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Amanpour
Interview with Former Israeli Knesset Member and Former Israeli Diplomat Colette Avital; Interview with "The Beginning Comes After the End" Author Rebecca Solnit; Interview with Representative Anna Paulina Luna (R- FL); Interview with Representative Teresa Leger Fernandez (D-NM). Aired 1- 2p ET
Aired April 24, 2026 - 13:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[13:00:00]
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Hello, everyone, and welcome to "Amanpour." Here's what's coming up.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
COLETTE AVITAL, FORMER ISRAELI KNESSET MEMBER AND FORMER ISRAELI DIPLOMAT: Israel is a divided society.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: Fighting for the soul of Israel amid war against Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and even Syria. Former Knesset member and democracy
activist Colette Avital joins me.
And --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REBECCA SOLNIT, AUTHOR, "THE BEGINNING COMES AFTER THE END": There is this new world being born. This world in which we think differently about
nature, about race, about gender, in which we are much more adamant about equality and human rights.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: -- "The Beginning Comes After the End," a new book by writer and activist Rebecca Solnit shows where to find the light in the world today.
Then --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. TERESA LEGER FERNANDEZ (D-NM): The issue of sexual assault and sexual violence has no partisan boundaries.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: -- accountability on Capitol Hill. We hear from the bipartisan duo who pushed two congressmen to resign over sexual misconduct
allegations.
Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Christiane Amanpour in London.
From Iran to Lebanon to Israel and the occupied West Bank, the Middle East really seems to be in flames. In Lebanon, Israel continues to pound
Hezbollah in the south despite a so-called ceasefire and ongoing talks with the Lebanese government.
Another prominent journalist, Amal Khalil, was killed on Wednesday in an Israeli strike, according to authorities. The fourth Lebanese media worker
killed since Israel started its offensive there in March. Meantime, Israeli settlers are ramping up their violence against Palestinians in the occupied
West Bank, often with the security forces looking on and even participating.
But what about life inside Israel? Many Israelis support all this war, especially since October 7th. They say it makes them feel safer. But not
all. One key voice of resistance belongs to 86-year-old Colette Avital. She's a former Israeli diplomat, former Knesset member, and a Holocaust
survivor. And she's joining me now from Tel Aviv. Welcome to our program, Colette.
COLETTE AVITAL, FORMER ISRAELI KNESSET MEMBER AND FORMER ISRAELI DIPLOMAT: Hello. Hello, Christiane. Thank you for having me.
AMANPOUR: You know, as I'm looking at you, you look phenomenal. The background looks peaceful. You wouldn't believe that what I've just
described is actually happening. War all over the place. Just perhaps a few weeks ago, your background might have been a warscape. What, in your view,
is happening right now, and how do Israelis look at it?
AVITAL: Israel is a divided society. There are those who support this government, but there's also a large size of the Israeli population
growing, actually, who oppose us because what we've been living through in the past few years is a constant erosion of our democratic system. It's a
number of laws that try to limit the freedom of speech, the freedom, the equality of the citizens.
And altogether, since October the 7th, even though this war was imposed on us and it was quite a massacre, we live in constant wars, endless wars,
which we think lead nowhere, with no exit strategy. And this is, in a nutshell, what we're going through. We're demonstrating, we've been
demonstrating, it's now 831 days since the October war.
We haven't defeated the Hamas. The Hamas has been taking over the Gaza Strip again. And we have been demanding all this time an inquiry committee
to go to the end of things to see what really happened. And even today, this was brought to the High Court of Justice with violence around it,
people protesting against the system of justice.
So, this is where we are. We're trying desperately to save whatever can be saved and hopefully, maybe in November, we'll have elections and maybe all
of this can change.
[13:05:00]
AMANPOUR: When you say an inquiry, you mean an inquiry of your own government's actions or an inquiry of the -- what inquiry are you talking
about?
AVITAL: There are two types of possible inquiries. There is the law, which usually speaks about an inquiry committee, which is set up by the high
court of justice. This is the inquiry committee we want, one which is subjective and not a government inquiry committee, which would be named by
politicians and which would lead nowhere.
AMANPOUR: OK. Now, you're talking about protest, and obviously you yourself have been taking part in some protests against the Iran war. And
at one of these protests that you were at, it appears you were -- you found yourself on the ground holding your head. We have some video of a person
also in the protest around you was filming this. Can you tell us what happened to you?
AVITAL: I really am not the story, and I think there have been worse cases. I think one of the real stories is the growing violence of the
police. The police should be there to protect us, not to attack us. They're coming with horses. They're quite violent. There have been cases where
they've arrested women who were standing peacefully around and undressed them, and they had to be interrogated naked. So, those are practices which
never existed in our country, and I'm sorry to say the police receives orders, so this is not by chance.
AMANPOUR: What do you think it's all for? I mean, this is really pretty shocking, given that Israel is always called, you know, the only democracy
in the Middle East. And you're talking about women being arrested, Israeli women, and stripped and interrogated while naked. I've never heard that
before.
AVITAL: Here you are. Unfortunately, that was the case, and unfortunately, we are trying to see how to protect ourselves. I've been in one or two
demonstrations since, and we have civil society organizations that are there to -- forming a line to protect us.
AMANPOUR: Let me write how somebody described -- I know you play down what happened to you, but Noa Landau in Haaretz, the columnist, wrote about your
incident. A Holocaust survivor, a former diplomat, a Knesset member, is thrown to the ground like garbage at the age of 86 in yet another display
of criminal violence by the police. This is exactly what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants, to destroy the old elite literally. But it is
also a metaphor for what's happened to an entire generation that's been transformed overnight, from founding figures into dissidents, from
ambassadors into demonstrators.
I guess she is describing what's happened to you, right? I mean, all that you bring to this issue, and as a fierce defender of Israeli, you know,
democracy, here you are now, a protester and a bit of a dissident.
AVITAL: OK. The stakes are high. I've served my country all my life. I was a diplomat, as you said, and I was a member of the Israeli parliament. And
I'm proud of what this country has achieved over the years and what really is happening, that everything which was good is being destroyed, whether
it's the arts or the academia or the freedom of the press. The press is being bullied and so on and so forth.
So, I think that we are paying a high price right now. And despair or not doing anything is not really a recipe. So, we are fighting. More and more
people are fighting to make Israel a normal country again. We're also losing internationally. I think we -- as you said, we are and we're the
only democracy in the Middle East. This is something we cannot afford to lose.
I mean, in 78 years, this country has achieved more than other countries in hundreds of years. And so, this is something we need to protect. This is
something we need to defend here.
AMANPOUR: I want to ask you how much the defense of the values and the achievements of your country do you think also rests on how you deal with
your neighbors, the Palestinians? And I ask because you mentioned, you know, Hamas is still in control of parts of Gaza. The Israeli military is
in control and occupying the other part. But most particularly what we're seeing now is a relentless drumbeat of violence by Israeli settlers in the
occupied West Bank, which has been described as an attempt at ethnic cleansing.
[13:10:00]
And also, we see that the -- we've seen it with our own teams who've been recording it. They are, you know, sometimes condoned or even supported by
the Israeli security forces. What is going on there? And why don't more Israelis speak out about it?
AVITAL: Well, first and foremost, I think the big crime is occupation. I think the Palestinians have a right to remain there. to self-determination,
and I belong to all the groups of people in Israel who still believe in the two-state solution. And as long as we occupy the territories, more and more
violence occurs.
Now, the Palestinians themselves have made their own mistakes, which doesn't condone ours, doesn't justify ours. But what has been happening
since this ultra-nationalistic Messianic government is in power are two priorities. Priority number one, to stay in power, and priority number two
is to annex territories. And this is done, actually, in a deliberate way. It's not only by passing laws that annex more and more territories. It's by
harassing the Palestinians and the Bedouins.
I've been and I've seen some of these places. And what is really happening is that there was a plan which was actually put out by the person who now
is our minister of finance, Mr. Smotrich, and who has two portfolios. He's also in charge of the civil administration. And this plan is a deliberate
cleansing of the area by first harassing the Palestinians, coming, breaking into their houses. I could describe it to you. We've been into those
villages. Some of them still exist, and some of them are in the process of being wiped out.
So, what is really happening is that in the past few weeks, 34 new settlements have been approved by the government, 110 outposts, which were
illegal, which were like farms on the hills surrounding some of these Arab villages, have been also made, you know, functioning. And I don't believe
that those are spontaneous acts by those boys that live on the hills and are actually thugs. All of this is really a strategy. And it is actually
condoned from up there. I think the orders are also coming from somewhere up in the government.
So, you see a two-pronged kind of policy. The moment you manage to get to drive the Palestinians out of their homes, out of their lands, the
government is taking over those lands and expanding and making more and more, building more units and so on. So, whereas in the past you could see
that those were incidents by foolish young people, today it is a strategy of a government. And this is what we have to fight against.
AMANPOUR: And I just wonder, you know, some other really awful evidence came up according to the Norwegian Refugee Council, which is a very well-
respected international humanitarian organization headed by a former Norwegian government official. It reports about men and boys reporting
forced stripping, sexualized humiliation, degrading treatment by settlers as Israeli forces stand by. The official report says more than 70 percent
of the displaced households interviewed identified threats against women and children, particularly sexualized violence, as the decisive factor in
their decision to flee. Can you respond to that?
AVITAL: We don't have very much evidence on sexual harassment. We do know of one case in a little village called Homsa where 30 people lived and
settlers came in, tied all the women and children and took away the iPhones that were there and stripped naked one man and tied his genitals. That's
the case that we do know about.
We are starting to investigate now to see what really is the case after we saw this report, the Norwegian report. But in any case, when the settlers
come in and they break into the houses and they start actually harassing the women and the children, you don't need sexual abuse for that. It's
enough that they come in and they break everything. This is already a kind of an abuse. This is already a kind of humiliation, certainly in the Arab
society.
[13:15:00]
This is already a kind of an abuse. This is already a kind of humiliation, certainly in the Arab society. So, this is happening all the time. And
sometimes it is young boys, 14, 15 years old. Can you imagine the kind of education they get?
AMANPOUR: Indeed. You know, you have said some Israelis have become cold to other people's sufferings. And I know that when you march, you're
surrounded by younger generations of Israelis. You know that a huge majority in your country, well, a significant majority approves of the way
things are going in terms of the wars, et cetera. They think it keeps them safe.
What would you say -- what do you say to the younger generation when you're -- when you when you come up against them or with them in these protests?
AVITAL: I don't mean to justify anything, but you have to understand that the situation is more complex. I think that this country has been very
deeply traumatized by the 7th of October attack, onslaught, murders and everything that was done. And so, when people suffer, they're thinking of
their suffering before thinking of others. And it takes a little bit more, I don't know, consideration and thinking of what is happening around us.
And I think that the Israeli society for a long time has not looked into that. But remember, we were attacked.
And so, if the war was something which was justified at the beginning because we did have to go out and defend our citizens, I think more and
more people understand today that there is no strategy, that we haven't really achieved anything other than perhaps military victories, which lead
nowhere, that the Gaza Strip is still controlled by the Hamas, that nothing was really achieved in terms of ending whatever threatened us in Iran.
Most people understand that. And I think that the younger generation also, and certainly the younger generation, is paying a very high price, as do
mothers in Israel as well. So, I think that there's a waking up, this is what I see around me, and more and more young people understand that unless
you lead to a political solution, there's no end to any war or any conflict, and no conflict was ever resolved by simply military means. This
is something which people understand today.
AMANPOUR: And certainly you, better than others, as a former diplomat. Colette Avital, thank you so much indeed for joining us.
AVITAL: Thank you for having me.
AMANPOUR: And about the issue and allegations of sexual violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians while Israeli forces stand by, the
IDF denies those allegations.
And later in the program, a glimmer of light in the gloom, writer and activist Rebecca Solnit tells me why there is actually more to celebrate
than we might think.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMANPOUR: Now, to a worrying signal from the top of the planet about the shrinking Arctic sea ice. Chief Climate Correspondent Bill Weir filed this
report from a unique location on a Norwegian island in the Arctic Ocean to mark Earth Day this week.
[13:20:00]
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BILL WEIR, CNN CHIEF CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT: Greetings from a most gorgeous corner of the top of the world. Welcome to Svalbard, Norway. We're about 79
degrees north, way high in the Arctic Circle, in this gorgeous fjord that is framed by the Lilliehook Glacier.
Albert I of Monaco came here way early in the 1900s, took a picture of this glacier because he was into ice, and he used to go around the corner. He
couldn't even see the end of this glacier. His grandson came back, photographed the same fjord just to show how much ice is disappearing up
here as a result of man-made global warming.
And this season is emblematic of the changes. When we landed in Longyearbyen, Norway, this is sort of a central town, the melt had come a
month earlier than anybody had expected. So, snowmobiles, dogsleds for tourism were all parked in the mud. Best guides could do was offer boat
rides, and that's sort of a trend these days. As the landscape melts and changes, as the economies shift, coal mines are shutting down, there's a
lot of interest in sort of the precious minerals, rare minerals that exist in this part of the world, and prospectors are talking about that. Of
course, when Donald Trump says he wants to take Greenland, that makes the Arctic a geopolitical hotspot.
But what's interesting is that Russia has been ejected from the Arctic League of Nations for its invasion of Ukraine. Donald Trump has frozen, no
pun intended, all climate science funding and research trying to kill anything that has a whiff of climate science. So, that's 50 percent of the
Arctic. Russia and the U.S., not really at the table these days. So, you've got scientists from other countries, European countries, Japan, South
Korea, doing amazing work up here, trying to measure the changes, at great discomfort and danger.
Luckily, no polar bears up here today. But that's another interesting story about what's happening. 10 years ago, we thought the polar bears would all
be starving by now because the sea ice holds rain seals, that's their main prey. But these bears have adapted to hunting reindeer now or foraging
along the seashore, going after duck and goose eggs. And some Svalbard polar bears are as fat as they've ever been, but there's a limit to how
fast they can adapt. And there's fear that this population could crash like the polar bears we're seeing in Canada.
But for the human population, the scientists up here that I've been talking to, there's such frustration about the politics, especially in the United
States, reversing on climate change, science, adaptation, mitigation, just as this whole landscape really melts beneath their feet hopefully this
Earth Day is another chance for a wakeup call to realize that what happens up here connects all of us. It affects everybody, from Texas to Wisconsin
to other hemispheres.
And if you think the price of oil is high now, oh, as one scientist told me, just wait until the North Pole melts. It's going to be ice free in our
lifetimes. It could absolutely happen.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Bill Weir reporting there now. It's often easy to spiral into despair thinking about the state of the world today, conflict spreading
across the globe, climate, as we've just heard, threatening our homes and livelihoods, or A.I. potentially stealing our jobs. But our next guest
brings an alternative perspective. In her new book, "The Beginning Comes After the End," writer and activist Rebecca Solnit urges us all to see the
light in the gloom. She highlights the achievements since the 1960s, like decolonization, gender equality and environmentalism. I asked her how she
stays optimistic in these politically fraught times.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Rebecca Solnit, welcome to the program.
REBECCA SOLNIT, AUTHOR, "THE BEGINNING COMES AFTER THE END": My pleasure. Hello. Hello.
AMANPOUR: So, just as we're beginning or I'm beginning to feel overwhelmed by the world around us and the incredible amount of, you know, violence and
disruption and chaos you come out with, "The Beginning Comes After the End: Notes on a World of Change." Tell me what you were telegraphing to all of
us.
SOLNIT: Scientists talk a lot about baselines, which is what something was before it changed. And people often don't have the baselines to understand
that we live in a world that's changed profoundly over the last 70 years. If you zoom out from the daily news to see that, you can see that a lot of
what the right-wing internationally is doing is backlash, trying to change things back, put women back into subordinate positions, put people of color
back into subordinate positions, pretend we didn't learn all this stuff that tells us we can't continue destroying the environment.
[13:25:00]
And so -- and just understanding the profundity of change is understanding that all the good things are, we changed it, understanding how change
works, understanding that all this activism, all these movements have actually been tremendously effective.
AMANPOUR: Yes. So, you take as one of your sort of standards in this book, you take a cue from the philosopher Antonio Gramsci. You write, the old
world is dying, the new one is slow in appearing, in this light and shadow, monsters arrive. I think that's what he said, right?
SOLNIT: Exactly.
AMANPOUR: And what does that mean? So, I guess in your view, are we at the beginning or the end of this cycle?
SOLNIT: Yes is my answer to many either or questions. But I would say that a kind of white supremacist, patriarchal capitalism, if you'll forgive my
extra super left-wing language on occasion, is really flaming out and kind of supernova-ing on its way to collapsing. And another world is swimming
into being. And that's what I love about the Gramsci quote. I think a lot of us could have felt that way anytime in history since he said it in the
1930s.
But right now, I wrote this book because we talk a lot about the old world that's dying. We talk a lot about the monsters and there are lots of them
and they're fierce. But there is this new world being born, this world in which we think differently about nature, about race, about gender, in which
we are much more adamant about equality and human rights, in which we understand that we were never separate from nature. And that is actually
really exciting, really transformative and really impactful. And it's happening in a thousand ways all over the world with, of course, backlash.
AMANPOUR: Yes. So, I want to pick you up on this because I think it's really important, especially for a lot of our viewers, and especially
because of the highly polarized world we live in, the weaponization of just about everything.
You say, if you'll forgive the words of a, you know, lefty liberal, I'm just paraphrasing you, but that's basically how you identify and you are an
activist as well. But what about people who don't identify as lefty liberals and, in fact, the opposite? You know, you talk about backlash. How
does one get to interconnectedness if it's, you know, one side wins and then the other side wins and then the other side loses and the other side
loses? How does that contribute?
SOLNIT: And I'm talking less about that kind of strife, which sounds like warfare or political campaigns than a lot of underlying assumptions that
are radically different than they were in the world in which you and I were born into a while back. And the interconnectedness, for example, we live in
a world in which women are not assumed to be the opposite sex and so utterly different than men that they cannot be, for example, CNN anchors
or, you know, public intellectuals or presidents or, you know, we live in a world in which the idea that the races are so separate and must be kept so
separate and colonialism was a completely legitimate, you know, civilizing project are not the assumptions we have now.
And people understand nature in a radically different way than they did before Rachel Carson, before a lot of other things changed. People used to
think nature was kind of decorative, a little irrelevant, anachronistic. Now, we understand that it's the conditions of our survival and we're not
separate from it.
And just understand the way poisons, pesticides, and other things have downstream downwind effects that everything exists within a system and you
mess with any part of it, you impact the system as a whole, which of course is offensive to right-wing people who want unhindered ability to destroy
the environment and profit from it.
But the majority of us understand that and climate chaos has been the last great lesson in that everything is connected to everything else. Everything
you do has an impact and you need to take that into account when you act, when you make decisions.
AMANPOUR: It is going to be interesting to see where people land, even on climate now, even as you say, the right-wing or whoever, because there has
been so much evidence of climate disruption, upheaval, the deathly results of climate disruption right in front of our eyes. On the other hand, the
current U.S. administration is rolling back all the environmental protections and in fact, unleashing quite a lot of the fossil fuel that can
damage our climate.
So, I think, weirdly, that argument is still out there. There's still people who absolutely refuse to believe their eyes.
[13:30:00]
When you -- and as you have engaged so much with Indigenous activism for so many years, how should we learn? I mean, you've alluded to it a little bit,
but how should we learn from them on all these issues?
SOLNIT: Once you acknowledge in -- at least in this hemisphere, in North, South, Central America, that this, you know, this hemisphere was inhabited
for 10,000 years and more before Christopher Columbus, you recognize that human beings are not inherently destructive of nature, that we are not
necessarily, you know, something that doesn't belong in nature, because human beings coexisted with nature, and when Europeans arrived, it was an
incredibly thriving natural world.
And so, I think that's been really impactful in changing our thinking. The great majority of people on Earth believe climate change is real and
serious, are experiencing it, support major climate action. We have the solutions. We have the majority of human beings behind us. The obstacles
are only political, and they're only a very powerful minority. The fossil fuel industry and things like the Trump administration that support and
ally with that industry.
The fascinating thing about what's just happened with the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is it's reminded people and nation states around the world
that fossil fuel is volatile, unreliable, dependent on the twisted geopolitics of the countries that have it and the countries that need it,
and that the energy transition is not only good for the climate, it's good for the domestic economy, good for the domestic environment, good for
global stability politically and domestically.
AMANPOUR: You know, I'm glad you mentioned that because throughout this war in Iran and the closure of the Strait, I've wondered, wow, what if the
world's led by the United States had been so much, you know, further forward in the transition away from fossil fuels? We literally,
quote/unquote, "wouldn't be over the barrel" that we are right now.
And you've said, don't look -- I mean, from your perspective, don't look for a hero on the left, but just understand change and the most important
change is collective. Do you think that is still possible in a world where the internet, as I said before, polarization, weaponization, there seems to
be the opposite of collective right now? Everybody's fragmented and definitely in their corners.
SOLNIT: You know, I live in San Francisco, I have a front row seat for what Silicon Valley is doing, and the first thing they're doing is
isolating and alienating us, contributing to the loneliness pandemic. But you see, with no kings, with extraordinary election in Hungary last week,
with so much that's happening, that actually civil society movements are an important matter more than ever and have made the world we live in, you
know, we have authoritarians representing a minority trying to push back against minority majority gains for women, for democracy, for equality, for
accountability, for environmental protection, et cetera.
And we have seen authoritarians, often with the help of Silicon Valley, have gained some power in recent years. They've also lost it. The
presidents of South Korea and Brazil who attempted coups are both in prison, and you know, things are not really going that well for Donald
Trump right now.
AMANPOUR: You know what's interesting, what you mentioned at the end of the last question, talking about how a green economy would be better for
people's, you know, pocketbooks and national economies. It's interesting that, for instance, in Hungary, one of the things that really also led to
the overwhelming defeat after 16 years of the self-styled illiberal Democrat Viktor Orban, who's such a hero to the right across Europe and in
the United States, was the economy. He wasn't meeting the people's, you know, reasonable demands and needs.
And you can see in the United States, individuals are very upset about the rising prices, about inflation, about, you know, the consequences of war
and all the other things. You know, that's something that all sides can agree on, right? The economy. It's funny that they don't coalesce around
that.
SOLNIT: It's interesting because I think a lot of people don't understand how all the things connect, how this decision, you know, going all the way
back to Ronald Reagan, and this decision and this decision and this decision are why, you know, housing, healthcare and education are so
brutally expensive for people here in the U.S., how these things are put together.
[13:35:00]
It's often kind of wonky and technical. In the same way, renewables are kind of wonky and technical and how they could make energy so cheap that
actually in Australia, electricity is going to be free in the middle of the day because they don't even know what to do with all the solar power at,
you know, sun is at its highest. And then it could also produce a kind of energy security.
The climate movement has always argued we need to do this to protect, you know, the global ecology, the planetary health we all depend on. But we
could also argue on economic and geopolitical grounds that it produces a more affordable energy system. And it just ends a lot of the corrupted
geopolitics.
AMANPOUR: Basically, you know, your book is not a, you know, history of hundreds of years past. It's not a world history. You go back to, you know,
essentially to the '60s where you say there was so much progress, decolonization, environmentalism, gender equality, civil rights, sexual
rights and all the rest of it.
And you talk about memory as a form of resistance. And in your book, you turn to the American theologian Walter Brueggemann for a map of hope. He
has said, hope arises from memory and that if you forget that every good thing we have came about as a result of a heroic struggle, of course, you
will despair. So, give us some more of that so that we can end this on a note of hope and not despair.
SOLNIT: One thing I talk about a lot is I constantly see people writing obituaries for feminism, saying it failed, it didn't change anything. And
oh, my God, if you understand the status of women in the world you and I were born into a while ago, you understand that we have had a very
successful revolution in both public and private life.
Women's roles are radically different. We have so many more rights inside marriage, inside the home, in education, under the law, you know, to
participate in public life, to hold powerful roles, to be treated with respect and dignity, to not be degraded and objectified, manipulated,
groped, harassed in the workplace. And all that came about as a result of feminist activism.
So, that's something if you don't remember what the status of women was, say, in 1965, you can't see how profoundly we've changed it in culture, in
law, et cetera, by telling different stories about who we are, what our rights should look like, what's possible, what, you know, what gender
means, what equality means.
So, yes, we have changed so many things. And I could say the same thing about the environment, about race, about indigeneity, about disability,
about queer rights. But, yes, we have changed the world profoundly for the better, and we are now defending those victories against the right-wing
attempt to roll it all back.
AMANPOUR: Really interesting. A real pleasure to talk to you, Rebecca Solnit, with "The Beginning Comes After the End." That's your new book.
Thank you so much.
SOLNIT: Thank you. A pleasure at this end, too. Take care.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: And a more equal world is better for all. And we hear an example of that bravery coming up after the break. The bipartisan duo pushing for
accountability. Michel Martin speaks to the women lawmakers who drove two congressmen to resign over sexual misconduct allegations.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[13:40:00]
AMANPOUR: Next, a look at bipartisan collaboration on Capitol Hill. A pair of female lawmakers from across the aisle successfully pushed two
congressmen accused of sexual misconduct to resign. Republican Anna Paulina Luna and Democrat Teresa Leger Fernandez argued that all the allegations
against them made it impossible for Eric Swalwell and Tony Gonzales to serve. They joined Michel Martin to discuss accountability and whether this
signals a broader push for reform in Congress.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Thanks, Christiane. Representative Anna Paulina Luna and Representative Teresa Leger Fernandez, thank you both so
much for joining us.
REP. ANNA PAULINA LUNA (R-FL): Thank you so much for having us.
REP. TERESA LEGER FERNANDEZ (D-NM): Thank you, Michel.
MARTIN: How did you two start working together? Who saw who first?
LUNA: I think actually first, we first connected during the vote by proxy and Representative Leger Fernandez reached out during the whole effort to
expel both Eric Swalwell and Tony Gonzales and we basically decided to work together on this very important issue. And I'm glad we did because we both
won big.
MARTIN: Look, we were all hearing just how polarized things are, you know, on the Hill. The reality of it is that we don't hear a lot of kind of
bipartisan sort of workings. Representative Leger Fernandez, how did it sort of occur to you that this might be a good idea to work together?
FERNANDEZ: So, I'm chair of the Democratic Women's Caucus and we're always looking for ways in which we can work on a bipartisan basis with women in
Congress, period. And the issue of sexual assault and sexual violence has no partisan boundaries. And so, I was furious when I heard of the
allegations against Eric Swalwell when I saw the evidence. And I had also been very angry about Tony Gonzales and the failure of Speaker Johnson,
honestly, to take any action against Tony Gonzales, who had admitted six weeks earlier that he had violated our code.
You saw Representative Anna Paulina Luna taking a very public stance about this was wrong with regards to Swalwell. I called her up. I said, it's
equally as wrong with regards to Representative Gonzales. And she agreed. And so, based on that phone call, we began a weeklong series of
communications of work to accomplish what happened in pretty quick time. I mean, from the not for Gonzales, because that went on way too long. But for
Swalwell, it was within four days he had chosen to resign rather than face expulsion.
MARTIN: The allegations against both men are disturbing. In Representative Gonzales' case, first, he denied having an affair with a subordinate, a
subordinate who later took her own life. And then he later admitted it. I mean, so he lied. Representative Swalwell, slightly different in the sense
it was more of like a drip, drip, drip, like one woman and then another woman and then another woman coming forward with these disturbing
allegations. One of them, a staffer.
So, Representative Luna, what was the moment for you when you just said, look, enough is enough? Because the Ethics Committee was looking into these
allegations.
LUNA: I remember hearing, you know, the rumors early on about Tony. And then when we saw the article drop shortly thereafter, I remember telling
myself, I was like, this is not normal that you have a staffer letting themselves on fire. There has to be more to this. And I started doing my
own digging. And I was furious that initially after he made that admission that he decided that he was still going to seek re-election.
We have a lot of young people that come up on here, both men and women. And not to say that sexual harassment and assault doesn't happen to men, but
specifically within this institution with younger women, it seems to be a very, very prevalent problem. And if I had the votes to expel him right
there, I would have. And at the time, I didn't feel that I had those votes possible to get it done.
But I remember it was a Thursday before stuff started breaking on Swalwell. There was another woman who came forward about inappropriate text messages
and sexual harassment. And I saw the messages from Tony and I was like, this is total predatory behavior. I had also, in between that time period,
obtained messages specifically from the widow of the woman who committed suicide and saw what was not publicly available at the request of the
family, not to least because they had a young child involved.
But the fact that Ethics had sat on this and not made the recommendation right then and there, as soon as they got those messages for him to be
gone, I got really ticked off. And I was like, if I have to call my own party for this, I'm going to. And, you know, that's when you kind of just
saw it snowball.
[13:45:00]
MARTIN: Representative Leger Fernandez, what about you? What was the line where you said, you know what, enough is enough, we can't wait for the
Ethics Committee?
FERNANDEZ: Well, I think that expulsion is an extraordinary measure. It's done very few times since our founding, but it's in our constitution. If
you can convince two thirds of your members that the actions are so heinous and outrageous, then you can expel a member for these kinds of actions.
They had violated the code. And so, I think that that's all you needed was they violated a code that was very clear, that was meant to protect women.
MARTIN: This is what Mr. Swalwell says. I just do need to read it. He says, I'm deeply sorry to my family, staff, and constituents for mistakes
in judgment I've made in my past. I will fight the serious false allegation made against me. However, I must take responsibility and ownership for the
mistakes I did make. He says, I'm aware of efforts to bring an immediate expulsion vote against me and other members. Expelling anyone in Congress
without due process within days of an allegation being made is wrong, but it's also wrong for my constituents to have me distracted from my duties.
Therefore, I plan to resign my seat in Congress.
Mr. Gonzales, after having acknowledged this relationship, he posted on X saying, there's a season for everything. And God has a plan for us all.
When Congress returns, I will file my retirement from office. It's been my privilege to serve the great people of Texas.
So, here's a question I have for you both. Was the goal to force a formal vote or was it to create enough pressure that resignations became the most
likely outcome?
LUNA: It was multifaceted. So, I think, you know, deep down, both me and Leger Fernandez were hoping that they would do the right thing and resign.
And I again posted that if they had any ounce of integrity based on what was being presented to them, that they would not force everyone through
this process, but that if we needed to, we would be willing to essentially pull the trigger and force the votes. Of which you saw enough people on
both sides come out and say, it's time for these guys to go. And the common consensus on the Hill that week was it's time to take out the trash.
And I don't think it just stops there though. What I've realized is that because you have such a consolidation of power, it is really hard for some
of these people to come forward if they are, you know, being sexually harassed because they are feared that, A, they're going to get blackballed
within the Hill that they won't get hired.
And then also, two, having to go through, I think the media firestorm that's been created. And I don't think that this is the end of what you're
going to be hearing, at least from the Hill. I think that there, you know, is some other stuff coming down the pipe.
MARTIN: What about this question of due process though? Public figures in lots of fields, they're celebrities and celebrities will say that sometimes
they do attract sort of false allegations. So, I just wanted to ask how that question of due process landed with both of you.
FERNANDEZ: For my motion to expel, we had an admission. You had a confession. He said he did it, right? And Americans are fed up with
powerful men using and abusing women without consequence. He admitted six weeks later, he's still voting.
And you know what? I have to file that motion because he, what you just read, he had said he was going to stay on maybe through May. And I said,
uh-uh, staying on through May isn't enough. You need to resign and resign immediately. And the reality to your question is, why did we do it? Because
if we wouldn't have filed the resolutions to expel, they wouldn't have resigned.
And when you think of what the evidence that came out with regards to Swalwell was overwhelming, and he kept nudging, he denied it as well. His
initial denials were, I didn't have sex, right? And then his subsequent denials were, I didn't have sexual assault.
Now, our code says no sex because the reason why there is no sexual relationships with a staffer is because that power relationship can never
be undone. You can never have consent when there is that power relationship because our staffers rely on us for their paycheck, for their promotions,
for their -- they look up to us.
And that's why I think it's important that we hold ourselves to a higher standard. It's important that if we are going to say we need to prosecute
the Epstein predators, that we also need to hold ourselves to those same kind of standards. I want to prosecute the Epstein predators. I want to
make sure that nobody and none of my colleagues are going to get away with this kind of behavior either.
MARTIN: Until 2018, Congress was actually exempt from most of the civil rights laws that applied to other places of business. There really wasn't
even any really reporting mechanism if you were experiencing sort of this kind of conduct.
[13:50:00]
Is there still a legacy of impunity from that time when Congress really literally was exempt from the same laws that attach to other workplaces?
FERNANDEZ: Yes, that does exist. And what we are working on now, because we can't say, OK, we got rid of these two. There's others. You know, we
have allegations against Cory Mills. That needs to -- we need to get that done. But what we are working really hard on is what do we need to do to
build on the reforms that Jackie Speier started back in 2018?
And so, we are having those meetings now. We are looking at what are the legislative, what are the legal changes we need to do? Because it needs to
happen on two bases. One is we have to reform the systems and the processes that kept these women from reporting it. And two, we need to change the
culture so the people who come here know that they can't use their power as I get to do whatever I want to my staff or anybody else's staff. And it
takes this outrage that I think percolated up with regards to these two men, the outrage that has percolated up because of the Epstein survivors.
We are done with it. I am so done with men thinking that they can take advantage of women in this way just because they have power.
MARTIN: You've alluded to another member, Cory Mills of Florida, who has been accused by two different women, not congressional staff, of
inappropriate conduct. In fact, one actually had a restraining order against him. Another woman, apparently there was a police encounter in
Washington, D.C. related to him. She didn't move forward with charges. I guess one of the things -- and so, that matter is also before the Ethics
Committee as well.
I am curious if you feel, as a person who's called leadership into account for not, in your view, taking these matters as seriously as they should
have, do you think you're paying a price for this?
LUNA: There's a couple of members, to be clear. It's not just Cory, there's a couple. One of them is a senator, and I've been cooperating with
Senate Ethics over there. I actually just wrote an op-ed in a place, I think The Spectator yesterday, about the overhaul that ethics need to see.
I think ethics need to complete gutting, and I think it needs to be reappointed with people that will take these allegations seriously. It
shouldn't take, you know, three years.
People that are sitting under ethics investigations, what will typically happen is, from what I gather, the party in power basically will slow roll
the release of certain things. And I take abuse very seriously, right? Like I've had friends that have been in abusive relationships, and I know what
that can do to people. And so, when I hear these types of things happening, and remember, you have a sitting member of Congress that's facing these
allegations, that's not a good thing. And there's multiple things there.
And I've said very publicly, I don't care if it's a Democrat or a Republican, if there is evidence of violation of our code of conduct in the
House, our rules, FEC reporting rules, FEC laws, or if someone's facing and has legal documentation showing that they've done something illegal, then
they should not be serving in the House of Representatives. And if someone calls up an expulsion vote, I will vote to expel that member.
To Leger Fernandez's point, this process has taken far too long. And too many people that were guilty, OK, you had Tony Gonzales, he should have
been out. You had Swalwell, he was out fairly quickly. And then you had Chynn Fliss McCormick, who was under investigation for three years. She
should have been out. And so, that's what I'm saying, is that we have to change the process.
But again, we are doing this in addition to everything else that we're doing, in addition to now fighting for re-elections. And so, I just hope
that we can continue to provide the building blocks to continue to further and push this conversation. But I do think right now, big changes are
happening. And again, you saw three resignations within a week. So, that tells you something.
MARTIN: OK. So, before we let you go, let's talk about what needs to happen going forward.
FERNANDEZ: So, we need to take those reforms that were began by Jackie Speier, and we need to update them to reflect the moment we're in,
including the moment we're in with regards to what the social media looks like, what all of that looks like. And we need to rely on who are the
experts here. And I keep saying, we know who the experts are. They're the women who work for Congress, because they're going to be able to share with
us why aren't they reporting? What do they need? What do they need so they feel protected and respected when they file a complaint?
How -- because right now it takes so long. You're forced into mediation. It goes -- there's so many different offices. How do we get that streamlined?
How do we make sure that we have those conversations across the line and get something done? We can't wait till next year. We can't say, well, we're
going to wait, right? We're going to wait until when Democrats get the gavels, we'll work on this. But this is a bipartisan issue. We need to
work.
I've already talked to some of the leaders on the other side. We've been -- I've been, as the Democratic Women's Caucus, I've been asking to sit down
with Johnson since basically the week I got elected. There's 96 Democratic women in the House. He's refused to sit down with me. Hopefully, maybe
he'll sit down with Representative Luna and I together. Those are the next steps.
[13:55:00]
That then we actually, I think there's some laws we need to pass. And then there's just some processes we need to change in addition to that idea that
this is no longer, guys, it ain't an old boys' club, a young boys' club. It is America's house. We need more.
MARTIN: Representative Anna Paulina Luna, Representative Teresa Leger Fernandez, thank you both so much for talking with us.
LUNA: Thank you.
FERNANDEZ: Thank you, Michel.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: And that's it for now. If you ever miss our show, you can find the latest episode shortly after it airs on our podcast. And remember, you
can always catch us online, on our website, and all-over social media. Thank you for watching, and goodbye from London.
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