AOC Answers Students Question On Trump And RFK 'Autism' And Pregnant Women LIES | US NEWS

Yeah, you're both wearing gray shirts. We'll take that one first. Sorry. Hello, my question is for our future senator, Trey Jackson. My name is Dr. I'm a senior at University of Southern Maine. I'm studying biology. And we all know that Maine is one of the less funded states in order of research and development. And my question is, what can you do in order to improve those funding? As we know that there is so much cutting in funding for research right now. thank you this might have been a question for the congresswoman too because i know she's having to deal with that now i mean obviously stopping a president that doesn't believe in the rule of law i mean when congress appropriates money for research you know it has to go forward he can't hold those things up i mean he can't uh go to war without congress's approval he can't do tariffs but because the republicans are in charge they're letting him get away with whatever he wants and so clearly making sure that the money that we've already funded gets out to those institutions but i think increasing it obviously i mean again it's about priorities i mean their priorities are giving billionaires tax cuts that's always what they want i i don't care the billionaires are doing fine you know what we need to have is people in this country that have health insurance that we do research to find out how we can stop cancer how we can stop alzheimer's and we're only going to do that with funding that are coming from our federal government and not something i am going to fight for because there are people out there that can do this we can we can make people's lives better in so many different ways but it's going to start with research you know we have a lot of great research right here in maine uh you know they're struggling with the funding that's not coming from the federal government we need to do more and that's something i am going to fight for because i believe wholeheartedly in it question y'all i'm sorry white shirt and the glasses yes you you can stand up thank you describe anything in the back, folks. Sorry. I'm Stanley. I know Troy knows who I am. But I am really excited to be here. Obviously for Troy, but also for AOC. It's okay. You can ask her a question. So as a bunch of us, we're all students and we're going to have so much student debt and all this stuff um and with the increasing ai jobs uh jobs being taken over by ai um what can we do to make sure that that doesn't happen and that we can help ourselves with our debt thank you thank you i mean so much can be said about the student debt crisis and it kind of goes back to one of the earlier questions as well about how would Troy stay in touch while Senator Collins has gotten out of touch. And the reason I tie those two things together is because one of the reasons that people get so out of touch in Washington is that they write rules for everybody else, and then they write a different set of rules for themselves. And so, you know, Senator Collins went in has been in there for a very long time voting to and allowing people's health care to get cut allowing all sorts of things and has been going around you know uh meeting with billionaires and having these kind of closed door meetings and she does not support a congressional stock trading ban and troy jackson does and the reason i say that's important is because when COVID came around and it was time for PPP loans to go out, fully forgiven loans intended for small business owners in local communities, lots of members of Congress started feeding at the trough and taking millions of dollars of fully forgivable PPP loans for themselves. and they never once questioned any of it and they never once said, you took out a loan, you need to pay it off. But that is what they're telling teenagers who are taking out student loans and have to take out student loans at unconscionable amounts because the price of higher education has unforgivably become a luxury good. And increasingly, it feels like only a certain class of Americans can responsibly afford it. Not only that, but the interest rates on these loans are so high to the point that people who I've heard from people that have been paying off their student loans for 10, 15, 20 years, and their balance is still higher than the principal that they started off with. that's usury and it should never be allowed in the united states of america but in addition to that public colleges and universities should be tuition free they've been tuition free in the past they public colleges and universities have been tuition free it's just for us that they started charging huge amounts and the reason that that's so important is because once public colleges are tuition-free, that forces the private institutions to rein in their costs. So we need to lower the costs of college. We need to ensure and take care of insane amounts of student debt. And most importantly, when we look at what this administration has been doing, we need to understand that an education is important to employment, but it is so much more important than just a job. Accessing in education is about being a full human being and a full participant in American society. And that's about pursuing the education that you see fit. And that can be immediate. Maybe later on in life, you want to go back to school. People's lives weave and bob in so many different directions. I wanted to go to medical school and I couldn't because, you know, my dad passed away from cancer. My mom was a school bus driver. I couldn't afford to continue to go to school. But that doesn't mean that, you know, if I didn't end up in this, in this situation, that that shouldn't be something that's foreclosed upon you. And that's one of the big reasons why I started waiting tables. And so I say all of this because as AI begins to encroach in our society. Their goal is to take your cognition away from you.