| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
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| Well, up next, new members of Congress talk about their early lives, previous careers, their families, and what drove their interest in running for office. | ||
| Up next, conversations with Representative Brandon Gill of Texas, Representative Sujas Subramaniam of Virginia, Congressman Tim Moore of North Carolina, Representative Luce Rivas of California, and Resident Commissioner of Puerto Rico, Pablo Jose Rivera. | ||
| One of more than 60 new members of the U.S. House is Republican Brandon Gill of Texas. | ||
| In college, he ran the student newspaper known as the Dartmouth Review. | ||
| He's also worked as an investment banker and is founder of the media outlet known as DC Inquirer. | ||
| He talks here about his career and his early years in Texas. | ||
| I grew up on a thousand-acre cattle ranch in West Texas outside of Abilene. | ||
| We raised Angus and Brandus beef cows. | ||
| So I've been ever since I can remember working cows, building fences, driving tractors and backhoes, doing everything you would expect to do on a thousand-acre cattle ranch. | ||
| I really can't remember a time in my life when I didn't have a job growing up. | ||
| So grew up in a very different environment, very unique environment, I think, in rural West Texas, but it's God's country out there. | ||
|
unidentified
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What did those experiences teach you? | |
| You know, you learn the value of a dollar immediately. | ||
| You know, like I said, I was getting paid $6 an hour in kindergarten whenever I was working on the ranch, and I was helping my dad do whatever he needed to do on the ranch. | ||
| But you learn the value of a dollar, you learn how to work hard and work long. | ||
|
unidentified
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You went to Dartmouth, correct? | |
| And edited the Dartmouth Review. | ||
| Tell us what got you interested in that experience and what that was like for you. | ||
| Well, I wanted to get involved in the conservative community at Dartmouth and the Christian community as well. | ||
| As you know, Dartmouth is about as secular and liberal a college as you can possibly be. | ||
| I love dear old Dartmouth, but we don't agree on everything. | ||
| So I wanted to get as involved as I could and got involved with the Dartmouth Review. | ||
| It's got a long history. | ||
| It's got a great history. | ||
| We've had a lot of fun there. | ||
| And I really enjoyed it. | ||
| You know, we stirred the pot a little bit on campus, you know, ruffled some feathers, but had a lot of fun doing it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Investment banking was part of your experience as well. | |
| Tell us about that. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| After graduating, I worked in finance for several years, first as an investment banker and then as an equity analyst at a hedge fund for several years. | ||
| So got to really see, experience the private sector. | ||
| Got to work long hours once again, but got to see a little bit of what the real world is like, how our global financial system works, and what is the plumbing of the global economy. | ||
| So I think it provided a really strong foundation, not only for what I'm doing now, but for a general understanding of how this world really works. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You are the founder of a website known as DC Inquirer. | |
| For those who do not know what that is, what is DC Inquirer and what's it all about? | ||
| DC Inquirer is a conservative news site that I founded a few years ago, and I started it specifically to go to bat for President Trump and good, strong conservatives in the media. | ||
| What I recognized was, unfortunately, we've got a pretty biased media in the United States, and one side of the aisle is pretty well covered. | ||
| You know, you've got CNN and MSNBC and the New York Times and in the Wall Street Journal occasionally. | ||
| And oftentimes you wake up in the morning and you see that all of these news outlets are printing virtually the same headlines. | ||
| And it's usually in favor of Democrats and against Republicans. | ||
| So what I wanted to do was balance out that media narrative. | ||
| So we started DC Inquirer, really exploded within a few weeks of starting it. | ||
| We were getting more Facebook engagement than the Washington Post. | ||
| And it's because the American people are looking for, they're looking for conservative news. | ||
| They're looking for somebody who's different, not just re-spouting the same liberal talking points that every other news outlet is conveying. | ||
| So had a lot of fun there, was able to reach a lot of people with the conservative message. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So you moved to Texas and then ultimately ran for this seat, the House, Congressman Burgess's seat. | |
| That's right. | ||
|
unidentified
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I believe. | |
| Why did you make the leap to running for a House seat? | ||
| Well, you know, we wanted to get back down to Texas as soon as possible. | ||
| My wife and I have a little baby, 17-month-old Marigold, who is around the office as much as we can keep her. | ||
| In fact, we've got a crib in the back closet that Marigold takes her afternoon naps in whenever she's around. | ||
| So we have a lot of fun there. | ||
| But, you know, I never expected to be running for office. | ||
| I enjoyed being in the private sector. | ||
| It was going really well for me. | ||
| I enjoyed finance. | ||
| I enjoyed conservative media. | ||
| But whenever Dr. Burgess announced that he was retiring unexpectedly, what I wanted to make sure of was that the people of Texas 26 had strong conservative representation in Washington. | ||
| I think that there's too often we see conservative districts like Texas 26 who aren't always represented by very conservative representatives. | ||
| So I wanted to make sure that that didn't happen and jumped in the race. | ||
| We had a pretty brutal primary, but we were able to win it without a runoff, got 58% of the vote March 5th in an 11-person field. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You are 30 years old, correct? | |
| Read a quote from you published in one of the local Hill publications here. | ||
| Young people have seen this country run by an older and older and older generation. | ||
| Tell us more about your thinking. | ||
| Yeah, you know, I think that the America that I experience as a 30-year-old is very, very different than the America that a lot of other people in Washington have experienced, people who are 50 or 60 or 70 years old. | ||
| You know, I was born in 1994. | ||
| So for my entire life virtually, we've had an economy that's addicted to deficit spending and interest rate manipulation. | ||
| We haven't had a budget surplus since 2001. | ||
| So the majority of my life, we've been running budget deficits. | ||
| We've had an open border for almost my entire life, minus the four years of the Trump administration, including in the early 2000s at times with a Republican administration. | ||
| I mean, this has been a crisis my whole life. | ||
| We've watched as the woke left has taken over virtually every single facet of civil society and shove all kinds of perverted woke nonsense down our throats. | ||
| So that's the America that I've experienced. | ||
| And I love this country. | ||
| We live in the greatest country in the world. | ||
| But I have no illusions about how hard we're going to have to fight to take our country back from what the Democrats have done to it. | ||
| Whether it's the economy or the border or social issues, which have gone further and further and further left. | ||
| We've got a lot of work to do. | ||
| And I think that that's what I'm bringing here is the fight, because we're going to need it to save this country. | ||
|
unidentified
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As a 30-year-old long-term vision here in Congress, is that what you're thinking? | |
| You know, we'll see. | ||
| I'm certainly not going to overstay my welcome with my constituents, but we'll see what happens. | ||
|
unidentified
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One of more than 60 new members of the U.S. House is Suha Subramanyam of Virginia. | |
| The Democrat served as an advisor in the Obama White House and spent several years in the Virginia legislature before coming to Congress. | ||
| He was born in Houston, Texas, and talks here about his parents having immigrated to the U.S. from India. | ||
| My mother came from India in the late 70s. | ||
| Her port of entry was actually Dulles Airport, which I represent in Congress now. | ||
|
unidentified
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And so, you know, it was sort of her Ellis Island. | |
| And, you know, when she came, it was kind of a very foreign place, obviously. | ||
| And my dad came from India as well, and they met up. | ||
| And they grew up, they actually grew up in Capitol Hill here when they were the first couple years in America. | ||
| My dad went to school here, and then they went to a meeting down in Texas in the middle of winter, and it was snowing here, and it was sunny and 80 there. | ||
|
unidentified
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Decided they wanted to raise a family down there. | |
| What kind of work did your parents do here in DC? | ||
| Yeah, my dad was training to be a physician. | ||
| So he was doing his residency here at Howard University. | ||
| And then he decided to go down to Texas and practice. | ||
| So I'm the black sheep of my family. | ||
| Both my parents are doctors and my sister's a doctor. | ||
| And I dropped my pre-med in college and here I am now, politician. | ||
| In the House of Representatives. | ||
| What did your parents teach you about life and about work? | ||
| Yeah, they just taught me to work hard. | ||
| If you're going to do something, just do it really well. | ||
| My mom would always say, you know, I don't care if you're a janitor, just be the best janitor. | ||
| I don't know if that was true, but I know she, you know, she really instilled hard work and also giving back to the community, I think, was important to them. | ||
|
unidentified
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I think they saw medicine as a way to help people. | |
| And, you know, I found another way to help people. | ||
| Tell us about your education, early work experiences? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| You know, my first job, I bused tables at a Mexican restaurant, and the kitchen was on the top floor, but the bar was on the bottom floor. | ||
|
unidentified
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So it was a good workout every day. | |
| And then I sold insurance on the phone one summer. | ||
| And so that was actually great because you do a lot of phone calls when you're running for office too. | ||
|
unidentified
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But those are my first couple of jobs. | |
| I went to school in New Orleans and then went to law school in Chicago. | ||
| But I've done most every job at this point, but this is the first time I'm doing the congressional job. | ||
|
unidentified
|
When did politics or thinking about politics enter the picture for you? | |
| Yeah, you know, I was actually not political at all, but my mother was always a pretty strong Democrat. | ||
| My dad was always a Republican, an independent Republican, but he always voted for the bushes down in Texas. | ||
|
unidentified
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But then, you know, when I got to school, I was pre-med. | |
| I was doing the thing my parents wanted me to do, but I didn't really have any passions. | ||
| And then Hurricane Katrina hit the city while I was in New Orleans. | ||
| So that's really what got me interested in public service and community engagement. | ||
| And that's sort of what led me to this trajectory. | ||
| At what point did you realize that you're a Democrat? | ||
| How did you come to that decision? | ||
| Yeah, you know, I think my mom is more vocal than my dad, and maybe she won that debate. | ||
| But more importantly, I think the Democratic Party fits my values better. | ||
|
unidentified
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So, you know, I've always felt like gun violence prevention is important. | |
| For instance, I care a lot about the environment and believe that we have to address climate change. | ||
|
unidentified
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That's an existential threat. | |
| My mother actually taught me the importance of reproductive freedom. | ||
| When she came to this country, she was actually pro-life, but then she actually had patients who needed an abortion because they had life-threatening illnesses or conditions. | ||
| And so she taught me that importance of giving women a choice and giving them the freedom. | ||
| And so just like some of the core values of the Democratic Party have always been my values. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You spent some time working for the Obama White House. | |
| What did you do there? | ||
| Yeah, I was a technology policy advisor. | ||
| So I ran a task force on technology policy. | ||
| did a lot of things, AI policy and blockchain policy. | ||
|
unidentified
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It also did cybersecurity. | |
| I ended up getting security clearance so I could do more national security work. | ||
| So it was just anything in the tech world, like that task force ended up trying to touch it and help it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You're a lawyer and you spent some time as a member of the Virginia Senate. | |
| What did you take away from that experience in the Senate? | ||
| Yeah, it's just amazing, you know, how people, how much of a voice people have. | ||
|
unidentified
|
One of the bills that I passed in the state Senate was actually written by eighth graders. | |
| And they actually came and testified on the bill and they ended up getting it passed and signed into a law even with political opposition. | ||
| So I've always felt like everyone has a voice and it's my job to give them that power to be able to use that voice. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What was that bill? | |
| The bill was basically trying to let kids in middle school start like a career in technical education class. | ||
| Virginia actually banned it and so these kids got together and said we need to change this and so I brought a bill that basically reversed that ban and they were able to start, I was able to go to the first meeting of their HOSA club and the others are now starting career and technical education classes because of it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You have a family right now? | |
| Yeah, I've got two daughters, Maya and Nina, they're four and three and my wife and we've got one of the best commutes in Congress. | ||
| I live 30 or 40 minutes away depending on how much I want to pay in tolls. | ||
|
unidentified
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I can get here pretty quickly. | |
| But I have a great family and they're the reason I do this. | ||
|
unidentified
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What do you like to do in your spare time? | |
| You know, I really like playing pickup basketball, watching movies, spending time with my kids at the playground. | ||
|
unidentified
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Those are some of the things I like to do. | |
| I have to ask someone who's 38 years old about long-term plans. | ||
| What are you thinking when you think about the future? | ||
| You know, I try to think of the future a couple years at a time. | ||
| I think right now I'm looking at making sure I do as good a job as possible for my constituents and just for Virginia generally. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I just think that this is a fantastic state. | |
| It's one of the best states, if not the best state, to do business. | ||
|
unidentified
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It's a great place to live and a great place to raise a family. | |
| I want to keep it that way and I want to make life better for all Virginia. | ||
| One of more than 60 new members of the U.S. House is Republican Tim Moore of North Carolina. | ||
| He's an attorney and business owner who served more than two decades in the North Carolina House of Representatives, including the last 10 as Speaker. | ||
| He talks here about his career in state government and what it means for his new role in Washington, D.C. Of course, a lot is about learning people and learning how to try to respond to those various needs. | ||
| North Carolina is one of the fastest growing states in the country. | ||
| And having the opportunity to serve at the helm of the state house for those 10 years after serving 12 years, of course, before then, not as the Speaker, was a great learning experience, but really the understanding of how to take real world problems and try to address those through a legislative process, which of course is what I'm now going to try to do here at a slightly different level. | ||
| Can you point to one or two things from your statehouse service that you're most proud of? | ||
| Certainly, I think the way we turned our state around after in 2010, my party took the majority for the first time in 100 and some odd years of both chambers. | ||
| And we really wanted to try to change the direction of the state. | ||
| At that point, we're one of the highest taxed states in the country, over-regulated. | ||
|
unidentified
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I mean, all of the metrics were going in the wrong way, whether it was unemployment, you name it. | |
| And we took that and we paid off the debt we had to the federal government to where fast forward to today, we're one of the fastest-growing states, lowest tax. | ||
| We've cut regulations. | ||
| We have put a lot of capital into construction without acquiring debt. | ||
| And it's worked out. | ||
| North Carolina is a fast-growing state. | ||
| So I would think that honestly that comprehensive approach to turning North Carolina around is the thing I'm the most proud of. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Let's talk more about you here. | |
| Tell us about your background and your family growing up in North Carolina. | ||
| What was it like? | ||
| Yeah, born and raised in the town of Kings Mountain. | ||
| Graduated from UNC Chapel Hill, went to law school out in Oklahoma, then came back and practiced law for 29 years. | ||
| It'll be 30 years this year before taking, of course, this position. | ||
| But I have two grown sons, one of whom's in law school himself. | ||
| So very proud of them and have a great family back home. | ||
| Most of my family is from the area. | ||
| So I trace my roots all the way back to before the Revolutionary War. | ||
| We actually have a very prominent battle, the Battle of Kings Mountain that occurred there in 1780. | ||
| And I actually trace four direct ancestors to that battle. | ||
|
unidentified
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So as I tell people, the Moores, we've been there for 200 years. | |
| We haven't been able to afford to leave yet. | ||
| When did you first start hearing about the family and its history in the battles? | ||
| Really, really for over the years as a child, but it was confirmed once I was elected Speaker of the House, some of the local genealogy and history folks in my community wanted to really do that in a more formal way. | ||
| And so ran through and I have the family tree and the chart. | ||
| It's amazing. | ||
| It's this piece of paper. | ||
| If you unfurl it, it would go from this column to that column going through all of the individuals and the great-grandfathers and so forth and so on. | ||
|
unidentified
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And it's actually on both sides of my family, both on my mother's side and my father's side. | |
| Interesting. | ||
| Put that in the broad perspective in terms of your own education, your own evolution, where you are today. | ||
| Well, I came from a very, very modest family. | ||
| My father owned a convenience store for years, then got into the furniture business. | ||
| My mother was a nurse. | ||
| I was the first one to go get a graduate degree of any kind in my family. | ||
| And very supportive family just all the way around. | ||
| I always joked in politics, if just all of my cousins would vote for me, I'd win any race because I had a huge family back home. | ||
| And they've all been so, both the immediate family and the extended family have been very supportive. | ||
|
unidentified
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But the point of that being is I'm deeply embedded, love my community. | |
| That's home. | ||
| It has been home. | ||
| It will always be home. | ||
| And just really honored for the opportunity to be here in Washington representing my community. | ||
| I was going to ask you, why did you run for the seat? | ||
| I'm sorry? | ||
| Why did you run for the seat? | ||
| Well, it worked out. | ||
| I knew I was done serving in the state house. | ||
| I'd served 22 years, 10 years as a speaker. | ||
| I knew it was time to do something different. | ||
| And I knew I wanted to maybe find some more service to do. | ||
| And the districts were redrawn, and so this became essentially an open seat. | ||
| I saw it as an opportunity where I could serve, but really the thing that weighed heavily on me was seeing, without trying to talk politics too much, was being able to see where we had done so many great things at the state. | ||
| And what I saw was the need to try to turn things around at the federal level, whether it's taxing, whether it's spending, regulatory relief, you name it. | ||
| And so I felt inclined and led to run and as a result filed and the voters chose to send me here and I'm very thankful for that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Now your interest in politics goes way back to teenage years, right? | |
| Tell us about it. | ||
| So I was active in politics even back as a kid and in high school and then in college, involved everything in student government in college and law school and then when I graduated law school and started practicing law, I was our county party chairman for a period of time. | ||
| I served on our board of governors for the state university system appointed by our legislature to that position. | ||
| So just always had an interest in public service and in government and so but you know probably never really imagined the opportunity to have to have this opportunity. | ||
|
unidentified
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What is that interest in politics? | |
| Where does it come from for you? | ||
| You know that's a good question, right? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| At least some of it must be genetic because my youngest son loves politics and my oldest son, he doesn't care much about it. | ||
|
unidentified
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But I don't know. | |
| Neither of my parents were politically involved. | ||
| I guess it was really just when I was in school and getting involved and getting interested and just, it became a passion. | ||
|
unidentified
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It's what I was interested in, and I've just followed it. | |
| And of course, practicing law is, you know, there's a little bit of public policy in that. | ||
| But I always felt like I wanted to do more than just practice law. | ||
|
unidentified
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I wanted to be engaged and involved in representing my community. | |
| So I think about that question, and I don't have a great answer other than what I gave you there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for that answer. | |
| How would you describe yourself politically? | ||
| What's your way of thinking? | ||
| So I'm conservative. | ||
| I believe in less government. | ||
| I believe in responsible government. | ||
| I believe that government should do what it does well and effectively. | ||
| For example, like Hurricane Relief in western North Carolina. | ||
| We need to get it right. | ||
| We need to take care of those folks. | ||
| But we don't need to be overly intrusive in people's lives. | ||
| And so that's the general philosophy, just a traditional conservative. | ||
|
unidentified
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And that's the moniker that I have. | |
| And you are or have been a business owner, correct? | ||
| I have. | ||
| So I was involved in a couple of different businesses over the years, one of which was a convenience store, a grocery store that had a restaurant. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'll never own one of those again, just let me tell you that. | |
| But also it was a silent partner in a couple other businesses, but also my law firm. | ||
| I was with a firm with partners for a while, and then I opened my own office in 2009, and so became a full-fledged business owner there. | ||
| I know what it means to sign the front side of a paycheck, to have to hire folks and vet people and be responsible not only for myself, but other employees and making sure they're taken care of. | ||
| So I think it's very important that members of Congress, that there are members here who know what it means to sign the front side of a paycheck. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What kind of mark do you hope to make here in Washington? | |
| You know, I really want to fight for my community. | ||
| Right now, I mentioned it earlier about the Hurricane Helene damage. | ||
| It is just the amount of damage and destruction that our community suffered in the western part of the district is just unimaginable. | ||
| And we have to help those folks. | ||
| And we are helping those folks. | ||
| We're getting resources deployed and we're making sure that that gets dealt. | ||
| That really is sort of top of mind right now in terms of for the district. | ||
| The other thing that we have to do is we have to control, in my opinion, a lot of the federal spending. | ||
| As we're doing this interview right now, we have a national debt of roughly $37 trillion. | ||
| That is not sustainable. | ||
| If we don't rein that in, our children and grandchildren and their children will be paying for this for years to come. | ||
| So I want to really come in and make sure that we're providing the services we need to, that we're not over-taxing people, and that we are getting a handle on this national debt that we have right now. | ||
|
unidentified
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So those are things that we have to deal with and things I want to be able to go back at the end of this first term. | |
| I want to be able to look back and say, it's better now than it was then. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And finally, you mentioned family back home. | |
| What do they think about all this? | ||
| Oh, they're excited. | ||
| I had the whole family up here for Swearing In Day, for opening day. | ||
| And so they'll be coming around. | ||
| They'll be around for the inauguration for the president. | ||
| So they've been very supportive and they've enjoyed it. | ||
| And one thing I think that's very important, like not only my family, but just folks from back home, when I know there are folks coming here, from my district, I go out of my way to try to show them around. | ||
|
unidentified
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I mean, this is our nation's capital. | |
| This is the people's house. | ||
| And so many folks, they may come here once or twice in their lifetimes. | ||
| And I think it's very important that when someone comes here that they get a full sense of what it is. | ||
| My staff will probably tell you that I will, instead of sending a staffer to go take a tour, I'm going to be one to jump up and say, nope, I got this, and try to get them as much as I can, whether it's going on the house floor, whether it's going on the balcony, whatever it is. | ||
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unidentified
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And of course, we're going to have folks here for the inauguration. | |
| We're going to make sure that we take care of them and let these folks know that one, I want to find a way as much as I can to share this experience and to show the appreciation for the opportunity to be their public servant here in Washington. | ||
|
unidentified
|
One of the more than 60 new members of the U.S. House is Democrat Luce Rivas of California. | |
| She's an engineer who also spent several years serving in the California State Assembly. | ||
| Representative Rivas also started a nonprofit to encourage school-age girls to pursue careers in the STEM fields. | ||
| And she talks here about her own early interest in technology. | ||
| When I was in elementary school in fifth grade in 1984, so it's a long time ago before anybody had computers at home and cell phones, my teacher had an Apple IIe computer in the back of the classroom, and she taught some of us how to program it. | ||
| I thought it was a classroom toy or activity until I got really good at it and she said, you should consider a career in computer science or engineering. | ||
|
unidentified
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And I thought, wow, people get paid to do this? | |
| I had no idea. | ||
| And that kind of sparked an interest and led me to continue and eventually end up at MIT and where I studied electrical engineering. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, that's quite a continuation of electrical engineering at MIT. | |
| And then your early professional experiences. | ||
| What were they in engineering? | ||
| So I worked for Motorola in the Chicago suburbs. | ||
| I worked on automotive electronics, like what became OnStar for GM, so navigation, telematics within the car. | ||
| So it was a very exciting time. | ||
| This is the late 90s. | ||
| And I was a hardware engineer, which was a lot of fun back then. | ||
| Want to hear more about STEM education in a moment, but take us even further back. | ||
| You are the daughter of Mexican immigrants. | ||
| Tell us your family story. | ||
| Yeah, my family are immigrants from Mexico. | ||
| I grew up with a single mother, and she came to the United States in 1963 in the San Fernando Valley where I grew up. | ||
|
unidentified
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And she just came to work hard. | |
| I had other family that was already here. | ||
| And she lived with them. | ||
| And when she got married and had her two daughters, her goal was just to work hard so that we would have a better future than she did. | ||
| What other kind of experiences do you remember growing up in California? | ||
| Oh, wow. | ||
| You know, it was a great time to grow up. | ||
| I loved being in the San Fernando Valley. | ||
| You know, I just remember neighbors and family all getting together. | ||
| Back then, we had manufacturing in my district, like General Motors had a plant, Price Pfister. | ||
| So a lot of my friends' parents had good paying manufacturing jobs, which unfortunately all went away in the 90s and really changed our community. | ||
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When did politics become part of the picture for you? | |
| Well, I've always been engaged. | ||
| You know, I remember when I first voted in 1992, that was the first year I was eligible to vote for Bill Clinton for president. | ||
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Very excited. | |
| I was a first year at MIT and got involved in college Democrats and groups like that. | ||
| But I never thought about it as a career until there was an opening for the State Assembly. | ||
| And my congressman at the time and state senator and others called me and said, you would be a great candidate. | ||
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And I told them, I'm not a politician. | |
| That's not what I do. | ||
| And they're like, that's why you're perfect. | ||
| You know, they felt we needed people with a diverse experience in other sectors and that could bring that to policymaking. | ||
| How long were you there? | ||
| In the State Assembly? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Six and a half years in the State Assembly. | ||
| What would people remember you for? | ||
| You know, I was chair of natural resources for a few years, working on climate policy for California. | ||
| And as you may know, California leads the world in climate policy. | ||
| You know, other states, other countries want to know what California is doing because that's where they think everyone else will be headed. | ||
| So it was interesting to negotiate some of those big bills. | ||
| But I think environmental justice, science and climate change education are bills that I worked on, you know, increasing young people, you know, interest and background in STEM in our state so they could be the future tech and science leaders. | ||
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Do you remember the moment when you said I'm running for Congress? | |
| What was it? | ||
| Yes, I do. | ||
| My congressman met with me, the former congressman, and told me he was not running for re-election, but he hadn't told anybody yet. | ||
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And he was asking, you know, is this something you would be interested in? | |
| And I thought about it and I said, yes, let's do it. | ||
| You know, I thought I wasn't ready, but are we ever ready? | ||
| But it's been such a great opportunity. | ||
| You know, when I came for the orientation, I was elected freshman leadership representative for my class. | ||
| So I get to participate in the weekly leadership meetings with our leader, Hakeem Jeffries, and others. | ||
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I never thought I'd be at the same table as some of these congressional leaders, so it's amazing. | |
| Back to your science background and STEM. | ||
| Also, Reid, as part of your experiences, you started a nonprofit. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Tell us all about it. | ||
| I started a nonprofit in 2012. | ||
| It's called DIY Girls for Do-It-Yourself. | ||
| It's an after-school program, summer camp, for young girls in my district starting at fifth grade, where they're able to do a lot of hands-on tech and STEM projects. | ||
| The goal is to get them interested in careers in STEM, and it has worked. | ||
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In the years it's existed, we have hundreds of girls that are in college right now studying STEM. | |
| So I'm going to ask you about a couple of specific examples, somebody who's doing particularly well. | ||
| So I think of a young woman that's at Brown University studying material science and engineering. | ||
| She was in the very first class of the DIY Girls program that I used to teach at the time in fifth grade. | ||
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So she was 10 years old. | |
| Now she's like 20, 21 at Brown University involved in research and internships and different engineering societies. | ||
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And it's so much fun to watch young women like her already engaged. | |
| And this is where they first heard about engineering in this program. | ||
| Overall, how much do you stay in touch with those young ladies and what do they think about what you're doing now? | ||
| Well, I think a lot, you know, I do stay in touch with especially the young women that were elementary school students when we started. | ||
| They're in college or have recently graduated from college. | ||
| They're excited that they know their congresswoman personally and they often reach out to me for resources, for access to internships. | ||
| I have one that's in public policy, so she has been one of my interns when I was in the state assembly. | ||
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So it's a very diverse, I think they see a way to change their community and how they can be a part of it. | |
| And aside from some of the physicians here in Congress, not a lot of scientists with strict science backgrounds. | ||
| How does that inform you? | ||
| What do you bring? | ||
| What will you bring to the conversation here in Washington? | ||
| You know, I'm an engineer and have taken lots of science courses, physics and chemistry. | ||
| And I think it's a different way of thinking, you know, and the way the solutions that we propose and how we work with others too. | ||
| We don't have to have the right solution in the beginning, but we continue working until we do. | ||
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And it's, you know, engineering is very collaborative. | |
| You know, you work in a team. | ||
| You don't work alone. | ||
| And that's my background. | ||
| That's how I was trained. | ||
| And so that's how I feel ready to do in Congress. | ||
| How else do you like to spend your time when you're not doing your Congress work? | ||
| Oh, wow. | ||
| I like running. | ||
| I like hiking. | ||
| You know, just spending time with friends and family, going out to dinner, you know, just things like that. | ||
| One of more than 60 new members of the U.S. House is Pablo Hernandez Rivera, resident commissioner of Puerto Rico. | ||
| He attended Harvard and went to Stanford Law School. | ||
| He's also the grandson of Rafael Hernandez Colón, who served as Puerto Rico's governor for three terms starting in the 1970s. | ||
| He talks here about conditions on the island and his upcoming work in Congress. | ||
| Well, the energy crisis facing Puerto Rico dates back to Hurricane Maria and even before that, because we have an outdated energy infrastructure and now we face a problem generating energy as well as distributing energy. | ||
| These problems were worsened by the privatization of both functions and the high satisfaction that the people now have with those private companies. | ||
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It is one of my priorities as a member of Congress. | |
| There have been billions in federal funds assigned to reconstruct the island's energy grid, but only a fraction has been dispersed. | ||
| Making sure that that money is released, that that money is put to good use, is one of my priorities. | ||
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You do have some political figures in your family background. | |
| We read you're the grandson of the former governor of Puerto Rico, Rafael Hernandez-Colón. | ||
| When did he serve? | ||
| What was he known for? | ||
| He served from 1972 to 1976, and then he staged a comeback in 1984 through 1992. | ||
| He was known for accomplishing Section 936, which was a tax incentive that developed the island's manufacturing industry, bringing in a lot of pharmaceuticals. | ||
| He was known for his defense of Puerto Rican identity and culture, as well as his defense for Puerto Rican autonomy as a U.S. Commonwealth. | ||
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What did you learn from him about politics? | |
| I learned a lot about values. | ||
| I learned that it's important for you to be honest and to genuinely care about people's problems and the issues facing the island. | ||
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Your grandfather was a relatively young man when he became governor. | |
| You are a relatively young man, 33, is that correct? | ||
| Yes, he was the youngest governor. | ||
| He is, let me re say this since he is the youngest governor in the island's history, and I am the youngest resident commissioner in the island sister. | ||
| When did you realize at what age the politics might be a career for you? | ||
| I had ups and downs. | ||
| I think I first developed political awareness when I was around six and it caught my attention. | ||
| But then when I was in my teens, I was like, never going to do this. | ||
| And then later in my teens, I was like, oh, I think I might do this. | ||
| So it's been hovering in my mind basically all my life. | ||
| And besides your grandfather, were there other political conversations at Rama House? | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| So my father ran unsuccessfully for this very same position 25 years ago. | ||
| And you've entered public service. | ||
| What is it about public service and elective office that drives you? | ||
| It's the ability to have a positive impact on people's lives. | ||
| I try to think, my approach to politics is think about the normal person. | ||
| Don't think like a political junkie. | ||
| Don't think like a pundit. | ||
| Think about how people conduct themselves in their daily lives. | ||
| What are their concerns? | ||
| What are their aspirations? | ||
| and work towards solving those concerns and facilitating those aspirations. | ||
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What other kind of professional experiences have you had? | |
| So I am a lawyer. | ||
| I worked here in DC at a law firm. | ||
| I worked as a tech public policy consultant at a big tech company. | ||
| And I also worked in the governor of Puerto Rico's office after graduating from college and in the U.S. District Court for the federal court in Puerto Rico. | ||
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I should ask you to make some news recently. | |
| You penned a piece in the Hill publication about Puerto Rican statehood. | ||
| Just another news item to talk about. | ||
| Where is the island on that issue right now and where are you? | ||
| Well, my position throughout this campaign was that instead of focusing on statehood and status, we should focus on more urgent issues such as economic development, the energy grids reconstruction, and equal treatment in federal programs where we don't have that equal treatment. | ||
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I personally oppose statehood. | |
| I think the island is basically split almost 50-50 on that issue. | ||
| The reason I oppose statehood and support maintaining and improving the current Commonwealth status is because I think statehood would be economically disastrous for the island. | ||
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Right now, we don't pay federal income tax. | |
| Therefore, we set our state income tax rates very high, as if we were paying both federal and state. | ||
| If you had to add federal income taxes on top of that, it would essentially double the tax burden, force you to lower your state tax rates, and bankrupt an already bankrupt state government. | ||
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So I don't think it's fiscally feasible. | |
| That being said, I think the current relationship has some flaws that need to be addressed. | ||
| Among them, the fact that this Congress approves federal legislation without our meaningful participation. | ||
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Puerto Rico is not that far from here. | |
| Three-hour flight, perhaps. | ||
| How often do you plan to get home? | ||
| Well, we're going to play by year at start, from the beginning, but right now we're thinking of one weekend here. | ||
| If there's two weeks of session in a row, we're going to stay over just one weekend. | ||
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If there's three weeks in a row, we'll come back the second weekend. | |
| And obviously, every time we have a district work week, we'll be in the island. | ||
| Tell us more about your immediate family. | ||
| I'm married to Monica Teresa Pascual. | ||
| I've been happily married to her since 2020. | ||
| We were not high school sweethearts because of her decision, not mine. | ||
| And we don't have kids yet. | ||
| We have a beautiful rescue dog named Sol, which means Sol means son, but she was rescued in Calla Sol, Sol Street in Old San Juan, which is where I grew up. | ||
| All this week, watch C-SPAN's new Members of Congress series, where we speak with both Republicans and Democrats about their early lives, previous careers, families, and why they decided to run for office. | ||
| On Friday, at 9.30 p.m. Eastern, our interviews include Delaware Democratic Congresswoman Sarah McBride, the first openly transgender member of Congress. | ||
| From those first moments after his diagnosis, Andy and I knew how lucky we were. | ||
| We knew how lucky Andy was to have health insurance that would allow him to get care that would hopefully save his life. | ||
| And we both knew how lucky we were to have flexibility with our jobs that allowed him to focus on the full-time job of trying to get better and me to focus on the full-time job of caring for him, of loving him, of marrying him, and eventually when he found out that his cancer was terminal, to walk him to his passing. |