[DESCRIPTION] Ritchie Torres is sitting in a chair and speaking.

[RITCHIE TORRES] When people ask me, why are you so pro-Israel, I tell them it's because I dropped out of college.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[DESCRIPTION] Touro Talks intro displaying photos of students and faculty across the university, fading into the Touro University logo.

[TEXT] TOURO TALKS TOURO UNIVERSITY, A Conversation with U.S. Congressman Ritchie Torres, January 27, 2025, Touro Talks is sponsored by Robert and Arlene Rosenberg

[DESCRIPTION] Dr. Alan Kadish speaks to the camera with a blank background. Touro University logo is at the bottom right.

[ALAN KADISH] Hello, and welcome to Touro Talks. I'm Dr. Alan Kadish, the president of Touro University and your host today. In a world that's filled with turmoil and confusion, it's sometimes hard to find beacons of hope and voices that speak with moral clarity. Congressman Ritchie Torres of the Bronx has been one such voice, an outstanding representative of the people in his district, an incredible friend to the state of Israel and to the Jewish community.

Congressman Torres has stood in opposition to bias and hatred in the halls of Congress and on the streets of New York City. Touro was proud to host the congressman at our Times Square Cross River Campus on January 27. Thank you for joining us today.

[APPLAUSE]

[DESCRIPTION] Alan Kadish and Ritchie Torres sit on stage in an interview setting with a live audience. Cameras are set up around the stage, recording the event.

[ALAN KADISH] Welcome, Congressman Torres. It's great to have you here.

[RITCHIE TORRES] It's an honor to be here.

[ALAN KADISH] Most of the people in this room are undergraduate students. As you can see, we have a few professors and a few staff members. But by and large, these are undergraduate students, some in school in Manhattan, some in Brooklyn, and some from Queens.

[RITCHIE TORRES] Any Bronx representation?

[ALAN KADISH] Bronx is one of the few places where we don't have a campus. And so I went to medical school in the Bronx. So I have a lot of fond memories of it. And I've been to Yankee Stadium once or twice. But that's one of the few places that Touro doesn't have a campus right now. So, Congressman, before we start talking about some issues, tell us a little bit about your own personal history, how you got into politics, and how you got here today.

[RITCHIE TORRES] So I'm 36, so I've been engaged in politics for about 20 years. I got my start as an intern at age 16. And then I ran for office at age 24 and became an elected official at age 25. But the starting point for me is the Bronx. I was born and raised in the Bronx, spent most of my life in poverty. I was raised by a single mother, who had to raise three of us on minimum wage, which in the 1990s was $4.25 an hour.

And I tell people that whatever virtues I possess are ultimately attributable to my mother. And when I won my Democratic primary in June of 2020, when I knew that I was going to be a United States Congressman, I publicly said that before I'm a congressman or a councilman, I'm first and foremost the son of my mother, Deborah Bosolet. And for me, one of the gratifying facts about representing the Bronx is that it's full of single mothers like mine, who struggle and sacrifice and suffer so that their children can have a fighting chance at a decent life.

For me, the most formative experience of my life was growing up in public housing. Here in New York, we have the largest stock of public housing. It's home to a half a million New Yorkers. But it's been so chronically underfunded that it has a capital need of $80 billion and counting. So I grew up in conditions of mold and mildew, leaks, and lead, without consistent heat and hot water in the winter.

And so my experience in public housing is what inspired me to get my start as a housing organizer. And then eventually, I took the leap of faith and ran for public office when I was 24. I had no deep pockets, no ties to the party machine.

But I spent a whole year doing nothing but knocking on doors. I went into people's homes. I heard their stories. And I won my first campaign on the strength of door-to-door, face-to-face campaigning, became the youngest elected official in New York City.

What's unusual is seven years before then, I was in a completely different place. I was a broken person. I had dropped out of college. I found myself struggling with depression, even abusing substances. There were moments when I thought of taking my own life because I felt as if the world around me had collapsed.

And so I never thought, by the grace of God, I would have a fighting chance to rebuild my life and then seven years later become the youngest elected official in America's largest city and then seven years later become a member of the United States Congress. And so for me, the lesson learned is, even in your moment of greatest darkness, never lose hope. And I feel like only in America is a story like mine possible.

[ALAN KADISH] That's a great story. So how were you able to turn it around? There are a lot of great people who've come out of the Bronx but also some people, as you point out, who've had a really tough time. What was the secret of your turning it around?

[RITCHIE TORRES] Well, obviously, it's just the love and support of my mother, who's just been a constant in my life and then mental health treatment. One of the issues about which I'm most passionate is mental health. Every morning I take an antidepressant, and it enables me to be a productive public servant. And I feel no shame in admitting it because depression is a condition that affects millions of people.

And it's been a personal priority of mine for me to share my story in the hopes of breaking the silence and stigma and shame that often surrounds the subject of mental health. But I would not be in Congress and alive today were it not for the power of mental health treatment.

[ALAN KADISH] So you're absolutely right. It's a huge problem. In our experience, it's actually a problem that's getting worse, not better, despite the advances in treatment. We have a number of schools at Touro that train mental health professionals. And we're trying to do more of that and perhaps provide more community.

Is your experience as well-- do you think mental health problems are on the rise? And do you have a sense of why that is or what we should do about it?

[RITCHIE TORRES] So I'm a millennial, and I have enormous empathy for the plight of Generation Z, which, to me, is facing a perfect storm of mental health challenges. For me, the two events that were catastrophes for the mental health of our society, particularly Gen Z, are social media and the isolation of COVID, the prolonged isolation of COVID.

Gen Z is the first generation to grow up on social media online, which has led to unprecedented rates of anxiety and depression. It's a topic about which Jonathan Haidt has written extensively. I would recommend his book, The Anxious Generation. But I worry about the long-term implications of social media and the legacy of COVID for the collective mental health of our society.

[ALAN KADISH] And I think you're absolutely right about that. And I think we do need to pay more attention about how to overcome that because we're going to be seeing echoes of that for decades, if we don't do a better job getting people like you to turn around and be able to do the incredible things you've done.

So Touro is not a faith-based institution, but we are a Jewish-sponsored institution. And we do have a big affinity for the State of Israel. And a lot of our students spend time there. In full disclosure, one of my children lives there.

So you've been a strong supporter of Israel. How did that start? And how did you get to be where you are in Israel, which is not necessarily typical for everyone in the United States right now, particularly in the Democratic Party?

[RITCHIE TORRES] I mean, I've been traveling to Israel for about 10 years. So I've been writing about it and speaking about it and thinking about it. It's become a personal passion of mine. I openly identify as a Zionist. I'm not Jewish, but as George Santos would say, I'm Jewish.

My running joke is after the explosion of George Santos, I became the most prominent Jewish gay Latino Congressman of New York. So that's that. But for most of my life, I had no knowledge of Israel or the Jewish community. I grew up in a community that was almost exclusively African-American and Latino.

And a turning point came in 2014 when I entered the city council. And I was invited by the Jewish Community Relations Council to travel to Israel for the first time. It was the first time I ever had an opportunity to travel abroad. And when you experience both the complexity and majesty of Israel as a country, when you go to the Old City or the Masada or Yad Vashem or the Gaza envelope, the experience is formative and transformative.

There was one conversation in particular that lodged in the back of my mind. I was speaking to the local mayor of Sderot, who said that the majority of his children struggle with post-traumatic stress because families like his live under the threat of relentless rocket fire. And I remember seeing bus stops doubling as bomb shelters. And I thought to myself, imagine the sheer trauma of a five-year-old Israeli child seeking refuge in a bomb shelter while sirens are going off and rockets are being fired and adults are panicking. And this is happening not during wartime but during peacetime.

I come from the Bronx, which is a rough neighborhood. And I have constituents who live in fear of bullets and guns. But none of my constituents live in fear of rockets. There's no one in America who fears that Canada and Mexico are going to fire rockets into American homes and communities.

And so I came to realize early on my privilege as an American that I live in a continental republic guarded by two oceans, surrounded by peaceful neighbors, whereas here you have Israel, a tiny democracy the size of New Jersey surrounded by enemies that want to wipe it off the map and that live in the face of genocidal existential threats. And so I came away from that first trip with a profound empathy not only for the plight of the Jewish people but for the complex security situation that Israel faces. What Israel faces has no real equivalent in the American experience.

And when I'm speaking to my colleagues who disagree with me, I tell them, before you rush to judge Israel, you should actually go there and speak to both Israelis and Palestinians. Speak to both Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs. See the facts on the ground with your own eyes. Go to a place like Sderot. And if you have an open heart and an open mind, I guarantee you that you will come to a view of Israel that's far more nuanced than the caricature that percolates on social media platforms and on college campuses.

[ALAN KADISH] And so what's their response when you do that?

[RITCHIE TORRES] Well, what I find is that some of the most vociferous critics of Israel have never gone there and refuse to go there. It was a few years ago. There was an organization known as the Democratic Socialists of America--

[ALAN KADISH] Sure.

[RITCHIE TORRES] --which celebrated October 7 on October 8. And back in the summer of 2020, long before October 7, the DSA sent out a questionnaire to city council candidates. It was about 15 pages. But the final page was a foreign policy section even though the city council has no role in setting foreign policy.

But the foreign policy section only had two questions. Question number one, do you pledge never to travel to Israel if elected to the city council? And question number two, do you pledge to support the boycott divestment and sanctions movement against Israel?

And so, in the mind of the DSA, it is morally permissible to travel to China, which has committed genocide against Uyghur Muslims or to travel to Russia, which has invaded a sovereign nation state like Ukraine or to travel to Iran which is the leading sponsor of terrorism in the world. But travel to the world's only Jewish state? That is strictly forbidden. And for me, if that is not evidence of anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism, then I'm not sure what would be.

[ALAN KADISH] Why do you think that that's taken over the minds of some of your colleagues and the Democrats that you've described. Do you have a sense of why that is or what's responsible?

[RITCHIE TORRES] I have a bad joke that's probably not appropriate to tell here. But when people ask me, why are you so pro-Israel, I tell them it's because I dropped out of college. But I feel like higher education, not Touro-- but I think there are college campuses and social media platforms that are indoctrinating students with a hatred for Israel, which bleeds into anti-Semitism.

[ALAN KADISH] So what I would suggest to you is I think you're absolutely right. And I think the phenomena you mentioned before about social media and short attention spans is related to that because if you don't travel to Israel, if you don't understand the history of the Jewish people, if you don't respect the fact that we're Indigenous people, at least a short soundbite is we're powerful.

The Palestinians aren't as powerful. So therefore, they're just-- and I think those short soundbites don't have the same perspective that you've been able to bring to the Middle East because both of your thoughtfulness, your background and the fact that you've visited Israel-- and I think somehow we have to try to break through that.

A lot of us have had some good ideas. But I think the work that you're doing and the way you've portrayed things here-- And as we know, you've been in the media a lot in the last week, which we've seen. And you've been articulate. And you've been a strong supporter of righteousness and moral clarity, and that's been tremendous.

So before we go on, I just want to thank you for that. I've heard you quoted as saying that "the progressive movement moved on for you." You didn't change. So tell me a little bit more about what you feel about the progressive movement, your relationship with it, and how that quote really describes where you are politically.

[RITCHIE TORRES] So when I first entered politics, I identified as a progressive. But over time, the progressive movement has become so radicalized that it's morphed into something that I no longer recognize. So when I first entered the city council 12 years ago, the progressive position on Israel was a two-state solution.

Now it's free Palestine from the river to the sea. Now it's the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state. Back then, the progressive position on policing was police reform. And now it's defund the police or abolish the police. Now, back then, the progressive position was on immigration reform. And now it's open borders. And so I feel like it's become so radicalized that I no longer feel at home in the movement.

And I feel like there's a deep strain of anti-Semitism on the far left. And I'm convinced that any movement that embraces anti-Semitism will ultimately rot from within. To me, there's no excuse for an organization like the Democratic Socialists of America celebrating the mass murder of Jews on October 7.

[ALAN KADISH] No excuse for celebrating the mass murder of any of anyone. So how do your constituents feel about this?

[RITCHIE TORRES] Well, I have a varied constituency.

[ALAN KADISH] Tell us a little bit about your district, where it spans.

[RITCHIE TORRES] I represent about half the Bronx. It's home to great institutions like Yankee Stadium, the botanical gardens, the Bronx Zoo, Fordham University, Arthur Avenue, Little Italy, which has some of the highest concentration of businesses that have been owned by the same family for more than 100 years. It's an extraordinary neighborhood.

My district is primarily Latino and African-American. The South Bronx is primarily Latino. The Northeast Bronx of my district is primarily African-American. I represent Woodlawn, which is a heavily Irish community. There are vestiges of an Italian community both in Morris Park and in Arthur Avenue, a significant Albanian population in both Pelham Parkway and Arthur Avenue, Mexican population in Arthur Avenue. And then I have a vibrant Jewish community in Riverdale, including an Orthodox Jewish community. And then I represent Little Yemen.

So my constituents in Riverdale are generally pro-Israel. My constituents in Little Yemen are not so pro-Israel. But for most of my Black or Brown constituents-- if you're a single mother struggling to put food on the table and pay the bills and keep your family afloat, the farthest issue on your mind is Israel. You're concerned about the cost of living, public safety, the bread and butter concerns.

[ALAN KADISH] So I've heard you talk a little bit about this. But do you think that the results of the last election, which were close but where the Republicans won across the board-- do you think that was related to the fact that a lot of your colleagues in the Democratic Party aren't concerned about those bread and butter issues? Do you think that was part of it?

[RITCHIE TORRES] Yes, I feel like we swung the pendulum too far to the left on issues of public safety and border security, and we became out of touch. And the two reasons we lost-- one was inflation. If you're paying double or triple the cost for groceries and gasoline, people are going to feel the impact of higher cost. And then, immigration, the overwhelming impact of the migrant crisis on cities like New York had a radicalizing effect on voters, including in my district.

So I think one of the things that hasn't been talked about enough about inflation-- there are a lot of ways to look at the statistics. But if you look at what a family really needs to do, people like me are lucky enough that if eggs triple in price, we can still buy eggs. But for people who aren't as wealthy, this is really a serious issue. And the numbers I don't think reflect the pain that people have had.

It's the most important issue. For me-- and I've said this to my colleagues-- the mission of the Democratic Party should be simple, lower cost, lower crime rates, and make government work. Make government effective and efficient. Make it capable of delivering for people. And I felt like we just got distracted by fashionable nonsense, and we lost our focus on the fundamentals.

I was en route to Manhattan. I was in the car with an Uber driver who said to me he recognized me. He actually said he voted for Trump. He voted for me, and he voted for Trump. But he said he's working two jobs. His wife is working two jobs, and he cannot afford the rent. And he's being forced to relocate to Pennsylvania after living here for 30 years.

And we're hemorrhaging population. We're losing working class people who can no longer afford the cost of living in New York. And that, to me is a fundamental failure of governance.

Even today, on my social media account, I released a video on Con Edison. I don't know if you're a fan of Con Edison. But we conducted an investigation, which found that the difference between what Con Edison charges the Bronx for gas delivery and what National Grid charges Queens for gas delivery is as much as 200%.

[ALAN KADISH] That's crazy.

[RITCHIE TORRES] And so when we asked Con Edison why the differential, they said, well, we provide a better service. I'm like, it's gas. Well, you're providing magic gas. But all of it adds up, the higher cost of utilities and rents.

And even earlier today, I did a press conference on early intervention, which is a program that serves the most disabled children in our society, one to three years old, zero to three years old. These are children who have developmental delays, disabilities. And we have the worst early intervention program in the state, in the country, where it ranked 50 out of 50. And there are 10,000 children on the waiting list for these federally-mandated services.

And the program has been so poorly managed that you have working class providers who have gone months without pay. I spoke to a provider who went unpaid for 15 weeks. She had to take out debt, and she couldn't stop working because she's serving severely disabled children who need her services.

But the system is failing. There are many in our state who feel like the state is heading in the wrong direction. And they feel like their public safety and affordability and quality of life is declining and their costs are rising, and that we're all paying more and more for less and less. Something's got to give.

[ALAN KADISH] How do we make government work better? Because in the things that we experience, we have the same-- it may not be exactly the same things, but we have the same challenges of the fact that we're frustrated that government doesn't work better than it does. And so we're struggling with trying to figure out why that is and what we can do about it. And I know you've had some ideas about that. So I thought I'd--

[RITCHIE TORRES] Well, first, admission is the first step toward recovery. The political establishment thinks that everything is wonderful. But that's not what people are feeling on the ground. And I feel like we should be honest that government is failing people. People feel that government is failing them, and we have to figure out how to make it work.

I feel like we have the most dysfunctional criminal justice system. Take as an example the case of Jamar Banks. He stabbed two people on New Year's day. And he had 54 priors, including an attempted murder, a shooting, multiple stabbings, multiple acts of domestic violence, thousands of dollars in theft. And he was released back onto the streets.

And the average New Yorker wonders, how can you have a criminal history that includes attempted murder only to be released back onto the streets? And here's the problem. New York is the only state in the country that prohibits judges from considering the public safety risk of violent offenders and repeat offenders.

[ALAN KADISH] And that was a criminal justice reform that was passed just a few years ago. Is that right?

[RITCHIE TORRES] Yes. And again, some of the reforms were right and laudable. But we need common sense. The question of whether judges should have the authority to consider public safety risks, if I were to present that to the people of New York in the form of a referendum, 80% of New Yorkers would vote for it, 80% of New Yorkers from every background Black and white, Latino and Asian.

And yet the problem with our politics is that common sense is dangerously uncommon. Albany refuses to end the practice of releasing repeat offenders. It refuses to empower our judges to consider public safety risks.

[ALAN KADISH] So Touro, by the way, we have another version of what you've just talked about. We have only one rule of management. It's don't do stupid stuff. We don't always succeed. But at least that's what we try to shoot for. And common sense--

[RITCHIE TORRES] Common sense is the rule.

[ALAN KADISH] Sometimes it seems that government fails in that regard, whereas you've presented a very common sense view of a lot of things today. Let's go back to one of the topics that we talked about earlier, which was you mentioned that you think universities are responsible for some of the rise in anti-Semitism in the United States. And that's certainly something that a lot of us have thought a lot about. So how has that happened? And how should we address it?

[RITCHIE TORRES] Well, I think much of what happens on college campuses is ideological indoctrination masquerading as instruction. I mean, take as an example Columbia University, where a professor by the name of Joseph Massad, who is an apologist for October 7, is teaching about the Jewish enlightenment. How could an apologist for October 7 be teaching about the Jewish enlightenment? That would be the equivalent of David Duke teaching about the Civil Rights movement. It's offensive. It's absurd.

[ALAN KADISH] So I would only disagree with one part of what you've just said is I wouldn't call Massad an apologist of October 7. I think he's actually a supporter of October 7. I don't think he's apologizing.

[RITCHIE TORRES] No, no, no. I'm using apology in a different way.

[ALAN KADISH] No, I'm just--

[RITCHIE TORRES] Apologia in the sense he's a defender of October 7, at least that's my understanding of the word "apologist," not that he regrets or is sorry for it, but he's an apologist in the sense that he defends it.

[ALAN KADISH] And he may be the most egregious example. But we've seen at universities all over the country that a lot of the progressive movement that you were talking about earlier has taken over a lot of college campuses. And--

[RITCHIE TORRES] Part of it is foreign influence. So one of the largest donors to higher education is Qatar. And I do worry that foreign gifts has had a corrupting influence on higher education. I'll give you an example. At the K-to-12 level, there was a school in Brooklyn that had an after-school program where the students were shown a map of the Middle East, where Israel was wiped off the map. And it turns out that program was funded by the Qatari International Foundation.

And so when I reached out to the chancellor, the previous chancellor, before he was raided by the FBI-- when I reached out to him and asked him, do you not review the materials that are shown to your students? He said, we're not in a position to review every single thing that our students see. I said, don't review everything. Just review the materials coming from the Qatari International Foundation. But I feel like we should not allow our foreign adversaries to weaponize American institutions against Americans or to use our colleges and universities to conduct what are effectively foreign influence operations.

[ALAN KADISH] I think you're absolutely right about that. It's hard to know how to parse the different influences. The start--

[RITCHIE TORRES] I have a common sense rule. If you are an adversary of the United States like China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran or if you're a state sponsor of terrorism like Qatar, then you should be prohibited from contributing foreign gifts to American institutions of higher learning. That would be the rule.

[ALAN KADISH] I was at Columbia in the '70s, and the radicalization actually started then. So this has been going on for a while. So I agree with you completely that foreign donations are a major factor. But I think the self-selecting faculty--

[RITCHIE TORRES] Absolutely.

[ALAN KADISH] --that began as refugees from the '60s have accelerated this process. And I think that it's created a faculty that's out of touch with mainstream America but that's influencing young people on college campuses. And I think that's one of the major challenges we have.

[RITCHIE TORRES] I mean, you remember the Congressional hearings on anti-Semitism. Elise Stefanik, who was a Congresswoman at the time, asked the presidents of the three flagship elite universities, do you think calling for a genocide of Jews is a form of harassment? That's not a trick question. That's a pretty straightforward, simple question.

And if you were to ask the average person in the Bronx, where the median level of educational attainment is less than a college degree, the average Bronx resident would say, of course, it's harassment. Calling for a genocide of any people is harassment. But if you ask an academic, what you will often get is a coldly legalistic, formulaic answer. It's context dependent. And I feel like the loss of moral common sense has become not a bug but a feature of what much of higher education has become.

[ALAN KADISH] I think, unfortunately, you're right. And part of the work we do is to try to create a place where there's common sense, open dialogue, different points of view, but where people have respect for other views and respect for other people. One of the things that was said after those hearings is that some of those college presidents were new and were inexperienced. But if you're going to be president of an elite university, you probably should be ready for the job. And it's not an easy job, no question.

[RITCHIE TORRES] Again, I think a 10-year-old could have answered that question correctly. It's not rocket science to know that calling for a genocide is a form of harassment or should be considered unacceptable.

[ALAN KADISH] The reality is this. A lot of what we've found in dealing with New York State and institutions, there are a lot of great people. But they've lost track of what you've talked about, which is that what they really ought to be doing is helping people. And in dealing with some of the departments we deal with, we more feel like they're worried about whether we have the right color dot on the eye than trying to accomplish the mission that we're engaged in. And so how can--

[RITCHIE TORRES] Well, I just feel like-- take the New York State budget. Since 2015, the budget has grown by $110 billion, by more than 70%. It went from $142 billion in 2015 to a proposed $252 billion budget in 2025. Raise your hand if you've seen a $110-billion improvement in your quality of life and in the delivery of state services. I've yet to find a New Yorker. And no one's asking that question in government. Why are we paying more and more for less and less? And that, to me is the most important question.

[ALAN KADISH] So why are we-- where do you see some specifics about how we could spend the money better or change policy to make it work better?

[RITCHIE TORRES] I mean, I feel like there's a fundamental failure to hold ourselves in government accountable for actual results that the good intentions does not necessarily translate into good results. And ultimately, we should be judged by the results that we create for the people we represent. We use the term progressive.

I mean, the central value of progressivism should be progress. And progress is empirically measurable in the real world. If we're spending more and more on a public good but producing worse results, we should investigate why, rather than simply doubling down on a failing system.

[ALAN KADISH] So let me talk about a couple of specific examples. You talked a little about growing up in public housing. And that's really been a great boon for a lot of New Yorkers but also a terrible problem.

[RITCHIE TORRES] Well, that's why for me government failure is not an abstraction because when government failed my family and me, it meant that I had no heat and hot water in the winter. It meant my grandmother had no hot water because we had no working boiler, or my neighbor was stranded in her top floor apartment because there was no working elevator. So I just feel deeply from my own lived experience that we have an obligation to get it right because when we get it wrong, people can lose their lives or their livelihoods. And we have lost sight of the fact that governing is a moral enterprise that has an actual impact on people's lives and livelihoods.

[ALAN KADISH] So do you think NYCHA, the New York City Housing Association-- is it underfunded? Or is it poorly managed?

[RITCHIE TORRES] Both. It is catastrophically underfunded because, look, no matter how wonderfully managed public housing might be, bricks and roofs, boilers, and elevators do not replace themselves. It requires investment. And there's been a chronic lack of investment in public housing. But it's also poorly managed.

And so if I were an executive, I would have a laser-sharp focus on not only advocating for more funding for public housing but improving the day-to-day operations. So much of government is frozen in the 20th century. We should be bringing government into the 21st century. We should be harnessing the power of technologies like artificial intelligence and blockchain to modernize New York State government.

I'll take an example is we lose hundreds of millions and billions of dollars from toll evasion because people purchase fake license plates. Why are we not harnessing the power of AI to authenticate license plates? It's like a common sense thing to do. It would save us hundreds of millions of dollars every year.

[ALAN KADISH] I think that there have been attempts to try to deal with license plate fraud or toll fraud. There have been attempts to deal with the fare jumping--

[RITCHIE TORRES] The fare evasion.

[ALAN KADISH] --at the MTA. And it represents things that I agree with you. We can do a lot better. And I think we better hurry up and harness the power of AI before China tries to take over AI from us.

[RITCHIE TORRES] Well, China has just made an extraordinary breakthrough. I'm still digging through the details. But it appears that the most superior AI model at the moment is DeepSeek, which is a Chinese company.

[ALAN KADISH] Whether it's superior or just a lot cheaper is still unclear. And I agree with you. We just heard about this today, and we're still trying to figure out--

[RITCHIE TORRES] It's more efficient than Open-- but it's also capable of reasoning step-by-step reasoning. So it's cause for concern.

[ALAN KADISH] It is, which is why we need to continue to invest in education so we can produce the kind of people who can lead the next generation of innovation in this country because the world's gotten to be a more complicated place. Let me close with a couple of questions.

[RITCHIE TORRES] Sure.

[ALAN KADISH] I don't want to put you on the spot too much about national politics. But--

[RITCHIE TORRES] It's my job. So it's not putting me on the spot, but it's--

[ALAN KADISH] What's your impression of how the next Congress is going to work, particularly in the House, given the very narrow Republican majority and the push from the Oval Office to do a lot of things very quickly?

[RITCHIE TORRES] Well, look, I feel like we on the Democratic side are-- we feel like we're drinking from a fire hose because, I mean, the president is issuing hundreds of executive orders. And it's hard to keep track. I mean, for me, the most offensive one is the executive order ending birthright citizenship. I'm convinced it's blatantly unconstitutional. And I hope that the Supreme Court-- if the case reaches the Supreme Court, it's a 9-0 decision. But who knows?

But I suspect the house Democrats are going to be one of the most powerful minorities in history because the Republican margin of control in the House is so vanishingly small. It's only a few seats. And so nothing of consequence can get done without the buy-in of Leader Jeffries and House Democrats. So even though on the surface it appears to be complete Republican control, there are going to be moments when it feels more like divided government.

So in general, I think anything we can do that unites us in any spirit of bipartisanship that we can engage in is good. So I hope that to some extent the House works that way. We'll see whose predictions come out to be true.

[RITCHIE TORRES] Look, even during the first Trump presidency, there was bipartisanship. There was a bipartisan agreement around criminal justice reform, around trade, around the reauthorization of NAFTA. So there will be bipartisanship.

[ALAN KADISH] What do we need to do in the United States right now? And this is the last question I'll ask you. What do we need to do in the United States right now to try to shore up support for Israel, which, of course, you've so eloquently put is near and dear to your heart and certainly is near and dear to ours? So what can we do to change those views? I mean, you talked about taking a few individual people there. That's one thing. But on a larger scale, what do you think we can do?

[RITCHIE TORRES] Well, look, when I think about what are the disproportionate drivers of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, particularly on the far left, the culprits are social media and academia. And reforming academia, reforming social media is a long-term process that has no simple solution. We've been debating Section 230 and social media for decades.

But I feel like the area where you can have the greatest impact in the short term is electoral politics. It matters who you have in elected politics. And so I would encourage all of you, whether you care about Israel or housing or the cost of living, remain engaged in politics.

There are too few people engaged in our civic and political life. And you're ceding power to the extremes. I often feel like the far left and the far right are more politically engaged than the majority of Americans who are in the center. And so if you want to see a triumph of the center over the extremes, we need more Americans to be politically and civically engaged.

[ALAN KADISH] Well, we have a number of political science majors in the room today. And so I think you're encouraging them as--

[RITCHIE TORRES] Even if you're not a political science major, I think part of what it means to be a good citizen is to be engaged in our society and in our government.

[ALAN KADISH] Congressman, it's been an absolute pleasure having you here. I hope we get a chance to see you in the future. And I'm going to actually invite you to join us again soon. And we try to stay neutral on politics, but I think let's just say that a lot of the ideas you talked about for New York State are ones that we hope get implemented because we do need help.

And we do see a lot of the challenges that you described-- and so eloquently-- about your constituents in the Bronx. But in the rest of the New York Metropolitan area, we're feeling it too to the extent that we can make things work better. And I think people like you are a strong way to have that happen.

[RITCHIE TORRES] Well, look--

[ALAN KADISH] And so I appreciate it.

[RITCHIE TORRES] --I feel like we are the greatest state and the greatest country on Earth. And I love to quote Bill Clinton, who said, "there's nothing that's wrong with America that cannot be cured by what's right with America." And I have that same optimism about New York. There's nothing that's wrong with New York that cannot be cured by what's right with New York.

[ALAN KADISH] Friends, congressmen, Mr. Torres. Thank you, sir.

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[DESCRIPTION] Audience applauses and some give standing ovations to Congressmen Ritchie Torres.

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[TEXT] Touro Talks, Touro University, touro.edu/tourotalks

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