Calling Congress … Does It Work? with Rep. Melanie Stansbury

26:41You know, because I'm not in D.C. and I'm not interacting with my colleagues from other places, I can't say for certain. But the fact that we are seeing Republican members of Congress who we know have reached out to the president, they posted public statements. I think it is very clear that the public outcry, whether it's social media, the calls, whatever, I think certainly influenced them. And I'll just say you're asking, you know, does it ever change the course of things? I'll give you one really concrete example where I can point exactly, which was during the big fight over the big ugly bill that passed this summer.

27:19There were a lot of things that people lobbied against, particularly the health care cuts to Medicaid and others. But in particular, the idea of selling off public lands became a cause not only for folks on the left, but folks on the right. Because people are sportsmen and they love the outdoors and they think our public lands are important. And so there was a broad coalition and movement online and calling members on both sides of the aisle. And ultimately, there were five Republicans in the House who said, I won't vote for this. And I spoke to one of them afterwards and I said, thank you for using your voice because they didn't even have to vote on it.

28:01They just made public statements. And one of them said, well, I had to because the calls wouldn't stop. So if you wonder if your calls matter, they absolutely matter. So we'll take a quick break. And when we're back, I want to talk about what impact Congress has these days. If you're calling Congress and it matters, does Congress still matter? Especially right now. We'll take a quick break and we'll be right back. Guys, today's sponsored dumb question is from me. I'm going to take the next minute to tell you a little bit about Smart Girl Dumb Questions and to ask you for your help in continuing to make independent, fact-based, and curious journalism.

28:37No, I'm not going to ask you for money. Here's what I need. I would love you to tell 10 of your friends about the show. Or 100. I don't know. Blast that reunion group that you muted. And definitely tell your mom. And tell your mom to tell her friends, too. Even if you don't like the show and you're just, like, hate watching it or listening to it, tell 10 of your friends to hate watch it, too. Numbers are numbers, people. So this is a good time to shift gears. because, yeah, the meta question is, like, I'm writing to an entity that, and that entity should matter, but we're in a time where the president elides, bypasses, ignores, shuns, whatever word you want to use, Congress, on several situations, some of which have precedent with prior administrations from both parties, and some of which, like, the tariffs are, you know, being seriously considered for their constitutionality in the Supreme Court as we speak.

29:28So, you know, I think that there's a question though right now is like, is Congress defunct? You know, I think that like, you know, you called it a meta question. I'm going to make it even more meta, which is, does democracy matter anymore? And if the answer to that question is yes, then Congress absolutely matters because the foundation of democracy is checks and balances and the check and balance as it's designed in our Constitution is three branches of government that are co-equal. And the responsibility of Congress is the budget oversight and writing the laws. The executive branch actually by design, interesting, fun fact, when the founding fathers actually created our modern republic, they didn't even create an executive branch.

30:16They were so freaked out by what King George had done that they just created Congress was the first version of it because they believed that democracy had to be like with the people. And then eventually they were having problems with like debt and banking and making up their minds. So they created the executive branch, but they made sure that it was small and that it was constrained in its powers. And then the courts, of course, were created to provide that legal check. Now, I think that part of what Trump's entire MO is Project 2025 allies, these people that are pushing the boundaries are trying to do is that they are trying to take executive power and push it to whatever legal limits they can get away with.

31:03But in reality, the courts, especially the lower courts, the lower federal courts by and large are ruling against them. And even though it may not look like it because of their messaging, they are complying with the lower courts. They're appealing, but if a court is saying, okay, there's an injunction, you can't do that, they do comply with the injunctions. Yeah, they hold. Yeah. And these budget bills, Trump sent us his president's budget last year saying, I'm going to eliminate most of the EPA. Well, the budget that we passed in the House and that hopefully gets through next week, I mean, it funds most of the same programs largely at the same level.

31:44So Congress is still exercising its authority, but here's why it matters. I believe that many of the crimes that this administration is committing right now, and I say this as a member of the Oversight Committee, for those crimes that do not have statute of limitations, they will be held accountable when the Department of Justice is doing his job again. And, you know, we may not have the votes at this moment to impeach people like Kristi Noem, but she's committed crimes that she will be prosecuted for even after she leaves this job. So it may appear that it doesn't matter right now, but I do believe our country's been through some rough and dark times.

32:26And I think we're going to come out of this and you better believe like we're going to hold all these people accountable. I mean, it seems like there's this thing that happens in Congress where the legislative branch has the lowest indicator of trust across all of government. I think it's around 30 % in the last reading of this or in 2023. I imagine it might be lower now. What is the way out of that? Well, my background, we were talking, my background's in water resources, but I have a graduate degree in sociology. So I think about this sociologically. Americans are, we are deeply individualistic and rebellious people.

33:17It's like in our blood. It's in our culture. It's who we are. And so I think we are just by our nature and culturally deeply suspicious of the man, the government, whoever the government is. We don't like politics. We don't like politicians overwhelmingly. It's just part of the culture. But yet we're like super hyper political environment. And so even when people say I hate politics, you know, you're sending your friend clips of like people talking about politics. and so when you ask someone in a poll do you like congress I'm gonna say I don't like congress you know if somebody pulled me asked me that no I don't trust those guys but you asked me do I believe that democracy is important I'm gonna say yes so I think a lot of it is like like it's also reflective of just like the culture.

34:05But I do think that what people are deeply troubled by, I'll just use that word because I can't think of anything better at the moment, is just the erosion of trust in institutions. If people were already culturally, you know, sort of predisposed to think the government can't be trusted. Now you've got people breaking the law and the White House. You've got the courts ruling against our basic rights. And then you've got a bunch of slimy politicians in Congress that aren't standing up for basic dignity and saying stupid things on the air. And so I think that our political environment has created a lot of mistrust in our institutions and politicians.

34:52And my antidote is why I'm sitting here. When I moved home to New Mexico. I worked in D.C. for several years. I worked in the Obama administration and in the Senate doing water and science and tribal issues. I got asked to run for office for the state legislature. And that year was the 2018 cycle. And I asked Emily's List for support. They help women run for office. And they told me at that time, the largest number of women who had ever asked for their help to run for office was 900 women in the 2016 cycle. In 2018, 42 ,000 women ran for office, 42 ,000. And every single cycle since then, it has grown exponentially.

35:37If you look at what Congress looked like in 2017 versus what Congress looks like now, it has completely transformed. We have completely changed the body politic. We're not in power right now. But I can tell you like here in New Mexico, where all that transformational change happened over the last several cycles, we passed universal child care, we passed voting rights protection, we passed universal college, we passed, you know, food and health care protections. And so I think people feel very hopeless and helpless right now, but we have already transformed the political fabric. And when we come back into our power and our ability, it's not like we're just going to go back to where we were.

36:22there's a whole different group of people there with different values who want to transform this country for the good of this country and so you asked me how do we get out of it we're not going to get out of it by polling people and asking what they think of politicians unlike politicians well we got to yeah who the politicians are and what they do with it i also think there's like a bit of what you see in any kind of trust survey where it's like i don't like i don't like we get as journalists. It's like, I hate the media, but I like my local journalist. I don't trust science, but my doctor is great.

36:55And I think people feel that way about their personal congressperson often. I think part of the problem with the challenge of the institution right now is that Congress was designed constitutionally to be separate and equal. And right now it doesn't feel equal in part because of the executive expansion that we've been seeing through the courts and through the executive branch seizing it in recent years, and in part because it doesn't feel separate. And I say that like it doesn't feel separate right now. You don't get a lot of people voting against their president. And by the way, you didn't get that also in the Biden administration.

37:31I don't know your voting record in alignment with the president's at that time, but a lot of Democrats, like you get a very close, I had a friend who was a lawmaker and voted with the president 98 % of the time, and that was a low number relative to many other lawmakers. So you get a sense, or they vote with the party or what the president's agenda is all the time. And I feel like that is actually the crux of it. It would be interesting to see separation of Congress. I don't know. It's my... I mean, I think that what is different about this moment is that Donald Trump's violating the Constitution.

38:15And like that shouldn't be partisan. That's not about voting with the president. He's invading foreign countries, violating the Constitution. Today, I was just listening to the news before I got on this. You know, they just killed another two individuals on a boat through another illegal strike in the Caribbean. And they're violating the law daily. Like, we've never seen a president like this before. And I think why people are deeply distrustful is that Congress is not only enabling it, but they're not stopping it. And so I think they're angry at both sides of the aisle over that. And I think that people are wondering, how is it that I can't break the law as an everyday citizen, but the president can go break the law every day?

39:03And how did we not have a contingency plan to stop this? And, you know, the only tool we have is impeachment. But if you don't have the votes, then you can't do it. And so I think people are angry. They're scared. They're frustrated. and they're mad at Congress because they don't see us stopping it. Of course, Secretary Rubio and the president would say that this is, or they have said that the Venezuela action is within the bounds of what the executive can do without, they have to notify Congress but not seek their approval because they say it's short of, you know, an act of war. But I do think that the level of, sorry, go ahead.

39:40Can I interject there? Yeah. No, they're committing more crimes. Yes. And the reason I can tell you that is because I've sat in all the classified briefings and read the legal arguments from the White House and DOJ. And their arguments are they're actually arguing that drugs are a weapon of mass destruction. Yes. They're claiming it's fentanyl, which it is not fentanyl. It is not fentanyl, yes. Yeah, it's just, I'm going to use a swear word, it's bullshit. What is astonishing to me is that I will see my colleagues, especially in oversight, which is very much a political arm of the White House on occasion, is like, they will lie.

40:21The White House or, you know, for example, these shootings in Minnesota. And then my colleagues will come in and they don't even take a beat. They are happy to just lie to the American people. It doesn't seem to affect them to even like pause before repeating the lie. And I do, I think that that's really disturbing. Is that, does that go, is that part of the fact that Congress has become, everything is like a spectacle right now. We were talking about social media. It's like everybody is always on performing on their version of like Real Housewives, Capitol Hill. It seems like everyone's always performing.

40:59I never thought I'd live in a day of viral C-SPAN or people turning to Capitol Hill for late night content. But we live in that moment now, and everything is clipped and cut up and disseminated, and therefore it changes people's behaviors. And then you all are hanging out at Capitol Hill and going to the same gym. And I wonder how – are people play acting? Do they just let their guards down when you're all working out in Lululemon or aloe? Whatever is your poison of choice. I don't know. Yes and no. I mean, there are some members who their commitment to their onstage persona is consistent with their offstage persona.

41:47So it kind of is it depends on the person. And I will say this. I think it's worth noting that like 535 members of Congress, probably the average person could name 10 or 20. And that's because there's only a handful of individuals on either side of the aisle that really have these really high profile social media presence and are on the news all the time. But the rest of the folks in there are kind of everyday people. And you would be surprised by what Congress actually looks like if you knew every individual who's serving. But, yeah, I see it all the time. One of the things that I find interesting, we have a bipartisan women's lounge, and it's such a metaphor for me in Congress because we didn't even have a significant threshold of women serving in Congress until the 90s.

42:38And so there wasn't even a bathroom, a women's bathroom next to the house until the 90s. And the women of the house petitioned to get a lounge so that they would have a private space to spend. And so there's now a bipartisan women's lounge right off of Statuary Hall. and um i love that lounge because it is a third space inside the capital where the cameras are off there's no staff in there and i have real relationships with women on the opposite side of the aisle because we sit and eat lunch we've had interesting conversations and their private persona is completely normal and then when the cameras go on you're like oh okay we're back to that.

43:19So it is absolutely - This is like the wing. You probably don't know if the wing was like this notorious women's club that happened in Manhattan. And then it led to a men's movement that kind of filed a lawsuit against the whole thing. Audrey Gelman was involved, but it's like a women's wing. And it's so funny to say that the people's personas will just switch in and out. You famously served on House Oversight and Accountability with Marjorie Taylor Greene. Did you miss Do you miss Marjorie Taylor Greene? You know what? So we're actually preparing for a reboot, a new season of the Doge Subcommittee, as you were saying.

43:58And Tim Burchett of Tennessee is going to be our new ranking member. And he and I just met a couple of days ago. And I'm cautiously skeptical but excited. He wants to try to reboot in a bipartisan fashion. But, you know, MTG and I always had a very professional relationship from the first time she took the gavel till I was made ranking member. We met in her office. We had conversations that were very collegial and civil. And then, yeah, the cameras would go on and, you know, the kind of like partisan warfare would erupt in the room. And then to your point, things would get clipped. And actually, there was a viral moment where she was gaveling me that was super, super viral.

44:43And it's funny because she did gavel me really hard, and it did really mess up my eardrum that day. But it was like, you know, three minutes out of a really boring three-hour hearing. And if you watched the rest of the hearing, you would have been like, oh, that was dumb. But that moment went like super. I'm the chair of this committee. That's not how our voluntary procedure works. You're not recognized, Ms. Stanbury. You're not recognized either. You can't just speak anytime you want. I'm the chair of this committee. People often think like she and I were like at loggerheads and I was like, no, she was like smashing the gavel in my ear and I was irritated.

45:18Yeah, she was showing like an image of someone flicking off the committee before they were supposed to come testify or something. And you showed the full image, which showed the guy throwing like a backwards peace sign or whatever. And that's a funny clip. Again, speaking to the power of clipping, that was a second thing that happened. Oh, that wasn't the same one you're referring to. No, but you know what's funny about that is that there's actually a picture, I think, of Politico photographer in the hearing room. And you would be surprised having seen that clip because in the hearing room, she had a giant poster and I was holding up eight and a half by 11 of the actual picture.

45:59Saying that this is game day. One moment. A point of order. You're not, you're not. Madam Chair, I have a point of order. The document that you have up behind you is a misrepresentation of the actual post. It appears that you're trying to misrepresent a witness here. Point of order. This is the actual picture. Ms. Stansbury, you're not recognized. Ms. Stansbury, you're not recognized. Ms. Stansbury, did you feel you were in a safe environment? When you were told you must come here. And in this huge hearing room, it didn't look funny. It just looked like I was holding up a piece of paper. But the way the cameraman in the room zoomed in on it, and then my hand kind of went into the frame, and then Jimmy Kimmel clipped it.

46:44And he kind of added his commentary. And when I saw it, I literally fell out of my seat. It was so hilarious. And I was like, that's so funny because it's just this moment that got caught in a particular kind of way. You're like the dude with sign of Congress. You know, dude with sign. Yeah. Social media, you know who he is, right? I love. Somebody asked me in an interview, they were like, how do you destroy somebody with a normal piece of office paper? I know. Because that's my thing. You got to move out of the eight and a half by 11. I feel like that's really like the country, you know, things are not normal.

47:17You got eight and a half, 11. Next thing we know, you're going to be like with an index card. It's going to be quite, quite sad. You didn't tell me if you miss Marjorie Taylor Greene. I think you do. You know, she's an interesting person. I don't know. I'll answer it as a sociological thing. I found her evolution really interesting. And I appreciated that in her final months, she used her platform to expose Donald Trump for who he is, and to stand with Epstein survivors, and that in her new incarnation, she's continuing to hold them accountable. I hate her politics. I don't like the particular issues and especially cultural issues she stands for.

48:06And I think that her rhetoric and actions caused a lot of harm to many of our communities, particularly in the LGBTQ plus community. So, you know, she's a complicated human. Yeah. Who's your favorite workout buddy in the congressional gym? Oh, my gosh. Well, I don't work out at the gym personally, but I do live in a building that a lot of members live in. And I'm trying to think. I see people there. You know what? I have a lot of different friends. I would say our main activity is probably drinking more as a coaching strategy than working out. Who do you guys drunk text or drunk dial? I guess you could call your own lawmakers, but that would just be calling yourself.

48:49You know what? I called both or I texted both of my senators to tell them to not vote for Homeland Security funding. So I can do it. All of you can do it. And I even said to one of my senator's staff yesterday, I was like, I lobbied him personally. And they're like, oh, we know. He told us. Oh, they know. They know. OK, perfect. We love it. By the way, if the government shutdown goes through, is anyone going to be answering the phones at your local lawmaker? Sure. So because of the appropriations bills pertain to specific agencies and we passed some, if any agency shuts down, it'll be Homeland Security.

49:29So yes, there will be. Okay. All right. Unless you want to call Christy, in which case can't get through. I doubt you could now. Can we do it just very quickly before you run a very quick lightning round of a few questions of things that you have insight into that we don't? But you were, I misspoke earlier, you were on the Doge subcommittee where Marjorie Taylor Greene was the chairwoman at the time. You're still on the Doge subcommittee. Doge survives the actual Doge initiative or whatever. What is the latest on Doge? Have we Doge'd yet? What's going on? Yeah. So, like I said, I just met with Tim Burchett, who is, you know, a lot of people know him for his comedic appearances on TV.

50:17And he's always wearing his Carhartt jacket. You know, Tim is an interesting person. He is very friendly with people on both sides of the aisle. He himself, by his own admission, is very far right ideologically. But he contacted me and said, I'm going to be the new chairman. And really, in the majority, you control the committee. So he does not have to be bipartisan. He did not have to contact me and say, you know, let's do this collaboratively. But he did. And so I met with him and the staff last week, and we agreed that we would do some, we would attempt a grand experiment of normal bipartisan oversight hearings on efficiency in the coming months.

51:02Now, will that continue? Will members on the committee be interested in that? We don't know yet. But we're going to attempt to restore some normalcy and see what happens. It's an experiment. Okay. There was some reporting last week that I think the Social Security Administration said it discovered that Doge employees at the agency were secretly and improperly sharing sensitive personal data in a potential violation of the Hatch Act. So this is according to a whistleblower. This is data from potentially hundreds of millions of Americans to an insecure server, I believe. Is there any further information on that?

51:46Because you hear a lot of theories about what happened to Doge data. Do we know anything more? Will we know anything more? When will we know anything more? Yeah, I mean, well, specifically about Social Security, you know, immediately when we found out that they had infiltrated the Social Security system, there was lawsuits and it was appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court could have chosen to say, hey, this is a violation of privacy laws. But instead they said, eh, we'll wait till the lower courts decide this. But for now, you can continue to share this data. So the Supreme Court is very much in dereliction of duty right there.

52:31And so we know from this whistleblower of one instance in which data was shared with a private political entity, but who the hell knows what they were doing with that data for months. And we have plenty of whistleblower and other evidence reporting that not just Social Security data, but Treasury data, other private data was not only leaked, but it was downloaded to private servers. Is it being sold on the open market? We have no idea. But again, this kind of goes back to what I was saying earlier. Normally, these are federal crimes that would be prosecuted by DOJ. But because DOJ is not doing its job, they're not prosecuting these crimes.

53:11I believe that in a future administration, all of these individuals, whether it's Elon Musk, it's individuals who illegally infiltrated these data sets and illegally shared data sets, they'll be criminally prosecuted. And this was from a DOJ filing, the Department of Justice filing. There's too many DO somethings here going on. Okay, very quickly, you're one of nine Democrats who broke with the party to penalize the Clintons for not appearing before Congress in the Epstein investigation. What was your thinking there? In this moment, when we see a completely lawless administration not complying with the Constitution, the law, and Congress's separate but co-equal powers, it is deeply concerning to me that we continue to exercise congressional authority to its fullest extent.

54:11And in the specific case of what happened with this subpoena, we subpoenaed a number of individuals on a bipartisan basis as part of the Epstein investigation. And I want to be clear, if we were if the Republicans were actually holding people accountable for the Epstein crimes, we would have DOJ in front of the committee and we would be holding the DOJ AG in contempt. But they are weaponizing the committee. They're going after the Clintons. But also, we did subpoena the Clintons. And on the day they were to appear in front of the committee, they didn't show. And so while they were in good faith negotiations, and I believe ultimately if this goes to a vote on the floor, there will not be grounds to hold them in contempt.

55:02To me, it was important in that moment to make a statement about the subpoena power of the committee. I don't care if you're a Democrat. I don't care if you're a Republican. If Congress subpoenas you, you come to the subpoena. And so that's why I voted the way I did. Have you gotten a lot of flack for that? No, not at all. No. Interesting. A lot of media are interested in it, but not from constituents at all. I think because the American people understand the moment we're in, in terms of democracy and the Constitution. And I think people genuinely across the ideological spectrum want to know what happened in the Epstein case.

55:42And so we want to hear from everybody. By the way, seven Democratic lawmakers broke with the party in the House and voted to continue the funding for DHS, correct? Yeah. You know, I don't know that I would say they broke with the Democratic Party because in this particular instance, everyone voted their own conscience in their own district on all of the budget bills. I voted no on all of them, even the ones that had things in it that I had advocated for, because I felt like in this moment, my voice is my responsibility. And so my voice was, I'm not going to vote for any more money for this administration to continue to break the law.

56:24But I think it's also just important context, and I'm not defending it. it's just important for people to know that each of us, and this is kind of by design, you know, we represent the people in our districts. And so the individuals who did vote for the funding, all of them are in Trump districts. And so, like I said, I'm not justifying what they did, but I think they're looking at their districts and they made decisions based on that. But I've also seen that in the last 24 hours, a couple of them have made public statements saying they made a mistake. People are getting phone calls from their constituents, I assume, very upset about that.

57:02Or just having their conscience. But it's interesting what you said, because you just said voting your conscience and voting for your constituency. But do those often actually collide for you? For me? No. Yeah. But for certain people, I imagine they do, right? At the end of the day, you're kind of obligated, you don't have a fiduciary responsibility to vote your constituency, but that's why they vote you in. And I don't know, have you seen lawmakers kind of go down the path of voting their conscience and then being voted out? I guess it kind of happened to the 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump in the first term.

57:39Yeah. I mean, I think that it's hard to know. And I'm just a regular person. Before I ever took this job, I was a water resources manager. I was just a nerdy water resources manager. And, you know, it's easy when you're— Is being a water resources manager more or less fun and engaging than being a congressperson? Well, I got to go out on rivers a lot more. So that was—no, but I mean, this work is deeply meaningful. But what I was going to say is that, you know, it's easy or maybe it's not easy because the public is angry and confused right now watching how people are voting. But when you don't really know what you're going to do, and sometimes I don't even know what I'm going to do until I walk down to the floor and the bill is in front of us and you have to press that button.

58:34And so what I can tell you, and the button is the yes, no, or not vote, although you're supposed to vote. no matter what. And so, I mean, what I can tell you - They should have a bullshit button. They should, yeah. You guys should have one in Congress. Just be like constantly on. Or just like, you know, in America's Got Talent where you can just do a buzzer. I would love to just have a buzzer. Like this legislation sucks. I'm not voting for it. But you have to vote, right? And so every person is weighing a lot of things when they walk down to the floor and press a button. You're saying, have I heard from my constituents?

59:10Have I heard from major organizations, whether that's state or local governments or tribes in my district? Is my district more conservative or is it more liberal? How do I personally feel? What, for people who are people of faith, what is my conscience or, you know, what is my moral faith tell me about this issue? And you take all of those things into consideration. And for me personally, I was raised by a strong single mother who was always spoke her mind, always spoke her conscience. And she passed away a couple of years ago. But my mother always said to me, do what's right. Do what your conscience and your heart tell you.

59:53And so I try to keep a fidelity to that. But people are always weighing different considerations. And I guess if it's helpful, you know, when especially for these individuals that are running in frontline districts, you have to understand like the Republican machine is going to run tens of millions of dollars against you. And so for a lot of them, when they're about to press that button, they're thinking, if I vote yes or no on this thing, is then$10 million going to drop on my local TV station saying that I voted for some terrible thing that led to the death of people or something? So it's not as simple as people saying like, this is what I believe versus this is what my district wants.

1:00:37Sometimes people are thinking about the consequences politically and what that will mean for their overall service. But for me, I feel fortunate that I can vote my conscience and that by and large, my district supports me in that. Yeah. There's been this leveling of an idea that part of what has made these interactions between cities and Border Patrol ICE agents such a tinderbox has been the rhetoric around these individuals that these men are scared as they're going into the cities and trying to do the job that they've been assigned to do. Do you believe that at all? I want to be very clear that I don't think that's an excuse for the kind of violence that we have seen in Minnesota recently.

1:01:22But do you believe that there's like a cycle of fear that's happening here? I think that what is going on is that Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth, Christy Noem, and this cast of characters who are involved in militarizing and deploying both our domestic law enforcement and our National Guard and troops into American cities have explicitly recruited. people under this paradigm that we're going to attack American cities, which is totally outside the norm for the United States and illegal. And so you have a huge influx of people who've joined ICE and CBP since then, also because of these signing bonuses, who are excited about that mission.

1:02:16They're choosing to do that, right? And then you add the fuel to that fire, which is you have a president and cabinet secretaries that are inciting violence. You have the vice president going on national media and saying, you just shot a woman who's a mother for nothing, and you have total immunity. He said that on national TV. And to me, that was a dog whistle. That was the vice president saying, if you go out there acting for the president or this administration and you kill an American, we're going to have your back. And so that is what is inciting violence and then they're you know he subsequently tried to walk back that claim he's he'd said that the agent was protected by absolute immunity and then tried to say yeah tried to walk it back i believe but but he said it multiple times and they were all over the media i mean i heard steven miller in histrionics for days doing his crazy thing so these guys are inciting violence and i also think that it is important to recognize that i do think in Minneapolis, you know, the president himself was tweeting about using the Insurrection Act.

1:03:25I think they were intentionally inciting violence to give it a go to see what would happen and see how it would be deployed. Do you have any evidence for that? The president's own tweets. He tweeted. I mean, that's what you're referencing. There's nothing beyond that you're seeing in terms of an orchestrated plan. I mean, what is the evidence? They're pepper spraying people in their faces and kicking them on the ground and shooting people and mass arresting members of the clergy. You know, when we look at what happened in Minnesota in the last week or weeks, and we think back to the fact that, well, in summer of last year, ICE was already in LA.

1:04:02We were seeing, you know, what was coming out of there. We saw what happened in DC. We saw Chicago.

1:04:11I mean, I don't want to be like a person who is a grieving person asking, was there something that we could have done? Or is there something that, like, you know, as those moments were happening, was it so localized? Were you not hearing from constituents then about their concerns about border enforcement? I'm just curious, like, how we got here and whether there was anything that we could have done sooner. I mean, we could have elected Kamala Harris as president. That's the most important thing we could have done. I mean, honestly, all the signs were there. We knew that this president, he was announcing it in his mass rallies.

1:04:52He was putting it on his social media. He told us that this is what he planned to do and now he's executing it. And, you know, I think that local governments, state governments, civil society are doing their best to hold it back by using the courts and organizing in our communities. but there was a president elected that has little regard for the constitution or the American people and I think that it is escalating in front of our very eyes and I fear that it'll get worse in the coming months and year and I think we have to continue to use the tools that we have personally I was doing town halls I did over 50 town halls I heard from tens of thousands of New Mexicans, I feel like I have done everything that I know to do.

1:05:43And I'm always inviting people to share ideas with me because we got to think outside the box because clearly the checks and balances that are in the system were written 250 years ago and are not made for this moment. And so, you know, whatever we have to do to protect our people, I'm all in. But I think that the only threshold thing that would have set us on a different course was to have elected a different president. So now one of the things that people can do is to call and call their congressperson. This is a thing. Now I've advertised that you should do it. I tried it once myself. I've called somebody else's.

1:06:24I've even, you know, crossed the border and called somebody else's congressperson. Thank you so much, Representative Stansbury, for speaking to me. The last question we ask everyone before they leave is, what, to the point of don't know, what is something that you don't know that you would like the answer to? A fun, dumb question that we could go help you find out. Well, if I might just add one more thing to the last point. Please, yeah. A more serious thing, and then I'll move to the fun question. Yeah. There's more than just calling your member a Congress, and this really goes to what are the real things we can do right now.

1:06:56We can't wait, obviously, till the next election to take action. And that's why, you know, actually physically being in the streets and exercising our voices and organizing and protecting our communities is important. And putting pressure on members of Congress is important and using the courts to stop them is important. But we have to flip the house. And one of the most impactful things anyone can do right now is to help a member of Congress who's either in a difficult district get reelected or get your favorite Democrat elected to a Republican district. So I highly, highly encourage everyone to get involved, run for office, support your state legislature.

1:07:38Your state legislature is the front line for helping to protect against these attacks on our Constitution and civil liberties. So make sure that you're getting involved in the political process. It does matter. in terms of fun questions we're trying to think of something fun you know it's my birthday on saturday and i was just talking to a reporter who right before i got on with you who his birthday was also this week um and it got me to think we were talking about aquarius's and if you are a person who's into astrology and there's a lot of really amazing aquarius's serving in congress so So I think my question is, what is it about astrology that impacts people's personality, their life course?

1:08:25What calls people to certain professions? So yeah, I think that's the question. You're a believer. You're an astrology believer. Yep. I mean, it's part of the whole mix, right? What is your sign? I'm a Scorpio. Oh, okay. Fiery. I'm a Scorpio. Yeah. And I believe in it, too. I feel like there's a weird intersection of the Venn diagram of people who hold graduate degrees and believe that the world is divided into 12 categories of people based on when they were born. And I'm totally part of that, I have to admit. But I mean, whether it's nature in the cosmos or it's nurture, I mean, like every Aquarius I know is like deeply concerned about like the state of humanity and public service and creative.

1:09:18I'm not just trying to put myself up. I was going to say, yeah, I think every, Neil deGrasse Tyson said every astrology book is like written to just make everybody feel like they're the best of the 12. and that but I but I but I believe that I actually think Aquarius a pretty pretty good sign maybe you should do like an Aquarius lounge and that could be the path to bipartisanship it's like if we start organizing caucus around astral astrological signs interesting I thought more like a salon I was thinking like how matchmakers you know find like compatibles oh yeah could be I don't know I I mean, like, for some reason, a lot of my friends are Aries, and I can't explain why.

1:10:00But maybe it's – I'm sure if you're out there and you know astrology, please tell me why I get a lot of Aries. But, yeah, maybe that's a way to find people to do bipartisan lawmaking with. Maybe. You know, hey, it seems like we're trying everything these days, so might as well try that. Thank you so much, Congresswoman Stansbury. Thank you for being with me. And you said to call you Melanie. I feel uncomfortable calling you Melanie. But you've got to follow Melanie on social media because there's a lot of great content. And in addition, I think obviously you are a Democrat. You speak a lot about Democrat issues.

1:10:32You also speak a lot about institutional issues and about how Congress works, which I find very helpful to understand. So thank you for the transparency that you went to that. Absolutely.

1:10:45All right. Astrology, that's the fix to all of our congressional woes. I think probably not. On the show, I never want to tell people how to vote, but I think when it comes to what you care about, whatever it is that you care about, it is important to call your lawmakers. And certainly I care about this issue of the violence and acting with impunity that we have seen by ICE agents in cities in the United States, and most particularly in Minneapolis. And I will be calling my lawmakers on that issue in particular. But what I found really fascinating about that conversation is I entered just kind of dumb about what does that even look like?

1:11:24What happens on the other side? And it was just really interesting to hear about the mechanics of how that all works and what an impact and dent it could make on a person and a position. And I guess sometimes we forget like we live in this democracy and we actually have a way to change the course of things. It doesn't feel like that a lot, but I guess next time I pick up the phone and drunk text my lawmaker or drunk email them, I will always remember that that is something that we have the possibility to do right now in the United States of America. And I think it's, for me at least, I'm very much moved to be doing that these days and these times as it relates to what we've seen in Minneapolis.

1:12:06And, you know, I don't want to be lulled and I want to be hopeful that there's some better thing that comes out of it. Because this feels like a watershed moment where we have drawn a line on what we will and will not allow to happen in this country. That's what it feels like to me, but I'm curious what it feels like to you. So feel free to call after you're done calling your lawmaker. you can call me at 1-855-MY-DUMB-Q. You can drop us a note at naeemaraza101 at gmail.com or on social media at smartgirldumbquestions. Today's episode was produced with Dessa Wunderad, Dana Balut, and Melissa Lee Gibson and mixed by Johnny Simon.

1:12:40I'm your host, Naeemaraza, and we'll see you next week on Smart Girl Dumb Questions.

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