How have you been, How are you managing this transition in Washington? You know, there's a lot of opportunity, just kind of chomping at the bit to get started. That Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and I couldn't agree more with the new administration forging ahead on a wide ranging and ambitious slate of reforms, and was my own election fast approaching. I'm feeling galvanized by the opportunity to deliver fresh perspectives and real change. So on today's show, in honor of Women's History Month, I'm kicking off a series of conversations with fearless female leaders who I look to for guidance and inspiration. I'm Tally far Haitian Weinstein, and this is hearing throughout this month. I'm excited to share some powerful conversations I've been having with women on the front lines of some of the most critical battles in the fight for a more equitable criminal justice system. You're going to hear stories and innovative policy ideas on issues ranging from immigrant safety to LGBTQIA rights, and a survivor focused, holistic approach to cases of domestic violence and sexual assault. But to start off this series. I was thrilled to sit down with Senator Gillibrand for a reflection on the profound impact that women's perspectives can have on policy and the persistent challenges of sexism that we have to overcome. You know, I wonder as we are still very early in reflecting on the divisions of the last four years and all of the fires that the President started. You know, for me and I think for many people, one of the moments that stood out in a sea of insults and provocations was that really sexist tweet that the President directed against you. And we don't have to rehash it here, you know, other than to say he called me acrost. Yes, well I couldn't even I just couldn't. It was implying, which is pretty outrageous and terrible when you have young boys. I mean right, Well, so I wanted to ask you, you know, as a human being, like, how did that make you feel? For it to be about you? I mean, every woman in politics experiences some of this in a I would say a milder way. That was really shocking. It was shocking, It was inappropriate, it was harmful. It was a misuse of his power and his platform. You know, if we had social media companies that actually cared, they would have done something about that them. There has to begin to be some oversight over social media and over right wing media that proclaims it to be truth and proclaims it to be facts, but in fact is all opinion. And you know, when you say something that's obviously false, and to be able to do so with whatever million followers he had at the time, I think it's problematic and have the weight of his reach. He just was doing a gender slur and he did it with the purpose of harming me and my credibility, and I think he should have been held accountable and he wasn't. And so I hope that we can take the lessons in the last four years and begin to govern better because we've let these platforms have barely any oversight or accountability, and it's harmed the country. It has perceivably changed the nature of the climate in America because hate has been allowed to fill airwaves that can be distributed to millions of people immediately. Kirsten, what did you say to your sons about that tweet? So I just didn't mention it. I didn't mention it, And what I was upset that day and Henry, who was I think maybe ten or nine, You just said, Mommy, why are you so upset today? I was like, well, you know, the President said something mean about mommy. He said, what did he say? Mommy? What he say? I was like, well, he said I was doing a bad job, and I just don't agree. So I just really avoided it. I think the older boy, who was probably fourteen at the time, he may or may not know about it, but he didn't ask me about it. So I just didn't talk about it. So, you know, you and my children, I mean THEO is now seventeen and Henry is now twelve, and they understands that politics is a bit of a blood sport. They do get that this is a rough and tumble type job and people are attacking. You know. They understood that early on when every two years as a House number and every six years as a Senator, I had to run for office again. And I just remember walking with THEO actually, and he was young, he was like, he was probably about ten, and I said, well, yeah, mommy has to run for reelection and and I have to asked the voters of New York State if they want to hire me for this job. And he said, well, mom, is somebody running against you? I was like, yeah, someone is running against me. Well why are they running against you? And what do they say? I was like, oh, well, we just agree on everything. You know. She doesn't believe in women's rights, she doesn't believe in gay rights, she doesn't believe like we just would tick through all these different views and THEA was just like, oh, well, you better win, Mommy, you better win. But he was shocked to know that I could lose my job in a year or two, whatever it was, and that this was a competitive opportunity for his mother. One of the things I did to prepare for running for office was to show my kids some negative ads from you know, like the presidential campaign. Yeah, and I picked gentle ones, but I wanted them to understand that people will say things about you that are not true, and even about people you like. Right, And I think that they've absorbed, but I do sometimes wonder what else they're absorbing, just from living with a parent who is gauged in these really hard issues. Like last night, I was very startled by this. I was putting my nine year old to bed and she asked me if I could only do something about gun violence or sexual violence, and she used the words sexual violence, Which would I choose which is worse? And I thought, oh, my goodness, they're really horrible. But like, right, they're both horrible, is the answer. So I gave what I think is the right answer to my nine year old constituent. But I think we're living through a really hard time and to even to pose it that way, like does she maybe they understand that there is just so much to take on right now. I wanted to ask you, because I've heard you talk about your grandmother so much, what do you think she would advise have advised you to do when the President tweeted that, oh, she would have said, punching back, punching backuly and don't stop, which is why I did so. I was struck by the story that I once heard you tell you were talking about being considered for the appointment to the Senate when Hillary Clinton had vacated that seat, and you described pausing in the middle of your interview with then Governor Patterson to express, you know, your empathy, to just tell him how sorry you were about the way that he had been mocked recently on Saturday Night Live. Well, I was actually quite appalled. I thought, why would you make fun of the first black governor who has a disability for his disability. I couldn't actually believe that in this day and age, somebody thought that was funny, and I didn't think it was funny. I thought it was really inappropriate and mean. And you know, at the time, the governor was just finding his sea legs, like the last thing he needed was the popular kids to be making fun of him, and that's what it felt like to me. And so I just said, you know, I'm really sorry that they chose to make fun of you. And he said, oh yeah, my staff to say brush it off, and I said, you know, I don't think you should brush off. I think you should say something. And I think you should say something because think of how many other people who live with disabilities, who don't have your platform and don't have your stature, who could never stick up to bullies. And I said, you should just say something and say it's not right, and that you know, because I don't think it's right, and I think they need to know that what they did is wrong. And for whatever reason, it made him feel much better because I think his staff didn't quite understand that that's the kind of thing you shouldn't brush off. I like that story very much because for me, it's of a piece with I think a lot of your work where you it seemed to me very quick to identify who is the unpopular kid and you know, in this scenario, whose feelings have not been acknowledged, and then to make that your cause right and your a fight for justice. So you have done this as a champion for LGBTQ plus people in the military and elsewhere, for veterans, for women who have reported harassment in the workplace, And I wonder if you could say some more about where that instinct comes from to identify with people's vulnerability and to build your work on it. Well, I'm a Catholic and a Christian, and I you know we are always called to help the least among us. And if you look at Christ's life, he literally spent almost all his time with the most marginalized people. Whether it was prostitutes or people with diseases, or blind people or the tax collector who was considered the biggest outcast. He always spent time speaking for the voiceless or of helping those who had no power in society, and so it's definitely part of my upbringing, but also my faith. I think that's what my job is. You know, I think that, you know, being called to public service, having the platform I do, I think that my time and my voice can best be used lifting up those who aren't being listened to and lifting up those who don't have power. And when you carry voices and they are heard by those in power, you're doing your job. Yeah, you know, as I am now running for office, I find that it centers me to even just picture in my mind's eye who is the person that I'm fighting for. And it's not always the same person, but often I just close my eyes and I see, you know, a woman of color who is not a citizen, so she's afraid of approaching the criminal justice system, and she's been the victim of domestic abuse and she needs us to reach out to her. You know, I also see in you a certain kind of ruthlessness, and I mean that is the highest compliment actually, or stubbornness in once you've identified an injustice that needs to be taken on or a wrong that needs to be righted, that you work with a lot of determination. I think that that's why you're so productive. And I wonder if you could speak a bit about how these two instincts we've identified, your empathy and your determination have worked in the last four years in Washington, where there's been such a misogynistic culture and all of this is so much more complicated for a woman with power. Yes, I agree that has been complicated. Understatement. Yeah, there's a great deal of misogyny in the world, is a great deal of gender bias in the world. And through empathy you can find common ground, and you can find common ground with anybody. I work with Ted Cruise, I work with Rampaul, I worked with Mitch McCall, which is shocking because I disagree with them on so many levels, on so many issues, but there's always an opportunity for bipartisanship. For example, when I wanted to help the horse racing industry, I'm actually have a Sarah to the glass this morning, and I wanted to help stop the death of horses because they were doping them up before races and using medicines that weren't right. And I was able to work with Mitch McCall on that because he's that's Kentucky. So so empathy takes you a long way because there are shared problems and shared worries and share fears in all people, and everyone cares about their children. Everybody wants a better job to be able to provide for their kids. And so that's that's the sweet spot, that's the that's the shared values that we have to govern on. So if you are putting yourself in other people's shoes, often you can then see where you have things in common, and then the determination kicks in with you. Just don't let it go. Like once you've got your bipartisan core, you just keep pushing your issue and asking people to pay attention, asking people to please let you vote on it, to please include it in the next package, to please you know, you have to be incessant. And you're talking about bipartisanship as looking for shared interests, not as a kind of compromise, which I think is often how it is portrayed as a giving up of your values. Do you feel like you have to give up things in order to, you know, work with those who disagree. No, So if they're not going to agree that women deserve to be paid equal for equal work, we're just not going to agree if they believe that air and water should be polluted for the benefit of a company, we're not going to agree. But we might be able to agree on different tax credits for company that are willing to invest in great energy. There we go. So there's going to be places where we will not agree, and those are our core values that you don't compromise on. But there are ideas and ways of helping people that can be agreed on. And is there something particular you think that needs to be done or asserted to somehow respond to the way women were talked about in the last four years, you know, in sort of that change in atmosphere, or are you able to just sort of come back to you know, just continuing determined to do the work. Yeah, Well, what do we have to fix? I guess I'm asking when it comes to gender bias and gender violence, that is as prevalent now as it's ever been, and it's only grown the same as true with racism and bigotry, and it has grown under Trump because he basically poured fuel on a fire that had always been burning. We have to make sure that people who are public servants understand that this is domestic terrorism, and so we have to designate it as such and then do a better job communicating that to people so they understand, you know, if they're being misled by a website or a group or you know, any place, that they're being led down a path that is so damaging, destructive and filter with lies. I agree with that, and I think that it's important to say out loud what makes hate crimes. And I think of domestic terrorism as a variant of hate crimes different from just the underlying violence because it goes past, you know, the immediate victims and has the effect of terrorizing entire groups of people and inhibiting entire communities. And that's why it has to have a different status in the mind of a prosecutor, in the mind of a legislator. Right to say that you are hurting so many more people, yes, with your carrying the country apart. I mean, the division that has been created under President Trump is so harmful. And it's one of the reasons why President Biden ran on this notion that he wants to heal the soul of America, that he actually wants to do the hard work. But that's going to take education. It's going to take legislation to define white supremacy as a domestic terrorist ideology whatever, whatever the right terminology is. So we're going to try to do that work in the Senate right and to give prosecutors the investigative tools they need in order to be able to pursue it. It's going to be part of the DOJ and I know several people who are committed to getting that done. Can you tell us a bit about what is sort of your agenda right now, Like, what are some of the things that you want to fight for in this new chapter. Well, right now, the most urgent crisis is obviously getting COVID relief into my state and into the whole country. I want to focus on paid leave. The fact that if we'd had paid leave as a country when this pandemic hit, less people would have lost their jobs. People would have been able to take off the time to be home with their kids when they were remote learning without losing their job, or their place in that job, or their income. They wouldn't have had to make those terrible touch choices that have really harmed particularly women. If you look at the statistics from December, there were one hundred and forty thousand net jobs lost, and if you add all the ones that were gained and all the ones that were lost, that net number is women and mostly women of colors. So we are bearing the brunt of this pandemic in it's such a horrible way because women won't regain their earning potential or their earning capacity probably for decades. And if I may just just spen that out, this enormous hit that women have taken, and I'm so glad that you have highlighted, it will reverberate into other things like women in leadership, right, I mean, yeah, it is worrisome, and hopefully women will continue to want to run for office like yourself and women all across the state and all across the country, so that we can continue to support women leadership. I think Kamala Harris being our vice president is an inspiration for the globe. The fact that we have our first Black woman and our first Asian American woman matters. It absolutely matters. Just to have her be in such a position where she can use all of her experience and all of her ideas to the greater good. I think is a gift. It's a gift to the country. It's a gift to the world, and I'm just so grateful that not only did she aspire to it, but that she was given the opportunity to do it. Young people can see you can be anybody you want to be. You just have to aspire to it and then work really, really hard and try to achieve it, and that there's nothing wrong with big ambitions and big dreams. As I listen to you, I think I believe that men love their children just as much as women do. But I never hear male leaders Hey that's say yeah, just say it out loud. Why not? Yeah? Well, that those are some of the unique gifts that we bring to the table, and that's why I so desperately want more women in leadership. I want to get us to fifty one percent of people in Congress. I want to have more governors, more mayors, and a president that's a woman sooner than later. And so I just think that the talents and the experiences and the perspectives that we bring to the decision making table are unique and are powerful, and so I just want more of those ideas and perspectives to be represented better. You talked about the vice president, and I'm over the moon as are you. And yet I keep coming back to this idea that's been I think it's been top of mind in New York because we're going to have ranked choice voting in our municipal elections for the first time, although not in the district attorney's race. That the data shows that ranked choice voting is particularly beneficial to female candidates because so many people can envision a woman as a number two, shoot, but not as a number one, and it sort of capitalizes on that. And so I just share that I'm frustrated that, you know, we'll get that and it's not enough number two, you know, but we'll get there. I promise in our lifetime tally, we will see a woman president. Okay, so this is our bet. There will be a woman governor, a mayor, and a president within a decade. And it's gonna happen. And the reason why leadership matters for those for your wonderful mail listeners is that it's not that you guys aren't doing a great job, because you are. It's just that when you have more diversity at the decision making table, different issues will be brought up and different solutions will be offered. And I think this pandemic has showed that our lack of investment and a lot of the issues that women often advocate for has harmed our economy, harmed our country, and harmed our safety. Paid leaves should have been in the law of the land a decade ago. We should have nurses and testing at every school in America. These are ideas that I've been pushing for a decade that many women share, but sometimes male leadership does not put these priorities on their top ten list, and so we still don't have equal pay for equal work. We still don't have affordable daycare, we still don't have universal PreK in the whole country. Like these are challenges that we must meet, and unfortunately, oftentimes our male leaders don't feel as passionately as you and I might feel, because we see how important only child education is. Because we see that our children need to have their parents home for that first three months so that there can be bonding, so that there can be real early childhood education and that nurturing environment. We know that if they were in PreK that whole year, they'd be being socialized, they'd been getting more access to numbers and books, and have full time well qualified people teaching them. These are the things we know, and because we don't have enough of us heard on these issues, there's still not law yet. And it's so that's the reason. And so it's not that we don't love our male friends and we don't love our male leaders, because we do, but over time they don't necessarily feel the passion and the priorities that women do. And as a consequence, we have really been kicked in the butt because of this pandemic. And things would have been so much different if we had had more progress on more issues that oftentimes our female representatives are the ones championing. I could not agree with you more. And it's just because we see things. You know, everyone sees things with the benefit of their own experiences. And I'll give you one example. We're talking about police reform. We're in this moment of reckoning around the country. One thing I don't hear enough of is that the NYPD only one percent of its budget goes to the detectives who investigate sex crimes and crimes against children put together, and it's for it can't even it seems crazy, horrible, right, And just to see it is to already be on your way to a solution, but you have to be you have to be looking for it to see it, to say, you know, these crimes are a priority for me, and that is looking at how we define public safety and we should define it so much more broadly than we do today. Well, thank you, Kelly. This has been a joy and I look forward to seeing you and good luck in your race. And I really hope that you can get where you want to go because I think you have a lot of great ideas to help people with. Thank you so much. Kirsen Hearing is producing partnership with Pushkin Industries. Our producers are Sam Dingman and Camille Baptista. Our engineer is Evan Viola. Special thanks to Malcolm Gladwell and Jacob Weisberg. This podcast is paid for by New Yorkers for Tally and Senator Gillibrand's appearance on the show does not constitute a political endorsement. I am running to be a District Attorney of Manhattan and to set a national example in delivering safety, fairness and justice for all, especially our most vulnerable. If you like what you've heard, go to tally forda dot com to learn more about my campaign and be sure to join us for the next installment of our Women's History Month interview series. Next week. I'll be joined by Tanya Selveratnam, author of the new memoir Assume Nothing, which tells the story of her experience of intimate partner violence. I'm tally for Haiti and Weinstein. Thank you for listening. I'll see you next time I'm hearing

How have you been, How are you managing this transition in Washington? You know, there's a lot of opportunity, just kind of chomping at the bit to get started. That Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and I couldn't agree more with the new administration forging ahead on a wide ranging and ambitious slate of reforms, and was my own election fast approaching. I'm feeling galvanized by the opportunity to deliver fresh perspectives and real change. So on today's show, in honor of Women's History Month, I'm kicking off a series of conversations with fearless female leaders who I look to for guidance and inspiration. I'm Tally far Haitian Weinstein, and this is hearing throughout this month. I'm excited to share some powerful conversations I've been having with women on the front lines of some of the most critical battles in the fight for a more equitable criminal justice system. You're going to hear stories and innovative policy ideas on issues ranging from immigrant safety to LGBTQIA rights, and a survivor focused, holistic approach to cases of domestic violence and sexual assault. But to start off this series. I was thrilled to sit down with Senator Gillibrand for a reflection on the profound impact that women's perspectives can have on policy and the persistent challenges of sexism that we have to overcome. You know, I wonder as we are still very early in reflecting on the divisions of the last four years and all of the fires that the President started. You know, for me and I think for many people, one of the moments that stood out in a sea of insults and provocations was that really sexist tweet that the President directed against you. And we don't have to rehash it here, you know, other than to say he called me acrost. Yes, well I couldn't even I just couldn't. It was implying, which is pretty outrageous and terrible when you have young boys. I mean right, Well, so I wanted to ask you, you know, as a human being, like, how did that make you feel? For it to be about you? I mean, every woman in politics experiences some of this in a I would say a milder way. That was really shocking. It was shocking, It was inappropriate, it was harmful. It was a misuse of his power and his platform. You know, if we had social media companies that actually cared, they would have done something about that them. There has to begin to be some oversight over social media and over right wing media that proclaims it to be truth and proclaims it to be facts, but in fact is all opinion. And you know, when you say something that's obviously false, and to be able to do so with whatever million followers he had at the time, I think it's problematic and have the weight of his reach. He just was doing a gender slur and he did it with the purpose of harming me and my credibility, and I think he should have been held accountable and he wasn't. And so I hope that we can take the lessons in the last four years and begin to govern better because we've let these platforms have barely any oversight or accountability, and it's harmed the country. It has perceivably changed the nature of the climate in America because hate has been allowed to fill airwaves that can be distributed to millions of people immediately. Kirsten, what did you say to your sons about that tweet? So I just didn't mention it. I didn't mention it, And what I was upset that day and Henry, who was I think maybe ten or nine, You just said, Mommy, why are you so upset today? I was like, well, you know, the President said something mean about mommy. He said, what did he say? Mommy? What he say? I was like, well, he said I was doing a bad job, and I just don't agree. So I just really avoided it. I think the older boy, who was probably fourteen at the time, he may or may not know about it, but he didn't ask me about it. So I just didn't talk about it. So, you know, you and my children, I mean THEO is now seventeen and Henry is now twelve, and they understands that politics is a bit of a blood sport. They do get that this is a rough and tumble type job and people are attacking. You know. They understood that early on when every two years as a House number and every six years as a Senator, I had to run for office again. And I just remember walking with THEO actually, and he was young, he was like, he was probably about ten, and I said, well, yeah, mommy has to run for reelection and and I have to asked the voters of New York State if they want to hire me for this job. And he said, well, mom, is somebody running against you? I was like, yeah, someone is running against me. Well why are they running against you? And what do they say? I was like, oh, well, we just agree on everything. You know. She doesn't believe in women's rights, she doesn't believe in gay rights, she doesn't believe like we just would tick through all these different views and THEA was just like, oh, well, you better win, Mommy, you better win. But he was shocked to know that I could lose my job in a year or two, whatever it was, and that this was a competitive opportunity for his mother. One of the things I did to prepare for running for office was to show my kids some negative ads from you know, like the presidential campaign. Yeah, and I picked gentle ones, but I wanted them to understand that people will say things about you that are not true, and even about people you like. Right, And I think that they've absorbed, but I do sometimes wonder what else they're absorbing, just from living with a parent who is gauged in these really hard issues. Like last night, I was very startled by this. I was putting my nine year old to bed and she asked me if I could only do something about gun violence or sexual violence, and she used the words sexual violence, Which would I choose which is worse? And I thought, oh, my goodness, they're really horrible. But like, right, they're both horrible, is the answer. So I gave what I think is the right answer to my nine year old constituent. But I think we're living through a really hard time and to even to pose it that way, like does she maybe they understand that there is just so much to take on right now. I wanted to ask you, because I've heard you talk about your grandmother so much, what do you think she would advise have advised you to do when the President tweeted that, oh, she would have said, punching back, punching backuly and don't stop, which is why I did so. I was struck by the story that I once heard you tell you were talking about being considered for the appointment to the Senate when Hillary Clinton had vacated that seat, and you described pausing in the middle of your interview with then Governor Patterson to express, you know, your empathy, to just tell him how sorry you were about the way that he had been mocked recently on Saturday Night Live. Well, I was actually quite appalled. I thought, why would you make fun of the first black governor who has a disability for his disability. I couldn't actually believe that in this day and age, somebody thought that was funny, and I didn't think it was funny. I thought it was really inappropriate and mean. And you know, at the time, the governor was just finding his sea legs, like the last thing he needed was the popular kids to be making fun of him, and that's what it felt like to me. And so I just said, you know, I'm really sorry that they chose to make fun of you. And he said, oh yeah, my staff to say brush it off, and I said, you know, I don't think you should brush off. I think you should say something. And I think you should say something because think of how many other people who live with disabilities, who don't have your platform and don't have your stature, who could never stick up to bullies. And I said, you should just say something and say it's not right, and that you know, because I don't think it's right, and I think they need to know that what they did is wrong. And for whatever reason, it made him feel much better because I think his staff didn't quite understand that that's the kind of thing you shouldn't brush off. I like that story very much because for me, it's of a piece with I think a lot of your work where you it seemed to me very quick to identify who is the unpopular kid and you know, in this scenario, whose feelings have not been acknowledged, and then to make that your cause right and your a fight for justice. So you have done this as a champion for LGBTQ plus people in the military and elsewhere, for veterans, for women who have reported harassment in the workplace, And I wonder if you could say some more about where that instinct comes from to identify with people's vulnerability and to build your work on it. Well, I'm a Catholic and a Christian, and I you know we are always called to help the least among us. And if you look at Christ's life, he literally spent almost all his time with the most marginalized people. Whether it was prostitutes or people with diseases, or blind people or the tax collector who was considered the biggest outcast. He always spent time speaking for the voiceless or of helping those who had no power in society, and so it's definitely part of my upbringing, but also my faith. I think that's what my job is. You know, I think that, you know, being called to public service, having the platform I do, I think that my time and my voice can best be used lifting up those who aren't being listened to and lifting up those who don't have power. And when you carry voices and they are heard by those in power, you're doing your job. Yeah, you know, as I am now running for office, I find that it centers me to even just picture in my mind's eye who is the person that I'm fighting for. And it's not always the same person, but often I just close my eyes and I see, you know, a woman of color who is not a citizen, so she's afraid of approaching the criminal justice system, and she's been the victim of domestic abuse and she needs us to reach out to her. You know, I also see in you a certain kind of ruthlessness, and I mean that is the highest compliment actually, or stubbornness in once you've identified an injustice that needs to be taken on or a wrong that needs to be righted, that you work with a lot of determination. I think that that's why you're so productive. And I wonder if you could speak a bit about how these two instincts we've identified, your empathy and your determination have worked in the last four years in Washington, where there's been such a misogynistic culture and all of this is so much more complicated for a woman with power. Yes, I agree that has been complicated. Understatement. Yeah, there's a great deal of misogyny in the world, is a great deal of gender bias in the world. And through empathy you can find common ground, and you can find common ground with anybody. I work with Ted Cruise, I work with Rampaul, I worked with Mitch McCall, which is shocking because I disagree with them on so many levels, on so many issues, but there's always an opportunity for bipartisanship. For example, when I wanted to help the horse racing industry, I'm actually have a Sarah to the glass this morning, and I wanted to help stop the death of horses because they were doping them up before races and using medicines that weren't right. And I was able to work with Mitch McCall on that because he's that's Kentucky. So so empathy takes you a long way because there are shared problems and shared worries and share fears in all people, and everyone cares about their children. Everybody wants a better job to be able to provide for their kids. And so that's that's the sweet spot, that's the that's the shared values that we have to govern on. So if you are putting yourself in other people's shoes, often you can then see where you have things in common, and then the determination kicks in with you. Just don't let it go. Like once you've got your bipartisan core, you just keep pushing your issue and asking people to pay attention, asking people to please let you vote on it, to please include it in the next package, to please you know, you have to be incessant. And you're talking about bipartisanship as looking for shared interests, not as a kind of compromise, which I think is often how it is portrayed as a giving up of your values. Do you feel like you have to give up things in order to, you know, work with those who disagree. No, So if they're not going to agree that women deserve to be paid equal for equal work, we're just not going to agree if they believe that air and water should be polluted for the benefit of a company, we're not going to agree. But we might be able to agree on different tax credits for company that are willing to invest in great energy. There we go. So there's going to be places where we will not agree, and those are our core values that you don't compromise on. But there are ideas and ways of helping people that can be agreed on. And is there something particular you think that needs to be done or asserted to somehow respond to the way women were talked about in the last four years, you know, in sort of that change in atmosphere, or are you able to just sort of come back to you know, just continuing determined to do the work. Yeah, Well, what do we have to fix? I guess I'm asking when it comes to gender bias and gender violence, that is as prevalent now as it's ever been, and it's only grown the same as true with racism and bigotry, and it has grown under Trump because he basically poured fuel on a fire that had always been burning. We have to make sure that people who are public servants understand that this is domestic terrorism, and so we have to designate it as such and then do a better job communicating that to people so they understand, you know, if they're being misled by a website or a group or you know, any place, that they're being led down a path that is so damaging, destructive and filter with lies. I agree with that, and I think that it's important to say out loud what makes hate crimes. And I think of domestic terrorism as a variant of hate crimes different from just the underlying violence because it goes past, you know, the immediate victims and has the effect of terrorizing entire groups of people and inhibiting entire communities. And that's why it has to have a different status in the mind of a prosecutor, in the mind of a legislator. Right to say that you are hurting so many more people, yes, with your carrying the country apart. I mean, the division that has been created under President Trump is so harmful. And it's one of the reasons why President Biden ran on this notion that he wants to heal the soul of America, that he actually wants to do the hard work. But that's going to take education. It's going to take legislation to define white supremacy as a domestic terrorist ideology whatever, whatever the right terminology is. So we're going to try to do that work in the Senate right and to give prosecutors the investigative tools they need in order to be able to pursue it. It's going to be part of the DOJ and I know several people who are committed to getting that done. Can you tell us a bit about what is sort of your agenda right now, Like, what are some of the things that you want to fight for in this new chapter. Well, right now, the most urgent crisis is obviously getting COVID relief into my state and into the whole country. I want to focus on paid leave. The fact that if we'd had paid leave as a country when this pandemic hit, less people would have lost their jobs. People would have been able to take off the time to be home with their kids when they were remote learning without losing their job, or their place in that job, or their income. They wouldn't have had to make those terrible touch choices that have really harmed particularly women. If you look at the statistics from December, there were one hundred and forty thousand net jobs lost, and if you add all the ones that were gained and all the ones that were lost, that net number is women and mostly women of colors. So we are bearing the brunt of this pandemic in it's such a horrible way because women won't regain their earning potential or their earning capacity probably for decades. And if I may just just spen that out, this enormous hit that women have taken, and I'm so glad that you have highlighted, it will reverberate into other things like women in leadership, right, I mean, yeah, it is worrisome, and hopefully women will continue to want to run for office like yourself and women all across the state and all across the country, so that we can continue to support women leadership. I think Kamala Harris being our vice president is an inspiration for the globe. The fact that we have our first Black woman and our first Asian American woman matters. It absolutely matters. Just to have her be in such a position where she can use all of her experience and all of her ideas to the greater good. I think is a gift. It's a gift to the country. It's a gift to the world, and I'm just so grateful that not only did she aspire to it, but that she was given the opportunity to do it. Young people can see you can be anybody you want to be. You just have to aspire to it and then work really, really hard and try to achieve it, and that there's nothing wrong with big ambitions and big dreams. As I listen to you, I think I believe that men love their children just as much as women do. But I never hear male leaders Hey that's say yeah, just say it out loud. Why not? Yeah? Well, that those are some of the unique gifts that we bring to the table, and that's why I so desperately want more women in leadership. I want to get us to fifty one percent of people in Congress. I want to have more governors, more mayors, and a president that's a woman sooner than later. And so I just think that the talents and the experiences and the perspectives that we bring to the decision making table are unique and are powerful, and so I just want more of those ideas and perspectives to be represented better. You talked about the vice president, and I'm over the moon as are you. And yet I keep coming back to this idea that's been I think it's been top of mind in New York because we're going to have ranked choice voting in our municipal elections for the first time, although not in the district attorney's race. That the data shows that ranked choice voting is particularly beneficial to female candidates because so many people can envision a woman as a number two, shoot, but not as a number one, and it sort of capitalizes on that. And so I just share that I'm frustrated that, you know, we'll get that and it's not enough number two, you know, but we'll get there. I promise in our lifetime tally, we will see a woman president. Okay, so this is our bet. There will be a woman governor, a mayor, and a president within a decade. And it's gonna happen. And the reason why leadership matters for those for your wonderful mail listeners is that it's not that you guys aren't doing a great job, because you are. It's just that when you have more diversity at the decision making table, different issues will be brought up and different solutions will be offered. And I think this pandemic has showed that our lack of investment and a lot of the issues that women often advocate for has harmed our economy, harmed our country, and harmed our safety. Paid leaves should have been in the law of the land a decade ago. We should have nurses and testing at every school in America. These are ideas that I've been pushing for a decade that many women share, but sometimes male leadership does not put these priorities on their top ten list, and so we still don't have equal pay for equal work. We still don't have affordable daycare, we still don't have universal PreK in the whole country. Like these are challenges that we must meet, and unfortunately, oftentimes our male leaders don't feel as passionately as you and I might feel, because we see how important only child education is. Because we see that our children need to have their parents home for that first three months so that there can be bonding, so that there can be real early childhood education and that nurturing environment. We know that if they were in PreK that whole year, they'd be being socialized, they'd been getting more access to numbers and books, and have full time well qualified people teaching them. These are the things we know, and because we don't have enough of us heard on these issues, there's still not law yet. And it's so that's the reason. And so it's not that we don't love our male friends and we don't love our male leaders, because we do, but over time they don't necessarily feel the passion and the priorities that women do. And as a consequence, we have really been kicked in the butt because of this pandemic. And things would have been so much different if we had had more progress on more issues that oftentimes our female representatives are the ones championing. I could not agree with you more. And it's just because we see things. You know, everyone sees things with the benefit of their own experiences. And I'll give you one example. We're talking about police reform. We're in this moment of reckoning around the country. One thing I don't hear enough of is that the NYPD only one percent of its budget goes to the detectives who investigate sex crimes and crimes against children put together, and it's for it can't even it seems crazy, horrible, right, And just to see it is to already be on your way to a solution, but you have to be you have to be looking for it to see it, to say, you know, these crimes are a priority for me, and that is looking at how we define public safety and we should define it so much more broadly than we do today. Well, thank you, Kelly. This has been a joy and I look forward to seeing you and good luck in your race. And I really hope that you can get where you want to go because I think you have a lot of great ideas to help people with. Thank you so much. Kirsen Hearing is producing partnership with Pushkin Industries. Our producers are Sam Dingman and Camille Baptista. Our engineer is Evan Viola. Special thanks to Malcolm Gladwell and Jacob Weisberg. This podcast is paid for by New Yorkers for Tally and Senator Gillibrand's appearance on the show does not constitute a political endorsement. I am running to be a District Attorney of Manhattan and to set a national example in delivering safety, fairness and justice for all, especially our most vulnerable. If you like what you've heard, go to tally forda dot com to learn more about my campaign and be sure to join us for the next installment of our Women's History Month interview series. Next week. I'll be joined by Tanya Selveratnam, author of the new memoir Assume Nothing, which tells the story of her experience of intimate partner violence. I'm tally for Haiti and Weinstein. Thank you for listening. I'll see you next time I'm hearing