Senator Kirsten Gillibrand
Appearances
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Insider Trading in Politics Is a Bigger Problem Than We Thought
We don't do any stock investing in our family because I passed a law that said members of Congress have to disclose all their stocks. And so I've told them if you're buying and selling stocks, you need to tell mommy right away so I can disclose it. I'm hoping to ban it. And that would stop the insider trading by members of Congress. They have a 17 percent higher return rate than the S&P 500.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Insider Trading in Politics Is a Bigger Problem Than We Thought
And that is not because they're smarter.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Insider Trading in Politics Is a Bigger Problem Than We Thought
Members of Congress, which are very, very bad at this, most don't disclose like they're supposed to. One in three are trading. One in seven are disclosing.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
These are the requirements today for people serving in industry, men and women. They are gender neutral and they are very difficult to meet. They have not been reduced.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
We have hundreds, hundreds of women who are currently in the infantry, lethal members of our military serving in the infantry.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
So please explain these types of statements because they're brutal and they're mean and they disrespect men and women who are willing to die for this country. You will have to change how you see women to do this job well. And I don't know if you are capable of that.
The Daily
Could One Phone Call Lead to the 28th Amendment?
And they said that was unequal under the law.
The Daily
Could One Phone Call Lead to the 28th Amendment?
Correct. Because if you have equality, let's just look at Dobbs. Dobbs ruled that women of reproductive years do not have a right to privacy. Red states have then implemented that to say women of reproductive years don't have the right to travel. across state lines to get access to healthcare.
The Daily
Could One Phone Call Lead to the 28th Amendment?
They have decided women of reproductive years don't have a right to have private conversations on their Facebook pages with their mother about seeking abortion services, that women don't have the right to privacy to receive medicine in the mail.
The Daily
Could One Phone Call Lead to the 28th Amendment?
Imagine how men in America would feel if they were told today that they too do not have the right to privacy to cross state lines or to receive medicine in the mail or to have private conversations on social media with their families. They would start a revolution. And so I believe if we had an equal rights amendment, Dobbs would be vitiated.
The Daily
Could One Phone Call Lead to the 28th Amendment?
Dobbs would no longer count because it is applying a standard to women only based on their gender that they don't have a right to privacy and therefore have no access to the health care that they need.
The Daily
Could One Phone Call Lead to the 28th Amendment?
I think it could. It would be a strong legal argument that you are discriminating against women based on our gender and, in this instance, denying us access to life-saving care.
The Daily
Could One Phone Call Lead to the 28th Amendment?
So I started to ask for meetings with President Biden over a year ago. I used every opportunity that I had with the president or with the first lady or with Vice President Harris or with Vice President Harris's husband or with their chiefs of staff or with senior advisors in the administration to make the case that the ERA is valid. And I have argued with his lawyer ad nauseum.
The Daily
Could One Phone Call Lead to the 28th Amendment?
And he disagrees with me. But I think my legal arguments are supported by far more people than support his. My arguments supported by the ABA.
The Daily
Could One Phone Call Lead to the 28th Amendment?
And my arguments supported by a numbers of attorneys general from dozens of states. And the weight of the law is on our side.
The Daily
Could One Phone Call Lead to the 28th Amendment?
No, I have not gotten the meeting yet. I'm still asking for the meeting. Mr. President, I would like to meet with you for five minutes. I would like to make my best case to you.
The Daily
Could One Phone Call Lead to the 28th Amendment?
You know, I don't know what the issue is. I think perhaps the campaign got in the way because it became a question is, do we want to do this in the middle of a campaign? Shouldn't we wait till after the campaign? Maybe those were concerns. We did polling. We have polling showing that the American people support this.
The Daily
Could One Phone Call Lead to the 28th Amendment?
We've really just tried to make the case to all of the senior advisors that not only is this actually accurate legally, but that it is the right thing to do.
The Daily
Could One Phone Call Lead to the 28th Amendment?
Well, I don't know that it's the president. I don't think I think it's the team. I don't know. I got to tell you, when I I pitched it to him, I pitched it to him with my 30 seconds that I had in a photo line.
The Daily
Could One Phone Call Lead to the 28th Amendment?
Yes. When President Biden came to New York. for the celebration of the Stonewall Inn as a national monument. I made sure I got to that photo line. I said, Mr. President, I think you have an opportunity to direct the archivist to sign and publish the ERA. You got it out. I said, and if you do, it will be everything. It will guarantee women reproductive rights.
The Daily
Could One Phone Call Lead to the 28th Amendment?
It will guarantee them equality under the law. It will be the cornerstone of your administration. And I said, you don't have a formal role, but the archivist does, and she needs courage. And I believe if you tell her or direct her or do a new OLC memo, she will do it. And he said, so do you want me to make a big deal about it? I said, yes, I do. And that was our conversation.
The Daily
Could One Phone Call Lead to the 28th Amendment?
So it was very positive. So I've not had a negative reaction.
The Daily
Could One Phone Call Lead to the 28th Amendment?
No matter what approach you take on this Equal Rights Amendment, it will go up to the Supreme Court. This is the only route that is possible, I think, in the near future. And why wouldn't you do it now as an opportunity to stand up for what you believe in?
The Daily
Could One Phone Call Lead to the 28th Amendment?
So I disagree with her analysis. And you have to understand Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a great legal mind. She was a... unbelievable scholar and justice that did great things for our country. She knows nothing about politics. It's not her job to understand politics.
The Daily
Could One Phone Call Lead to the 28th Amendment?
If you start over, you will never see reproductive freedom or equality for women in our lifetimes because it's become a political wedge issue. So there are many people in the Senate today, in the House today, that if you ask them privately, do you believe women deserve equality? They're going to say yes. But their vote on equality will be about their position on reproductive rights.
The Daily
Could One Phone Call Lead to the 28th Amendment?
So that's the truth. And so I respect Justice Ginsburg for her legal acumen. I do not respect her view on this issue because I think she's wrong.
The Daily
Could One Phone Call Lead to the 28th Amendment?
Her legal analysis. She's not a lawyer. She knows nothing about the law. And for her to insert herself as a legal analyst in this whole process is unconstitutional. She is supposed to publish the ERA because the two standards of Article 5 have been met.
The Daily
Could One Phone Call Lead to the 28th Amendment?
Well, I mentioned it in the Christmas party photo line, and this is why I know Jill Biden knows about it. I said, Mr. President, I'm still asking for five minutes to tell you about the Equal Rights Amendment. And Jill said, we know all about it. I said, great. I just need five minutes because I really believe someone is advising him differently. And I
The Daily
Could One Phone Call Lead to the 28th Amendment?
I don't think they know all the things I know. And I would like to have him, at least as the president of the United States, make this decision fairly with all the information in front of him and let him, as the president, make history. Lawyers write briefs. Presidents make history.
The Daily
Could One Phone Call Lead to the 28th Amendment?
Right. Well, I've known for a long time that the Equal Rights Amendment is not part of the Constitution. Recently, I started looking into the law and looking into actually what it takes to make a constitutional amendment. And I realized pretty quickly it was about Article 5 of the Constitution that sets out two things that need to be accomplished to become a a constitutional amendment.
The Daily
Could One Phone Call Lead to the 28th Amendment?
You need two thirds of the House and Senate to vote in favor of it. That happened in the 1970s. It needs three quarters of the states to ratify. The last state to ratify was Virginia in 2020. And so I realized really quickly that the two things that are required by the Constitution have been met.
The Daily
Could One Phone Call Lead to the 28th Amendment?
So what's supposed to happen is when the two standards are met by Article 5—two-thirds House and Senate, pass it, ratified by three-quarters of the state—the archivist, who has a ministerial job only— He or she is not supposed to analyze the law. They're not supposed to have a deep think about it. They're just supposed to sign and publish when the two things are done.
The Daily
Could One Phone Call Lead to the 28th Amendment?
And because Trump was president in 2020, his Office of Legal Counsel issued a memo telling the archivist he couldn't sign and publish. And that memo said, timelines matter and you took too long. to get this added to the Constitution. And they cited a decision saying that all constitutional amendments have to be done in a timely way.
The Daily
Could One Phone Call Lead to the 28th Amendment?
Well, the 27th Amendment took 203 years to become a constitutional amendment. So clearly timeliness is not a standard. And so I looked further into what the law says about timelines and whether this timeline that Congress had put in as a seven years deadline in the preamble was actually constitutionally operative.
The Daily
Could One Phone Call Lead to the 28th Amendment?
And there was actually precedent that talked about cases that had timelines and deadlines and saying they were not valid. And I realized that the strength of the arguments were actually on our side.
The Daily
Could One Phone Call Lead to the 28th Amendment?
So I've been asking the White House to either issue a new LLC memo, and if they don't want to do that, then direct the archivist to sign and publish on the basis that the two things that Article 5 requires have been completed.
The Daily
Could One Phone Call Lead to the 28th Amendment?
Well, if you noticed in the Dobbs decision... Right, overturning Roe. Justice Alito alluded that there is no right to privacy in the Constitution and there's nothing protecting women for these issues in the Constitution.
The Daily
Could One Phone Call Lead to the 28th Amendment?
Well, that really highlighted the need for the Equal Rights Amendment to be part of the Constitution, because equal rights amendments across the board in states, states like Connecticut, states like New Mexico, there's current litigations in places like Pennsylvania.
The Daily
Could One Phone Call Lead to the 28th Amendment?
When a state has an equal rights amendment, in the case of reproductive rights, they have found that if a woman is denied access to health care for reproductive rights, including abortion, That it's fundamentally unequal. And so in the cases of Connecticut and New Mexico, women on Medicaid were given access to abortion services because they were denied it.