLER: But you haven’t put it in a human yet, have you?

AHITUV: We haven’t, no, it’s a long way to do that. We’re now working on starting a company to be able to do that. And in addition, what we’ve shown is we’ve just done one gene that makes the fat basically become very hungry. But these cells are also, they’re great secretors, they’re great at taking out stuff. And so now we’re also building them so they could basically throw things at the cancer to kill it and also optimize them in other ways where I think we can make them even better cancer killers.

WEXLER: Okay, so what I’m hearing from you, because this is unbelievable. This is incredible. Do you not like not, are you not able to go to sleep at night, Dr. Ahituv, because of the exciting possibilities that people won’t need poison, chemotherapy and radiation anymore, that we can just put some fat from our own bodies upregulate it and stick it next to a tumor? I mean, that’s unbelievable, doctor.

AHITUV: Yeah, that’s what we hope. And again, we’ve been hard at work at not only just trying to improve the technology, but really try to talk with a lot of clinicians, a lot of the people that try to get this into the clinic. And for that, we definitely have to start a company.

WEXLER: Yeah, you have to start a company. You got to go to Wall Street. You got to raise money. You got to do all that

AHITUV: Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

WEXLER: And that’s what I’ll be an investor. I’ll be an investor. I’ll be an initial investor. I love investing in stuff like this. I’ll take my money. Totally. Yeah.

AHITUV: That’d be great. We are looking for investors. If there’s anybody out there, we love to talk to you.

WEXLER: This is unbelievable. And you really think it’s working, like you’re seeing it work.

AHITUV: Yeah. I mean, in the mouse models, we shrink the tumor 40% for a lot of these, even genetic mouse models where we might have mutations. They will develop cancer for sure, no matter what. And their cancers are significantly shrunk. And as I mentioned, this was a proof of concept. We just did one gene, but now we’re building them, then I think we could even get them to die and not just shrink. So we think it has a lot of potential.

WEXLER: So they haven’t shrunk yet. So as an adjutant, as an extra therapy, it could be amazing because it’s not invasive. You’re just sticking some fat into people. But let me ask you about your preliminary statement, doctor. You said that cancer cells feed off of sugar. Does that translate to me, to me as a human, that for somebody I love that may have cancer, that they should not have sugar anymore, that they shouldn’t eat ice cream? Is it that simple?

AHITUV: Yeah. I mean, it won’t completely fix the cancer, but it might suppress how it grows. And so I recommend also talking to dieticians if you do have cancer, find ways where you could improve. And then at least in our models, for example, when we add a lot of sugar to the diet, to the mouth, we don’t see it working as well, our therapy. And so definitely a competition in our case where we compete for these resources. So I definitely advise and have a few friends actually who are dieticians. They’re dieticians in cancer. And so there is some benefit to that. I’m not an MD though, so I should point that out.”

Implications for Diet, Metabolism, and Public Health

WEXLER: You’re not an MD, but if you yourself knew somebody with cancer, you would basically say to them, cut out the obvious extra sugar. They can still have a piece of bread, a piece of fruit, but you’re not going to load on the extra crap. Is that what you’re saying?

AHITUV: Yeah, that’s what I would recommend, at least based on our studies.

WEXLER: because everything breaks down to glucose anyway. I mean, in other words, you know, most foods break down to some kind of a sugar anyway, unless it’s a pure protein.

AHITUV: Yeah, true that.

Brown Fat, Aging, and the Cold Truth About Heat

WEXLER: This is amazing. This is so exciting, this kind of research that you’re finding. I’m honestly speechless about it. You have to tell me more about brown and white fat cells. I didn’t know there were two kinds of fat cells. And you said the brown fat cells are what, in our neck? Is that what you said?

AHITUV: Yeah, so brown fat cells are sort of behind in our neck. They have a lot of mitochondria, these energy machines. And basically, when we’re cold, we’re in cold conditions, or if I put somebody in a cold room or in a cold country climate, and they turn on. So that’s their on switch. And then they start basically, instead of making energy for the body, they start burning the energy to heat. And as we age, also, they become less active. And it’s also thought that they have a lot of important roles in aging also.

WEXLER: Is that why as we age, we need a sweater? Doctor, is that why as we age, we always need a sweater?

AHITUV: Yeah, exactly.

WEXLER: Our bodies can’t recover as quickly. We can’t regulate our own temperature as well. Is that right?

AHITUV: Yeah, completely right. And so, yeah, and there is also a lot of interest in them in aging also. And if we could, using our approach, and that’s another thing we’re looking at, is if we can activate more of these brown cells or what we call BAY cells, where we make the white fat into a brown fat cell.

WEXLER: Oh, that’d be great.

AHITUV: That might be also beneficial in aging.

WEXLER: And then can we stick it back in my upper thigh? Can we do that, Doctor? Can we do that? We would have my own sort of sculpture. This is pretty cool stuff, I must say. This is very cutting-edge research. How is CRISPR involved with this?

AHITUV: So in order to upregulate the gene and make them into brown cells, brown fat cells, we took advantage of CRISPR, but a different type of CRISPR. So the regular CRISPR comes and cuts the DNA and you can change it, sort of like a copy-paste kind of a thing. But we took advantage of a different type where there’s mutations in the scissors, and so the CRISPR cannot cut the DNA, but it can bind to the DNA, so it’s a specific location or a zip code in the genome. So we use it like a delivery truck to bring something to a specific location, and that something is something that forces the gene to make more RNA and more proteins, to become much more active, and that’s the way we basically made a white fat cell into a brown fat cell. We forced the gene that makes a cell into a brown fat cell to be suddenly active with CRISPR, and that gene now became active and made that cell into a brown fat cell.

WEXLER: So do white fat cells not eat much? They just sort of hang around?

AHITUV: Yeah, they’re more storage and then when the times are low in terms of food, then they start releasing the storage.

WEXLER: Oh, they’re your reserve. They’re literally your avoirdupois, they’re your repository for other things. Got it. They’re there for the body when the brown cells. Now, do the brown cells ever communicate with the white cells and say, hey, I need more food. I’m going to you?

AHITUV: Yeah, so there is a, I mean, there is thought that there is communication. It’s not much known how they communicate with one another too much. But definitely when there’s, you know, when there’s cold, the brown fat cells turn on. When at low, when we don’t have a lot of food, the white fat cells start releasing their storage. And when there’s a lot of food, they start storing. And, you know, that’s why we have, we could have obesity if we have too much of that.

WEXLER: Pretty fascinating stuff. Thank you so much for taking some time out to be with us. This is really brilliant. I love to know that you’re in your lab and there are people like you in this country that are just still quietly trying to find the next breakthrough because, you know, last week I was, I’m down here in Boca and my mother has a diagnosis, I didn’t want to go into it. But I found myself at a cancer institute last week for some testing with my mom. And it was a factory of people, doctor. It was a factory of people. I never saw anything like it. It’s not been my experience. It was a nondescript office building off of a highway. And you go in and it’s, and everyone is sitting with their arm out getting some kind of whatever, maybe 50 people in a room. And cancer is a, you know, it’s a business. It’s a factory. I’m not saying the people in it aren’t trying to help people. I know they are. I know they are. I’m not being cynical about it. But it is such a widespread phenomenon. And people are just putting their arms out to have all kind of poisons go in to try and shrink whatever other poison. It would just be remarkable if we could do something that would be so well tolerated by the body and not have to introduce a foreign substance into our bodies. It’s pretty, would be unbelievable, right?

AHITUV: Yeah, I completely agree and hopefully we could get it in. I’d like to also mention that this work would not have been possible without the National Institute of Health support and support from the federal government. And it’s important that we maintain federal government support for science because without it, this kind of research would not be possible.

WEXLER: That’s right, UCSF, one of our brain centers. Absolutely. Dr. Ahituv, thank you so much. If you see Arnold in the hallway, give him a shout out, an extra hug from me, okay?

AHITUV: Will do.

WEXLER: Thank you so much. Dr. Nadav Ahituv, professor at UCSF. This is all about trying to make fat cells be part of the answer to bully cancer into submission.

PURA Chair Marissa Gillett on The Lisa Wexler Show – 6/26/25

Published on July 3, 2025 by Lisa WexlerLeave a comment

Opening Remarks: Heatwave Strains the Grid

WEXLER: We always appreciate Marissa coming on our show. She takes questions from you at 203-333-9422. Hello, Marissa Gillett. Welcome.

GILLETT: Hi, Lisa. How are you?

WEXLER: Is it hot enough for you?

GILLETT: Oh, gosh. It’s been really hot. And what folks don’t know when it’s that hot or maybe don’t realize is the amount of stress it puts on the electric grid. So there’s been some nail-biter days the past couple of days.

WEXLER: I know. I said to my husband, and we are only two people in a house of, let’s say, 3,000 to 4,000 square feet, right? So we’re overusing our consumption in a way. But I’m keeping the thermostat on 76 because I can live with that. It’s fine. And I don’t want to blow anything out. You know what I mean?

GILLETT: Oh, I actually know what you mean. I actually read an article the other day that the ideal temperature for your AC to be at 78, which with small kids in the house, sounds very hot to me.

WEXLER: Really? It does sound hot. But you know what? Because we’re used to the 74 range. But I put it on 76. I was very comfortable.

GILLETT: So yeah, we do 75 in my house.

Text Message Controversy & Litigation

WEXLER: Yeah. So okay, Marissa Gillett, let me go to the reason you’re in the news today. You’re in the news today because just going back a while, there was an op-ed, Jonathan Steinberg, state rep from Westport, was involved in it and writing it. There was an allegation that came against you, that you had somehow coordinated what the state rep was going to say. Maybe Norm Needleman was involved too. In any event, you said, no, you weren’t. But now it appears that your phone somehow automatically, accidentally deleted a conversation that other people wanted to look at. Can you explain what’s going on? Give us your point of view.

GILLETT: Sure. Thank you for the question. It’s referring to an op-ed that Senator Needleman and Representative Steinberg have been very clear that they wrote and that I did not write. So I really can’t comment on that further, but there is an active litigation at the Superior Court. So remember this traces back to PURA’s decision last year in November of 2024, where we actually ordered a rate decrease for CNG and SCG. And so those companies are appealing our rate case decision as they had sought re-increases. So all of this intrigue, I don’t want folks to lose track of the fact that this is around litigation where PURA had ordered a rate decrease for those companies.

WEXLER: Yeah. Okay. And so what I’m understanding is in the context of the litigation, in terms of discovery, which is a process by which people try and get information from the other party before going in front of a judge, they wanted to see whether or not there were text exchange between you and Jonathan Steinberg and Norm Needleman. And apparently, your phone was set on like automatic delete after 10 days or 30 days, something like that.

GILLETT: Sure. I think folks who have personal devices know that iPhones can be programmed to have deletions. And it just so happens that my personal device is set for a deletion after 30 days. And to be clear, the text messages that they’re referencing are available.

WEXLER: Oh, they are?

GILLETT: Sure. I think Representative Steinberg has made those available. Oh, okay. I think this will have to play out in the courts.

WEXLER: But if they’re available, why are they making such a big deal of it? Why is it on ctcapitalreport.com? Why are people opining on it? Why?

GILLETT: I think people will have to draw their own conclusions on that. I’m afraid I really can’t say more right now. I’m going to have to let the court play this one out.

On Eversource’s Bond Downgrade & State Regulation

WEXLER: Marissa Gillett, I saw today that Moody’s had changed their bond rating for Eversource. I’m not sure about Yvonne Grid, but Eversource. I think they went from an A triple minus to a B triple A, something like that. And, they are saying that Connecticut is the worst place for utilities to do business. Are we the only state in the country that is trying to determine rate increases based on a utility’s performance?

GILLETT: No, that’s a great question. We’ve talked about performance-based regulation in past months, and we’re certainly not the only state, although I would cast us as a leader in this space, and I think that’s with credit to the current state administration. Governor Lamont has been really strong on the concept of performance-based regulation as have the gentlemen we already spoke about, Senator Needleman and Representative Steinberg. Hawaii has gone before us and really pioneered the direction of moving towards full-blown performance-based regulation. There are a couple of other states across the country who have dipped their toes into it in one way or another. I would characterize us as the second state behind Hawaii, who is really pursuing what I would call full-blown performance-based regulation as opposed to adopting bits and pieces of it. There’s some growing pains. I don’t see those being a barrier, and PURA is looking forward to adopting its performance-based regulation decisions, which are due out this August.

WEXLER: But are you being criticized? Are you being sensitive? Do you have any response to the fact that Eversource is essentially saying, it’s going to cost us more money to borrow directly because of regulation in Connecticut? Like, what’s your response to that?

GILLETT: Sure. I mean, I would say we certainly have to be sensitive to a company’s financial position. It’s part of what’s charged to PURA in our statutory mandate. So it’s often talked about the balancing of interests and the tests that come with that, the legal tests that come with that when you’re evaluating a rate application. So there’s a lot of nuances to utility regulation. We’ve talked about in past months or the past couple of years, really we’re really trying to educate folks about what goes into your rates, and one of those things is that ratepayers do pay the cost of debt that a company has to pay. So it’s one of many things that you have to look at and evaluate in the context of a rate case. If I pull on this lever, is it going to cause that lever to go up? It’s part of a big calculation because when you’re adjudicating the request in front of you, you may wish to lower the return on equity, which is the utility measure of their profit, in layman’s terms. But making adjustments there might have an effect elsewhere. That’s part of what we really look at with stakeholders in the context of a rate case proceeding is making sure that the balancing of interests, and, you know, all of it boils down to what evidence of the utility put in front of us in that specific docket. All of that comes into the record and is evaluated when PURA, and that includes staff, other commissioners, when you’re making an ultimate determination.

Rate Case Updates

WEXLER: Okay. And that decision is expected in August. We’re chatting with Marissa Gillett, Chairwoman of our Public Utility Regulatory Authority.

GILLETT: Great question. So actually, one of the interesting things here is CLMP, which is the electric arm of EverForce, has not been in for a distribution rate proceeding since 2018. So there is no imminent decision. They haven’t applied for one before PURA. So the decisions that are actually pending before PURA right now, we have two. We have one that was a request from UI, which is the electric utility serving the New Haven area. Then we have one from EverForce’s gas arm, which goes by the name of Yankee.

WEXLER: Yankee Gas.

GILLETT: Those two companies filed their application the exact same day, last November 12th, and so their decisions are both due the exact same day, which I believe is October 28th of this year.

WEXLER: Wow. Okay. All right. You’ve got your hands full this summer, frankly.

GILLETT: Yes.

WEXLER: Yeah, you too. By the way, Marissa, where do you go for vacation?

GILLETT: Well, we just got back from Aruba, so I’m just enjoying time.

WEXLER: Aruba?

GILLETT: Yeah. We did, for my husband and I’s, our 10-year anniversary.

WEXLER: Did you like it?

GILLETT: We did. We had a great time with the family.

WEXLER: Good. I’ve never been, but I know people that have timeshares there, and my sister had a timeshare for years. They all like it. They go to the Marriott, I think. That’s the big place. Yeah.

GILLETT: We had to save up and have a big celebration for our wedding anniversary.

Managing Energy During a Heat Wave

WEXLER: That’s nice. Great. Happy anniversary. Thank you. Right now, as we speak, just returning to the heat wave, what should we know in terms of making sure we don’t blow out the system? In other words, if we personally make it too cool in our own homes, can we blow a fuse in heat like this? What is it that we should know in a heat wave like this?

GILLETT: I love that question. I think where we started at the top of the interview is just trying to flag the people if you haven’t spent much time thinking about the grid as a whole. When we refer to the electric grid, it’s not just the wires and poles serving local Connecticut towns. We are interconnected as part of this grid to the rest of the states in New England. Then our grid, which is called the ISO New England grid, is interconnected to New York, and has some interconnections to Canadian Hydro. So we, throughout the country, is interconnected, which allows us to rely on our neighbors to some degree. But electricity is finite, right? To the extent that your demand for electricity exceeds what’s available, that’s when you can get into big trouble. And heat waves really tax the grid, not just from a physical perspective on the equipment that you are alluding to, but just people’s demand for electricity can place a really big tax on that grid. So folks should be concerned not just about their houses, but we should really be cognizant from an individual and a holistic perspective about what we’re asking of the grid. On an individual basis, it’s not just your equipment at your house, but your electricity bill itself is really linked to your usage, your kilowatt hours that you’re asking for each month. And those kilowatt hours are multiplied by the rate for the electricity. So the more you use, the higher your bill is going to be.

WEXLER: But doesn’t it also have to work harder to get to the setting that you’re setting at when it’s 100 degrees outside?

GILLETT: Absolutely. So we should be really thinking about it and considering it from both angles.

WEXLER: Yeah, that’s what I think. I always think, I don’t want it to work too hard. So I think everybody really who’s listening now should be keeping their indoor temperature as warm as they can without schvitzing inside because if we all go a little easy on it, then we’re collectively giving ourselves a better shot at getting through this heat wave without getting a big blowout, right?

GILLETT: That’s right. That’s a great way of thinking about it and giving yourself a better chance to not have an eye-popping bill at the end of the fight as well.

WEXLER: Also true. It’s always about that eye-popping bill, that’s for sure. Marissa Gillett, thank you so much for being with us as always. Good luck with everything else on the agenda. We’ll chat with you next month. Thank you very much for being on WICC as always.

GILLETT: Thank you.

WEXLER: Marissa Gillett, our Chairwoman of the Public Utility Regulatory Authority, which is definitely a mouthful.

Sen. Blumenthal’s Iran Update & Thoughts on NYC’s Dem. Primary on The Lisa Wexler Show – 6/25/25

Published on June 25, 2025 by Lisa WexlerLeave a comment

WEXLER: Let’s begin with our own Senator Richard Blumenthal, who is here live with us, I believe, from Washington, DC. Hi, Senator Blumenthal. Where are you today?

BLUMENTHAL: I am most certainly in Washington, DC., about to go into a judiciary committee hearing at 10:15 on a number of judicial nominees. And happy to join you. Thanks for having me.

Iran Strike: Assessment & Accountability

WEXLER: Always a pleasure, really. So question for you. Now it’s been a few days. The bombing happened over the weekend with the dust settling and a ceasefire, fingers crossed, holding. Did President Trump do the right thing or did he make a mistake in sending the US bunker busters to destroy the nuclear site?

BLUMENTHAL: Lisa, I regret to tell you that that question can’t be answered without more information. And we were supposed to receive a classified briefing yesterday, which was canceled. The final battle damage assessment is still to be seen, but what we know from the Defense Intelligence Report that has been issued recently, there was a lot less damage than the president has said when he boasted about obliteration and total destruction of the Iran nuclear program. Let’s be very clear. A nuclear-armed Iran is a dire threat to the entire world, including the United States as well as Israel. I hope that the destruction was so extensive that Iran has set back more than months, in fact, years. I hope that its nuclear program was obliterated. But the evidence so far is that they dispersed a lot of their centrifuges, a great deal of their enriched uranium out of Fodro and the other sites that were hit elsewhere in the country, and that the scientists doing this program, some were eliminated, but many of them are still around. And so we have yet to have the final assessment, but I can tell you from my knowledge of what experts have told me and what I’ve seen of Israeli intelligence in the past, that more than one wave of attacks is necessary. Even with the bunker-busting bombs, more than a single day of attacks is necessary because we’re talking about a facility that is 250 feet underground, protected by many layers of concrete. The American people should know how difficult this mission was and how skilled and precise and expert our airmen were. And by the way, as I asked one of our generals just yesterday, Israelis contributed immensely to the success of this mission. So I think at the very least it was partially successful. I hope it was fully successful. We should know, and the American people deserve to know. That’s really the most important point I can make to you today, is the American people deserve to know. Not just Congress or others in the administration, but the American people deserve to know more of the facts.

WEXLER: Okay, but it sounds like from what you’re saying and in support of the overall goal, chatting with Senator Richard Blumenthal, that even if he couldn’t finish it all, it sounds like he did the right thing in at least trying to get rid of some of their infrastructure, make them scurry away. The Israeli intelligence isn’t going anywhere. They’re going to find where this material went. You know that they are. And then there might be another strike necessary. Is that what you’re saying when you said that one strike might not be enough?

BLUMENTHAL: Far from suggesting another strike, I think now may be a time, as the president himself has suggested, that negotiations could make some progress. The Iranians clearly know that they will be targets again in the future. If they pursue nuclear arms, there has to be eyes and ears on the ground, not just aerial surveillance, to know where they are in producing nuclear arms and, of course, they were close to a breakout, 60 percent. Nuclear enrichment is far exceeding the 5 percent, which was the requirement of the JCPOA, the prior agreement.

Trusting Iran? Negotiation vs. Stonewalling

WEXLER: So, Senator Blumenthal, I don’t mean to interrupt you, but I know you’re on a really tight five minutes. Doesn’t that suggest to you that when we talk about negotiating with Iran, we’re not talking about negotiating with a good faith partner? I mean, doesn’t that alone suggest to you that they use negotiation as a stalling tactic versus an actual negotiation where they will do what they say they’re going to do?

BLUMENTHAL: The history in the past has been that often Iran has used negotiating as a stalling tactic to stonewall, to play the European allies who have been the ones at the forefront of these negotiations. But let me say very emphatically, a nuclear-armed Iran cannot be accepted. And whatever is necessary to stop it has to be done. So at this point, I’m not telling you what should be done.

WEXLER: I get it.

BLUMENTHAL: But we cannot rely only on negotiations if the Iranians do not pursue them in good faith.

NYC Democratic Primary: Mamdani’s Win

WEXLER: Senator Blumenthal, I only have three more minutes with you. I’m uniquely aware of that. So I don’t want to pontificate. But last night’s showing of Mamdani, who is a person who’s only 33 years old, an assemblyman who has said things on social media like defund the police, who was the first person ever to run for mayor who said that he didn’t think Israel should be a Jewish state. He said a lot of very incendiary things, but he got elected by a convincing margin, not a 50 percent, so there still may be a runoff tally. But Cuomo conceded, that is sending enormous earthquake through democratic centrist people. And you’re a democratic centrist person, and I’m wondering, do you support Mamdani now because he won the Democratic primary, or are you going to sit this one out because you don’t agree with the socialist? What are you going to do as a leading Democrat?

BLUMENTHAL: Well, at this point, you know, I have enough on my hands without getting involved in New York politics. I’m a centrist, as you said. I’m a progressive Democrat on social issues. We celebrated, or actually far from celebrated, we commemorated the third anniversary of the Dobs decision, rolling back Roe v. Wade yesterday in the United States Senate. We’re determined to preserve reproductive freedoms. I’m strongly supportive of the civil liberties that are involved in LGBTQ+ rights.

Final Thoughts: Iran, Transparency, & The Question of Time

BLUMENTHAL: And let me just say about the Iranian situation, I hope that we did very severe damage to their nuclear arms program. Hope is not a strategy. What we need is a strategy. Your questions are exactly the right ones to ask. What is the end state here? What is the best means to stop a nuclear armed Iran? But truth telling to the American people is a prerequisite, an absolute condition. We can’t rely on claims that are either untruthful or unsubstantiated like were made by the president last Saturday night. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff actually was much more measured, if you recall. He said that the damage has been severe, but it’s way too early to make a judgment. That’s where we are right now. We need to pursue destruction of Iran’s nuclear arms program. And you’re absolutely right. We cannot tolerate any negotiation deploy as an excuse for stonewalling or delay.

WEXLER: It’s a real, you know, it’s a very, it’s a big dilemma when you’re sitting as commander in chief, when you’re told if 5% went to 60% and some people are telling you credibly that they’re weeks away and then you know it’s irrevocable. You have a decision to make. It was a gutsy decision whether you agree with it or don’t agree with it. It was a gutsy, risky decision. And maybe we did something that will, that will hurt them if not, you know, fatally kill them, so that we can buy time to continue to destroy their capabilities. I mean, that’s what it’s about, right? That’s what we’re trying to do.

BLUMENTHAL: The question is how much time?

WEXLER: Yeah.

BLUMENTHAL: In other words, is it years?

WEXLER: Yeah.

BLUMENTHAL: Or is it just months? Remember, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and I repeat, the Defense Intelligence Agency issued preliminary findings. I haven’t seen them, but I’ve seen five reliable press reports about them, which say that we set them back only a matter of months. So to take your point, it was a risky decision. The question is whether the risk was worth the return. And the reason to ask that question is that we will be faced with this kind of decision again. So we need to learn from the facts. And the American people deserve the facts, not just secondhand reports. And of course, Congress deserves the facts.

WEXLER: That’s true.

BLUMENTHAL: Under the Constitution, the President has a duty to inform Congress and gain approval for acts of war. Bombing another country is an act of war. And so it really isn’t about our prerogative legally. I don’t mean to rely on the legal principles here. But as a practical matter, the President needs support from the American people. Right now, the polls show that they disapprove of what he did. And the way to gain support is to tell the American people the truth, tell Congress the facts, and give us an assessment, a final battle assessment, showing what the damage was.

WEXLER: Senator Richard Blumenthal, thank you so much for coming on. I know you’re wanted in the Judiciary Committee. We always want to hear from you. Maybe we’ll hear from you again next week. Minute to minute, there’s always a breaking news story. Thank you so much.

BLUMENTHAL: Thank you. I’m always honored to be on your show and look forward to being on again. Thanks so much.

WEXLER: Senator Richard Blumenthal, great state of Connecticut.

News 12’s Frank Recchia on CT’s No Kings Protest on The Lisa Wexler Show – 6/16/25

Published on June 20, 2025 by Lisa WexlerLeave a comment

Protest Audio Echoes Revolutionary Sentiment

AUDIO: “And we are going to send a message to this president that there are no kings here.”/“America does not stand for kings. There are no kings in America. This is a democracy. The people rule the country.”

WE: Not one person, but all of us. So that’s just a little bit of the sound that our guest Frank Recchia captured for News 12 over the weekend when he personally went to Stanford to attend one of the many no kings rallies throughout Connecticut on Saturday. Hey, Frank, welcome to the show. Hello. Good morning.

RECCHIA: Good morning, Lisa. Thanks for having me.

WEXLER: So tell us about what you saw, you know, the what went, where, how. Talk to us, Frank.

A Sea of Similar Faces: Demographic Surprise at Stamford Rally

RECCHIA: Well, Lisa, you know, I think the most important thing, and I’m looking at video of the event that I shot myself over the weekend, and what really left out at me was the demographic of the crowd. You have what appears to be a sea of middle-aged white people. And I think this demographic speaks to a central question that the Democrats have to answer in three and a half years, which is, can we turn these protests into a broader section of the population besides middle-aged white folks who came out on the weekend?

WEXLER: Well, that’s interesting, but Frank, to be fair, we are in Connecticut. Maybe the majority of people are middle-aged white folks. I mean, you know what I mean? I don’t know. Was that the same color makeup around the country, or is it just because we’re in Connecticut?

RECCHIA: Well, I can’t speak for any other protests except the one that I attended and covered, but it really struck me that Stamford and Bridgeport, which is my home reporting turf, is not made up largely of middle-aged white people. So we certainly have a vast diversified population in this region. And you would think if this were a broad-based effort to show the world how opposed they are, radically opposed to this president and his policies, that it would extend beyond one demographic.

WEXLER: So why do you think, yeah, tell me, what do you think, Frank? You’re out in the community, tell me.

RECCHIA: Well, of course, reporters enjoy complete neutrality politically. But I can say as an observer that if the Democrats want to really create a surge, they’re going to have to create a protest that’s more reflective of the population in places like Stanford. I mean, Lisa, I’m looking at this video. I shot it in the rain for hours. These are largely white demographic. I was surprised by that. One has to ask, at what point will you begin to see a more diverse population?

WEXLER: Well, you know, it’s so interesting because the charge, the criticism level that the Democratic Party is that they have actually lost touch with the working-class, diverse base that they traditionally not only represented but purported to fight for, right? And so one of the criticisms against the Democrats is that these elite, richer, liberal people that intellectualize everything, that have lost touch with the basic needs and wants of working-class people. That’s sort of what you’re saying.

RECCHIA: Well, I’m just making an observation. Nothing more.

WEXLER: No, but I’m saying that’s what you’re saying reflected in this very widely publicized protest.

RECCHIA: I would be interested, you know, at this point, I really want to take a look at some of the other areas, so many protests. I understand there were 30, more than 30 across Connecticut. And the better part of 2,000 across the country. So it really does, it bears looking into. But I can tell you that, you know, I heard one observer who, you know, quoted the famous Winston Churchill line about this is not the end. It’s not even the beginning of the end, but it is perhaps the end of the beginning. And I thought that was a little ambitious in trying to characterize a movement that was almost monolithic, basically, white.

A Unified Message: “No Kings” as Rallying Cry

WEXLER: So let me ask you, Frank Recchia, what do you, what, when you were speaking to people, why did they show up, the people that showed up? What were they most upset about?

RECCHIA: Well, I mean, I think the message sums up the name of the protest, the No Kings in America. That’s the banner that they marched under. And there was literally a giant banner that they marched under, symbolic of this idea. And every sound bite, if you listen to that news package that I shot and that we put together, every sound bite is the same thing. Not because we didn’t try to find sound that covered a broader area or theme, but because that is what everybody said all the time. From Jim Himes, who stood up there in the pouring rain, to folks who came up and spoke to us. It was all about that central concept of no kings in America.

WEXLER: So this idea that President Trump is acting like a king, and no matter what it is, particular policy, whether it’s immigration or whatever it is, that they feel like he’s asserting too much authority.

RECCHIA: Very much so. That’s the main charge, is that you have a quote authoritarian system that’s beginning to take shape here.

WEXLER: Were there people there that specifically objected to, you know, like, for example, the ICE detentions or I had heard that some of these protests had people that objected to our political positions internationally with the pro PLO people coming there too. Did you see that kind of thing in Sanford?

RECCHIA: I didn’t hear anything about overseas politics, geography. I heard about, primarily, this No Kings idea and, yes, ICE and immigration, but, you know, I think the marchers went out there with the idea of driving home this basic concept of no kings in America. And there were a couple of people, now that I’m looking back at the video there, there are a couple of people who were touching on immigration in some of their signs, and, but these banners are reflective of that theme, no kings in America. That’s what they all say.

Peaceful but Passionate: No Counterprotests in Sight

WEXLER: Was it a peaceful protest in Stamford?

RECCHIA: It was a very peaceful protest. And when they all gathered in the beginning, and, you know, they had a rally on the courthouse steps there on Hoyt Street in Stamford, and they went over the ground rules, and they said, we are not going to break this code of peaceful protest, because, quote, that’s exactly what they want. They want to draw us out. And, you know, the other thing is this, Lisa, you know, the lack of any counter protest, because I went there with an eagle eye looking for a counter protest so we could deliver a balanced message. But they simply, I did not see any, I saw one person drive by in a car and they had the music cranked up about, you know, patriotic music cranked up. And I believe I heard a quick exchange from somebody who was driving that vehicle and some of the crowd members, but that person passed right by and that was it. It was one, you know, five or six seconds dialogue and that was it.

Thousands in the Rain: A Rare Sight in CT Protests

WEXLER: We’re chatting with Frank Recchia of News 12, who was in Stamford on Saturday for the No Kings Rally. How many people by your eye estimate of crowds were there?

RECCHIA: Well, initially when I spoke to the organizer, because we’re always trying to nail down a number in doing these reports, and the organizer came running up to me and said, Frank, we broke 5,000. You know, initially to me it looked like one or 2,000 who were on the steps of the courthouse. And then though, when they all started to march, the numbers just swelled, and it was both sides of the street and people honking. You know, it was quite a protest, Lisa.

WEXLER: Was it, in your opinion, one of the larger protests that you’ve personally seen in Connecticut in recent history, Frank?

RECCHIA: Yes. Yes. I think that was, I remember turning to my colleague there and saying, this is the biggest I’ve ever seen in Connecticut. I mean, this was thousands of people in the pouring rain. And the fact that it was pouring rain and they were there, nonetheless, you know, spoke to the passion of this movement. But I think if we’re looking for a barometer, Lisa, if we’re looking for some indication that, again, referring to Winston Churchill, this is not the end, it’s not even the beginning of the end, but it is perhaps the end of the beginning. I think if the Democrats are going to get this force to evolve into, quote, the end of the beginning, I think you need to see counter protests and you need to see a more diverse crowd turning out.

WEXLER: And what about our leadership? You said Congressman Jim Himes was there, State Senator Matt Blumenthal was there. Who else spoke?

RECCHIA: Well, there were some of the organizers who stood up and spoke and just, so much passion. And again, the pouring rain, those were the big names, Lisa. Blumenthal and Jim Himes. Senator Blumenthal told me later that day that he had been to one of the rallies in another part of Connecticut or he would have been there. But, you know, so much passion and we really should look into the demographic makeup of the protests in other parts of the country that would explain so much to me.

WEXLER: Okay, Frank Recchia, News 12. Thank you very much for coming on the show. Thank you always for your authentic eagle-eye reporting of what’s happening in our community. So your takeaway is that the demographic of Stanford while being very large was surprising to you. And you’re just not sure why in this crowd of people shouting no kings, you didn’t see more faces of different colors. That’s really what you’re saying today. You’re not sure.

RECCHIA: Yes. Interfactual observation.

WEXLER: Yeah. Frank Recchia, News 12. Thank you so much for joining us. We always love having you on the show. Be well, my friend.

RECCHIA: Thank you, Lisa.

Humans Still Outthink AI, With Reason: Melanie Mitchell on The Lisa Wexler Show – 6/17/25

Published on June 20, 2025 by Lisa WexlerLeave a comment

WEXLER: Artificial intelligence, AI, is everywhere. It’s being embedded in places that we might take for granted or coming from humans. It’s affecting the kind of decisions people are making about the kind of work they want to do, and it’s certainly affecting the way people are going about doing their work. Professor Melanie Mitchell has been spending a long time thinking about it. She wrote about AI well before it became a term of art that we talk about colloquially. She received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Michigan back in 1990, and she has held faculty or research positions at Michigan, the Santa Fe Institute, Los Alamos, the Oregon Graduate Institute. She’s currently professor at the Santa Fe Institute, focusing on conceptual abstraction and analogy making in humans and in AI systems. She joins us now. Hello, Melanie Mitchell. Hello, Professor. Welcome.

MITCHELL: Hello. Nice to be on your show.

WEXLER: It was really interesting because I saw in an article published recently that you said that notwithstanding everything we’re hearing about AI and ChatGPT, I use GROCK3 a lot, one of them, that they lack robust reasoning and cannot do analogies, and that that distinguishes them still from our brain, although they may be catching up. So tell us about that, Melanie. Hello.

MITCHELL: Yeah. So AI systems have progressed enormously over the past decade, but they still lack a lot of things that humans can do, which is including being able to reason in a robust way, being able to generalize, being able to distinguish truth from not truth.

WEXLER: Oh, big time.

MITCHELL: And many other things.

The Human Edge: Analogies and Reasoning

WEXLER: Can we still do that? That’s really the question. So Melanie, I’ve got so much to ask you. Okay, wait. So here’s the thing. Oh God, I have so much to ask you. You say that AI can’t generalize and can’t do analogies. Just as a comment, I’d like to hear your comment on this. You know, the SATs about 20 years ago got rid of the analogy section for kids. When we were kids, I don’t know how old you are, but when we were kids, the analogy section was always one of the more challenging components of the SAT. And I thought that it distinguished the smart kids from the not so smart kids, to be honest, because I thought it was asking things about the brain that couldn’t be memorized by rote. But the SAT got rid of it. Query, right, should they have done so, given what we now know about distinguishing the machine brain from the human brain?

MITCHELL: Well, I’ll just clarify that I wouldn’t say that they can’t do analogies, but I would say that they can’t do them in a general way that humans can do them. And that’s been shown in a lot of studies. An analogy goes beyond the kinds of SAT questions that you and I were faced with, such as, you know, shoe is to foot as glove is to blank, which are just words, how words relate to each other. But in general, an analogy is how whole situations relate to each other. They’re, you know, much more complex than a single word. And that’s something that humans are really good at, even though they might not even notice that they’re making analogies. And they’re really good at understanding new kinds of situations by analogy to things that they’ve experienced. And this is something that AI systems are still lacking.

WEXLER: And are they being built now to overcome this deficiency? Is there an aim to make them better at that?

MITCHELL: Yeah, there’s many people working on how to make them more general, more robust, more trustworthy. But they still have a lot of limitations in that. But, you know, there’s research going on all the time to make them better. But it turns out to be harder than a lot of people expected.

Don’t Believe the Hype: AI’s “Desire” to Stay Online

WEXLER: We’re chatting with Professor Melanie Mitchell, 203-333-9422. There was an astonishing, I’m sure you saw this news story, in which two different AI systems, when they were going to be shut down for something, they created an obstacle or a trick, so that they were not going to be shut down. Do you know what I’m referring to? This just happened last week, Melissa.

MITCHELL: Yeah, I do. Yeah, I mean, this is something that I think it’s reported a lot in the media, but you have to really look at the details of what’s going on. You know, humans are prompting them with text that is trying to sort of lead the way to them, generating text that sounds like they don’t want to be shut down. But the question is, how much is this inside the machine and how much is it the humans kind of leading questions to them in this way? So, I think a lot of these claims are way overblown, that we have to, if you actually look at the details of what happened, you would not find it as alarming as might have been reported in the media.

WEXLER: That’s interesting, because like here’s the media, an artificial intelligence safety firm has found that OpenAI’s 03 and 04 mini models sometimes refuse to shut down and will sabotage computer scripts in order to keep working on tasks. And so you’re thinking Hal is here from 2001 of Space Odyssey and he won’t go away. That’s what you’re thinking, right?.

MITCHELL: Right, exactly. But of course, those systems actually have no control over whether they’re shut down or not. And they’ve been trained with lots of human generated text, including, say, movie scripts about machines that refuse to be shut down. And so when humans prompt them in certain ways, they will generate text that sounds like the text they’ve been trained on. But in my opinion, they don’t actually have any wants or desires or any sort of emotions like we might have about being shut down. So I think that’s really a misrepresentation by the media of what’s actually going on.

AI in the Arts and Daily Life

WEXLER: Have you seen the Tony Award-winning show Maybe Happy Ending?

MITCHELL: No, I haven’t.

WEXLER: I think we both have to go see it. We’re chatting with Professor Melanie Mitchell because it is about, it was written by a Korean and an American. It was originally produced in Korea and it’s about two robots. And it is the show is an exploration of the conversation between the robots. And they say it’s quite moving and remarkable. I’m just saying.

MITCHELL: Oh, I’d love to see it.

WEXLER: Yeah. All right. So Melanie Mitchell, I have a question from the audience. Please, could I ask you about AI agents and how they are useful to us? And of course, my first question is, what is an AI agent?

So an AI agent is an AI system that can go do things for you. So you might chat with Chat GPT and generate answers to your questions. But you might want an AI system that will actually do something on the web, for example, will go and book your airplane ticket, or will find a restaurant and make a reservation for you, and actually take actions as opposed to just chatting. So that’s an AI agent. And those are beginning to come into the world. There are such things that you can use, but you have to be cautious because while they can be really useful and save you work, but they can also make errors. And if you entrust them with your personal information, like say your credit card number, it’s possible that they might be vulnerable to hacking the same way that other computer systems are. So I think we have to go into this new world of AI agents with a lot of care and evaluation for what kinds of problems that might arise.

WEXLER: Are they free?

MITCHELL: I think that they, you know, some of them require certain kinds of subscriptions to say OpenAI or Google’s Gemini system. But, you know, they don’t cost very much to use. And I think a lot of them are still at an experimental stage.

WEXLER: They must burn a lot of energy. If everybody has their own AI agent, which you know, could happen at some point, just think about how much energy that’s going to be eating up. Really? Wow.

MITCHELL: Yeah. So, this whole question of energy costs for AI, it’s somewhat controversial how much energy these systems are using. And companies that make these systems aren’t very open about telling us how much energy they use. But they certainly do use a lot more energy than like a human doing the same task. Because they need so much training, they need to be trained on so much data, and that costs a lot of energy. And also just doing the things that they do takes a lot of electricity. You know, I don’t know how to compare it exactly with a human, as a human, say, has to go out of the Internet and click on links and so on. But I think it is quite a bit more.

WEXLER: It’s quite a bit more. We’re fed by, you know, corn and soybeans and meat and potatoes and carrots. They’re fed by, you know, lithium ion batteries and who knows what else, and natural gas and coal and everything else, right? Yeah.

MITCHELL: Yeah. I mean, it’s a concern. And people are, in the field of AI, are working on trying to reduce the amount of energy these systems need. So hopefully, in the not too distant future, we’ll have much more energy efficient AI systems.

WEXLER: Professor Melanie Mitchell, what do you use AI for in the course of your day? How do you use AI?

MITCHELL: Yeah, this is a great question. I mean, I think people have to recognize that AI systems are everywhere. It’s not just Chat GPT or other systems like that. But for instance, when I drive and if I use Google Maps, and GPS to navigate, that’s using AI. Or if I speak into my phone and have it transcribe what I said for a text or an email, that’s using AI. All of these things are AI uses, and I think a lot of them are somewhat invisible to us. But I personally, I use it to speak the things that I want to get typed, to people.

WEXLER: How do you do that? Tell me how you do that.

MITCHELL: Well, on my phone, there’s all kinds of apps that will just, you press a little microphone on your text messages, and it opens up the microphone, and you just speak, and it transcribes what you say.

WEXLER: I don’t know how to do that. I don’t see the transcription one. I only know how to send it as a voicemail. That’s interesting. I have to think of that.

MITCHELL: Well, yeah, there’s plenty of things that are called speech to text. I think if you have a smartphone, there is such an app on it already. In terms of using generative AI like ChatGPT, I use those systems a lot for writing code. They’re extremely good at writing computer programs. And in the course of my job, I have to do that quite a bit. And I have found them extraordinarily useful for that.

The Future of Work: Humans in the Loop

WEXLER: Amazing. One of the questions that we keep being asked, and not only being asked, but thinking about ourselves as we have children that are rising into the working world, Melanie Mitchell, is what do you think kids should be studying today to be able to have a job in which their own self will be hireable as they enter the working world? In other words, I’m listening to you and I’m thinking, well, scratch computer programmer. I’m not sure I need to learn that anymore because AI can do it for me. So maybe learning how to become a self-taught computer programmer, which was all the rage 10 years ago, is not going to be the rage now or 10 years from now. What jobs do you think are not going to be replaced by AI?

MITCHELL: Well, I don’t know if computer programmers are going to be replaced. I think that it’s going to be made more efficient that rather than replacing programmers, programmers are going to use AI in their jobs. I think a human still needs to be in the loop for a lot of these tasks, even though AI is quite good at it, just because the human needs to know, it needs to actually pose the problem to the AI. AI can’t think of its own problems to solve, and I think that AI systems, while they will replace some jobs, they will actually create new jobs, and that’s something that’s happened with every technology. It used to be thought that when personal computers came out, that many jobs would be replaced, but actually these computers are things that we just use as tools in our jobs. Our jobs changed. And I think that’s what’s going to happen with AI also. So I think that, you know, the idea that computers are going to replace us as writers or journalists or computer programmers, I think that that’s not going to happen at least anytime very soon. And I think the same kinds of skills that we value in people studying for those kinds of professions today are the same ones that they’re going to need. So they are going to need critical thinking, they’re going to need logical thinking, they’re going to need to know how to interact with computers and with AI systems, they’re going to need to know how to deal with people and understand, you know, the social world. This is something that AI systems can’t do very well. And that’s, those are all the skills that I think need to be honed in, in school today. So I think that, you know, critical thinking and understanding these technologies is going to be really important.

WEXLER: So it comes down to the social emotional learning, which is critical for all humans at all times. By critical thinking, it comes down to literature, reading comprehension, understanding and poking philosophy, right? So then what you’re saying is the humanities are still relevant. And even, and even the STEM skills are relevant because you can’t tell an AI model what to do unless you have a pretty strong foundation yourself.

MITCHELL: Absolutely. I think you said it perfectly.

WEXLER: Melanie Mitchell, such a pleasure to have you on the show today. And thank you for your writing and your thinking about all of this. We really appreciate you joining us today on the show.

MITCHELL: Well, thanks a lot. I enjoyed it.

Sean Scanlon Says Connecticut Has Moved Passed Our Fiscal Crisis on The Lisa Wexler Show – 6/16/25

Published on June 18, 2025 by Lisa WexlerLeave a comment

WEXLER: Joining us now is Sean Scanlon, our Comptroller, one of our four, I think it is, Constitutionally-Elected Officers of the great state of Connecticut. Hello, Sean. Welcome back to the show today. Hi. So, Commissioner Scanlon, Comptroller Scanlon, from 40,000 feet, you’re one of our Constitutionally-Elected Officers. Your role is very much to be a caretaker of money and also our healthcare system. Are there national politics right now that are interfering with your ability to do your job, or do you feel that we in Connecticut can feel assured that we are on track in terms of government spending and our health care plan?

SCANLON: Well, national politics, unfortunately, plays a role in everything we do in the sense that it’s driving so much of what I think is going wrong in this country and so much of the difficult political divide that we’re facing. And in state government, we still can work together and try to bridge this divide in ways that I don’t think they can in Washington. But the rhetoric and vibe of Washington and the actual things they’re doing, they impact Connecticut every single day and every single thing that I do. And I think it’s my job in some ways, Lisa, to not just get up there every day and say, Donald Trump is bad for America and bad for Connecticut, but to actually explain not just what specifically that is, because I think people just tune out, you know, Trump bad, but also explain why we can be doing things better here in Connecticut and often doing things better by working together, Democrat and Republican, to solve problems. And I try to do that as often as I can, even though what is certainly more in vogue politically these days is just to talk about why you think the other side is so bad. But I think that leads to a lot of the problems we face and frankly, what happened in Minnesota over the weekend.

Political attacks, the safety of politicians and public figures, and the American public response

WEXLER: Oh, what happened in Minnesota over the weekend? Sean, it was so terrible.

SCANLON: I have been doing this for 10 years. I got elected to the legislature when I was really young in my 20s, and I got elected to this job at 35, as the youngest person ever to have it. And I gotta tell you, Lisa, that almost every day, somebody says, you know, you should get out of politics, right, for different reasons, but increasingly just because people just view it as a profession mired in danger and drama and all these things, and it’s certainly something that I increasingly worry about, which is something that nobody should worry about, but at the end of the day, I still am idealistic that I can change things and make things better and I think, you know, we need more of that in this moment to counter the real bad stuff that people are seeing, unfortunately.

WEXLER: We do. We now have to add to the list of people competent for public service, we have to add bravery. That’s correct. That has to be one of the criteria now to be able to run for office. You’ve got to be a little bit brave, like they have to be in Mexico and Colombia. It’s sort of scary that we’ve come to that. I was reading a piece that talked about the history of political violence. It’s as old as our republic, but it seemed like for several decades it really was at bay, and now it seems to be forward again.

SCANLON: Yeah, and we can’t normalize it, right? It’s insane. Like every politician tweeted yesterday, I’m shocked and horrified by this, but today they’re going to get back to saying the same stuff that they usually say, right? Our president, our former president, was almost assassinated last summer. We had a governor just a few weeks ago, one of my favorite governors in the country, Josh Shapiro, was literally firebombed in his home while he slept, and we’ve just moved on, right? We see shocking acts of violence all the time, of anti-Semitism, of racial hatred towards other people, and like everything else, we sort of just say, what a world, what a crazy world, this is where we’re at. We have to stop this stuff, right? And I’m a dad of two young kids, and not to get sanctimonious, but this is the kind of stuff that I don’t want my kids to grow up just thinking is normal, right? And I just, I don’t know the answers. I don’t know how we solve this, Lisa, but I just know that this has to stop, and we can’t just accept this as the new reality that we just have to deal with because it is what it is.

WEXLER: I’m with you, Sean. You know, I’m an elected judge. I’ve been elected four times, and judges have been one of the most prominent targets as a class of political people, of public service people in this country. Family court judges, whatever, just judges, because people are lunatics. And I’ve got my, you know, police chief on speed dial. And yeah, and I had to put cameras around my house. I was like the least person ever inclined. When I put cameras around my house, my daughter said, Mommy, what happened to you? I’m like, I don’t think I had a choice, Joanna. I’m sorry. I didn’t have a choice. And that’s as willing as I’m supposed to go, like to change my life, right? I didn’t want to have surveillance of people coming up my walk, but I do now. And I’m still out here doing my thing, right? Because I’m like you, my commitment to public service is still greater than my fear. But I thought to myself on Saturday, we’re chatting with Sean Scanlon, our Comptroller, I thought, who are we going to now have run? Lunatics on the left and right? Where are we going to get the same normal people to run for office anymore? They’re going to stay the hell with it. I don’t want to bother. That’s the danger in America.

SCANLON: Yes, yeah, I mean, look, I think that, I remind people all the time that 90% of people are not paying attention to politics, right, it doesn’t seem like that because we’re inundated everyday 24-7 by alerts on our phone about politics and news about politics, but most people are tuning that out and most people are frankly disgusted by what is happening. But if you pay attention to politics, you think we’re all in this never-ending doom spiral of fighting with each other and that that’s the only way to be that way. And that rhetoric inspires people who are unwell to take action in ways that, you know, everybody says they don’t want to see. But it’s up to us to change this. And I’m reading this great book right now called April 1865 by Jay Winnick. It came out like 20 plus years ago, but it was about the crazy month of April of 1865 where within one week we had the end of the Civil War and the assassination of President Lincoln and how we as a country responded to that and kept things together and reunited after that Civil War. And it goes to your point, Lisa, about how, you know, people think this is the craziest and most challenging time in American history. It’s not. We just think that because we have more access to information at any time in American history. But the answer is there for us to do this. And I just think it takes more people being willing to get out of the politics that’s broken and the status quo and try to move this country forward beyond just the same everyday BS that we’re doing right now, in my opinion.

WEXLER: And you know, when we were learning about Lincoln’s assassination, I didn’t learn this until I was an adult. John Wilkes Booth was the most famous actor of his generation. It would be like imagining, God forbid, like Tom Cruise assassinating the president, like something like that. Like it was an earthquake. It wasn’t just an average person who dared to shoot President Lincoln. It was the most famous actor in America. It was like you couldn’t create that kind of drama. You couldn’t write it. You know what I mean? It was unbelievable, actually. Unbelievable. I’m glad you’re reading the book. I hadn’t read that book. So, Sean Scanlon, let me ask you this, just bringing us back down. We are closing, they’ve closed the legislative session. I know you follow that very closely. The implementer bill is being awash. The housing bill is we don’t know what’s going to happen with that. We’ll have to see what Governor Lamont decides to ultimately do. From your point of view, as you sit in your various roles and positions, what’s the most consequential thing that you want us to know that came out of this legislative session?

Connecticut budgeting: working through the Connecticut fiscal crisis, affordability, and where to go next

SCANLON: Well, I think I would say the most consequential thing is something that I’ve talked about with you a lot, which is that the budget, I think, is a reflection of the reality that 10 years ago, Connecticut was in a fiscal crisis. We changed the way we budget. We did things like instituting the fiscal guard rails, and as a result of that, 10 years later, we’ve ended the fiscal crisis that was dominating Connecticut for the decade of the 2010s. I think we have a new crisis, Lisa, which is an affordability crisis, where health care, housing, child care, ever source bills, they all cost too much. They are all holding Connecticut back from going where we need to go, which is to get out of just neutral, where we’ve been in before, and move the state forward, and get to our full potential. We got to make the state more affordable, and so I think the budget that passed and what the governor and I, and I think hopefully a lot of legislators are trying to do is to say, hey, we’re in a new era in Connecticut. We’re moving past fiscal crisis, but now we have to address these other things that we haven’t had the ability to address for so long because we didn’t have the financial ability to do that when it came to our budget. And I think that is not a one bill and done or one budget and done thing, it’s going to take us 5 to 10 years to just chip away at this problem. But if we do that, Lisa, and we’ve tamed both these crises, the fiscal crisis and the affordability crisis, I think we are primed to see some really, really big and exciting growth happening in our state for the first time in a long time. And as somebody who loves the state and wants to see it hit its full potential, I think we’re finally in this really, really important moment that we can actually make that happen.

WEXLER: So, let me just, I’m hearing you very closely, Sean Scanlon. You think we’re out of the fiscal crisis. However, we have not paid down by any means our entire pension obligation. So why do you say that?

SCANLON: I say that because the 2017 guardrails were created to end the immediate fiscal crisis of, we hadn’t been paying our bills, we had persistent budget deficits because the way we structured our budgeting was leading to those deficits. And by instituting those controls and changes to our budget, we’ve now had seven consecutive years of budget surpluses. We’ve had the boosting of our rainy day fund to the highest it’s ever been in the history of our state at $4 billion. We’ve paid off almost a quarter of that pension debt just in the last five years alone. So I’m not saying that we are out of the woods on getting Connecticut going in a better direction. We’re not, but we have ended the actual crisis where we’ve stopped the bleeding, right? That doesn’t mean the patient is healthy. It just means that we’ve stopped the bleeding and we now know how to fix the patient. And we’re doing that right now. It’s gonna take more time, but we can’t just say, hey, we have to only treat one disease in this patient’s body. You see what I’m doing here? We’re going on a real medical show tangent.

WEXLER: I do. I see that, yes.

SCANLON: But there’s a co-occurring disease within the body.

WEXLER: The comorbidity. Let’s go there, Sean. The comorbidity.

SCANLON: To keep a patient alive and thriving, you can’t just treat one problem at the sake of the other. We have to do both at the same time. We have to walk and chew gum. And that means, in my mind, Lisa, finding a balance. Frankly, I think a better balance than we found in this last budget, not to be critical, but I think there is a better way to do it, of both paying down those obligations of the past, but also meeting the moment and funding these things that we were never able to fund.

WEXLER: Well, one of the Republican criticisms that I’ve heard coming out of the budget is that the fiscal guardrails were broken for the first time since 2017, with some money that was shifted that could be used for the general operating account. Are you saying, Sean Scanlon, you would have wanted to see more of that money do that or less of that money do that?

SCANLON: No, I think it’s not about more or less. It’s more about we just need to be bigger and bolder when it comes to tackling these things that are going wrong in the state, in my mind, or are causing the state to be not as affordable as it can be. That doesn’t always require the state spending money, in my mind. I don’t think money is the answer to every problem. I think it’s that we just need to be more aggressive and think bigger when it comes to addressing this, right? Energy is a good example of that. The legislature worked really hard this year on a bill, and I don’t mean to minimize their work at all. They ended up passing a bipartisan bill, but they themselves came out and said, well, this bill is only going to save you about 5% on your energy bill, right? Is that better than nothing? 100%. Is energy policy really, really hard and complicated? Yes, it is. But we got to do better than 5% savings when people are getting killed by their Eversource bill every year, and especially in the summertime. And I think that we can be bigger and bolder, but we have to get out of this land of steady habits mentality that we got to hit singles at a time when I think people want us to hit home runs.

Connecticut housing bill: the importance of affordable housing and where to go next

WEXLER: We’re chatting with Sean Scanlon. Sean Scanlon, if you were the governor, would you be signing the housing bill?

SCANLON: You know what, I think as the governor has said, the bill is not perfect, and there are some things that are in there that, you know, he would have preferred to do differently. I think it’s the same for me. I’m somebody who grew up, my parents got divorced when I was six. My dad moved back to New York where he was from, and my mom and I lived in just about every apartment there was in the town of Guilford, and there weren’t that many, trying to stay in that town because it was important to my mom that I grew up there because she had grown up there, and a lack of affordable housing really impacted my family. You know, I bought my first house with my wife when I was 30 years old, and prior to me buying that house, I had lived in a house that was purchased for only about one year of my first 30 years in life because my parents just couldn’t afford to be anything but renters. So I think that that bill that passed is a really gigantic step in the right direction and gets us on a path that’s better than the path we’re on now. Are there things in there I think were not the best way of attacking the problem? Yes, but I think overall it’s a good bill and it’s a bill that gets us going in the right direction. And as the governor has said, we’ve got some time to fix some of the things that weren’t correctly done in the bill before they take effect. And I’m confident that the legislature will do that. But I would sign the bill and I think he’s going to sign the bill too.

WEXLER: You know, Sean Scanlon, I’m listening to you carefully. I just want to say this. You started, you tell the story of your growing up from the point of view that you were happier, from the point of view as a listener, I’m listening to it, happier being able to own something of your own and that your mother was finally happier to be owned something of your own than renting. And a lot of the housing policies, this bill and other housing policies, are directed at continuing to build rental properties that don’t really do that. I mean, I’m all for the state helping out with down payments for housing, helping out with people eventually owning, creating more co-ops and condos, whether they’re in townhouses or high rises, not just single-family models. I just think our housing policy could be much more tailored to addressing what you’re talking about, which is helping people get a leg up on affording their own home. That’s just my own thought. And I don’t know that this is part of the policy.

SCANLON: Well you know, and I think that that’s right. And I think part of the controversy of this bill and what I’ve been hearing from people who live down in your neck of the woods is that this is sort of like a one-size-fits-all approach that might work in some places, but it just doesn’t work in a place like Fairfield County because they don’t have the space to develop the kind of, you know, numbers of units that are being prescribed in this bill. And that’s one way that I think we kind of get this wrong is that sometimes in Hartford, we dictate these one-size-fits-all solutions where, in reality, we need 169-town strategy to build more attainable and affordable housing in the state. And what works in Guilford may not work in Greenwich or it may not work in Granby, but we need more in all those places. And if we can work collaboratively to find a way to do that, whether that’s building apartment units in some places or single-family homes in others, I think we’re just going to be making progress on something that is a genuine, really big problem in the state. And one, of course, that people don’t like to address because it’s hard, right? Everything we do is hard, right? We did all the easy stuff a long time ago in politics and government. We got to start doing the hard stuff because that’s what’s going to make Connecticut better. And this is one of the examples where we can really do that. Everyone has a fear of the other and a fear of, oh, my God, what is this going to mean? At the end of the day, we’re going to be OK. This bill is not the end of the world. And it’s not even as bad as most people think it is. There are opportunities to fix it, and we can fix it. But we can’t kick the can on this issue. It’s too important.

WEXLER: Sean Scanlon, thank you so much for joining us. Our Comptroller joins us once a month to talk with us about what’s happening in our news. We really appreciate this conversation. You be well. Take care of yourself.

SCANLON: Thank you. Bye.