Political Powerhouses Katie Porter and Lorena Gonzalez

Every other week this fall, we’re airing some of Alec’s favorite episodes from our archives. This week, we feature two powerhouses of the political world: Katie Porter and Lorena Gonzalez in conversations from 2021. Democrat Lorena Gonzalez served in the California State Assembly from 2013 to 2022, representing her hometown of San Diego in the 80th Assembly District. The Stanford, Georgetown, and UCLA Law School graduate dedicated her career to labor organizing before taking office, where she fought for paid sick leave, overtime for farmworkers, and protecting janitorial workers against sexual assault. Today, Gonzalez continues to work for union causes as the Executive Secretary-Treasurer of the California Labor Federation. U.S. Representative Katie Porter (CA-45) was the first Democrat ever to be elected in the traditionally conservative Orange County district in 2018. Prompted to run by Trump’s 2016 win, Porter, a Yale and Harvard Law School graduate and single mom to three school-age children, quickly made a name for herself with her tough questioning of CEOs and administration officials, often using a whiteboard to lay out the facts. Porter, now in her second term, brings her experience as a law professor and consumer protection attorney to bear as she fights to end political corruption, increase government transparency, and hold leaders of both parties accountable.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to Here's
the Thing from My Heart Radio. This fall will be
airing a rebroadcast of some of my favorite episodes from
our archives. This week, we're featuring two powerhouses of the
political field, Congresswoman Katie Porter and former California State Assemblywoman

(00:24):
Lorraina Gonzalez. Gonzalez resigned from her position in the Assembly
in January, but continues to fight for union causes as
the executive secretary Treasurer of the California Labor Federation. Here's
my conversation with the progressive leader from my guest today

(00:45):
falls into one of my favorite categories politicians to keep
an eye on because they're doing amazing things. Lorrena Gonzalez
represents California's eightieth Assembly district in southern San Diego. She
was first elected in two thousand thirteen and got into
politics after years of working as a labor leader. She's

(01:08):
a progressive Democrat who supports working in middle class Californians
with an impressive list of wins, including paid sick leave,
overtime for farm workers, protecting janitorial workers against sexual assault,
automatic voter registration at the d M v diaper tax relief.
The list goes on and on. Growing up, Assemblywoman Gonzalez

(01:33):
saw first hand what government can do or not do
to help working class families. She was raised by a
single mom who put in long hours as a nurse
to support Gonzalez and her two older brothers. Today, Lorraina
Gonzalez has five kids in a blended family with her husband,
Nathan Fletcher. He's also in San Diego politics as a

(01:57):
county supervisor. Gonzalez and Fletcher of both Democrats, but that
wasn't always the case. He was a Republican. He was
actually a Republican assembly member and at the time I
was the head of the a f l c I
O in San Diego, and he was always a much
more moderate Republican. But through the process when he ran

(02:18):
unsuccessfully for mayor, we had a ton of discussions. This
is before we started dating or anything, and he saw
the light. He became a Democrat. Then we started dating,
then we got married. That makes sense to me. The
first thing I think about when I look at your
biography and so forth, beyond your family, the thing that
strikes me most is my goodness. You have the trifecta

(02:41):
of academic credentials here Stanford undergrad, Georgetown Masters, u c
l A Law school. You have the credentials to have
done a lot of things for yourself. You know, you're
certainly the whole Goldman Sachs material academically and everything. And
yet labor organizer, State Assembly. What is it? What was

(03:04):
the calling for you that you wanted to forego taking
care of yourself in order to take care of other people?
I put a lot of that on my mom. So
my mom, for most of my life, was a single mom.
She just worked her ass off. I don't know else
to put it. I don't ever remember her having a
forty hour work week. She worked fifty sixty seventy hours
a week, multiple jobs at times, all to make life better,

(03:27):
not just for me and my brothers, to give us
an opportunity to go to college and do things, but
also to make life better for her patience for people
she was serving. She taught me that in life, what
actually matters isn't how much money you have in your
bank account or how many trips you get to go on,
but how much you do to save the world. And
we laugh now, my husband and I, and it's it's

(03:50):
a question, do you want to savor the world or
save the world. We're still on the save the world trajectory.
At some point, you know, it's everybody's right to take
a step back and savor the world a little bit.
There's just so much work to do, and I think
that I saw that, and I saw hard working people
and saw what they go through, and just wanted to
ensure that I could try to make other folks lives
a little easier. Now, there's a variety of bills and

(04:12):
so forth that you've authored or co authored, and I
wanted to just hop through a couple of those, because
I find all this stuff very fascinating. Assembly build five
requiring workers classified as employees rather than independent contractors for
more labor protection. Take me through that. What's the difference. Well,
over the last maybe decade, a lot of employers have

(04:33):
taken advantage of loopholes in the law and classified what
would be traditional employees as independent contractors. And yes, it's
cheaper for the employer, but the cost that it puts
on both the employee and society is a large has
to be taken accounts. So when you're an independent contractor,
the employer does not pay their person of your Social
Security or Medicare. That's seven point five percent. You're responsible

(04:55):
for the full fiftent of those two things. They're not
required to provide hell care. They're not required to give
you paid sick leave, paid family leave that we have
in California. They don't have to provide you with workers compensation.
You don't have the right to a lot of civil
rights and sexual harassment laws. As an independent contractor, you're
viewed as an individual small business, not a worker of

(05:17):
the company. So obviously there's a number of benefits and
most important during COVID, which we found is nobody's paying
into unemployment insurance for you. So if you lose your job,
you're on your own. So it is this idea and
I can imagine and for some people it's an important
piece to be an independent contractor, to be a true
small sole proprietor small business, and we have those. You know,

(05:38):
you may be a plumber, you might be a doctor
that has your own business and you're on your own.
So for example, a doctor as an independent contractor, he
would then become whose employee to qualify for the benefits
you're enumerating here. Well, in doing a B five We
took what was called in California a decision by the
California State Supreme Court dynamics, and we applied that it

(06:00):
was going to be presidential basically, and so we applied
it to our entire labor code, and we said, but
there will be exceptions. And we took the reasoning and
the decision that said, if you have the ability to
bargain for yourself, if you truly require a certain certificate education,
you have the ability to provide these things for yourself.
Were less concerned, right, because what happens is a doctor

(06:22):
doesn't need these benefits necessarily, they self ensure they self
provide them, and then if something goes wrong, society is
not on the hook, right, It's not like some taxpayer
funded program. They can actually take care of themselves. If
a janitor is classified as an independent contractor and doesn't
have those benefits and they lose their job, they're going
to end up on state sponsored support. We we don't

(06:43):
want people to to be homeless or go hungary, so
we do provide a safety net, but they don't have
somebody paying into the system. There's no social contract that
was established. And those companies who are misclassifying workers are
at a competitive advantage over companies who are biding by
the law. So this is just strengthening the existing law.
And a lot of this came about because of the

(07:04):
upswing of all these tech companies that think if you're
hired through an app, you're an independent contract or your
own business, right. And that's what I'm curious about, is
that is that let's say I have a building, an
office building. Are you're telling me that they will hire
janitorial staff and call them independent contractors and not call
them employees. So usually what would happen if you hired
a buildings You hire janitorial company and you don't know

(07:28):
you have the building. You hire a company. That's all fine,
but the people working for the company, they would be
independent contractors when they're actually just employees who have been misclassified.
Give us the most vivid example of who the bill
was aimed to help. The bill was aimed to help
delivery drivers for Uber. For example, Right, yep, I carry
my Uber Eats bag. I'm being told where to go,

(07:50):
when to go. I can't negotiate with Uber over my
pay I can't negotiate with Uber over whether or not
I want to take a certain job, and uh Uber says,
I'm a small business and I have to pay for
my own expenses, for my own insurance. Um, I have
to pay my own taxes. There's no payroll taxes taken out.
Uber investors and Uber owners get very very very wealthy

(08:10):
and billionaires and the workers making submimum wage. Another area
is in two thousand seventeen. This one was very sensitive
to me because I was involved tangentially, but I was
part of drafting and circulating petitions in terms of lead
paint in the schools of New York, And in two
thousand and seventeen, you would have been requiring all K
through twelve schools to test their drinking water for lead.

(08:33):
Did your concern for this issue in was the trigger
that you're a mother? What was the genesis of that?
Obviously a lot of what I do is the fact
that I am a mom, and I'm a mom first, right,
So I approach a lot of issues that we're facing
as any mother would. Yes, you send your kids, I
send my kids public school. I hope and pray um

(08:55):
that they're safe, that nobody's going to gun them down,
that nobody is going to um poise in them that
nobody's gonna sexually abuse them and that they'll get a
good education at the same time. So there's a lot
of trust we put into our schools. And we had
a situation in my district where it was a really
odd situation. A dog. They put water out and the

(09:16):
dog they reacted to it, and so they end up
testing the water and um, the water had lead in it.
And this is like New York City. We've we fought
for years in my community in particular, which is a
Latino working class community, to replace lead paint in the houses.
We took lead out of candy. We know that it
poisons children and disproportionately poor children. And so when we

(09:40):
found it in the water fountain at school, it was
a shell shock for me because the one thing you
sent your kid to school and you're like, don't drink
the sugary drinks. Go have some water, Go drink some water,
drink for the waterfown, drink more, you know, and like
how many times diet code exactly, And I thought, oh
my gosh, for my own kids, you think of that thought,
like how many times I say, okay, after pe, make

(10:01):
sure you drink some water from the water fountain, you
know hydrate well a little. Did I know we're sending
kids to poison themselves. So what we did is in
some of these schools are very, very old, and we
said it's time to test it for lead, and we
got a lot of pushback. Everybody's like, well, is it
makes sense to test? I'm like, how can we not
test when we know that there's lead in the water?

(10:24):
Who on earth would be opposed to testing the drinking
water of your children in the school? Who people who
know that if it's positive, they're going to have to
pay to replace the pipe? Right? What was the upshot
of that in two thousand and seventeen, Did the testing
lead to any remediation of the problem that they ripped
the pipes at a certain schools? Or what happened they filter?
It was filtration the answer filtration um they replaced they

(10:45):
brought in water stations to some And what happened is
there there had already been a number of school bonds
that had passed, both statewide school bonds as well as
local school bonds. And what happened as soon as they
started finding this, then, know, when you pass the school bond,
there's a lot of things you can spend it on.
In in San Diego Unified, for example, had well we

(11:05):
had some football fields and some lighting that needed done,
and we wanted, you know, some HVAC done in the classrooms.
All important things. But if you find lead in the water,
guess what, replacing those water fountains gets to the top
of the list in money that was already going to
be spent. It becomes prioritized. So the world didn't end.
The waters has been tested, and now it's being fixed.

(11:29):
California Assemblywoman Lorraina Gonzalez. If listening to interviews with up
and coming politicians gives you a sense of hope, be
sure to check out my conversation with Texan Christina since Soon,
who co founded the Workers Defense Project. I think that
there's an image of Texas that people have that is
not the true Texas story. When people think about Texas,

(11:52):
they usually think about us in a singular way of
people like my white grandfather, which was a cowboy, And
the truth is that the state is you know, you
have a city like Houston, it's one of the most
diversities in the entire country. You have one in three
Texans that are immigrants, were children of immigrants. The state's
population is Latino, it's majority people of color at this point.

(12:13):
Here more of my conversation with Christina sin soon in
our archives at Here's the Thing dot org. After the break,
Lorena Gonzalez talks about cheerleaders and her fight to get
California's biggest sports teams to pay them like the professionals
they are. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's

(12:45):
the Thing. In two thousand eighteen, Lorrena Gonzalez co authored
a bill which put California on a path to generate
one of its electricity from clean, carbon neutral energy sources
by two thousand forty five. She says the state is
on track to meet its goal even sooner. We're already

(13:05):
almost there. I gotta be honest. We're gonna get to
renewable quicker than we had imagined or hoped. But that's
because we required it by way of what. By way
of large scale solar farms that you're seeing go up,
wind energy that you're seeing. We're exploring other forms biomass,
pub stations, things to provide renewable energy sources throughout California. Obviously,

(13:28):
rooftop solar plays a role in that, but we have
really adopted in California an approach that is getting us.
On any given Saturday, about eight of the energy coming
through a grid is now coming from renewable sources. How
did you get involved with the cause of the cheerleaders
in the NFL go as you lost? I guess you

(13:48):
lost your box seats of the Charges game. I was
not a popular person at the Charges. I'll tell you that.
What happened, to be honest, is you gotta figure I
was actually a Stanford cheer leader. So I was a
cheerleader and a labor leader. Right, I know how to
use a bullhorn and a megaphone. Um, it's it's a
rare combination. So when I had read at the time

(14:11):
the Raider ats, the cheerleaders for the Raiders had started
a couple of them start a lawsuit against the Raiders
for not paying the minimum wage because they were classified
actually as independent contractors. And so I talked to the attorneys,
and I'm an attorney, So I talked to their attorneys
and I was like, this is outrageous. They're basically almost
paying to do this fantastic job. Yes, it's a job

(14:33):
women want. It's a job that that is respected to
a certain extent, but it's still a job everybody else
on the football field. It doesn't matter if you're the
physical trainer. It doesn't matter if you're the person picking
up the trash. It doesn't matter if you're selling the peanuts,
if you're the coach, if you're the player. You're all
being paid like an employee. And these cheerleaders were being
given a stipend, being penalized. They signed an employment contract

(14:56):
with the NFL. So I said, this is easy. We're
going to make them by co employees so that they
have basical labor protections in California. And so I remember
the first time I introduced it, and of course a
lot of journalists were more fascinated with fact that I
was a cheerleader Stanford in one of those pictures, and
so we're like, all right, here's a picture, now can
we talk about this really important issue. And and then

(15:17):
my favorite part of the story is having to go
to then Governor Jerry Brown. And he's anyone who knows
he's a little I don't want to say crotchety. You
just never quite know what you would get with no
nonsense guy, No nonsense, and I mean, I'm like, God,
I got to talk to him about cheerleaders, like this
is gonna And so I said, um, we were at

(15:38):
a dinner together, and I said, Governor, when you have
a chancel and talk to you about this bill I'm
working on. It has to do with professional cheerleaders. And
he said I was a cheerleader, and I was like,
are you kidding me? He apparently he was a cheerleader
in college or high school, and so I was like, Oh,
I think I'm going to get this one. But we did.
I'm very proud of that. So what was that path?

(15:59):
Was it directed an individual team? Was this league? Why
you wanted the NFL to recognize? Was the situation in
San Diego duplicated at all the NFL teams? Well, none
of them were getting paid. None of the NFL cheerleaders
to this day, only in California do they have rights
as an employee. There was a bill actually introduced in
New York as well, but it never made it through.

(16:20):
So it was any professional sports teams in California, the
dancers or cheerleaders have to be treated and have the
basic labor protections of an employee. So that includes of course,
the Chargers, the Rams, the Lakers. It was basketball and football.
So I was going to ask about that because I
go to Knicks games, or I used to, and those

(16:41):
women were out there not getting paid either now and
a lot of them, but they are now. Only in California.
There's a national fight still against the NFL. There have
been a lot of lawsuits, a lot of the teams
have lost lawsuits, and there's been a lot more attention
to it. There's a couple of documentaries and issues pertained
to we'd like to see it, of course on the
national level. So how did the lawsuit work in California
and not in the other states. Well, it was settled,

(17:04):
and so in other states it's been settled as well.
But so often when you settle these lawsuits on worker issues,
the judge accepts a settlement, so it makes whole the
workers who are suing, but it doesn't force companies to
fix the problem. So it's kind of like an ongoing
invitation to sue without fixing the problem. And that's why

(17:24):
sometimes you need legislation to come in and say all right,
nobody can do this, this is enough. Now. In two
thousand nineteen, you passed legislation that extends the statute of
limitations for survivors of sexual abuse who are seeking justice
in court. Now, I think most of our listeners know
what a statute of limitations is, but I want you
to explain, as an attorney, the reason for a statute

(17:47):
of limitations in most cases, and there are some crimes
I believe, like murder, where there is no statute of limitations.
But where there is a statute of limitations in place,
why is there one. There's often a statute for a
variety of reasons. One, you can't preserve evidence. So you know,
I could say, hey, when twenty years ago you stole
this TV from me, Well, that TV doesn't exist. Witnesses

(18:09):
probably don't exist. It's hard to pin that down. People die,
they move away exactly, or or they forget I mean
quite frankly, you know, I can't remember twenty years ago.
Probably should have integrity in the trial of the witnesses.
You need to do it in a certain time frame.
But childhood sexual assault is unique. So there's some things
that made it unique and made the statute of limitations

(18:29):
very damaging. Number one, so often the primary witness the
child themselves, uh suppresses it basically doesn't think about it,
doesn't come to terms with it, and until later in
life when they're dealing with a failed marriage or depression
that it comes out. And so sometimes you know, that's
the primary witnesses a person who was assaulted, if you will.

(18:49):
And what we had with childhood sexual assault is actually
a lot of people knew what was happening. We actually
have official documents like the church, the Boy Scouts, they
actually had complaints that were filed that were put away
that there still exists and you still need all of
this proof, if you will, to establish a case, but
it allows time to have passed and yet still victims
to get some sort of justice. So I understand you

(19:12):
want some choice words for Elon Musk when he was
going to move his company from California. Is that true? Yes,
But I want to put it in context. Look, my
mouth gets me in trouble. I'd lie if I said otherwise.
I say exactly what I think and what I mean.
But you have to look in context. Elon Musk has
made a crapload of money off of California taxpayers, and

(19:33):
if people don't understand why, it's because everything he makes
is subsidized by taxpayers. So the tesla's that flew off
the market, those all had taxpayer rebates on a hundred
thousand dollar cards. I mean, people who didn't need the
rebates were given them because we want to encourage electric vehicles.
His solar panels and solar storage had been highly subsidized
by the state California, so taxpayers have helped make him

(19:55):
a billionaire in California. We have really supported Elon Musk
and coming the labor movement. He hasn't really been too
good on worker issues, so he's been slapped down by
the n l r B. He's he's anti worker. He's
had really some big safety problems in his facility. So
I've always been a little irked, like, here we are
giving you taxpayer dollars and you can't even abide by
the law when it comes to union organizing. That upsets me. Well,

(20:18):
during the pandemic, he decided forget it. I don't like
these orders. I'm going to open up my factory in Fremont.
It doesn't matter what the county public health officer is saying.
And you're talking about an area where we had tons
of Latinos dying from COVID. We had the spread. It
was at roaring at the time. So he brings back
his workers and he says, if anyone stops him, he's
going to take his jobs to Texas. I mean, at

(20:40):
some point, look, every elected official in Calfoya should be
saying I won't say it here, but go go away,
Elon Musk. There is a point where where as elected
officials and this kills me. It doesn't matter who it
is who is getting things from us, right, leadership is
also being able to make those tough decisions and say, hey,

(21:02):
all right, we like your product, we like what you're
doing for the environment. But by the way, we've got
rules and we're going it doesn't matter who you are,
you're going to stick by the rules too. And it
it irks me that so many of our rules in California,
in this nation, we apply them disproportionately to communities like
mine and not to billionaires like Elon Musk, and I
think we have to be stronger about that. He has

(21:24):
a lot of fans on Twitter, and I got a
lot of lush comes with the territory. It does. Well,
let me just say this, you were such an amazing
woman and all your credentials and your accomplishments and your passion.
You're somebody who it's still your task to save the world,
I'm afraid, and not savor the world. You have to
have to postpone the savoring of the world a little

(21:46):
bit longer. You and your husband. You have to keep going.
There's no turning back. You've got to keep running and
keep doing this great work you're doing. You've been doing
amazing work, and you were such a role model, and
we wanted you on because people spoke so highly of view.
Andrew Day, the actress, was talking about the work you
did with that school down there. Robert E. Lee. Yeah,

(22:08):
in San Diego. You can imagine, yes, because we care
about our history. You had the name of the school changed.
You and other people were working on that cast I did.
And this was before we kind of started attacking the
Confederate name issue, so I got to see what people
said before they realized it was politically incorrect. But you
don't have a school in San Diego named after Robert E.
Lee in the nineteen fifties, the same year that we

(22:30):
ended segregation in the schools, and it not be tied
to racism. So that school today is over kids of
color and they finally don't have to go to school
that is named after not just the biggest traitor in
our in our history, but somebody who was fighting to
keep people segregated, in keep people enslaved. Well, what an

(22:50):
honor it is to get to meet you. I know
your time is valuable. Thank you so much, Thank you,
Lorraina Gonzalez. My next guest is United States Congresswoman Katie Porter,
a Democrat in her second term and wielder of the
famous prop the white Board of Justice. Here's my conversation

(23:11):
with the congresswoman from Katie Porter represents California's district in
Orange County, which is traditionally conservative. She's a consumer protection
attorney and a law professor. She quickly developed a name
for herself in her first term with tough questioning of

(23:32):
people testifying before Congress, often using her famous white board
to hold CEOs and political appointees accountable. Katie Porter grew
up on a farm in Iowa. During the farmer crisis
of the nineteen eighties. She broke with family tradition of
attending state school to go to Yale and went on
to Harvard Law School. She decided to run for office

(23:55):
after Trump's win in two thousand sixteen and became the
first Democrat elect it in her district. Katie Porter is
comfortable being a fish out of water. I like to
be challenged. Um. I like to learn, and I think
that was a huge part of, you know, why I
chose to to go, you know, off to college far

(24:15):
away from Iowa, to kind of stretch myself. UM. I
loved being a professor. I was a professor here at
the University of California, Irvine, teaching business law horses, and
then really stretched myself when I ran for Congress. And
one of the great things about being in Congress that
I never hear anyone talking about, which makes me kind
of skeptical, frankly, is that the great thing about this

(24:36):
job is every minute you should be learning something. Whether
that's listening to your constituents, whether that's a briefing from
about national security, you know, whether that's you know, having
a meeting with your staff. There's just so much to
learn to be able to do this job effectively. And
I like that. So in some ways it's very much
like being a professor. My job is to learn stuff

(24:56):
and then to help teach, and so in this case.
Instead of teaching a classroom, I think about teaching the
American people. You graduated Harvard Law School one year two one,
So when you left there, where did you go from there?
Where did you first go out of school? So? I
went to clerk for a federal judge in Little Rock, Arkansas.
He was a wonderful judge. And this won't surprise people.

(25:17):
There weren't a lot of other law clerks who wanted
to work on the bankruptcy cases. Um and so literally
I think I got to work on every single bankruptcy
opinion the entire Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, which stretches
from North Dakota down to Arkansas, worked on that year. Um.
And then I went off and I practiced. I took
the bar um exam, and I practiced law in Portland,

(25:38):
Oregon for a couple of years. What led you to
Portland from Little Rock? My now ex husband is from
their family. Yeah, family, and you know it was a
good place to practice there. And then decided that I
wanted to become a law professor. And I hadn't really
gone to law school thinking maybe I want to be
a professor. I had thought about getting a PhD. Um

(25:59):
and at the time, the idea of writing a book
seemed really long to me, which is funny because I've
now written two law textbooks that are like a thousand
pages each. Um. But when I got to law school,
I was I really liked it. I wasn't sure what
I wanted to teach, what did I love? Where did
I wanted to spend my whole career studying? And then
I took Elizabeth Warren's bankruptcy class and that was it.

(26:21):
That was what I wanted to spend my life working on.
This is why you were in law school. This is
when I went to law school. My third year in
law school. Tell the story if you would have you
approached Warren after she was less than cuddly towards you
in class. Yeah. Yeah, So Elizabeth was a really great professor.
She called on students um and you had to have
your homework done, you had to be prepared if you

(26:44):
showed up. And so I was a rule follower. I
did my homework. I sat in the front row, which
I thought would help her overlook me, but it didn't
really work out that way. And so, you know, one
of the solutions to not being called on is to
raise your hand, um. And so she was asking a
question and I raised my hand and I gave what
I thought was a pretty good answer, and I remember

(27:05):
her turning to me, I'll never forget I mean the
hand yester, I can do it today. She said, thank,
miss Porter, thank, And I remember just wilting inside because
I was thinking. I was thinking so hard and I
was coming up short. Um. And I went to see
her after that, and I said, don't give up on me.
I've never taken a course like this before. I didn't

(27:27):
take some of the there's a couple kind of courses
you often take, their introductory to bankruptcy, and I just
jumped into the deep end. I was like, don't give
up on me. I really care about this stuff. And
the reason I cared so much about bankruptcy was growing
up in Iowa in the nineteen eighties during farm made
and the tractor motorcades, and watching the farming community where
I grew up really struggle economically. When I got to bankruptcy,

(27:50):
I realized there are tools in law and policy to help. Now,
when you made that request of war, did she granted
what she were given? Take with you in the classroom,
did she be going, I mean know, it actually was
the opposite. She came back to me even more because
she knew I really cared, like she knew that it
mattered to me. My message to her wasn't taken easy
on me. It was don't give up on me. And

(28:12):
a lot of professors. I mean, I see this in
witness rooms, actually in hearings, and people will ask a
witness a question and the witness will stonewall give a
nonsense and answer another question, answer another question. And what
my colleagues will do is they'll just give up. They'll
move on, they'll start giving a speech. But just like
in the classroom, when I gave a wrong answer, Warren

(28:34):
didn't say, oh well, let me go find someone more cooperative.
She told me. Think she stuck with me as I
was learning. So whenever I hear someone, you know, they
give a nonsense answer, I'm not going anywhere. You said
something interesting. When people don't give a good answer, you know,
I myself become exhausted by the unwillingness of people to

(28:55):
answer the questions of the duly elected members of Congress.
You are here, congresswoman, Porter or anybody, You're not doing
this for your health you're doing this on behalf of
your constituency of the American people. You're representing the American people,
and many of them are so smug and so arrogant
and won't answer your question. And I was wondering, do
you find that the authority of the Congress is weakened

(29:15):
in recent years because people feel like, what does it matter?
There's no teeth behind this. So I think that some
of the things that we've been able to do with
our hearings is actually restore a sense of accountability to this,
which is if you if I ask you a question
and you give me a nonsense answer, I'm not going
to pretend that what you said makes sense. I'm not

(29:37):
going to accept a wrong answer. If you're dodging, if
you're stonewalling, I'm going to try to get you to answer,
so you would think. I mean, it's sort of an
interesting to me. I remember, like maybe the second or
third hearing I was at, I said, well, surely you
know now everyone will come really prepared, like I won't
stomp anybody anymore because they'll know that you have to
show up and take me seriously. But you know, I've

(29:59):
been underesked made in my whole life. At this point,
I kind of exploit that and when does this still
show up and they're contemptuous or they're unprepared. I mean,
the other day Steve Minuchin had said, well, are you
a lawyer? Like, yes, I am, like since you mentioned it,
but I think that you know, the goal is that

(30:20):
these shouldn't be performance art moments. They should be substantive.
And so you know, the one thing I will say
about the white board is it's not about trying to
go viral um. It's not about an antic. It's not
an antic. It is a tool. And so sometimes I
use it, sometimes they don't. Sometimes I use other things.

(30:41):
I don't you know. I think it was maybe one
of my staffers m when we started the first time
we ever used it was with Jamie Diamond. We were
trying to go through the budget of a worker, what
a typical family would spend, and compare it to the
salary and show that even though he's paying more than
minimum wage, people can't be against meat on that she

(31:01):
had two thousand, four hundred twenty five dollars a month.
She rents a one bedroom apartment. She and her daughters
sleep together in the same room. In Irvine, California. That
average one better apartment is going to be sixteen hundred dollars.
She spends one hundred dollars on utilities, take away the
seventeen hundred, and she has net seven d twenty five
dollars four hundred dollars per car expenses and gas net

(31:21):
three A low food budget is four hundred dollars. That
leaves her seventy seven dollars in the red. She has
a cricket cell phone, the cheapest cell phone she can
get for forty dollars. She's in the red. A hundred
seventeen dollars a month. She has after school childcare because
the bank is open during normal business hours. That's for
fifty a month. That takes her down to negative five
hundred and sixty seven dollars per month. My question for you,

(31:44):
Mr Diamond is how should she manage this budget shortfall
while she's working full time at your bank? And so
the idea of the white board was just instead of
having all these numbers what she spends on rent and
food and rattling it all off a million miles an hour.
And he says, I'm sorry, could you repeat that? I mean,
that is what every The first refuge of every unprepared

(32:05):
student in every classroom in America is to ask the teacher,
I'm sorry, could you repeat the question. That's a courtroom
tactic exactly, So, especially in Congress, we only have five minutes.
So if someone says could you repeat that, and you've
spent a minute setting up the question, your loss. So
the idea of the white board was to prevent him
from being able to, you know, sort of dodge and stall.

(32:28):
And you know, the interesting thing that he said is
I'd have to think about it. And I asked him,
you know again, and he said, I have to think
about it. And I asked him, well, what about this?
And he said, you have to think about it. And really,
I hope he is. I hope that moment did prompt
him to think. When I was doing Saturday Night Live
for this long run during Trump's thing, and we would

(32:49):
be there and I would pitch ideas, and I wanted
your character to have the white board everywhere, like you
were with your kids at the breakfast table. All right,
let me show you, and like you have the white
board out of your swing everything for your children and
your boyfriend, and you're at the gas station and whatever.
Everywhere you go someone is handing your whiteboard. But I
wonder is there a distinction between when you're questioning people,

(33:11):
not only the questions you ask, the way you ask
them again, you only have five minutes, but the way
you anticipate they're gonna respond when their government administrators who
are there to protect an administration. Do you see there's
a difference between the two. When someone who is a
political appointee is before you, are they even worse in
terms of their caginus? No, not always. I mean I

(33:31):
think that, you know, it just depends on the witness.
We try to anticipate what the witness will say. In
other words, what's the obvious thing they're going to try
to dodge with Where are they going to try to
misdirect us? If we we research the witnesses, sometimes we'll
watch video clips of them to try to understand kind
of what they're like, um, whether they get easily frustrated,

(33:51):
whether they launch into long, boring explanations. So I'm prepared
to cut that off. But I think one of the
great myths is that you know, the oversight can me
where I'm so excited to be serving again in this
Congress somehow is less important or less exciting in a
democratic administration, given that I'm a Democrat than it was
when you know, we were a Trump administration, and you know,

(34:14):
so opposite. I would just tell you that these are
both oversight stays important. I mean, once we're enacting programs
that I have supported and I have voted for as
a Democrat, I'm even more concerned that these programs are
working as intended. So the responsibility to do good oversight,
it's not a partisan thing. It's part of effective government. Now,

(34:38):
do you go back to your office sometimes and watch yourself,
watch clips of yourself, and review what you've done to
see how effective or ineffective you think it might have been.
Not usually. I mean it's interesting after I question, and
when I'm questioning, I typically have no idea what anybody
else around me is doing or saying or reacting. It's
it's just me and that witness, right and just looking

(35:01):
at them, you know. I like, after I questioned Postmaster
to Joy, oh my god, oh my god, I wasn't
sure that I made the point that I wanted to make.
Now it turns out I think I did. But when
I got off, I was just like I don't think
I did it. I think I messed it up. So
it's often, you know, it's it's not about how I'm feeling,
it's about whether it's resonating with the American people. So

(35:21):
it often, you know, that's about how people react to it.
So you can make something that you think is great,
you know, but if other people don't find it moves them,
then it doesn't really work. So when you're down in
southern California and you go to Orange County, it was
primarily to take the teaching gicket you see Irvine. If
you see Irvine as a campus inside the red red

(35:42):
red part of California there in Orange County, what was
it like for you down there working there? Was Was
it a very conservative staff and an administration and faculty? No?
I mean, look, Irvine has changed a lot, and a
big part of the reason that Irvine and Orange County
has changed is in part at the presence of the University. UM.
It's a large employer here. It attracts bright and interesting

(36:05):
and thoughtful people from all around the country and even
the world. UM. And so you know, my kids go
to school, UM in public school here and there are
they have some very conservative classmates. I mean one of
my former cub Scouts. I was his cub Scout dead
leader for five years. That kid actually made phone calls
from my pum Republican opponent in eighteen So I don't

(36:28):
know what that says about my cub Scout skills. But
you know, uh, you know, actually there are a real
diversity of opinion here. But there are very progressive people
here too. There are people in the middle, there are Republicans.
I like that diversity. I represent roughly equal numbers of Republicans, Democrats,
and no party preference or independent voters. And what that

(36:49):
means is, on any given topic, I need to know
how to talk to people who will come at it
from a lot of different perspectives. And that is an
incredible skill to have, and I wish all of my
colleagues had it. Frankly, when you went to Washington, and
you talk about the importance of the work that you
do within the district, but when you went to Washington,

(37:10):
what did you think that was going to be like
with your colleagues and stuff, where than what did it
turn out to be. I thought there'd be more substantive
policy discussion among regular members House Representatives is four hundred
and thirty plus people, so it's big. And so it
turns out that a lot of things are kind of
decided before they get to you, that they're decided by leadership.

(37:34):
Um that you know, the relevant committee has kind of
figured everything out before it comes to you, and you're
just in a situation of yes or no on the vote.
And I think that's where I saw hearings as this
great opportunity because if you're not if you're a newcomer
to Congress, you don't have a lot of power, especially
on the Democratic side, but we have a strong seniority system.

(37:54):
But one of the few equal things about Congress is
everybody gets five minute for their questioning. So I decided
I was going to use my five minutes better than
anybody else, or as well as I could to the
maximum of kind of my ability. Um. And that's where
I found the greatest reward, really, And and the thing
that's rewarding for me is it's not the answers that

(38:15):
these witnesses give, because they're often really bad answers. It's
the American people watch and they see that that lady
is asking what I've always wondered, why do the drugs
cost so much? Right? Why does the drug keep getting
more expensive? Do you know what the price of Revelement was?

(38:35):
I can look it up, but I don't recall. I
don't have it in front of me. Four hundred and
twelve per pile. I would say approximately seven pill, but
I again, I don't have it in front of me.
Seven nineteen propel and today Revelement cost seven hundred and
sixty three dollars per pill. I'm curious did the drug

(38:59):
get some stantially more effective in that time? Did cancer
patients need fewer pills? She's asking about me, and that's
really for me than the most rewarding part. You were
a single mom where you got divorced when your your
kids are how old now? They're now fifteen, twelve and nine.
So you were a single mom now for almost a decade.
And do you maintain because I know that we One

(39:21):
of the things you focus on is about all the
women that are losing jobs. We're losing a lot of
women in the workplace because of the COVID correct, absolutely
huge issue. What are some of the legislation you might
or might not propose to address that? So when I
was elected in the last Congress. At that time, I
was the only single mother of young children to serve.

(39:41):
Since then, the Republicans have elected one. But you know,
this idea of the single household, the single parent household,
isn't well represented in Washington, to put it mildly, So
when we talk about issues like child poverty, one of
the reasons for that is women, single women, single mom,
single dad's try ring to raise a family on one income. Um.

(40:02):
What happens financially to families when they get divorced, um,
it's you know, it's very difficult. And so when we
see right now, what we know is about of women
have left the workforce since the pandemic. A lot of
those are lost jobs. Some of them are women who
are leaving because they're putting a position to choose between
taking care of their kids who are out of school,

(40:23):
remote learning um, or you know, having to go to
work and leave their kids home alone. This has long
term implications not just for women's economic opportunities and child poverty,
but also for our economy as a whole. If we're
a capitalist economy, we need our best and brightest doing
the work, competing for the jobs, and that means men

(40:45):
and women people of different backgrounds, all having an opportunity
to be in the workplace. And in our country, we're
losing a lot of women out of the workforce and
that's going to have big implications for our global competitiveness.
It's not just a women's issue. We all benefit from
a strong, healthy economy. One of my favorite phrases, and
I use it all the time with my staff, is

(41:06):
by the ticket, take the ride right. And this actually
applies to capitalism too. If we want to say, and
you know, you hear these people who are uber capitalists,
they're they're anti government, they're worried about this, they're they're
throwing up this, you know, ridiculous specter of socialism. Well,
guess what inherent in capitalism is equal opportunity to compete.

(41:29):
And that's true about antitrust enforcement, but it also has
to be true about social mobility. It has to be
that that you're not allowing things like race discrimination to
taint who you promote in the marketplace. You're paying people
not because of the color of their skin, but because
of how good they are at their jobs. All these
things are perversions of capitalism, and we ought to be
standing up for them on that basis, as well as

(41:51):
the fact that they're morally apprehensible. Now, obviously we have
a graduated income tax in this country. The more money
you make, the more you pay in taxes. Why isn't
the same prince applied to these trillion dollar COVID relief bills?
Meaning why are we giving a single penny to a
family that's making over two d Okay, great question. So
I want to push back on a couple of things.

(42:12):
One is you said we have a graduated income tax.
I want to push back on that and say, we
theoretically have a graduated income tax. Okay, that's what it
says on paper when you look it up in the
little back of the I r S booklet. If you
still do your taxes on paper, but in actuality, people
who earn a lot often pay a lower effective tax
rate because we have loopholes. We have problems in our

(42:34):
tax system, and so we need to close that gap
because a lot of people who are running around talking
about how they're in the highest tax bracket aren't paying
taxes in that higher bracket because of capital gains, because
of all kinds of other things. The other issue with
regard to COVID relief is Look, we definitely want to
focus the help where it is needed, but we also

(42:56):
cannot be so focused on making sure that nobody gets
any help that they don't need, that we slowed the
whole thing down, and we ultimately allow people to die
and to suffer while we're waiting around. And there are
people in a very expensive areas where they were spending
all of their money to make ends meet. Now boom childcare.

(43:16):
You have kids childcare. For my daughter Betsy, when she
went to the University of California Irvine, childcare cost more
than it would have for her to have been an
undergraduate at u c I childcare one year preschool was
more than it would have been for her to be
an undergraduate. So all of a sudden, when you'd have
all these kids out of school, people's expenses are going up,

(43:38):
even if their income may be stable. So we have
to think about the entire the entire effect here, And
here's the main thing I have to say to people.
COVID relief is the financially and fiscally responsible thing to do.
If we get this wrong, it will set our economy
back for a decade or more. It will be a

(43:59):
depressure Howard Dean was on the show the other day
and said the same thing. I said, do you think
we're running a risk by printing trillions of dollars? He said,
the problem will be if we don't spend that money. Absolutely,
we have to invest it wisely. We have to make
sure we're putting it into programs that are working. We
have to root out fraud, waste, and abuse. Um. You know, so,
I think it's ridiculous, for example, that we passed a

(44:19):
paycheck protection program, a p p P program for small
businesses that allowed Congress members to get loans. That's nuts.
That's a mistake in the program. But our biggest risk
here is not doing enough and leaving people mired a
long term poverty and hardship, out of the workplace with
atrophying skills, when other countries are not making that same mistake.

(44:42):
So obviously, the current senator there Padilla is an appointee
interim because Harris is now the vice president. Do you
think that that's his seat to hold onto or does
the congresswoman have other ideas about her future in California politics.
I'm really excited it about Alex Padilla representing me and
my family. Um, in the Senate, and I've contributed to

(45:06):
his re election campaign already. UM. You know, I think
he's gonna be a wonderful partner and a really important
voice for California. UM. He has an amazing life story.
He went to m I T he's incredibly smart. So
I think you can safely paint me as a fan
of alex Pidia and somebody who's really excited about working
with him. He just got added to the Senate Banking Committee, UM, yesterday,

(45:28):
So I told my staff, like, call him up, let's
start working on bills together. Do you think that you
have what it takes to serve in the Senate? What
do you think you're better off where you are in
the Congress? Oh? Look, wherever you put me, I'm gonna
fight for the American people. I'm gonna I mean, this
is when I was a professor. I became a professor
to understand what was wrong with our laws and how

(45:49):
we could make it better. When I'm in the House,
that's what I'm thinking about, what's wrong, how can we
make it better. It's gonna be the same thing whether
I would be in the administration. UM. Whatever I go
on to do after this, UM, you know, these are
the fundamental questions. The fundamental question that has motivated my
life is how do we achieve economic prosperity for all Americans?

(46:09):
And I'm going to keep asking that question whatever job
I'm in, UM. And you know, I kind of look.
The house is fun, it's scrappy. UM, it's a little
bit chaotic. You're right, UM. But you know, whenever I've gone,
I've always tried to make the most of what I've gotten. UM.
And so you know, whatever the future holds, I'm pretty
sure I'm going to still be asking tough questions. The

(46:30):
honorable Katie Porter. If you're enjoying this conversation, be sure
to subscribe to Here's the Thing on the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
While you're there, please leave us a review. I really
appreciate it. When we come back, Katie Porter talks about
why Trump must be convicted by the Senate. I'm Alec

(47:02):
Baldwin and this is Here's the Thing from my Heart Radio.
When protesters stormed the US Capitol building on January six,
Katie Porter wasn't far from the insurrection. I was on
the Capitol grounds, UM in my office, which is not
in the capital. Which house building are you in long Worth?
In long Worth and more as AOC has now memorialized

(47:25):
it the Duncan Donuts Building, which was actually a factor
and why I picked that, Um, it's very handy to
be able to go get coffee in the morning. But UM,
I was in my office and Alexander Kazier Cortes. I
passed her in the hallway as I went into my office,
and you know, she kind of you know, she waved,
and a few seconds later she came back and knocked
on the door and said can I come in? And

(47:45):
I said, of course, and you know, she came inside.
She was obviously very rattled. There had been a bomb
threat at her building. I didn't know that at the time, UM,
And so we sheltered together, along with a couple of
staffers for about four or five hours, six hours in
my office, barricaded the doors, turned the lights off, pulled
the windows, silence the phones, just in the cold, um

(48:07):
and the dark, you know, worried that what was going
on at the Capitol, where there were cameras watching. What
you can't see is that there are underground tunnels connecting
the Capital to our office buildings. If the attackers had
come down those tunnels, we would not have known they
were coming. Um. And so we just stayed barricaded in
there for hours and didn't know what was happening. And

(48:27):
when you look back on it, now, what do you
think should happen? Oh, to protect us? I mean, look,
we have to. We have a real problem in this
country with misinformation, with with violence. UM. You know, our
democracy is strong, but it is not unshakable um. And
this was this was a powerful kind of I think
earthquake a powerful shake um to our democratic principles. So

(48:48):
I think we have to reaffirm that it's okay to disagree,
so kay, to have different ideas. I represent Range County.
I represent a lot of constituents that I disagree with. Um,
that's okay, that's healthy. But violence in a democracy is
never okay. You voted to impeach Trump. I did twice,
and the Senate is not going to convict you know,

(49:09):
I think they should convict him. I think that this
is and I think too many people are thinking about
this just from the punitive angle about Trump. But we
have a rule of law in this country, and part
of that rule of law is precedent. So what we
are doing here is saying this conduct was not acceptable
and if anyone again, it's not who we are. So

(49:32):
if you're wondering future president whether you can act like
President Trump did, the answer is no, you will be impeached.
This is illegal. So we need to set that precedent
and establish that boundary. I would have bet you everything
I own at the onset of Trump's administration that it
never would have ended this way. Meant it ends. His
political legacy ends on this note, one of destruction and

(49:56):
hate and lawlessness and stuff with which which defines him.
You know, I've always said that the government's purposes to
do the greatest amount of good for the greatest number
of people. This is not some concierge service to help
wealthy Americans. And I'm wondering, what's the change you'd like
to see in the campaing finance laws that will help
clean that up. Yeah. No, corporate pack money is a

(50:17):
huge part of it. Citizens United saying companies are people, right, So,
you know, reversing Citizens United stopping corporate pack contributions or
at least forcing corporations to disclose them to shareholders and
justify how this actually provides any value to the corporation. UM.
I think that's really important. I think campaing finance generally,

(50:39):
you know, I think small dollar contributions are great because
you know, five dollars a dollar, you know, volunteering your time.
People can feel themselves part of democracy, part of the process. UM.
But you know, until we clean that up, until we
clean up some of the corruption, it's going to be
really hard. I think it's the source of all of
the problems to this country, source of all of the problems.

(51:00):
Which committee do you want to You're on one exclusive committee.
I was at an exclusive committee lust Congress, which is
financial Services. You're not there anymore. I'm not there anymore.
And now I'm on. I was on Financial Services, and
then later in the year I got added to oversight
when there were openings. So now I'm on I continuing
on the Oversight committee. I'm really excited about that. I
love that oversight UM and I like doing it for

(51:21):
all different kinds of areas, everything from you know, pentagon
spending to pharmaceuticals to car seats UM, to civil liberties UM.
And then I'm now joined the Natural Resources Committee, which
has jurisdiction over public lands, over tribal lands, all the
drilling on public lands, UM oceans and wildlife. So, you know,
I said the other day, polluters, I have questions. UM.

(51:44):
So I'm really excited about that, and it's incredibly important
issue in California. It's important to our global competitiveness in
the future. The company, the economy, the nation that has
manufacturing jobs in the next decade will be the country
that figures out how to manufacturer a green way. We
need that to be us. Bobby Kennedy Jr. Used to say,
let's force them to bring their products to market at

(52:07):
their actual cost. What are the American people really paying
for a gallon of gas? You throw the PCBs in
the Hudson River and we have to clean it up.
That should be a part of the cost of your thing.
The woman who studied bankruptcy law at Harvard with Elizabeth warrener,
you saw you dot on the finance comman anymore? Sure,
I'm definitely sorry. I mean I asked to serve because
I wanted to. Um. I want to continue working on

(52:27):
those issues, and I hope there'll be an opportunity for
me to fill up vacancy in the future. Um to
get back to that committee. Um, you know, I'm excited
to be on the Economic and Consumer Protection Subcommittee of Oversight. Um,
I'm gonna keep doing a lot of work on financial
services issues from that. So absolutely wish I were on.
What happened? You know, they just they they had so
many spots. They voted people on and off. I was

(52:49):
one of two people who didn't get it. Um, you know,
eight or ten people did get it. Other people were chosen,
other people were chosen. But you know what, Like, remember
what I said about I've been underestimated a lot. When
I went on now, people are like, oh, well, she
can't go all financial services, financial services, where all the
hot committee action is. Trust me. When I went on

(53:09):
financial services, everyone was like, oh my god, that's the
most boring committee. No one's gonna pay attention to. Right.
So wherever I go, I'm going to try to engage
the American people. And I don't think there is a
bad committee in Congress. These are all important. Well let
me just say I really mean this. People who really
are so disheartened. I mean they're crushed and demoralized by

(53:32):
the inefficiency of the American government. They've lost faith, and
then along you come, and all my friends who see you,
you know what they are. They're proud of you. They're
so proud of you because they get when you're there.
You're not there for the self aggrandizing. You're doing this
because you care, and you take the job seriously and

(53:54):
you and you're finding and honing away to use the
job the office as a tool. You're honing a tool
to do the work you want to do on behalf
of the American people. So thank you so much, thank you,
oh absolutely, thank you so much for having me. My
thanks to Lorreina Gonzalez and Katie Porter. This episode was

(54:16):
recorded at c d M Studios in New York City.
We're produced by Kathleen Russo, Zack McNeice, and Maureen Hoban.
Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is
Daniel Gingrich. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing. Is brought
to you by My Heart Radio.