So what is everyone actually going to get working on in the next couple days?

Oh, that's a very good question, and I just...

I wanna just remind everybody that this so-called, uh, leader within the House, the speaker of the House, has sent us home for over a quarter of our working days since I've been in Congress.

And so this is not a serious man with serious proposals.

And I have taken to calling this the shiny object presidency.

They have nothing to deliver for the American people, and so they all have to get trotted out propping up yet another scheme of this president that is yet another lie about essentially paying off voters to vote for him.

He won't make the case to the American people about how their lives are but- better because he can't.

What do you read there, and do you believe change is actually on the horizon, or are you suspicious of the fact that the people leading the industries, who've also led the efforts to stop [laughs] regulation before, are now seemingly all getting on the same page?

What are, what are your concerns about the legislation, and what do you see its future being? Can the GOP ram this through on this party line reconciliation line?

They're certainly gonna try, but what we've seen time and time again is, uh, Speaker Johnson, who is not often able to deliver the votes that he needs on the floor, things often go sideways at the last minute.

So it remains to be seen whether he's gonna be able to pull this off.

Look, Americans don't want this.

They don't want federal interactions in state elections.

They want states to be running their elections, and they want guardrails on ICE.

They have said this time and time again.

... and the difficulties combating it?

What, what is going on? How did this happen?

Yeah, this didn't happen overnight where we are right now, and this began with a s- a series of changes, I think, that happened in both the way that we, uh, get news, the way that we understand government.

And so I always want to start with, I believe that cable news and social media has broken government, okay? And so y- you have this incredible pressure on you as, um, a representative to be chasing moments that will break through, mkay? And what I'm talking about is trying to go viral, trying to make it to the news.

And what that means is the day-to-day work that needs to happen to make sure that we are representing our constituents, it's still happening, but you don't see it, so people lose this sense that their representatives are actually doing work for them.

So I, I always say there are people in Congress right now that you will never know about who are working so hard on behalf of their constituents.

And so there's a handful of people that go viral, right? They're on TikTok, they're on social media.

I've gone viral a couple times.

What are we supposed to do?

No.

No, clearly not.

Now, I've seen some of the unredacted Epstein files, and obviously, as you know, President Trump's name is all over them, but so are the names of other senior Trump officials: Howard Lutnick, Secretary of Commerce, John Phelan, the Secretary of the Navy, and Stephen Feinberg, the Deputy Secretary of Defense.

These men were appointed by President Trump to senior positions in his administration.

All of them have clear and confirmed ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

Attorney General Bondi, yes or no, has the Justice Department asked Secretary Lutnick about his ties to Epstein?

Mm-hmm.

It is contempt for the Americans they are supposed to be serving, right? And, um, I met with the survivors after that hearing, and we went to the hallway, and they said, "You know, we hoped that we would get some answers.

Woo!

That's why we've come together tonight.

Now, I know many people out here are feeling angry, and you're feeling anxious and frustrated.

I get it.

This administration is trying to break us, but they can't, because, in the words of June Jordan, "We are the ones we've been waiting for." [cheering] We are the ones.

We are the ones we've been waiting for, that are gonna change the course, are going to turn the tide on this dark, dark time.

It's us.

Woo!

What's your reaction?

Well, this particular issue with, uh, the Epstein files and lack of transparency has gone back for several presidential administrations.

This is not just the responsibility of the Trump administration.

This has been mishandled from the beginning.

Uh, I have met with survivors who say that they were abused by Jeffrey Epstein in the '90s and went to authorities and nothing came of it.

We certainly have the sweetheart deal that was cut, um, with Alex Acosta.

Uh, it is, it is continuing to be a situation where these survivors have not gotten justice from anyone around them.

So Attorney General Bondi was specifically referring to a vote, uh, you m- you made against a bill that would have adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's definition of antisemitism, which you said, quote, "Would equate protected political speech with unprotected discrimination." Were you surprised that she brought that up?

But if you can just share with us your thoughts in this moment.

Well, I really appreciate that you're starting with that, because it is not a Department of Justice right now.

And it saddens me to say it, but after everything that I have seen, certainly in the cases of Alex Pretty and Rene Good, and how they are, um, not just not investigating what were clearly violations of their constitutional rights, their human rights, killing them in broad daylight, but then using the power of the Justice Department to then drag their names and their families' names through the mud.

It's sickening.

And what we saw on Capitol Hill this week with, um, AG Bondi, she was not at all interested in answering our questions about how she is standing up and protecting the American people.

It has been completely weaponized to go after the president's perceived enemies.

And as a former history and social studies teacher, um, I taught government for years to students, and we, we have fallen so far from our ideals, so far.

And I think that, that, you know, they're targeting a community there that has legal asylum, that has lived there for many decades, and that has, you know, that it, I, I mean-

Explain why you walked out on the Attorney General Pam Bondi.

So I walked out because...

Well, first of all, my time had expired, and I needed to collect myself, quite honestly.

And the thing that I want people to understand is I was there in that hearing, really channeling all of what I've heard from the survivors, uh, in the multiple times that I've met with them, and I was just so disgusted that I had ended my remarks by saying, "Do the right thing.

Meet with the survivors," and she continued to make it about other things and other people.

And her going after me personally like that was just too much because the survivors were sitting right there asking for her attention.

Instead, she, she chose to accuse me of anti-Semitism.

Your response?

Um, where do you, where do you stand on that?

Oh, I've been very, very public that any kind of political violence, regardless of who it's directed towards and where it's coming from, has to be condemned unequivocally.

There can be no asterisks by it.

And I think what's so painful for a lot of people in this moment is that when you are acknowledging this horrific act of violence, as directed at Charlie Kirk, which was terrible, and I condemned it and I will always condemn that kind of political violence, I think the pain on the Democratic side is coming from the fact that we do not see that outpouring of incredible, um, just heartbreak for what happened to the members from the Minnesota State Legislature that were attacked.

And you can't just have compassion for your own team, as it were.

You have to have compassion for anyone who's a victim.

And so, bringing us back to our basic human dignity...

We have good lawyers." Isn't that kind of the opposite of what Charlie Kirk just said there in his own words?

... country that actually work much better than they don't.

don't.Exactly. And as Sylvie said, and Sylvie is just a wonderful person, and you definitely should go to the library, uh, Ali.

You should definitely see a show there.

It's an incredible, not just an incredible resource for the community, but the community itself is so special.

But so what she was saying is absolutely true, that they don't see themselves as two separate communities.

It's not Derby Line on the Vermont side and Stanstead on the other side.

It is one community that has grown up there over hundreds of years.

I think we're really gonna see it across this country.

I'm worried this is a trap."

Yeah.

And so, you know, what I want people to understand is, y- you have a situation, as you said, he has been a green card holder for, for 10 years.

Mr. Mahdawi has been, um, accused of no crime, okay? This is critically important for people to understand.

He's been accused of no crime, went in for his final citizenship interview, um, it seems like this was possibly a ruse to get him to show up, then arrested upon his arrival.

And again, I want people to understand, these were masked, hooded men, in plainclothes, with an unmarked van, handcuffing him.

This is not the America I think many of us thought we lived in.

Can you explain, since now, um, the federal court in Vermont is taking on her case, what's happening with Ramisa?