“You have been fighting against Republican cuts to Medicaid. Can you talk about how these cuts will affect people?”
“Medicaid is one of the largest insurers in the United States of America. One in five people get their insurance in whole or part or in part from Medicaid, and that’s before we even talk about Medicare.
If you buy your insurance off of a health exchange, even if you’re buying a private health insurance plan off of an Obamacare or state exchange, you will be affected, because Medicaid expansion affects ACA coverage.
Medicaid expansion affects people with disabilities, people who are looking for work, whose job doesn’t cover health insurance, whose job doesn’t pay enough for them to have health insurance. Out of every 10 babies born today, four of [those births] will be covered by Medicaid.
We are talking about a massive devastation of our social safety net. And for all of this conversation that Republicans talk about with [Medicaid work requirements for] quote-unquote, able-bodied men — they are very literal in that —people with mental health issues, I think they would consider them able-bodied. We are talking about one of the biggest revocations of health insurance and health care in the United States of America. It is tremendously dangerous.”
“Why do you think Republicans are pushing for this? Who benefits from it?”
“The whole reason we’re here is [because] they’re talking about waste, fraud, and abuse. I’ve been sitting through a lot of these debates. The only time the Republicans brought up a number of alleged waste, fraud, and abuse is $50 billion. Even if you believe them, then why did they put $850 billion as the number for their cuts? Where’s that other $800 billion coming from if you said the waste-fraud-abuse number was $50 billion? And the reason for that is because this is not a health-care-cut bill. This is a bill where they have an assignment — they are trying to give trillions of dollars in collective tax cuts to billionaires, and they have to pay for it. And so the thing that they have identified to pay for it is one of the largest areas of expenditures in the United States, which is health care.”
“The last time we met, we talked about the Defiance Act, the bill you are co-sponsoring that would give survivors of sexually explicit deepfake AI abuse recourse to sue. Why is it more important now than ever?”
“We saw Trump’s announcement at the State of the Union for the Take It Down Act [legislation requiring platforms to remove nonconsensual deepfake pornography], which passed through. But what we are still missing is victim-centered legislation that actually gives victims the power and the ability to advocate for themselves and to fight for themselves and have their day in court, and that’s what Defiance does. It gives people who have been subject to nonconsensual, deepfake pornography the civil right of action so that they can pursue justice for themselves and to seek damages for this kind of sexual abuse and harm. Defiance is tremendously important, because Take It Down centers other people, right? But Defiance is about helping the disproportionately, and overwhelmingly, women and children who are affected by this.”
“What did you think when you watched President Trump’s inauguration and powerful tech CEOs Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Sundar Pichai were sitting so close to him?”
“This is a moment in history personified. This is not just people buying favors. This is about who controls this country, and everyone else is just a formality, and that is the worldview that we are up against right now. This is the stakes of the present moment. And when Sen. Sanders and I talk about oligarchy, this really is what this is. It is beyond partisan as well. It is concentrated. It is most concentrated in the Republican Party. But it’s also the power that controls our politics writ large.”
“President Trump recently implied he’s not sure he has to uphold the Constitution, and many of the actions of his administration involve denying people due process. Beyond kids, we’ve also seen this in the cases of people deported to El Salvador, including Bronx resident Merwil Gutiérrez, who you’ve spoken about. What do we risk when we don’t have proper due process for everyone in the country, U.S. citizens or not?”
“The Constitution is the only thing that really defines us as Americans. Despite the right wing’s attempts, we are not a country that is ethnically defined. We are not a country that is defined by any one person, ideology, etc., except for the Constitution. What makes America America is enshrined in that document, our freedoms. People need to understand that when the president attacks the Constitution, he is attacking our country. We all swear an oath to the Constitution. As federally elected officials, we swear an oath to uphold, to defend, to protect the Constitution of the United States. First and foremost, if the president is in any way confused about his responsibility, he should resign. Any president should resign if they don’t understand that, at the core, that’s what his job is. Trump knows exactly what he’s doing. He wants to transform the definition of what it means to be an American — from upholding the Constitution and our freedoms — to a pledge of loyalty to him. That is what a cult of personality and authoritarian regimes are all about.”
