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Matt Katz: It is The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Welcome back, everybody. I'm Matt Katz, reporter in the WNYC newsroom, and I'm filling in for Brian today. Now for our monthly Call Your Senator segment with New York Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. There's plenty to discuss this morning from the big changes at the top of the presidential ticket on the Democratic side to her recent efforts on behalf of veterans and 9/11 responders and more.

If you're a New Yorker, call your senator with your relevant questions at 212-433 WNYC. Non-New Yorkers are allowed to call too. Senator Gillibrand is your senator, too, during these call-ins, 212-433-9692. You can also text the question to the same number, 212-433-9692. Senator, we always appreciate that you do this. I'm sorry you got me today instead of Brian, but welcome back to WNYC.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: Thanks so much. I'm glad to be on the call. Thank you.

Matt Katz: Excellent. Just to start off with some breaking and apparently good news, we're hearing reports of a big prisoner swap with Russia that will see the release of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former marine Paul Whelan. They've been jailed there without due process. Do you know anything more about this prisoner swap that you're able to share?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: I don't. I wasn't briefed on it ahead of time and I'm so excited about it because for New York and for our communities, we've been particularly disturbed by these two imprisonments. I think for the media world, Evan's imprisonment has been just gut-wrenching and so distressing, and so I'm very excited that Evan is coming home. For our Marine veteran Paul Whelan to be alleged to be a spy was deeply problematic, and we really wanted this hostage exchange. There's also a third one, a radio journalist who's also being exchanged, which I think is really exciting. It's just good news that's been so needed in these very troubling and unstable times.

Matt Katz: Oh, that is good news. I'm sure colleagues over at The Wall Street Journal who have been desperate to see Evan returned, are going to be thrilled once he is back on American soil. Thanks for a little update on that.

We're going to get to policy stuff, but this has been obviously some of the wildest weeks in national politics ever. You stuck by President Biden until he made the call to withdraw from the campaign, and then you endorsed Vice President Harris. Were you surprised by his decision to drop out of the race? When you saw the news, when you saw what was happening, were you like, "Oh my God?" Or did you feel like it was coming?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: I've always had a great deal of faith in President Biden, and I think this was an example of extraordinary courage, putting the country ahead of his own opportunities and privileges and interest in continuing to lead this country. I think he did absolutely the right thing and I think it showed so much courage. I haven't seen a president do that since George Washington. [chuckles] It's so unusual to step away from the most powerful position in the world to do something for the greater good for your country.

I think it's been really important for the Democratic Party. I think it's been important for the nation. There's so much energy that is just surging behind Kamala across the country, and I think people are ready for the next generation of leaders, so it just was the right time. I'm very grateful. I'm very grateful that President Biden is still the president because this hostage release is an example of what years and decades of leadership in the international sphere has allowed him to accomplish. His wisdom and his seniority and his experience, I think is what made the difference in this hostage release.

I'm just grateful that he will continue to be our president through the end of the year, and I'm grateful that Kamala has stepped up to be our nominee in this political contest.

Matt Katz: You ran for president alongside Harris a few years ago before she became the presumptive nominee this summer, or I guess a couple of weeks ago, really. Did you have any thoughts of throwing your hat in the ring if President Biden did drop out?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: I didn't. Many governors did and lots of other folks, but I'm running for reelection in New York State to be the senator for the next six years, which I'm very excited to be doing. I'm really enjoying the work I'm doing on behalf of New Yorkers, especially in the national security space because I now sit on both Armed Services and the Intelligence Committee, and I may have the opportunity to lead the Armed Services Committee in the next few years in the Senate. I feel like I'm exactly where I should be and that my contributions there are most meaningful.

I'm very excited for Kamala. I think as somebody who's always supported women in leadership, I've helped every one of Kamala's campaigns from when she became a senator. Now I intend to lean in and really help her in every way I can for her presidential race. I think it's great. It's a changing of the guard and it's an opportunity to show a new kind of leadership, and I'm excited about it.

Matt Katz: I have to ask this because this is what's on everybody's minds, the veepstakes. Do you have a top three choices for potential running mates for Vice President Harris?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: Well, there's so many good ones. I think all the governors are terrific. I think some of our cabinet secretaries are also terrific. I do have a favorite though and that's Mark Kelly, because he's a colleague, and I think he brings to the ticket enormous national security prowess. He also served for over 20 years in the US Navy as a Navy pilot. He landed the space shuttle and was an astronaut for a decade. He's got one of the most amazing women as his wife, Gabby Giffords, who leads the Gun Reform movement after surviving her own assassination attempt.

I think together they represent America in a way that is so incredibly inspiring and really embody the notion of service first. He's my first choice but again, this is something that Vice President Harris gets to decide on her own. The people from whom she can choose from are so talented and so interesting and effective that I think she really can't go wrong.

Matt Katz: Very good. That's politics. We're going to get to policy now. Let's go to the phone lines. Lars in Brooklyn, you're on with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.

Lars: Good morning, Senator. I've been a lifelong Democrat and I feel that in recent years, one of the most potent issues that has been affecting people on the ground and which I feel has not been addressed by people on the federal level is that the housing crisis, part of it is, yes, people talk about demand, but so much of the prices and availability has been driven up and squeezed by private investment into shelter.

Even in a recent ad by Kamala Harris has addressed cost of living and being able to earn enough and an honest day's work to pay your bills and pay for shelter, but I feel like there's this continuing ignoring on the federal level of investment companies like Blackstone or Redfin buying up starter properties, turning around and renting them or flipping them for profit for these funds. The only way this can be curtailed is on a federal level, and I still haven't seen any sort of addressing of that, much less policy. I wonder, Senator, if you have anything to address that or if there's any plans in the Democratic ticket to address that.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: Yes. It's been a chronic problem throughout New York that I've talked to a lot of New Yorkers about no matter where they live, affordable housing is hard to find anywhere. I've been working on a lot of legislative ideas with some of the New Yorkers in our delegation. I have one bill with Yvette Clarke where we want to invest $15 billion annually in affordable housing.

That bill creates a lot of incentives to build housing, but also changes the AMI calculation, because right now in New York City, our average median income is driven by huge salaries of people who live on the Upper West Side or in Westchester and parts of Long Island. As a consequence, our median income is much higher than anywhere else in the country. What's considered affordable in New York isn't actually affordable. We want to shift that to be localized to not all income levels to not have it be a median income, but an income based on what working families are earning as opposed to the ultra-wealthy. That, hopefully, we can get a vote on and work on a bipartisan basis.

I'm also concerned not just about affordable housing, but how we treat the homelessness crisis and people who are unhoused. I think our traditional system of shelters is unwise. I think we should be putting people into permanent housing and transition housing that could be owned by the city and the state. You always have a hundred thousand units that is just going to be used for families transitioning or something like that.

I think there's an opportunity right now through innovation to use a lot of the unused commercial stock and to get it changed so it can be compliant for residential, and you may need some waivers for some requirements like distance from the sidewalk and other specific requirements that we could amend so that we can use that unused commercial space for housing.

I would really focus on building the kind of housing that is hardest to get, like housing for people who have mental illness who need 24/7 medical support or medically supported housing for seniors, for older Americans who need healthcare services provided regularly. Those two populations, those are hard things to do, but I can imagine you could use some of these commercial settings to put critical care units, to put specialized services, to put mental health services in so you could create two solutions in one building.

Those are some of the things I've been thinking about long term, about how we address homelessness, how we address mental health challenges, how we address substance use disorder, how we address lack of affordability for families who are unhoused. I think it needs a lot of solutions, both federal, state, and local. I certainly am going to continue to write legislation and try to get the bipartisan support we need for a real investment in affordable housing. You're quite right.

I do think what you mentioned in terms of buying up housing and turning it into an asset class does, unfortunately, drive up costs. I think it's also true when we have private equity buying up doctor's offices and medical practices, and then slashing whatever costs they think are too much, but it results in poor medical services. There's a lot of challenges we have with the fact that we buy up things and turn them into an asset class and then sell them. I think we would need to have a much more serious look at what are some of the unintended consequences of that, and how do you ameliorate for it?

Matt Katz: Thanks for calling, Lars. Let's go to Eric in Brooklyn. Hi, Eric. You're on with the Senator.

Eric: Good morning. My name is Eric Weltman, and I'm a New York organizer with Food & Water Watch. Senator Gillibrand, we want to urge you to oppose dirty permitting legislation concocted by Senator Manchin that threatens our climate and promotes fracking. Manchin's bill is a wish list for the fossil fuel industry. It would fast-track fossil fuel exports, open up more federal lands and waters for fracking and oil drilling, and limit the ability of the public to oppose its devastating destruction.

Unfortunately, Senator Gillibrand, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee approved the bill yesterday and, Senator Gillibrand, we really need your leadership as a climate leader to help protect our health, our communities, and our environment and stop this dangerous and dirty bill that would maintain our reliance, increase our reliance on fossil fuels.

Matt Katz: Thank you, Eric. Senator-

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: Thank you.

Matt Katz: -familiar with this legislation?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: I'm not on that committee, so I wasn't familiar with the bill at all. If it is as you describe, that's the kind of thing I would be against. I will review it carefully if it is coming up for a vote and I will absolutely consider all the things you just said. I generally believe in clean energy, especially in New York. Fracking has a unfortunate risk in New York that it could harm our groundwater, which would therefore harm our agricultural industry, harm our tourism industry, and other industries in our state, which count on clean water.

We already have so much water pollution in our state with PFOA, PFAS, those forever chemicals that come from manufacturing of plastics. We also have pollution from the use of firefighting foam used on military bases that have now polluted our groundwater around our military bases that are deadly for the citizens that live there. I'm very concerned about keeping our water clean, which is why I would be quite circumspect of supporting anything that makes it easier to frack in places that do not want fracking.

Matt Katz: On another health-related front, there's a bipartisan effort from the New York delegation to secure permanent funding for the World Trade Center Health Program. I feel like we already had this fight at one point. What's going on with that? Why are you again leading a bipartisan group on this?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: When we first passed the 9/11 First Responder bill 10 years ago, we knew we would have to do it incrementally, that we could pass the first tranche of $5 billion, we could pass the setting up of the program, and we could pass the requirement to do the epidemiology studies to know all the cancers that were caused by the toxins admitted from Ground Zero. Every five years, we've continued to perfect the bill, make sure that everyone's covered.

The last fix we did was to make sure the service members who were at the Pentagon site and the service members that were in Shanksville were also covered because they weren't covered. The first responders there weren't covered. What we realized is any of these crash sites, because they were lit on fire with jet fuel, they emitted the same toxins. It wasn't unique just to Ground Zero. It's the nature of jet fuel lighting, building materials, other items on fire that create these horrific toxins. It's the same toxins we found at the burn pits all across the globe that we just got money for our service members. 3.5 million service members now have healthcare.

This last fix, hopefully it's the last one because it's going to make it permanent funding, meaning you don't have to go back to the well every year, and it will make it non-discretionary, meaning you can't change it, it's going to happen no matter what, it's to make sure that there's enough money because the cost of inflation for healthcare has been higher than the cost of inflation overall. The costs just keep going up exponentially more quickly.

This last funding stream is for, I think, $2 billion or $3 billion which should complete the funding to the life of all first responders and community members that were affected. It's bipartisan, bicameral. Senator Schumer is leading the charge, so we are very much positioning ourselves to be able to get a vote on this by the end of the year.

Matt Katz: Back to the phones if we could. Aaron in Astoria. Hi, Aaron. You're on with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.

Aaron: Hi. Can you hear me?

Matt Katz: We can. Yes.

Aaron: Hey. My name is Aaron. I live in Astoria. I'm actually a former intern in Senator Gillibrand's office in Manhattan in 2018. I had a very good experience there around freshman year of college, and I voted for her that year. I voted for you that year, but, unfortunately, I am not going to be able to vote for you again because, frankly, I am repulsed by your support for the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

40,000 dead Palestinians slaughtered some by weapons that we sent to Israel that you voted for. I'm just disgusted by the pictures I'm seeing every day of dead children, men, women funded by the bombs that you voted for, Senator Gillibrand. I want to know how many more dead bodies will it take for you to call for an end of arm sales to Israel.

Matt Katz: Thank you, Aaron. Senator?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: Unfortunately, the attack on Israel on October 7th, where Hamas entered Israel and slaughtered 1,200 people, including women, children, babies, was so horrific that Israel felt it had to respond to keep its borders secure and to destroy Hamas, because they could not endure any more terrorist attacks like this. The United States has a lot of experience with terrorism as well. We had 9/11. I can tell you fighting terrorism is very hard because it's not a nation-state. It tends to be terrorist organizations that infiltrate countries, like Al-Qaeda and ISIS in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The way to defeat terrorism when you have those types of infiltrations is the local people have to help you. When we were most effective in defeating terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan, it was when the Afghanis and the Iraqis pushed those terrorists to organizations out of their own countries.

I believe the quickest way to end this war and the death and destruction of innocent people in the Palestinian authority is to have Israel begin, with the Arab allies, to rebuild Gaza, rebuild the Palestinian state, and get the local community to help them expel Hamas to fight against Hezbollah, to fight against the Houthis, and all Iranian proxies together, because you need allies.

You need to have a long-term strategy to push out terrorist organizations that are destroying their local populations by doing terrorist operations from that base. Hamas has been hiding its rockets, its equipment, its military capabilities in tunnels that they used the money that the United States gave to Gaza over many decades for fuel, for housing, for infrastructure, for building, and they built hundreds of miles of tunnels to execute terrorist operations.

Hamas has been the worst thing that could ever happen to the Palestinian people. The Palestinian people have to reject them, but the only way that's going to happen is if we rebuild Gaza and build a Palestinian state. The Arab world wants to help do that. Israel was about to sign this agreement before October 7th, which is why October 7th happened when it did. They were going to sign a normalization agreement with Saudi Arabia. The purpose of that normalization agreement was to build a broader and deeper Abraham Accords to join Egypt and Jordan and the Emiratis and the Moroccans and the Bahrainis in a regional defense alliance against Iran and all its proxies, against Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis to stop terrorism and to create a regional alliance for peace in the region.

It was the first Middle East peace plan that I ever saw Israel support that they were excited about, that they were all in for. I was very excited about it for the Israeli people. I was excited about it for the region. I was excited about it for the Palestinians. Part of that agreement was going to be to rebuild a Palestinian state with the help of these Arab leaders, because the Arab leaders have not invested in the Palestinians. They have not spent time building an education system, a food system, a water system, an electric grid, and they were going to do this. That is why October 7th happened when it did to make sure this agreement was not reached.

That agreement is still on the table, and so I am hopeful that we can get that agreement signed sooner than later, that we can have that permanent ceasefire and we can pivot entirely to rebuilding and restabilizing the region with the help of the Arab world.

Matt Katz: If you're just joining us, I'm Matt Katz filling in for Brian Lehrer today. We're talking to Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. Senator, just to continue on the situation in the Middle East, you've talked to Brian and our listeners before about your support for Israel in your past visits. Does your support extend to the targeted killings we've seen in the last couple days in Iran and in Lebanon that potentially could lead to a wider conflict and potentially could jeopardize ceasefire negotiations?

Kirsten Gillibrand: One of the challenges is that, again, fighting a war against a terrorist organization is very hard. I think that it would always be in the United States' interest as well as Israel's interest to take out top terrorists who are planning these terrorist operations, killing innocent people, and are intent on a hundred-years' war.

The mission and the motto of Hamas is to destroy Israel and destroy all Jews. That's their intention. It's their goal. Every plan they have is around that goal, and that's murderous. I do not support terrorism. I will never support terrorism, and so going after a terrorist leader is exactly what you do after a terrorist attack. We certainly did with Osama Bin Laden. That is how you protect your country from terrorism.

We would love to be post-war and post-terrorism. Nobody wants to see the war in Ukraine right now, but Putin was so blood thirsty and so murderous and so determined on reconstituting the former Soviet Union that he wants to invade all the gold countries that might have been part of what his vision for a new Russia would look like. We have to stand against that. When terrorist organizations come in and just destroy a building in New York and result in thousands of people being murdered, you have to respond to it because it will happen over and over again.

We would love to be in a peaceful era. It's just not a luxury we have right now. Israel does have the right to go after these terrorists, and I'm hopeful that we will not escalate this to a regional conflict. I'm still very hopeful that we will pivot to this regional defense alliance, because if you have more friends and you have more capabilities, it is less likely that terrorist organizations and terrorist states like Iran will use warfare as their way to project their power.

We want to be post-war, we want to be post-terrorism. We're not there yet because there are world leaders like Putin, like the Ayatollah, like anyone else throughout these countries that are deeply unstable who are blood thirsty for war and death of their enemies. Unfortunately, that's still the world we live in, and it's a horrific, horrific price to pay because of all those innocent people who have died in Ukraine, of all the innocent people that have died in Gaza, and all the innocent people who have died in Yemen and in Somalia and all the other countries around the globe that are dealing with horrific terrorism and war.

Matt Katz: Are you confident that Prime Minister Netanyahu can navigate these now very dangerous waters? You attended his speech to Congress last week. Did you hear what you wanted to hear? Are you feeling comfortable with the Israeli leadership at the moment?

Kirsten Gillibrand: There's a lot of things about the Israeli government that I deeply disagree with. The attacks on the Judiciary. I don't agree with the way they're prosecuting the war in many respects, but a lot of people didn't agree with how the United States prosecuted the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for 20 years either. US' support for Israel goes beyond whoever they elected that election cycle.

How horrific would it have been for the United States when we elected Trump if NATO turned its back on us or other allies turned their backs on us, or no longer would work with us on anti-terrorism and counter-terrorism missions around the globe? It would've been terrible and horrific for our own safety and security and stability.

We typically do not disown allies when they have an election and they elect somebody we don't like because they would then disown us when we have an election and someone is elected that that we don't even like, like when Trump was president. It's just not what we do. You stand by your allies. You recognize they're going to go in and out of conservative governments to liberal governments because that is the general nature of all humanity. They want to change every election so they keep having a pendulum swinging back and forth between who their leaders are, but we still stand by them.

My job as someone who is very knowledgeable in national security, serving on the Intelligence Committee for the last several years, as well as the Armed Services Committee for a decade and a half, is to make sure that I advise those allies on what they should be doing. When I met with Prime Minister Netanyahu four months ago, I made a very strong case that he had to have a ceasefire, that he had to pivot to this regional defense alliance, that he needed to commit to rebuilding Gaza and rebuilding a Palestinian state with those Arab allies leading the charge. I made a very impassioned and aggressive and, I think, persuasive argument.

During his speech, he mentioned the Abraham Alliance. That is exactly what I talked to him about, it's exactly what I want him to be doing, and it's the only way to have a permanent ceasefire, and it's the only way to have stability in the Middle East any point in the next 100 years. I was grateful that he talked about that.

Did I love all the political references and the Trump love? No, of course not. It's not going to be my cup of tea, but I respect him as a world leader to come and talk to his number one ally. They're the only democracy in the Middle East, and I respect that he wants to tell us his perspective. I didn't agree with his perspective and how he characterized the protest in the United States. I think it was very heavy handed and very inappropriate in many respects, but I really appreciated that he talked about the Abraham Alliance because that is the future and that is the path to peace.

Matt Katz: You mentioned a few moments ago, our wars in Afghanistan, Iraq. Just to pivot to that for a moment, you were on the forefront of expanding coverage for veterans exposed to burn pits while serving overseas, and now the latest threat apparently to veterans' health seems to be exposure to heavy blasts from their own weapons. What is the science showing about this? What are you working on in this regard?

Kirsten Gillibrand: For most people, they understand the football player analogy. When football players are getting hit over and over and over again, their brains get damaged. They have traumatic brain injury, and some of this brain injury wasn't even detected till after these football players died and their brains could be looked at very scientifically. They were suffering from a lot of these same symptoms: sleeplessness, anxiety, suicidal ideation, blackouts, all sorts of really violent outbursts, panic attacks, hallucinations, cognitive problems, other psychiatric disorders, dementia.

That's what these service members are suffering, and it's because we believe the blast pressure from shooting various weapons. It's whether they're shooting different ordinance, shoulder fired missiles, different kinds of arms and munitions that they're using in their training. We want to have a hard look at it so we're going to ask the Department of Defense to review all of the training and how much exposure these service members are getting to blast over pressure. We're going to have them track and prevent and create treatments for these kinds of injuries.

We want to make sure that the DOD is assessing which weapons to use and how often in training, and we want to have a much better improved data collection on concussive and sub-concussive brain injuries that service members have sustained. We want more information on the discharges related to-- and medical providers trained in these injuries as well as efforts with allies and partners to better address them.

Matt Katz: Very good. There's a whole bunch of legislation that I wanted to ask you about. Let me get on one more issue here before I let you go. You are working with Senator Josh Hawley, whom many of us remember from throwing a fist up at the January 6th protests/attempted insurrection at the Capitol. You're working with him on funding mental health support for first responders. Tell us a little bit about that and how that relationship works when the cameras aren't around.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: To be an effective public servant, you have to listen to other people and reach across the aisle because you can't pass a law if it's not bipartisan. The House right now is Republican, so they won't call up a bill that's not bipartisan. If you need 60 votes to overcome cloture, you're going to need at least 10 Republicans in the Senate. I work with pretty much all Republicans on something. I figure out, "There's someplace where we have common ground," and then I build around where that common ground is. I might not agree with them on 9 things out of 10, but if I can find the one thing, I will find it.

Josh and I have been working on a couple of bills that I think are extremely meaningful. The one that you've mentioned is deeply bipartisan. It's got quite a lot of supporters already. Basically, it will look at the fact that a lot of our first responders, our firefighters, our police officers, our EMTs, have been suffering from a lot of mental health issues, particularly post-COVID.

As you remember, there was a lot of pressure on first responders during COVID and for a lot of people those pressures have continued. A number of them are unable to continue to serve because of it. Some people are not willing to serve and won't even be recruited into it because of the challenges that our first responders are having to meet. We're losing a lot of first responders to these mental health incidents.

Every day think of a firefighter, they put themselves into extremely challenging and life-threatening situations in order to keep us safe. It takes a toll. A lot of our first responders have higher rates of PTSD and suicide compared to the civilian population. I think it's important that we make the effort to get the mental health resources that they need to survive and thrive because we need our first responders to keep our city safe and to keep our families safe. I will always reach across the aisle to do things to keep our families safe.

Matt Katz: That is our monthly Call Your Senator segment with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. Senator, thanks for taking these questions from me and our callers. It's always appreciated.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: Thanks a lot. Appreciate you very much.

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