- Ted, it's good to see you for our first weekly insight of the new year.

Happy New Year.

And January is already shaping up to be a very big month in the world of politics.

- Yes, both at the state level and in Washington, Michelle.

And one of the interesting things is January Real will set the table for the rest of the year statewide and at the national level too.

- And state lawmakers recently gathered for the first day of the General Assembly on January 7th.

When you look at the house chambers versus the Senate chambers, it's clear the Senate is much more divided this year.

- Right, continuing a theme we talked about a lot at the end of last year.

Right, Michelle, Dominick Ruggerio, he did win another term as Senate president and the vote was 26 to 12, which probably sounds pretty comfortable, but if you look back two years, he got all but one vote to be the Senate president again, which is a reflection of what we've seen this dissent among some of the Senate Democrats who feel that Ruggerio's health, you know, he's 76, he's been struggling with cancer, a growing number of these Senate Democrats feel he's just not in the right shape right now to continue to lead the chamber.

And I think that's why you saw that dissent.

So I'm very interested to see how that dynamic continues throughout the year.

- By contrast, it's a very different feel over at the State House in the house chambers where every Democrat, what the exception of one voted to keep Joe Shekarchi as speaker for another term.

And the speaker has said the focus this year will really be on the budget as lawmakers grapple with what is believed to be a 250 million to $350 million deficit.

- Right, and that tees up the next big moment in January, Michelle, which is Governor Dan McKee will give his annual state of the state address on Tuesday, January 14th, and two days later release his budget bill, which will have his proposal for how to close that deficit.

Interesting for a few reasons, it's McKee's biggest week of the year, any governor, it's their biggest week to...

They have the full statewide attention on them.

It's a chance for maybe to have a bit of a reset following the difficulties in 2024 with the bridge at the end of the year there was the cyber attack.

And then also this is the most difficult financial situation McKee has faced in his term as governor with this large deficit.

So we'll see kind of how he thinks about controlling spending in a more straightened fiscal environment.

- Ted remind viewers, how did we get to a point that we are facing such a large deficit this year?

- Well, on some level it's pretty simple and it's the same old story, Michelle, which is that the state funds programs in areas that grow by more every year, especially healthcare, but also education.

Then tax revenue grows every year.

So every year, if those things go up 4% and the tax revenue goes up 2.5%, you always have a problem.

And then on top of that, it was sort of masked in the last few years by those large influxes of federal money covid relief and related spending bills that money's mostly gone.

So now we're kind of back to the base level budget in Rhode Island, which is in deficit.

- Sure, let's turn now to Washington DC, the new Congress was recently sworn in President-elect Donald Trump will be inaugurated on January 20th.

What will you be watching there as it pertains to how that could affect Southern New England?

- Well, two issues come right to mind to me, Michelle.

The first one is immigration.

Trump obviously campaigned on mass deportations, but there's certainly are questions about how much of that was rhetoric and what the administration's actual policy will be.

You know, are they gonna do more targeted immigration enforcement rather than sweeping immigration deportations?

We just don't know.

And we need to see, once he takes office what he does that would certainly have ripple effect in local communities.

And then tariffs, something Trump has talked about a lot, but again, where some of what he said would be very dramatic, other advisors have suggested maybe a more targeted approach.

So, there's a ton of issues we wanna see what Trump is gonna do on...

But those are two where Michelle, he has a lot of flexibility to act on his own as president, which is why I'm so interested to see what he does right away.

And then interested of course to see how the Democrats who represent this region in Congress react and respond to whatever Trump does.

- Right, if we do see those mass deportations, how does local law enforcement respond?

- Yes, as well as local elected officials.

- Awesome to see you, thank you very much, Ted.

- Great to be here.