Episode 34: Confronting Patriarchy in Congress
with former representative Marie Newman
Amy is joined by former congressperson Marie Newman who shares her advocacy against bullying, her first-hand account of the January 6th insurrection, and her insights into how we can save our nation's politics and find our path again.
Our Guest
Marie Newman
Marie Newman is a former congresswoman, nonprofit CEO, marketing executive, author of A Life Made from Scratch and When Your Child Is Being Bullied: Real Solutions, antibullying activist, former Moms Demand Action spokesperson and national LGBTQ+ advocate. In addition to those roles, she is a mom of two adult children, consultant and podcaster. Marie Newman is known for building movements and solving the toughest problems. Her motto has always been, when you do not see the solution you desperately need, make it from scratch! She lives in Lagrange, Illinois with her husband and beagle, Iggy.
Amy Allebest: Here on this podcast, we are active advocates of women entering leadership roles, whether that's applying for C-suite positions, pursuing promotions, or running for elected office. However, while we encourage our listeners to follow these ambitions, we also have to be honest and tell you that that path is not easy. Oftentimes, the deck will be stacked against you. We live in a culture that is accustomed to male leadership and sometimes struggles to accept women in charge in the private sector. A recent study from S&P Global confirms that as of 2024, women occupy only a quarter of senior leadership roles across American corporations. Meanwhile, in our nation's government, not only is our media more critical of female candidates, but the public is actually more likely to donate to support a male candidate's campaign. Why? Because the American public still expects men to win and women to lose. And that is to say nothing about overcoming lifetimes of being taught to be quiet, to be submissive, to make ourselves small.
Yet, nevertheless, we persist. Women all across the country continue to seek leadership roles, stepping into the fire and fighting to make our world a more equitable place with governing bodies that actually represent our population, which happens to be 50% female. So, for all those women who have pushed and are continuing to push that needle forward, who are willing to step into the spotlight and work to correct the wrongs they see in the world, I'm so grateful for you. And I'm grateful to be discussing leadership and taking control of our own lives today with just such a woman. She is an outspoken anti-bullying advocate, a former congresswoman, and a current CEO. She's a woman who entered Capitol Hill at the height of the pandemic, stepping into an attempted insurrection and presidential impeachment hearings without backing down. And she's also the author of a fantastic new memoir. It's called A Life Made from Scratch: Lessons from a Controversial Congresswoman, Mompreneur, and Unstoppable Political Activist. Please join me in welcoming to the podcast former congresswoman Marie Newman. Welcome, Marie!
Marie Newman: Hello! Thank you for having me.
AA: Marie Newman is a former congresswoman, nonprofit CEO, marketing executive, author of A Life Made From Scratch and When Your Child Is Being Bullied: Real Solutions. She's an anti-bullying activist, a former Moms Demand Action spokesperson, and a national LGBTQ+ advocate. In addition to those roles, she's a mom of two adult children, and she's a consultant and a podcaster. Marie Newman is known for building movements and solving the toughest problems. Her motto has always been: “When you do not see the solution you desperately need, make it from scratch.” She lives in Illinois with her husband and beagle, Iggy. I love that, Marie. That's so great. I wonder if you could start by telling us a little bit about yourself more personally, where you're from and what brought you to do the work that you do today.
MN: That is a really long story. I'll try to keep it less boring and a little shorter. I think the question I get asked most frequently is, when did that feeling of having to defend against injustices and stand up for people start? And I think that it started at the very beginning of my life. I'll tell you just a quick story. My brother was bullied. He was five years older than me, and two of my sisters and I would walk with him to school. And one day, the bullies came by, and it had happened a few times, and I was just all done. I'm like, “Oh no, not today. Not on my watch.” I was in second grade, with my little pink book bag with books in it. And I'm only 5’3” now, so I was a super tiny kid. So I started twirling my pink book bag real hard, like a Tasmanian devil, literally swinging like this and hitting all of them. And they were like, “Good lord, who is this lunatic?” And they all ran. “Well, that works. Maybe I'm onto something!”
AA: Amazing.
MN: From that time on, you know, I have been an activist and a volunteer for my entire life. In my college years I fought for civil rights and racial equity and women's rights. I have been a champion of equity for a long time, I've worked on healthcare for all before it was even a phrase, so all my life has been dedicated to that. Now it just so happens that my professional life included leadership positions in management, consulting, and marketing. I've been a small business owner and I started a national nonprofit called Team Up to Stop Bullying. There's a reason I did that. My son was bullied intensively and required therapy in a bunch of things, so I decided that it was my turn to do something. I have another saying that when there's an icky sticky ball in the middle of the room that nobody wants to touch, everybody keeps walking around it, guess what? You have to pick that thing up and address it. And I did. And that's what I tell people a lot. Frequently, you will be the least qualified in the room to address something, but you're the only one who's willing to do it and has the passion with which it can be done. So, pick up the sticky ball and address it. And I did that again with the gun reform movement, I worked on that for 25 years as an activist, and women's rights always.
And finally, right after the 2016 election, I was amped up enough where people had told me several times, “Hey Marie, you should run for Congress.” And I thought, “You are hilarious,” because I had never even run for student council. I mean, it was a little bit absurd, right? And I did. The first time I ran in 2018, I lost by two points against a very conservative guy. And then in 2020, I won by four points in a field of four men. So don't ever let the quantity of the patriarchy get you down, because there's always going to be lots of it. And when there's lots and lots of it, sometimes that's the best time to fight it. Since then, I ran a national nonprofit that worked on intellectual disabilities, and I’ve written a book. I do a lot of healthcare equity consulting and political consulting, and I have a podcast coming out later this year and a few other things. Some great projects.
AA: Yeah, fantastic project. Something that strikes me as a through line of everything you just said is your courage. Like you said, you don’t like being outnumbered, being smaller, literally like physically tiny compared to a bunch of what, seventh graders? Seventh grade boys. My goodness, it's like a David and Goliath moment swinging your bag around. But you don't let that stop you. Do you think that that's something that you were just born with, that you're not deterred by the odds, or is that something that you've had to cultivate and talk yourself up into, or maybe some of each?
MN: Well, I think it's both. Sometimes that's how you're wired, right? And the rest of my family is not wired that way. One of my sisters is a little bit, but in general, we're just not wired that way. But I think the other part of it is that you have to accept the imposter monster. That imposter syndrome is going to talk at you all the time and you have to brush it aside. It's an exercise, right? Any leader that tells you they don't have imposter syndrome is lying, lying with seven underlines underneath it. I talk about it all the time, and we should talk about it more openly because you do kind of discount yourself and make yourself smaller sometimes. You're like, “Well, I'm not the best expert.” And certainly don't get out over your skis, I'm not suggesting that, but I am saying that you do have value and you do have contribution to the world. And sometimes it's from an entirely different perspective that's desperately needed. So don't discount yourself, and cultivate that sense of competence and that you do have value and contribution to a world.
AA: Yeah. Thank you. I also appreciate you talking about the ball that no one wants to pick up. And I think you're absolutely right that sometimes the person who's going to do it is just the one who's willing to do it. Not necessarily the one who has a lot of previous experience and expertise, but the one who's willing to, and that qualifies us, right? If we're willing to try and learn how to do it. That's fantastic, Marie. Well, I know you opened your book with that story of how one of your children was being bullied, and thank you for sharing that story with us. I know that in addition to being an anti-bullying advocate, you're also the proud parent of a transgender child, and you've been a fierce advocate on behalf of the transgender community. One quote from your book is that “simply acknowledging and tolerating is no longer enough.” Can you tell us about that activism and about that phrase that you write?
“don’t ever let the quantity of the patriarchy get you down, because there’s always going to be lots of it. And when there’s lots and lots of it, sometimes that’s the best time to fight”
MN: You know what, we frequently use the word “tolerate” when we're trying to manage pain. I really was on a mission to not have a term that is frequently talked about when you're talking about pain, and flipping that. Because we should be embracing and respecting the LGBTQ+ community, we should not be thinking about it as managing something. They're just one of us. We're part of Team America. We're all together, we're all in this together, and we should love one another and support each other. And it's that simple. The whole “tolerating” is just ridiculous. I don't know how that got started, but man, it makes me mad.
AA: Yeah, I can imagine. Would you be willing to share a little bit more about your advocacy for the trans community and the LGBTQ community?
MN: My daughter came out, oh gosh, 11 years ago now. Trans kids typically come out right around between two and four years old, or during puberty, or as an older person. Those are the big milestones and gates in which you start to have some reflection and understand who you are, right? So while she was figuring that out, she went into a deep depression in a very vivid and animated way. And we tried everything, Amy. Because we didn't know that that's what she was tussling with. She was so confused about things and so shut down, we couldn't even get that out of her. We had tried 10 different therapists, group therapy programs, events, activities, we tried everything, right? Then finally, one day, actually, she and my husband and I had a fight. She was being very disrespectful and mean to a bunch of people and we sat her down, and at this point she was known as Tyler and she was male, and we said, “Tyler, go up to your room and think about this.” And Tyler came back down and said, “You know what, Mom and Dad? I know I'm a pain in the butt. I know. I get it. So I have two solutions for you. I can either run away or I can kill myself.” And that ripped through me. I still can't even think about it without it hurting so bad again. It brings back every memory.
And coincidentally, she was graduating from eighth grade the next day. So the next day, I stayed in her room and I made sure she was okay. We looked up all these different organizations and programs to put her in, and we put her into a program that was for anxiety and depression because we knew she'd already been diagnosed with that. So she went to this very intensive day program, and it was going to be 12 weeks, but even in the first week, we saw progress. She came home one night, and I'll never forget it. We were making spaghetti, sat down, we're eating and we're chatting a little bit. And she looked up and she said, “Mom, you know what? I think I figured it out.” And I was like, “Yay! What is it that's bothering you?” And she said, “I am not a boy. I'm a girl, and my name is Evie.” I flung up my hands like this, so excited that the spaghetti went flipping everywhere. And I hugged her and said, “I'm so excited! You know your authenticity, that's amazing.” Oh, I was so relieved. Now we know our path, right? Because being in the gray is always the worst. When you know your path, that's amazing. So then I actually shut down my business for three months and learned how to be the parent of a transgender child, because, you know, I had a gazillion gay friends, but I probably only knew two transgender people in my entire life right at that point.
AA: Then how did you– can I interrupt you and just say that's incredible to me that you knew how to be so supportive right when she told you. If you hadn't done the training yet, if you hadn't done that investigation and that research yet and you didn't have trans friends… I am amazed, and I think that is a real tribute to you as a parent, that your knee jerk reaction was celebration with her. It sounds like that's the reaction that every trans kid dreams of their parent having, and that is incredible that that's what you were able to do.
MN: For me, I think most people would have that reaction when your child comes to you and shares a deep, deep, deep challenge like that. I think you're thrilled and you feel so honored and that they trust you enough to tell you that. So, I guess I had joy that she was willing to tell me this, but I am amazed sometimes that that's not the case. She had friends whose parents were not supportive. And I was like, “But that's your baby.” Because at the end of the day, this is just your baby, right? And we should all take care of our babies. I tell this all the time. People that say awful things about transgender people, I say, “That's your baby.” It doesn't matter if they're pink, polka dot, yellow, purple, or have scissors for fingers. That's your baby. And that's who your baby is, and you take care of your baby. It's as simple as that. So when people say, “Well, I wouldn't allow my–” it's not about allowing, it's not about lifestyle. That's the way they are wired. That is what God gave them. I don't know if you've seen the movie Conclave.
AA: Yeah.
MN: There's a great depiction of how people that are holy talk about how God made us. And I’m not saying everybody should believe in God. If you believe in the universe, mother nature, whatever you believe in is great. But I happen to believe in God, and I believe that God gives us gifts. And sometimes the gifts don't look like gifts, you know, but that's the gift that God gave us. And that the man that was voted in to be the pope at the end of the movie Conclave– Spoiler alert, everybody, he happened to be intersex or transgender. It's not clear which he is, but that he said he didn’t get any surgery and didn't change himself because that's the way God wanted him to be, to have a complex set of exterior challenges and emotional challenges. And that comes together in a beautiful way. It makes someone very compassionate and very empathetic and very wise. I love that movie for that reason.
AA: Yes, me too. Well, wow, that is just a beautiful story. Thank you for sharing that, Marie, and kudos to you for doing all of your advocacy work and your allyship. That's so, so, so important right now, especially in the political landscape in which we find ourselves in this moment. Speaking of that, maybe that will be our segue to the next question. I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit more, you touched on it kind of in your introduction, but why did you decide to enter politics? You said you hadn't thought about it before. It wasn't like on your life map that you set out, but what were your goals going in? What did you do during your time as a congresswoman and how do you feel about that time today?
MN: Looking back, there are two things, and forgive me to your listeners who are big Trump fans, but I just have to say it because it's part of the story. I worked very hard on the Hillary Clinton campaign, and I will tell you that I didn't agree with her on everything. There were many things that I had trouble with. That said, she was significantly better than what we ended up with in 2016. But I also knew that candidate, candidate Trump at the time, was telling us that he was going to ruin the economy, that he was going to be horrible to women, and that he was going to make healthcare real hard for everybody. And I'm all about equity. I'm about Team America. I'm for everybody. I'm nobody out and everybody in. And that has always been my mentality.
And something really clicked in me that night, and I decided to listen to those people that were asking me to run. And that inner voice, by the way, just as a spoiler alert, in the month prior to the 2016 election, because I had been so engaged for 20 years in politics on the volunteering side, I had printed out a couple of candidate guides from the state of Illinois. I was starting to look at it, and then I'd throw it out and I'd say, “Oh, that's silly. That's not for me.” And then I’d do it again. And then finally when that happened, there were two things: I knew he'd ruin the economy, I knew he'd be horrible on women's rights, and I knew that he'd be horrible on LGBTQ rights, and I knew he'd try to take away healthcare for everybody. And again, I said, “Oh, no ma'am. That is not happening on my watch.” So that's why I ran.
AA: Amazing. SWhat was your time like as a congresswoman? Can you tell me about some of the issues that you did champion? What was the experience like, especially being a woman in politics? And what were some highlights?
MN: I'm always driven by the underdog, so I tell this to candidates who call me every day. You know what is the most important thing to do, is to have as many meet and greets and sit down with as many constituents in a community, in a room, and have discussions. And your job there is to say, “What's wrong? What is keeping you up at night? What are your concerns?” And then shut your pie hole and take notes. That is your job as a candidate, and then it’s your job as someone who actually is in office as well. As an example, in my first campaign, I did, I think, 250 meet and greets, and in the second campaign I did 343 in 360 days. And it was very helpful because I learned a lot about what everybody's every day was bothering them. And I am encouraging the entire Democratic party right now to sit down and really listen to people, because we have lost our way.
That aside, when I was in Congress, I did the same thing. I continued having meet and greets and listened to small businesses and heard their concerns, and then I would take notes, I would make legislation, and then I would pass legislation, and it was as simple as that. Rinse, wash, repeat. I was in the community all the time, every day, and you know what? That formula worked really well. It ended up that I got redistricted out and lost my district, which just happens. We have a census every 10 years and things get reapportioned, so my district got pulled into five different pieces and I was no longer a member of Congress. It is what it is. But during my time, I loved it, really. I love solving problems at its core. That's what I like doing. I like solving problems, and I like collaborating with people. And I learned so much. I called my constituents my partners, because they taught me so much. It was a wonderful experience and I was honored to do it.
AA: Hmm, that's awesome. I mean, that's how democracy is supposed to work. But it sounds exhausting. That's a huge job to be doing that many meet and greets and listening to the public. But without that, I mean, any party that doesn't do that, that's not the way our government is supposed to run.
MN: Right. If you’re not close to your constituents and the folks that are not supporting you and supporting you. That’s how you understand people. That's why I keep on telling, like, some conservatives in the party want to throw different groups in America under the bus, because they're like, “Oh no, that's a hot topic.” Well, talk about everybody, don't talk about a group, and you're going to be in a much better position. We're all Team America here, so stop trying to pick on people. I hope we find our way again.
AA: Yeah, I sure do too. As I mentioned in the introduction, you were at the Capitol during the January 6th insurrection, so I'm wondering if you could share what that day was like for you. Everybody knows that it was a historic event, but some people, because of the way it's portrayed in the media, it might be downplayed for them. I think it's really valuable to hear people's firsthand experience of what it actually was like, and what they witnessed with their own eyes. I'd love to hear that story from your point of view.
MN: Sure. The headline is that it was a scary and precarious day and filled with unknowns. And that's why I actually took the time in one of the chapters in my book to articulate what it felt like, because people forget that politicians are humans and we have emotions. While it's our job to put our emotions aside, we do operate as humans, and sometimes that's very important to help our constituents to operate as humans. So, I tell that story from the perspective of a new, fresh-faced, freshman congresswoman. You don't even quite absorb it when you're there, right? You don't know you're making history or being a part of one of those critical historical events in your country that day. You don't absorb that. Later, you do and it hits you real hard, like a few days later. But you know what I remember, and I'll give you the short version, is that we had been warned early that morning, you know, you get daily information from the speaker's office, and it said, “Be careful, this protest could get unruly. Don't wear your congressional pins or your identification markers on the outside. Have your chiefs of staff drive you in and go through all the checkpoints because we have lots of security,” all of those things, and we did that.
And that day, January 6th, was designated to certify the 2020 election. So on January 6th, 2021, we were certifying, and you go state by state. What was further tricky is that because it was deep COVID times, we all had masks and social distancing, so we had to vote in groups instead of en masse at one time, so it took a long time to certify each state because you'd have to go in and individually vote. So we're getting warnings throughout the day, and I'm watching, because in every congressional office there are three TVs and you have CNN and MSNBC, and then you dip into Fox to see what's going on there, and then C-SPAN. And so you're starting to see the protests get very unruly. They're breaking down barriers, they're starting to scale walls, and literally I was getting hundreds of calls and texts from everybody, from my husband and my kids over to my seventh cousins. People were asking, “Are you okay?” Other members of Congress were checking on me, cabinet people were checking on me. And I didn't quite understand what level of danger we were in, I'll be honest with you, because I was just bound and determined.
“We’re all Team America here, so stop trying to pick on people...”
Flash forward to about 2:30 in the afternoon. I'm walking through the tunnels underneath– the Capitol campus is made up of the office buildings for Congress people and then the Capitol itself, and underneath are these big tunnels you would see in an airport hangar, and you go through there because it's a little faster and it was cold out. So I took the tunnels, and I'm all by myself. Now, typically those tunnels are hustling and bustling, but it was COVID and we were going in small groups back and forth. I’m walking along and I hear, “Congresswoman!” and I look and it's some Capitol police officer, who runs up to me and says, “Congresswoman, we've gotta get going.” And he said, “Do you wanna take your shoes off? We've gotta move fast.” And in my head I'm thinking, “I've been running in heels for like 30 years.”
AA: Got you. You're okay.
MN: So we're running. It's about seven, eight blocks underneath in the tunnels to get back to my office, so I'm a little out of breath. I'm seeing other people, other members of Congress doing the same thing. This guy's job was to get rid of stragglers and get them safety right, so he said, “I've got to peel off here. Get in your office. Is there anybody bigger than you in your office?” And I'm like, “I guess some of my staff.” And he’s like, “Okay, throw a piece of furniture against the door and stay inside.” And I’m like, “Okay, check.” So I get to my office, and my go-to when I'm super scared is humor. So I slammed the door and I said, “So, do we have any wine?” My staff was like, “Really?” I got everybody busy on a project because I know that when in crisis, you have to get everybody to walk away from their fear and start doing some critical thinking, because then there wasn’t time to think about fear. So we got everybody engaged in things, and they told us to stay in our offices, obviously, at that point. And then the protests were getting ugly. I then heard that there were shots fired in the chamber, and I was getting calls from the media, and I was trying to sort out what is the best path here? By this time my family is on fire, and I'm like, “I'm fine. I'm far away from where there are gunshots going off.” At that point, they were terrorizing the speaker's office. They were trying to ram down the doors. Those young people that were the staffers of Speaker Pelosi at that time are heroes. They helped the police understand exactly where they were and what they were doing, and helped bring the crisis down. They were rock stars that day. They were hiding under a table inside, because the speaker's office is made up of probably 15 offices, it's a big space inside the building, and they kept diverting the crowd. So they were brilliant and they saved a bunch of lives.
AA: Wow.
MN: Then we got word that Pelosi and Vice President Pence had been carried out the stage and went to panic rooms. All of the leadership on both sides, Democrat and Republican, were put in panic rooms in the building that are like black sites. And we're getting messages that people are really scared. And I didn't realize, because my office building was a bit protected because it was the farthest away, and the protesters decided to go to another office building. Now, they had a list of 40 members of Congress that they were going to kill that day. I was on that list, and didn't know it at the time. I learned that later. So it's good that they didn't find me.
AA: Oh my goodness.
MN: Normally, all of your offices are listed and right on the website, but they weren't up yet because it was three days into the Congress. So, thank God. My husband was like, “Thank God they didn't know where you were.” All of that was scary. Right around 4:30, 5:00pm, Trump was finally convinced that he had to accept the National Guards. The rules are that you have to ask for the National Guard to come in from other states, you can't just let them come in. So the governors of Maryland and Virginia kept saying, “We'll give it to you, don't worry about it.” And he's like, “No, this is going fine.” Because it was going fine for him. They were terrorizing the Democrats. Finally, he got talked into letting the Guard in, and in about a three-hour period, they secured the perimeter and members of Congress were asked by the Speaker and the Senate leader if we would come back and start voting again. We all said yes. We got there, voted through the night until about 4:30 or 5 in the morning, and then went home in secure vehicles, and we went about the business of Congress. And I learned later all kinds of stories about the 30 members of Congress that were trapped in the chamber when shots went off. They were wearing gas masks, they were crawling through the floor and the chairs to get to safety, and there were a lot of heroes that day that saved other members of Congress. One woman who was a member of Congress from Washington State had just had surgery on her knees, so two former FBI and CIA agents that are now congresswomen flipped her over their backs and carried her down four flights of stairs. So, thank God for smart women.
AA: Wow.
MN: You do what you have to do. I was super lucky in that I wasn't in as much danger as many.
AA: That's absolutely terrifying. Thank you so much for writing about it and for sharing it with us today. It's so critical to remember to have eyewitnesses share their stories so that the truth can be preserved.
I have a few more questions about your time in Congress. You write that only 29% of Congress is made up of women, when it should be 50% to be truly representative of the country. And you and I both celebrate that it’s higher, that progress is being made, but it's still not where it should be. Why do we continue to have such a substantial gender gap in congressional leadership? Is there anything we could do to close that gap?
MN: I'd love to say there was one issue or one root cause. At the end of the day, and I'll just be blunt, and I'm going to apologize to older white men that are listening, because not all of you are like that, but older white men like their power. They do. They just love it. They love their power, and they do not want to let go of that. And they realize that their relevance is waning. And it's not that all of them should wane, but whether it is in business, nonprofit, or in political settings or community settings, we are better when we have diverse perspectives, attitudes, and people. The notion that continues to be put down is very telling. So no, it doesn't matter what patriarchy it is, in either of those four buckets, it is when your voice is not being listened to. There's a reason people don't want it, because you might reflect a lot of people and that would be bad because then I can't hold onto my power. And again, I'm not torturing older white men, I'm just saying that we can't only have you speaking for us. In fact, it should be, if we were being smart, it should be 50:50 women, and then the communities of color should be represented at a bare minimum of the percentage that they are in society. Because they have had inequity for years and years and centuries and centuries, they probably should have more representation than not. Equity is a really big deal. And until we get older white men to realize that like, “Look, you're not the end all and be all.” And by the way, I'll quote Will Ferrell, the comedian, who recently said, “You know what? Men have been in power a long time, and it hasn't gone so well. How about if we give women a try?”
AA: Yeah, it's true. Thank you for that. Another topic that you write about in your book, and you write about it very courageously, is your experience with abortion. I wondered if you'd be willing to share that with listeners and talk about how you were raised, the beliefs that you had as you were raised, and how those beliefs were challenged, and then where you stand today on abortion.
MN: So, obviously I am pro-choice and believe in women's right to choose, and that women should have complete and full agency of their body no matter what. No exceptions. And back to that last question, to tie those two together, if men were able to get pregnant, for sure we would have full access to abortion, birth control, reproductive care, and it would be free. Let's just be clear. If men had babies. Now, in my situation, it was a long, long time ago, it was when I was in college, and it was a very hard decision for me. I grew up in a very conservative, red rock Republican household that was very deeply Catholic, so it was hard. What it really came to was that I was not equipped as a human to take care of a baby emotionally, financially, or in any other way. So I made both an emotional decision and a rational decision that I do probably want, and actually I'll be honest, I had no idea if I wanted to be a mom or not. And for someone to be a mom, they have to want to be a mom. It would be ludicrous in any other situation to say, “Hey, I want you to be an air traffic controller, but stress really bothers you and you don't like being up high.” That would be insane, right? Why do we make women have babies if they don't want to?
At the end of the day, I really struggled with it. I still maintain it was a good decision, but it was a very tough decision. And I was honest about the complexities of it and the guilt after it, and then reconciling it and dealing with it. Because anybody who says that you have an abortion and then that's it, I find that hard to believe. You do continue to deal with it. That said, everybody's decision is the right decision. Women need to have full agency with their bodies, and I did. And you know what? I don't regret it at all. It allowed me to go on to have two great kids, a wonderful husband, and a wonderful career. And my hope is that I've helped some people along the way. But what that untimed pregnancy did for me is it helped me understand that you are the master of your own ship and that you can direct your life as you see fit. It really made me feel a lot more powerful because I took control over my life, and that was the best lesson I could learn.
AA: Thanks for sharing that. I really feel, throughout the book and throughout this conversation, the balance and nuance. I so appreciate your willingness to talk with honesty about all of the factors, instead of just narrowly telling one story, even if it's a version of the story that fits the particular narrative, that it would just be easier to reduce it down and have it be more simple. You don't shy away from complexity in how you address all of these issues, and I find that so refreshing and so lacking in a lot of our political discourse, which becomes so polarized. People aren't really honest about the complexities, about what it really feels like in real human life. I really appreciate that.
MN: Amy, you bring up such a good point. And that's what I offer to everybody, is to tell your story about your challenges, because everybody thinks that you can't convince the other side. And our stories are filled with nuance. I like to tell everybody, look, if you've had a challenge in your life and someone doesn't believe that you've handled it correctly, or that from a political perspective, you're wrong. How about just telling stories of humans? I tell the story about my child being transgender. She's my baby. I'm here to let her have the best life possible. It's my job. I'm a mom. Understand it as a parent, right? And understand that people don't choose to be LGBTQ+. They don't. No one chooses that. In fact, why would you choose that, because they're having such a hard time now and always have? Try to come at it from telling your own story. Right now, with all of this Big Beautiful Bill that is going to decimate Medicaid and Social Security and nutritional systems like the SNAP programs and food programs, I tell everybody that everybody knows somebody that has been affected by one of those programs. 40% of all babies born in this country are supported by Medicaid. 60% of people that are 65+ are getting some level of assistance from Medicaid through their long-term care, whether it is retirement care or healthcare or other. We all know somebody who's going to be hurt very deeply by that program. Tell your personal story. Don't recite data and say “you're wrong.” We are very persuaded by stories. That's why I have a podcast that tells stories and I have another podcast that is going to be talking about life and tradition and politics to help people understand each other. Let's understand each other and tell our stories.
AA: Mm-hmm. I found that to be true, and that's demonstrably true, right? Humans are storytellers. I think that a lot of times, people's beliefs are changed in the heart, not the head. Data is super important, and it’s kind of scary that people can be changed by emotionality that isn't supported by facts, but it is true that that's how humans are wired. So, like you say, here's the opinion and here is the data. It’s really, really important to have your opinion supported by that, but it's not how you're going to reach somebody's heart.
MN: Oh my gosh. Agree.
“you are the master of your own ship and that you can direct your life as you see fit”
AA: You write also in the book, very sadly, about losing friends due to growing political divides. I know that's something that a lot of people all across the political spectrum have experienced, so maybe you could share a bit about what that was like when that happened to you. And if you have any guidance for listeners who are fearful of losing relationships over political differences or have lost them already.
MN: The headline here is: evaluate if that friendship was the friendship you thought it was prior to politics and after. The reason I state that at the outset is that what I learned is that I lost two of my closest friends, not to politics, it was our values at the end of the day. And that's what you have to really review and discern. Is it about your values or is it about politics? For me, what I realized is that it's not that I went into politics and started talking about all of this stuff very vocally. It's that I have learned in all my years on this planet that I cannot tolerate racism, I cannot tolerate bigotry, and I cannot tolerate xenophobia, and I cannot tolerate people who believe the pie is this big and it's not infinite. It’s about values and morality. So for me, folks that are racist, who believe that there's only equity for some and not for all, that some people should have healthcare and others should not, all of these value-based morals, right? I couldn't hide it or sweep it under the rug anymore. These two particular friends, it just broke my heart to realize that. But then I realized when I did the review, “Oh no, you've always been that way. I've just kicked it under the rug.” So for folks out there, think about what you've been kicking under the rug, and is it attached to your deepest values, your core values? And if it is, you don't have to dislike them or you don't have to walk away from them, but know that if you can't talk about your deepest core values in life, that's probably not a deep friendship. You don't have to be mad at them or anything, just say, you know what? You're not my cup of tea. And that's okay to let go of them. Just let go. You don't have to have a knockdown drag out. You can just say, “Look, these are my values, and that's made it hard for me to talk to you.” Every conversation is built on a value. We are where we are, but don't be afraid to let go of that relationship. You don't have to totally walk away from it, and you don't have to say mean things about them, just say that we disagree and you make me uncomfortable. But if there's a way to repair it and have a bridge, tell your story, because maybe you'll be convinced by something they say, or you'll convince them by something you stay with through your stories. They'll have empathy and greater empathy for that issue. So, do try. But if it’s not working, it's okay to walk away.
AA: Yeah, I agree. Definitely be willing to have those uncomfortable conversations. But one dynamic I notice that happens sometimes is that only one side, only one party in the relationship is able to speak freely and say all of the things that they believe, and then the other party will keep quiet in order to keep the peace. And that only lasts so long before the resentment can build up, and it's just not a fair dynamic. So when that party starts to disagree, it upsets the dynamic and it can be really, really tricky to renegotiate. Like, “Sorry, but I don't agree with you.” Especially women, since we're so trained to not rock the boat and to be agreeable and to not hurt the person's feelings by speaking up. It can be really, really tricky.
MN: I encourage everybody, and everybody has full agency, and as women, what we should say is that our opinion and our values are important to us. You can share in a respectful way, and if it is met with any kind of negativity, you can always walk away from it. Don't feel as though you have to subject yourself to pain and agony and a brick wall. You can share and then move on. And I forget which author said it, but if the other person isn't willing to fight for the friendship, that probably means that you weren't exactly friends, were you?
AA: Yeah. Which is heartbreaking, but then you can get over it and move along. One thing that I want to ask about too, is during your time in Congress you had the luck out of 435 possible neighbors in the congressional offices of having your office placed directly across the hall from the office of Marjorie Taylor Greene. What was that like? Can you talk about the conflict between you and Congressman Greene?
MN: I would say that God has a very funny sense of humor with me. There are 435 members of Congress, and he decided to put my office, a former anti-bullying advocate and expert/mother of a trans child, across from Marjorie Taylor Greene, who's the biggest bully and bigot and hateful racist literally I think I've ever met. And it was so funny, because on the day of the Equality Act, which is the bill in Congress that we voted on a few times that creates equality for everybody– it doesn't ask for LGBTQ folks to have more equality, it just evens up so that employers can't discriminate and people can't discriminate against you, you can't be discriminated against in public, and on and on. It's a very simple act. It just creates equality for everybody. That day, and she had been a pain about the bill coming up and speaking about it on the House floor, and I was ignoring a lot of it. That day, in the spirit of that being voted on that day, I put my transgender flag outside my office. You can have your state flag, the United States flag, and then you have one more. And so I filled in the third with the trans flag. I just wanted people to know that I support the LGBTQ+ community, right?
She saw that and went cray-cray. Insane. I had made a video and at the end I went like this, like all done, just being cute, right? She thought it was a personal upfront and went crazy. She marched herself down to the local FedEx or Kinko's or whatever it was, and had a sign made that there are only two genders, and slapped it up on the wall with a video and then started calling me a groomer and pedophile and all these things. And it was like, good Lord, you are unhinged. Then it blew up on social media and literally every cable station and every local station and even international media people were calling wanting an interview. And I was like, “Let's stop adding fuel to the fire, folks. This is ridiculous.” I did do a couple of interviews and said, “This is indicative of who she is, not who we are. I simply wanted her to love and respect and embrace my daughter's community. That's it. I wasn't trying to be mean to her, I wasn't trying to do anything.” And it kept exploding, and I stopped accepting interviews because the goal in that situation is to demonstrate that Marjorie Taylor Green is the problem. And we did. I mean, obviously anybody that's a parent, even Republicans were coming to me and saying, “Hey, I'm sorry, Marie. It's awful that that happened.” She made a complete fool out of herself, but she's still mad about it. When my book came out, she went crazy that I told that story, and she's like, “She's still a groomer.” And I was like, dear Lord, get a life, you know?
AA: Wow. You tell the story with humor, which I see is characteristic of you and your personality, but was that hard for you at the time?
MN: I was worried about my daughter, but my daughter handled it pretty well. Again, even most Republicans were like, “You're being a jackass.” I think that she just made it worse for herself. She did fundraise among the bigots and the racists really well with that, and there is quite a bit of money to be had among racists and bigots, but you can't let that stuff get you down. I was very proud of my daughter. She handled it very, very well, and she did a good job that day and then moved on from there. But it really upset me. And then she would do creepy things in the hallway to me, she'd whisper creepy things in the back of my head. I mean, she was just a creepy lady, right? So I finally turned around and said, “Look, lady, I'm from the Midwest and you do not want to mess around with me. Get the hell away from me right now.” And she did.
AA: Wow. I'm just amazed by your calm. I think even if you know that it's her problem, it's still unsettling to be antagonized that dramatically, to have somebody come at you and be attacking you in person, online, that's gotta be really disruptive to the nervous system. I'm just amazed that you seem to have a lot of skill in calming yourself down and just letting it be her problem.
MN: Right. There was so much of that going on, and that was emblematic of my term in general. There were so many things going on in the world, like I was very worried about COVID, people were starving in my district, and I was like, “You are the least of my problems, lady.”
AA: Yeah, that's great. That's a great perspective. Well, we only have time for a couple more questions. This has been just so illuminating, Marie, I'm so grateful for your time. I wonder if you can talk a little bit, and you mentioned this before, but the trouble with the Democratic party, too. I mean, we know that with Trump in office and with all of his group that there are plenty of problems on the right. But you also talk about a core group of highly corporatized Democrats and Republicans that you observed that didn't do much of anything. I'd love it if you could talk about that problem that's going on in our government right now, and some of the other things that you would like us to be able to address to heal some of the problems that are going on in our democracy at the moment.
MN: Well, I'll steal the title of my book that's very apt for the Democratic Party right now. The name of my book is A Life Made From Scratch because I've had to remake my life a bunch of times. I think the Democratic Party needs to rebuild from scratch. They need to get out to all 50 states and sit down and listen to people and take notes and then rebuild the party. We have a lot of folks, and this is both Republican and Democrats, so about 89% of the entire Congress, Republicans and Democrats, take corporate PAC money. They get told what to do and what not to do and when to do it and how to do it because of that, or they don't receive that money, which is why I never took corporate PAC money. There are also bully PACs out there, whether it is AIPAC or United Democracy Project, or Democratic Majority for Israel, they're all bully parties. If you don't take their talking points and really embed them into all that you do, you're not going to get money. So the fact that corporatized Democrats are held with a gun to their head at all times, that they won't receive money. My goal post-Congress is to get money out of politics to end these bully PACs, both corporate and the folks that work for foreign lobbies, and get them out of Congress so we just have folks doing their job every day and not having to fundraise and worry about money.
Corporatized Democrats like literally sitting and doing nothing because then they won't get in trouble. Because if they do anything, they're going to get in trouble. So there's a lot of folks that would call themselves climate hawks that have not proposed climate legislation because they take money from big oil. There are a lot of folks that may care about healthcare but would never, ever support Medicare for all because they take money from big healthcare companies and from corporate PAC money and big pharma. And if you do the analysis, every single time, when you take corporate PAC money, that person does not support any change in legislation. They just don't. So if we took money out of politics and got rid of corporate Democrats, we would be in a much better situation. We would've had healthcare for everybody right now as a starting point, we would have universal childcare. There it was in the Build Back Better Bill, and the corporate Democrats took it out and threatened everybody. My attitude right now is that I think we're capable of change and we can be a much better party and a party for the people, but we have to sit down and listen and then get to work. That's my recommendation to the party. And I talk about this a lot. It's one of the reasons I wrote the book.
AA: Yeah, that's so important. I mean, it's nothing short of corruption, to be honest, to be able to buy their vote.
MN: And then what they can do in the primaries. The problem is that corporate Democrats run other Democrats out of primaries, I mean, I was an elected official and I was run out of Congress because there was a coalition of conservatives in the Democratic Party and the Republican Party that made it impossible for me to win. There was a lot of coalition work done to take me down, and it was driven from corporate Democrats. It is what it is. I think that we all land in a position, Mother Nature, God, the universe puts you in one place at a time and says, “Okay, that was your job then, now this is your job.” I am a significant activist along with doing other projects to make sure that the country stays strong.
AA: Well, that's fantastic. That's a great place for us to wrap up. I've been ending all of my episodes this season with a call to action for listeners. So if you have any specific calls to action for listeners who are inspired to get involved on one of the topics that you've been talking about, could you leave us with that and then tell us where we can find your work as well?
MN: Yeah. Two easy things, and this is on my website, marienewmanstudio.com, and you can always send me emails. I do look at my emails every night, so please do if you have a question. I'm happy to answer them. There are easy things you can do. One, if you're dissatisfied with the legislation going through and what's going on in DC, you can call leadership in both the House and the Senate. John Thune in the Senate, he's a Republican leader, they're in power right now, and then Speaker Mike Johnson in the House. You can call the office and tell them that you're dissatisfied, and you don't need to know policy, you just tell your story. Tell your story about your mom who’s on Medicaid, or your sister who lost her cancer trial because they took away the NIH money. Tell your story to them in a very visceral way, respectfully and don't scream. And secondly, tell your story to your friends who are Independents and Republicans, and say, “Look, what they're doing is ruining lives. You're killing people, you're hurting people. You're making our world less safe.” Tell your personal story and maybe change a mind or two.
AA: Yeah. Thank you so much. Those are fantastic. Again, I want to promote your new book that has just come out, A Life Made from Scratch: Lessons From a Controversial Congresswoman, Mompreneur, and Unstoppable Political Activist. Marie Newman, thank you so much for being here today.
MN: Thank you, and have a great day.
