In a tele-town hall last week, Representative Nick LaLota of New York’s First Congressional District defended the ongoing war in Iran amid the Trump administration’s shifting rationales and objectives, told a caller that he had no role in a no-bid contract awarded to his brother, called himself a bipartisan legislator while blaming Democrats for New York State and the nation’s ills, and broke with the president with regard to offshore wind, albeit with qualifiers.
The congressman, who is serving his second term and will face re-election in November, heard from a Kings Park constituent in the March 18 session who asked “what credible evidence there is that Iran was any threat to this country” and noted that the president “said that we’re going to war because of his gut.”
“The president’s, and certainly his team’s, approach is more nuanced than the words that you referenced,” Mr. LaLota told the caller. “For 47 years, America has been under attack by Iran,” he said. “They’ve been killing our people left and right.” He cited the 1983 bombing in Lebanon that killed 241 Marines, sailors, and soldiers, and the 1996 bombing in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 Air Force personnel. “They’ve been slaughtering us for quite some time.”
He referred to this country’s June 2025 strikes on nuclear facilities in Iran, which the president said had “completely and totally obliterated” key nuclear enrichment facilities. But subsequent diplomatic efforts failed, Mr. LaLota said, and the Iranian regime was “insistent, as if it was their God-given right to continue to develop a nuclear weapon” and “was building essentially a shield of short-range missiles and drones behind which they could hide a nuclear weapon that it could build to ultimately commit to fulfilling its promise and its creed to slaughter Americans.”
The president has characterized the attack on Iran as both “major combat operations” and “a little excursion,” and not a formal act of war. Article 1 of the Constitution establishes the legislative branch, vesting it with authority to declare war, among other powers. “I take seriously my Article 1 authority and responsibility to conduct oversight to reduce and hopefully eliminate the chances of this becoming a prolonged ground war,” Mr. LaLota told the caller, “but the president made a decision.”
A caller identifying himself as Rob from Miller Place asked, “Why did you give your brother a $30,000 no-bid contract for the Target Down firearm training company?” Mr. LaLota’s brother owns a Virginia firearms-training company that was awarded a contract to train federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement snipers and other agents.
The question, Mr. LaLota told listeners, was proof that “I don’t screen the calls,” before addressing the caller. “I doubt your name is Rob,” he said. “I doubt you’re from Miller Place.” He said that subsequent to retiring from the Marines, Dan LaLota “did get involved in some, and he still is involved in some, government service, which includes him getting government contracts from time to time. And yes, he did get a government contract with which I had zero to do with whatsoever.”
A Smithtown constituent who identified himself as “a [Jacob] Javits Republican” and “not a Trump Republican at all” said he was unhappy with “this war on the Affordable Care Act,” citing a $2,000 increase in his son’s health insurance. Enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies, which significantly lowered insurance premiums for millions of Americans, expired on Dec. 31, 2025, because Congress did not pass an extension. As a result, premium costs more than doubled for many enrollees.
“I have very high ranks in bipartisanship,” Mr. LaLota replied, adding that he is a member of the Problem Solvers Caucus. After a lengthy monologue on his support for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, he said, “I’m not in favor of getting rid of” the Affordable Care Act, but added that “since Obamacare’s inception, the premiums have risen 60 percent more than inflation. One in three claims are denied, and insurance companies are raking in the profit. . . . I do hope that we find some bipartisan compromise to continue to put money into ensuring that people have good access to the Affordable Care Act.”
A caller from Greenlawn asked about funding for the Transportation Security Administration, employees of which have been working without pay since mid-February due to the partial government shutdown. Congress failed to pass full-year funding for the Department of Homeland Security because of disagreements over the reform of ICE and the Customs and Border Protection agency following two fatal shootings of American citizens by federal agents in Minneapolis in January.
“Shutting down the government is a stupid idea,” Mr. LaLota said before adding that “it’s the Democrats’ fault that these departments are shut down. Some of my colleagues have Trump Derangement Syndrome,” which he called “a real illness that affects people’s judgements.” ICE, he said, is funded through 2029 through the “One Big Beautiful Bill” of 2025 (which includes more than $1 trillion in cuts to the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid that are estimated to leave roughly 10 to 15 million more people uninsured by 2034). “They’re making this stink,” he said of Democrats. “They’re really doing it so they can appeal to people’s emotions and get people all stirred up.”
He said that “there are compromises on the table” related to body cameras and additional training for ICE personnel. “Heck, Trump fired Kristi Noem,” who until this month was the secretary of Homeland Security. “I thought that would’ve been the scalp that my Democrat friends would have been able to claim victory to their political base and say, ‘Listen, the fight’s over. We’re going to fund D.H.S. because Noem is gone.’ “
He said he asked Democratic colleagues if Ms. Noem’s firing would clear a path to D.H.S. funding, but “no, their political base is way too rabid to say yes to anything.” He blamed former President Biden, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and other city officials who he said “were attracting these migrants by giving them free hotels and health care. . . . We need to get the violent illegals out first. Then, I think we should get the ones who are mooching off of our health care and hotels and other social programs.”
Mr. LaLota told another caller that his position on offshore wind is nuanced. The president has waged war on offshore wind, but in recent months lost all five court challenges related to wind farms under construction on the Atlantic Seaboard, allowing their construction to proceed. “A lot of offshore wind’s critics aren’t wrong when they criticize the return on investment,” he said. “It takes a lot to build these darn things, it takes a lot to maintain them, and a lot of people think they ain’t pretty either.”
“But that said, a decent amount of them have been built and they’ve been built past 50-percent construction, and yet the president has pulled their permits on these, which I think is an unfair changing of the rules of the game midway through the game.” To maintain jobs associated with offshore wind “as well to put good power online, I’ve advocated for the restoration of these permits.”
“At the same time,” he added, “with respect to energy, I think that [Gov.] Kathy Hochul and others in Albany and throughout New York State should do a better job having a more open mind to being all-of-the-above energy,” referring to fossil fuels “that could be safely and cleanly extracted throughout New York.”
