Remember Gov. Ned Lamont’s weekly press conferences during COVID?

They are back.

But this time, Lamont is hitting the airwaves to highlight the impact of massive cuts from the Trump administration.

Five years ago, Lamont’s pandemic briefings were a staple of afternoon TV.

Starting Thursday, he returned to the airwaves with a new message – steep cuts from Washington could be catastrophic for Connecticut.

"These cuts will be coming," Lamont said. "I can't stick my head in the sand. I can't say, 'Oh, it hasn't happened yet so why worry about it?' We're not an ostrich."

The full impact is still unclear, but the White House has already cut $150 million to the Connecticut Department of Public Health.

Medicaid could take an even bigger hit as Congress looks to slash $800 billion from the House Energy and Commerce Committee budget.

Lamont said that $52 million is also at risk to prevent deadly floods like those that hit Oxford last summer.

"Extreme weather events are impacting our state. They're impacting Connecticut residents. They're harming people; we've seen lives lost but also a significant amount of cost," said Katie Dykes, commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.

Millions more for police officers and 911 dispatch centers is also at risk, according to the Connecticut Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection.

"Everything from supporting bomb squads to the urban search and rescue team that rescued people during the Oxford flooding," said DESPP Deputy Commissioner Brenda Bergeron.

Connecticut is a particular target because of the TRUST Act, which limits when police can work with federal immigration agents. This week, state lawmakers advanced a bill to expand the law.

Despite opposition from Democrats, Trump’s spending and tax cuts are moving forward. Just hours before Lamont’s news conference, the U.S. House of Representatives narrowly approved a framework for the plan.

It could slash $1.5 trillion in federal spending over the next decade, as well as extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts.

The plan includes few details, but House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) said Democrats like Lamont are fear mongering.

“The Democrats are out right now trying to make hay out of the fact that we’re going to gut Medicaid and all these other things. It’s simply not true,” Johnson said. “The president has made clear Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid will not take a hit, so you can count on that."

But across Connecticut, thousands protested billionaire CEO Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cuts at “Hands Off” rallies on Saturday.

“When I was growing up in the 1960s and the 1970s, we focused on expanding our democracy through a steady march toward equality for all,” said protester Pam Lewis, of Stamford. “But now we’re seeing the Trump administration rollback all of that progress.”

Even congressional Republicans – especially in the U.S. Senate – disagree about how deep the spending cuts should go.

“We have got to do something to get the country on a more sustainable fiscal path, and that entails us taking a hard scrub of our government – figuring out where we can find those savings,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.). “We are all aligned on the need to make the 2017 Trump tax cuts permanent, to restore American energy dominance, to grow our economy and to make a generational investment in our border security.”

In Connecticut, the uncertainty from Washington makes it nearly impossible to craft a new two-year budget.

On, Wednesday, House Speaker Matt Ritter asked Lamont to declare a “fiscal emergency”, which would let the state dip into its Budget Reserve Fund and suspend around $1.4 billion in pension payments.

“There’s so much that we don’t know that’s coming at us at a daily basis, that sometimes the best thing you can do is just pause,” Ritter told reporters.

But Lamont reiterated that the drastic move is premature.

State lawmakers have until June 4 to craft a new budget, although leaders expect to return in a special session this fall, once Congress passes a new federal spending plan.