Call Your Senator: Sen Gillibrand

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now, our monthly Call Your Senator segment. My questions and yours for New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. If you live anywhere in New York state and have a question for Senator Gillibrand, our lines are open at 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Call or text actually, and a call or text or two from out of state also okay. 212-433-WNYC. And we're going to set this up a little differently than we usually do. We're going to play a clip of Senator Gillibrand, a 20 second clip from when she joined Cory Booker on the Senate floor around 7:20 in the morning, before Booker completed his 25 hour marathon opposing many of Trump's policies. She let him take a breather for a few minutes by talking about the DOGE cuts to Social Security staff and services.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: Social Security is our senior's money. It's not the government's money. It's their money. What happens when you make it hard for a senior to call and make sure their check's on the way or their check never showed up and they can't find it? For a lot of older Americans, that Social Security check is the only money they have for that month.

Brian Lehrer: Senator Gillibrand on the Senate floor last week. Senator Gillibrand is with us live now. Senator, always good of you to do this. Welcome back to WNYC.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: How are you?

Brian Lehrer: I'm okay, thank you. Looks like you spoke for about seven minutes to help Senator Booker get through that. Why did you pick Social Security as your topic?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: Well, in New York State, Social Security is still the number one issue for seniors when it comes to knowing they will be able to pay for medicine or heat or their rent or food. And when President Trump and Elon Musk with their cutting spree decided to say Social Security can't answer the phone anymore, no, in phone service, it just sent a shockwave across New York.

And people were so anxious about it. Our seniors deserve to get the money that they earned. This is the money they put away. It's their money and I just think the DOGE cuts have been so erratic and irresponsible and incompetent without any regard for whether a program's functioning well or not. It shows how unqualified a lot of these decision makers are and this is just an example of one decision that created so much harm and so much anxiety that I wanted to really put a very significant spotlight on it.

Brian Lehrer: There have been a lot of news articles about this just in the last day or two. Here's a lead line from a New York Times article on Tuesday. As Elon Musk's team trims staff and plans cuts to phone services, the system is groaning under the pressure. That's from the Times. A headline out just this morning from public radio station WBUR in Boston state next door, anxiety grows in Massachusetts over Social Security staff cuts, errors, long wait times.

It says, though no cuts have been made to individual benefits, service delays and staffing reductions are creating anxiety for people across the state. I guess my question is, is that already happening in New York state too, as far as you know?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: Oh, yes. It's already happening in New York state and they already closed two offices. They closed the White Plains office and they closed the Albany office. That means if you're a senior living in Albany and you have to then go to another office, you might have to drive 45 minutes or an hour to do an in person visit. And a lot of our seniors don't like to drive anymore.

A lot of our seniors, and especially in more rural areas like upstate New York, there may not be a bus route to where you're going. There may not be any public transportation to where you're going. And so having to be in person is inappropriate and wrong. Then second, they then said you have to go online, but then they stopped online service.

I don't understand the absurdity of the decisions that they're making and if seniors have to only go online, then they're more exposed to scammers. I'm the ranking member on the Aging Committee. We just had a hearing yesterday on all the scams that our seniors are up against. Multinational criminal networks are constantly honing in on trying to convince our seniors to give them their bank account, to click on the wrong button, to be afraid they didn't pay their taxes, to be afraid that their grandchild is in danger, impersonating family members.

I mean, it just goes on and on. And so again, forcing seniors online just exposes them to more of these scams.

Brian Lehrer: There is a pushback response that came yesterday from the Trump administration Social Security office. They say, "Not only have zero customer facing representatives been let go from Social Security, Social Security continues to move employees from non mission critical positions to bolster the ranks of our existing dedicated frontline employees to serve the public." Your reaction to that claim of just doing things more efficiently?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: I don't think any senior in New York feels like it's more efficient and I'd like to know which positions are non critical that they're moving them to. Saying you can't answer the phone is a lack of understanding of how seniors interface with the Social Security Administration.

If they think phone answerers are non-critical, well, those are the public facing technology that seniors are most comfortable with. I think they're just lying and I think seniors are not able to trust what the Trump administration is saying and what DOGE particularly are saying.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call in this Call Your Senator segment, Eric in Brooklyn. You're on WNYC with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. Hi, Eric.

Eric: Oh, hey. I think my issue is probably conflated. I wanted to know if the Senator will vote no on the SAVE Act. It's a bill that's being proposed again in Congress. If this bill is passed, it will make married women ineligible to vote because of their names, won't be changed legally and not match their birth certificates. It will also prevent naturalized citizens from voting.

They could face additional barriers. Military members, tribal citizens and working class Americans will not have the ability to vote because they would need to match up their names with whatever documentation they have. And a lot of people just don't have passports and things of that nature so I'm actually encouraging the senator to vote no and I just wanted to get her thoughts on that.

Brian Lehrer: Eric, thank you very much. Yes, and I'm looking at an NPR page on this now for people who haven't heard about this yet. The report says up to 69 million American women changed their names after they got married and therefore don't have birth certificates that match their current names according to an analysis by the Progressive center for American Progress. The SAVE Act, Senator.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: I couldn't agree with your call or more. I'm a definite no. I am one of those voters. I was born Kirsten Elizabeth Rutnik and my birth certificate says that, but I changed my name after I got married to Kirsten Elizabeth Gillibrand. Would I be denied the right to vote? Probably. It's an absurd, outrageous, misogynistic, harmful bill that's just trying to reduce the number of people who can actually vote.

Brian Lehrer: I'm just trying to figure out what it's actually about. Is it another way to deport as many immigrants as possible or is it broader than that?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: I think they're going to say they're trying to stop fraud, but when you're telling a great percentage of married women in America that they're committing fraud by voting as their citizenship allows them and wants them to do is again, absurd. I think it's trying to make the system much more complex.

I think a lot of low income individuals don't necessarily have passports or other federal identification if they don't have their birth certificate. And so again, it's trying to disenfranchise voters that they are assuming are not voting for them, which is just absurd and ridiculous and wrong.

Brian Lehrer: We talked about the DOGE cuts to Social Security staffing and the closing of offices. Another set of specific cuts I see you've been speaking out against to the World Trade Center 9/11 Health Program. What got cut there?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: There's been two rounds of cuts. The first were just a random staff cutting of people who work at the World Trade Center Health program. It's a very lean program. They were cutting doctors, they were cutting administrators, cutting people who answer the phones, just a straight up staff cut, which we objected to and we wrote a letter immediately and said, you have to stop this. You can't cut these healthcare staff. These were all CDC staff members.

We were able to push the administration back because it was a bi-partisan effort. And so they said, okay, we won't cancel or fire these people. And then just last week, they fire the doctor who's head of the program, Dr. Howard, and a bunch of staff at NIOSH, which is the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, which is the part of the Department of Health and Human Services that actually runs the program.

It's where the doctors sit that have the experience in epidemiology and early detection and treatment. And so they cut a bunch of those. Now we're protesting those cuts. They have not yet relented on those cuts, but that's what we had press conferences on earlier in the week to shine a spotlight on these terrible cuts because it means our first responders, the men and women who literally raced up the towers, who literally went to the pile every day for months and months to find first survivors then remains, they're the ones who are dying now of these horrific cancers.

And also, the men and women who lived at Ground zero, their children and their families got the same cancers because of all the dust and all the toxins in the dust. That's what we're up against. Just ridiculous cuts that make no sense, that have nothing to do with fraud, nothing to do with waste, nothing to do with fat and budgets.

It's frustrating because these are men and women who we as taxpayers and we as elected leaders have voted over and over and over again to make sure they have the resources they need to survive. And this program gives family members hope that their loved one might survive longer and won't die immediately of these horrible diseases.

It's really a sick twist on how irresponsible these cuts that Elon Musk and his DOGE boys are inflicting on Americans.

Brian Lehrer: A DOGE related call from Sharon in Manhattan. Sharon, you're on WNYC with Senator Gillibrand. Hello.

Sharon: Hello. Thank you very much for taking this call. I'm trying to keep my voice calm so I don't express just outrage but the entire DOGE enterprise is something that's completely illegal and what I'm not understanding is why doesn't someone say, these people do not understand what government is and what government does?

For example, individual states cannot by themselves make the federal highway program. That's just one. Individual states cannot take care of many programs that affect everyone and it's clear that there's no understanding of what government is, but I don't hear anybody talking about why DOGE is not part of government.

It's something that's made up and can seriously upend the entire enterprise here and is harmful. Yes, Everybody talks about specific this and specific that, but I don't hear anyone saying they don't know what government is. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, Senator.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: The best way to fight against the DOGE boys is to file lawsuits which have been filed. Dozens of lawsuits have been filed in multiple states. Making the argument exactly that you just made, that these people don't know what they're doing, they don't have clearances, they've not been vetted, they're unknowledgeable, and they're just taking away our taxpayer dollars that we send to Washington that should be coming back to our state.

We've won a couple of lawsuits already. Some of the initial cuts that DOGE made, we were able to get a stay, a temporary restraining order, and a stay on those cuts. We initially got the cuts for NIH stopped for all the grants that do cancer research to find cures, that are doing trials of new medicines, of basic research, all the work we do to keep America safe and healthy.

But then Trump goes and says, well, then nobody who works at NIH can send emails or use the computer system or send out grant applications. Again, he's just trying to stop the funding of government. He doesn't believe that government has these positive functions. And so the best thing we can do is we talk about it all the time.

You can just follow any Senator on their Instagram page, and you'll hear them talking about it literally all the time but the best tool we have in the minority is lawsuits, and we're winning them. We will keep filing them. Eventually, they will go up to the Supreme Court, and then we'll know whether or not Justice Roberts has sanity and whether he can marshal the support he needs to put functioning government back in place.

Brian Lehrer: Arnold in Astoria, you're on WNYC with Senator Gillibrand. Hello, Arnold.

Arnold: Hello, wonderful Brian Lehrer. Thank God for you. Senator Gillibrand, thanks for taking my call. I work in the theater in New York. I'm part of the very big contingency that you represent. And in the theater, we have a way of working that is don't ever bring me a problem without the solution. Any producer will say that to any employee of the theater.

You've heard the expression, the show must go on. We're really good at that. We need to do that. And the frustration is that what we're hearing from our representatives, yourself included, I'm afraid, is a reiteration of the problems. You're sitting here now on the radio telling us all the terrible problems and how bad they are.

We know, we want to know what's the preparation for April 20th if Trump is threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act. We want to know what's being done about the Social Security. Why are these DOGE idiots still in charge and doing what they do. What is the action? We're not interested in the problem. We know the problem.

I would love you to get on the air and talk to us about here's how we're taking action. Donald Trump doesn't play by the rules so we have found a way to not sit here pretty and play by the rules and be victimized. We have found a solution. Here are our solutions. We've got 100 of them. We're taking action. Maybe two of them will work.

Is there any talk in the Democratic Party or in Congress of approaching it that way? Because I could pull together for you a whole crew of theater people who will come up and talk to you about how we do it.

Brian Lehrer: Do you want to say one thing, Arnold, before we get the Senator's response that you think that they're not doing that they could be doing, given that they have the minority in Congress and obviously not the White House.

Arnold: Yes, and of course, we understand that and we hear that all the time. We've heard several members of Congress say, "Well, there's really nothing we can do." But Trump's actions don't stop. I mean, Brian, any one of them. Let's take DOGE and the people-- These 19 year olds who came in and got access to all of our information, how they went in and locked the doors and told everybody they were fired.

Well, where was the crowd? Where's your PR agent? The great thing Cory Booker did was he brought attention away from Trump in the media. I also teach classes at the university level and I see these students who walk around just stunned, like all the hum is about Trump and he's doing terrible things and we don't even want to know about it.

Where is the action that says, okay, these DOGE people that Elon Musk brought in are not legally there. We're standing in front of the building, we're going to work anyway. We're at our desk, they're sleeping there. Why aren't we? That kind of thing.

Brian Lehrer: Senator?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: I really am so happy you asked this question because this is the question I get all across New York and there's a lot we can be doing, but it's not the kinds of things that you're thinking. And I need to explain to you why. First of all, Cory Booker standing up and speaking for 25 hours was wonderful because it was something so dramatic, so interesting, so outside the ordinary.

He broke a record of a known racist who lasted for 24 hours arguing that America doesn't deserve civil rights. Not only did Cory do poetic justice by beating Strom Thurman's record, but he did something that was so dramatic that it caught your attention. You saw it. You got to see him doing something which made you feel that he was fighting and doing something meaningful.

Did the 24-hour speech accomplish anything substantively? Absolutely not. It accomplished something from an emotional perspective. It accomplished something that you wanted to see and feel. And that's wonderful. Many Senators and House members and governors have been trying to do similar things, things that are dramatic, things that get noticed, things on social media that's interesting, angry analyses or episodes on anyone in justice, and that might break through that day.

But if you heard the caller before, she said, I don't hear anybody talking about the DOGE boys and the illegality of this. I don't hear anybody saying that this thing is really bad. It's not that we're not saying it, we're literally saying it every day. It's that we have a structural problem in our national media and national consciousness about how a message can break through.

All of our algorithms, all of our social media, even our national news, it responds to bright, shiny objects. They would rather cover Marjorie Taylor Greene having a drag out fight with a House Member about her eyelashes and then have an exchange about how they look, than cover smart bi-partisan work that's being done every day to help American people.

They don't want to cover it because it doesn't get the clicks. You ask, why do you keep telling us the problems? Step one of activism is advocacy. You need people to understand what's happening in the world. Most people are not as glued in, plugged in, knowledgeable as you are. You know exactly what's happening. You are following it every day. It is enraging you and you know what's happening.

You are what we call a high information voter, somebody deeply plugged in. Most people don't see what's happening. The caller before you hasn't heard anyone talking about DOGE. Well, she may not follow Cory Booker on Instagram, she may not follow me on Twitter, she may not follow elected leaders and are on an online ecosystem to get 24/7 information. That's true for most voters.

The reason why you keep hearing me and others telling you what the problem is and who is responsible is because more than half of America voted for Trump and felt he would do a better job on the economy, he would do a better job on public safety, and so they elected him. That's what all the deep dives tell us about what happened in the last election.

We lost a lot of male voters. We lost White men, Black men, Hispanic men, Asian men, young men in a big percentage across the board. We even lost white women. We had 58% under the Biden election and we were down to 54%. Our message of what's happening has to get through. You're annoyed because you don't want to hear any more problems, but step one of the solution is make sure people understand facts.

This is where your community could be so helpful. Writing plays, performing different types of soliloquies, putting up social media funny content about telling people what's happening because maybe you got, because you're so creative and smart and clever, can do some content that can break through and not have to be Cory Booker standing on the senate floor for 25 hours, which most people can't actually do.

That was an unbelievable feat. And you might be able to break through on social media, on the national news because you've done something so funny. Every Sunday morning, I watch everything that Saturday Night Live did the night before. Their humor is so good, it cuts through. It has to be reaching people who voted for Trump.

Step one is communicate facts and lift up people that you think are communicating those facts well, so we can out communicate the Republican ecosystem. Now, the Republicans have advantages on communications that we don't have. They have Fox News, who spreads lies all day long and doubles down.

For eight years, they've been building a digital ecosystem that is extremely sophisticated, where they have hundreds of influencers, thousands of validators, tens of thousands of amplifiers. Any crazy Trump message, like the transgender message or messages that they're eating cats and dogs in Ohio to be anti immigrant about Haitian immigrants, they set these communication chains up so they reach 100 million people, the 100 million people who didn't vote with us.

We need your help in being part of facts, getting facts out. Step one of solution is send facts. Step two is organize voters. The next inflection point is a year-and-a-half away. The next opportunity to right these wrongs for us, as electeds, for you, as advocates, is literally the next election. That's a long way for people.

They want to see something today. They want to see an outrage now, they want to see what you're doing to fight back, but all those actions are on some level just advocacy because you're just saying we're going to stand against you, we're going to fight against this, but there's no mechanism to actually succeed in stopping them because we don't have a majority in the House and we don't have a majority in the Senate.

It's the actual impact of a bad election cycle. This is what happens.

Brian Lehrer: Do you not think that--

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: And the last thing is, so one, be an advocate, get facts out. Two is organize your community to vote. Make sure you're registering every college campus to vote. You're privileging voting is the most important thing. There'll be local elections in November. We just had a massive success on voting in Wisconsin.

Did you see what happened in Wisconsin? They had an inflection point where they could actually vote for this Supreme Court justice. They shifted it so it's Democrat. If you look at a map of Wisconsin, every county shifted blue. That is how we win, and we won that one. And even in those Red House special elections, they were 30 points to Trump before the election.

We moved the needle to only 10 points towards Trump. We moved it by 20 points. That is a down payment for the next election. So organize, and then the last thing is support candidates that you care about through messaging or through money. Those are the three things we can do right now. Anything else is just a version of advocacy and you want to see it break through.

We're trying to be more creative. That's why Cory Booker did his 25 hours. We're trying to be more interesting. I'm doing press conferences every week, three a week. It doesn't mean that you're going to read about it or see it, but it doesn't mean we're not fighting. We need your help. We need your help breaking through on that message.

We have to build this ecosystem. I'm running the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, so I'm going to help build that communications, that coordinated communications muscle so that we are actually building our message and building a stronger brand over the next year-and-a-half through our battleground candidates.

Brian Lehrer: I know you got to go in a minute. I wanted to ask you one local politics question. If you're endorsing in the Democratic primary for Mayor of New York, but I'm going to let Mike in Manhattan bring us into that because he is calling on that primary. Mike, you're on WNYC with Senator Gillibrand. We've just got 15 seconds for your question.

Mike: Hi, good morning, Brian. Good morning, Senator. Thank you for having me on. Senator, you were very outspoken in the past about then Senator Al Franken and the accusations against him regarding misconduct and I wanted to know you've been, you said much less regarding Andrew Cuomo about that. And I just wanted to ask you about that and why your reaction to those two has been different.

Brian Lehrer: And just to get more specific, I do see that when Cuomo was governor in 2021, you called for him to step down more than four months before independent prosecutors with the state attorney general's office issued their report substantiating the harassment claims of a dozen women but I see that recently you told New York 1 this is a country that believes in second chances.

Why so soft on Andrew Cuomo? An equal treatment of women has been a core issue for you. A number of our callers and texters want a version of that question answered.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: It's very simple. When multiple allegations came out about Andrew Cuomo, I think it was eight or nine, I called on him to resign. When multiple allegations came out against Al Franken, there were eight, I called on him to resign. And that was my view at the time because people asked how do you think they can continue to govern with these allegations?

Both of them resigned. The question being asked today is what's my opinion about someone after they've resigned, after they've taken the penalty that I called on them to take? Do they have any say from you one way or the other? And my answer to that is everyone gets to decide in this election who they want to vote for. It's up to New Yorkers. It is not up to me. And that's it.

That's literally my perspective. And if Senator Franken decides he wants to run for mayor, too, or some other job, that will again be up to voters. But I did my part in standing with survivors and saying this behavior is unacceptable and that a resignation was needed at the time. And that is what I'm called to do at that moment.

Brian Lehrer: You're saying it's up to voters, but what would you say to some of the women who came forward who might feel betrayed by you, not at least recommending a no vote on Cuomo in particular?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: These are good questions for Governor Cuomo. And again, asking all women to be the judge, jury and advocate of every bad behavior of man is in and of itself harmful. I would ask you ask these questions of Governor Cuomo and you ask these questions of Senator Franken. You shouldn't be asking the women.

Brian Lehrer: Are you endorsing in the race?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: No, not at all.

Brian Lehrer: Senator Kirsten Gillibrand joins us monthly for our Call Your Senator segment. We always appreciate it. Thank you very much.