During a town hall event on Monday, a constituent asked Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) about ensuring strong leadership from Democrats.
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00:00There are two mics, I will raise your hand, I will call on you, and then the mic will get to you. Does that work?
00:08No.
00:09We'll do one right here.
00:14Hello, nice to see you all.
00:18We need the Equal Rights Amendment in Minnesota.
00:21My name is Peter. I'm in the ERA Coalition. I've been involved with the ERA since October 2023.
00:33I lobbied when I went down to the Capitol last year to lobby the bill.
00:37I was very serious. I went down there in April.
00:42We were rushed out of time to pass the bill in the House and Senate.
00:45And in the last days of the recession, it was passed the House, but not the Senate.
00:52It was table, the very last day.
00:55I was very serious. I was deep down. I knew what was going to happen.
00:59We were going to lose the trifecta.
01:03And, of course, we lost the trifecta.
01:07So now we have a tight house with probably no hope of passing the ERA.
01:14That bill seems to be passed.
01:19Thank you, Peter, for the question.
01:21So all of us share a commitment to passing Equal Rights Amendment.
01:26We were devastated that it became so close that it didn't get it done at the end of the last session.
01:31The good news is that we are all on the same page with the House and Senate about, at least on the Democratic side,
01:36about our commitments and moving forward.
01:38We have the agreement on language.
01:40We have tremendous co-authorship.
01:42I'm honored to be the lead author on the clone bill.
01:45Representative Lee Kinkey is the lead author on the primary bill.
01:48And so you're probably right.
01:50It's an uphill battle this year, but we're going to keep fighting.
01:52And I'm confident we're going to get it done next year.
01:54We'll do the purple in the hat right here in this session.
02:06Hello, government.
02:07I'm a veteran and also I'm a government employee.
02:13Thank you, sir.
02:18Right now, every day when I go to work, we're living in a dark cloud.
02:27And what we need now is strong leadership, especially in Washington.
02:32I'm going to be assured and keep our hopes up that we're going to get strong leadership right at the very top in these dark times.
02:44That collectively, you guys ever will inspire people in Washington to do the leaders to stand up and do what they're supposed to do and not do what this leader that I thought we had did to us.
03:01When he decided and went along with these other people on the budget, when it pertains to health care, when it pertains to our unions, when it pertains to rights, equal rights, how can you assure us that we can keep our hopes up?
03:24I appreciate that I do share and I think many Americans share that disappointment and the heartbreak that when we did need that strong leadership and obviously in the House, that leadership was there, but we did not have it in the Senate.
03:45But I think that leader did hear you loud and clear, and I am pretty certain that some bad goals are being stiffened as we speak.