Langworthy "Town Hall" Recap

April 19, 2025, Hands Off Protest, Owego, NY

April 24, 2025, Telephone Town Hall

On April 24th Congressman Nicholas Langworthy held a phone-in “town hall” for New York Congressional District 23. It lasted for one-hour seventeen minutes. He talked for twelve minutes and then took questions from nine callers, none from Tioga County.  

Langworthy’s first claim was that “nowhere has been hit harder than Western New York and the Southern Tier by the gluttony of free trade agreements that were really abusive to American manufacturing” and that President Trump recently took “steps to try to restore fairness in our trade practices.” Langworthy didn’t mention that President Trump signed the last trade agreement among the United States, Canada, and Mexico. 

Langworthy next talked about tariffs. He said that “our exporters . . . pay higher tariffs over two-thirds of the time.” However, exporters don’t pay tariffs; consumers do. Faced with higher prices and tariffs, consumers tend to buy local and U. S. manufacturers can’t sell their products overseas. 

After acknowledging “there’s going to be some short-term pain,” Langworthy claimed that under Trump “markets are responding positively.” The stock market did respond positively on April 24th but that was when Trump put a ninety day pause on tariffs.  

Next Langworthy talked about the budget reconciliation process. He said, “This bill provides a blueprint for delivering historic savings of taxpayer dollars and eliminates waste, fraud, and abuse while protecting essential programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security for those that truly need it.” Later in this segment, Langworthy again referred to “waste, fraud, and abuse,” but didn’t define “for those that truly need it.” 

Langworthy then took questions from constituents. The first caller, Jeanie, was a corrections officer who had been fired by New York State. Langworthy said he would help her open a federal case. 

The second caller, Susan a former federal employee, wanted to know Langworthy’s position on the Supreme Court ruling that President Trump needed to facilitate the return of Mr. Garcia from El Salvador. She said, “I am wondering what your position is on that because I would hope that as an elected official that you are interested in upholding the rule of law.” Langworthy responded by talking about Mr. Garcia being in the country illegally and that he “was not an upstanding citizen.” He did not answer Susan’s question. She pointed out, “We have a pattern here” of the “Trump administration . . . not recognizing due process.” She continued, “The Trump administration has been asked on multiple occasions to produce documentation of everything that you have just in fact gone down the laundry list for and they have been unable and/or unwilling to do that.” 

Susan also asked Langworthy to “provide an accurate accounting of where the fraud was identified, for how much, and then in what department.” Langworthy responded, “I’m not accusing someone of stealing money.” But that is what his repeated claim of “fraud” means. Langworthy then avoided the question by talking about transgender surgeries in foreign countries, non-binary gender education in Honduras, DEI, and social engineering. Susan said, “I’m not here to debate which programs are appropriate and which programs are not appropriate. I will tell you that there were no audits done by D.O.G.E.” Langworthy then admitted, “I don’t know that there’s fraud.” So why does he repeatedly refer to “waste, fraud and abuse”? 

The next caller was Nancy who wanted President Trump to stop talking about taking Canada as our 51st state, citing the effect of the lack of Canadian tourists on the local economy. Langworthy blamed Trump’s comments on a personality conflict with the former Canadian Prime Minister and thought a better relationship would come with the new prime minister. Langworthy also called for a trade deal between just Canada and the United States and excluding Mexico. 

Penny, the next caller, asked Langworthy where the House Energy and Commerce Committee would find the $880 billion needed to extend the 2017 tax cut. Langworthy responded that they would be eliminating “fraud and waste and abuse in the system.” He supported this by referring to NY State Controller Tom DiNapoli’s audit that uncovered “16 million dollars in improper Medicaid payments by the state.” To put that in perspective, over the 6-month period that DiNapoli’s audit covered, 370 million claims were filed for a total of $49.6 billion which means that the improper payments were .03% of what was paid out. And NYS was already in the process of recovering the money. Langworthy again referred to “social engineering.” Langworthy said that some of the revenue needed would come from the sale of airwaves that the federal government controls. 

Thomas, the next caller, was concerned about the lack of labor laws in the countries that companies have moved to. He referred to “little kids that are in sweatshops.” Langworthy said that we should make the effort to buy American-made goods. Thomas, referring to “South America, middle America” suggested that we should “just go down there [and] take over their countries.” 

Next, Shelby questioned how Langworthy’s stock portfolio did in the past month and questioned whether “there’s some insider trading going on within our federal government.” Langworthy said he doesn’t trade individual stocks and that he doesn’t think it’s ethical for anyone in Congress to do so. Shelby’s second question was about Langworthy voting for the SAVE act requiring anyone registering to vote to have the name they register with match the name on their birth certificate. The concern includes the women who changed their name upon marriage. Langworthy claimed it wouldn’t affect Shelby because she was already registered. Shelby replied that “it may not be affecting me directly, but it may affect all of the people that I love who are trying to vote. And to say that this won’t affect people is absolutely ridiculous.” Shelby also questioned why Langworthy is “afraid to speak to us in person” and wanted to know when he would. Langworthy claimed leftist organizations are creating the push for town halls and that “we overcommunicate with our district.” 

Christine then expressed concern for the environment in light of the federal administration’s “intention to fast-track the process for mining and fossil fuels on our public lands.” Langworthy replied that we have a massive amount of territory in the west that we aren’t doing anything with. He argued for pipelines and streamlining the permitting processes and against windmills in Lake Erie.  

Daniel, a veteran who works with Student Veterans of America, wanted to know whether veterans “will be able to continue to use our G. I. bills at schools that the administration doesn’t feel are all teaching the appropriate curriculum.” Langworthy said that the discussions of curriculums were connected to grants to colleges and not to student loan programs or where students “take their federal loans to go get an education.”  

The last caller incoherently asked about illegal aliens. Langworthy replied that “I.C.E. and our U. S. border patrol has done an incredible job working to get the worst-of-the-worst out of this country.”