00:00I appreciate the question and the intrigue.
00:02I have not made a decision, but I will tell you I am fully, sincerely focused on these
00:08midterms and I know we're going to be working together on it and I thank everybody here
00:12for that.
00:13As you think about this Calais decision and the effective gutting of the Voting Rights
00:20Act through Shelby and Calais, how do we best respond?
00:23You're a brilliant lawyer, been a legislator and an executive.
00:28How do we best respond to what is really a setback in terms of a tool that we've used
00:36to protect our voting rights?
00:38How do we best respond?
00:40Okay, real talk?
00:41Real talk.
00:42Straight talk.
00:45I honestly don't believe that it will be any time soon that we are going to revive the Voting
00:51Rights Act.
00:55So I don't believe that it is going to be the best use of our energy right now to try
01:04to get that done because I don't know that it's going to get done right now, the way this
01:09Congress is composed and the way they have been treating civil rights issues.
01:15I'm hopeful, but I don't know that it's going to happen anytime soon.
01:19So I think part of it is we've got to think about now, and I was talking to this young
01:25woman about this, now when they have destroyed the infrastructure we built over decades and
01:33had in place with the Voting Rights Act for 50 years, how are we going to achieve the goal
01:40when that infrastructure has been destroyed, and we're going to have to be creative.
01:45Part of it is these midterms are coming up and it will make a decision about who at least
01:51rules the Senate, I mean the House, if not the Senate.
01:55And so we have to do the work of telling people right now, check your voter registration status,
02:01make sure you aren't one of those people whose names got purged inappropriately.
02:05Make sure you've checked on your polling place because they've been playing games around
02:09moving the polling place where your grandparents always voted, and so on election day when they
02:14go to that elementary school down the block they might find that that polling place is
02:17closed.
02:19Registering folks to vote and having an agenda that is about turning out the vote in the
02:25greatest numbers we have ever seen so that in light of and in this environment where they
02:30are cheating, we will be too big to rig, too big to rig.
02:39It means being ruthless, they are ruthless, we need to be ruthless too.
02:48And by that I do not mean cruel, that is not our nature.
02:52By that I do not mean breaking the law, that is not what we do.
02:58But I do mean we must be uncompromising.
03:03And we must allow for a real conversation about revisiting certain things.
03:13For example, and I know this is going to be controversial coming from me in particular, we need to revisit
03:26the point of expanding the court to 13 justices like we have 13 district courts.
03:36We need to revisit, if they so want, statehood for Puerto Rico and D.C.
03:44Yes.
03:47If we regain control of the Senate.
03:52I served on this committee, the Senate Judiciary Committee, when I was in the Senate.
03:57Only the second black woman elected to the United States Senate after Carol Mosley Brown.
04:01And the Senate Judiciary Committee has the power to create rules for its committee that don't
04:12have to go to the whole Senate for a vote and worry about filibuster and all of that.
04:18We should demand if we win back the Senate that the Senate Judiciary Committee have the strength
04:27to put in place rules that would include if a nominee for a federal court or the Supreme
04:35Court comes before them and starts lying, that they hold them in contempt.
04:39If they refuse to give information for which the committee righteously requires, they think
04:49about accountability and consequence.
04:52And that those members of the Senate Judiciary Committee have the courage, because we require
04:58it to hold people accountable who are misleading intentionally.
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