Local News Coverage for Tompkins Town Hall

Editor’s Note: Cornell has no official role in encouraging the Town Hall. Any participation in it by individuals is independent of university status. 

Independent Nonprofit Nonpartisan News

Speakers at Friday’s town hall (June 6, 2025) included Tompkins County Legislators Rich John (at left) and Deborah Dawson (third from the left), author and organizer Andrew Kreig (at right) and Cornell professor Risa Lieberwitz (Photo by Cereese Qusba / The Ithaca Voice).

The Ithaca Voice, Town hall focuses on local impacts of federal spending cuts — so far, Cereese Qusba, June 9, 2025. Fifteen lost truckloads of food pantry supplies. A billion dollars in federal research funding cuts. ICE arrests carried out in Ithaca despite its sanctuary city status.

The Trump administration’s policies have begun to trickle down to the local level, and the impacts are poised to deepen in the coming months.

Tompkins County residents flocked to a town hall on Friday, featuring a Cornell University professor, county legislators, and nonprofit leaders discussing the local and statewide implications and threats of the Trump administration.

The event was organized by Andrew Kreig, a Cornell graduate and a longtime nonprofit executive and author. Kreig offered an opening address, focusing on the influence of media and media framing. He was followed by Risa Lieberwitz, right, a professor at the Industrial Labor Relations School at Cornell, who argued that the Trump administration is systematically attacking higher education as part of an authoritarian agenda.

“Authoritarian regimes always attack higher education,” Lieberwitz said. “Because universities are where we find critical thinking, questioning the status quo and organizing for social justice.”

On April 8, the federal government froze over $1 billion in funding for Cornell amid Title VI investigations led by the U.S. Department of Education.

In a statement to the Cornell University community on May 7, University President, Michael Kotlikoff, right, said that significant medical and military research is halted in response to the federal funding freeze.

“To date, federal agencies have stopped work on or terminated more than 100 research projects at Cornell, abruptly ending ongoing research grants with no official notice of their future status,” Kotlikoff said.

Lieberwitz emphasized the Trump administration’s misuse of civil rights law, remarking that “Trump has weaponized Title VI of the Civil Rights Act—not to protect civil rights, but to silence political speech and dismantle Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs.”

Rich John, below, the chair of the county’s Public Safety Committee, highlighted the Trump administration’s disruption of relations between local law enforcement and federal law enforcement, especially when it comes to immigration enforcement.

“So we now appear to be in a fundamentally different world where mutual trust, as we’ve operated under, is not valued,” John said. “The courtesy and respect that was ordinary is not, and we’re not being asked for collaboration.”

John noted that public safety in the local community is built on cooperation, trust and respect, which he said have been eschewed by President Donald Trump’s high-handed tactics. He warned that the administration has militarized immigration policy not just to pursue deportations, but to intimidate and bypass due process, even threatening local leaders.

Deborah Dawson, right, Tompkins County Legislator and former U.S. Justice Department attorney, warned attendees that the Trump administration’s executive actions and the so-called “naughty list” executive order could lead to massive federal and state funding cuts, severely impacting Tompkins County’s budget and local services.

She stated that approximately 35 percent of the county’s budget – roughly 15 percent in federal aid and 20 percent in state aid – is now vulnerable to potential federal funding cuts related to sanctuary policies and immigration enforcement.

Dawson specifically raised alarms about the consequences for Medicaid, SNAP, and nutrition programs, with New York State potentially losing $13.5 billion in Medicaid funds annually and facing $2 billion in new costs. This fiscal stress could cascade down to counties like Tompkins, which already pay $1 million monthly for Medicaid despite having no control over eligibility or benefits.

Attendees raised questions about how individuals, local communities, universities and advocacy groups can respond to mounting federal threats.

The panelists enforced the sentiment that “us” is the answer, urging community members to “get out of their silos” as Dawson said, and join organizing networks like Indivisible, and build systems of support across issue areas such as LGBTQ rights, housing, and environmental justice, encouraging networked resistance.

Cereese Qusba is a reporter at The Ithaca Voice, from which this story is excerpted, and a news editor at The Cornell Daily Sun working on The Sun’s summer fellowship. The Daily Sun republished part of the article in an excerpt below:

Cornell Daily Sun, ‘The Answer Is Us’: Town Hall Responds to Local Impacts of Federal Spending Cuts, Cereese Qusba, June 10, 2025. 

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