AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

During our election night broadcast on Tuesday, Democracy Now!'s Juan González, Nermeen Shaikh and I had a chance to speak with Melat Kiros, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, who won a House seat to represent Denver, Colorado. She's a 29-year-old Ethiopian immigrant and lawyer. In June, she won a major upset in the Democratic primary against longtime incumbent Congressmember Diana DeGette. Kiros will be the first Gen Z woman to serve in Congress. I began by asking Melat Kiros about the significance of her victory.

REP.-ELECT MELAT KIROS: What this victory means is that the working people of Denver, the working people of this district and, as we’re seeing tonight, the working people across this entire country are no longer accepting the status quo as it is. They are fed up with this administration, and they’re also not going to tolerate Democrats trying to go back to business as usual. They are demanding a change, the kind of change that leads to material improvements in the lives of working families all across this country.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Melat, what do you think would be the key things that you would be looking for especially progressives in Congress to do once they get into the House and for this next session?

REP.-ELECT MELAT KIROS: I think our number one responsibility has to make sure that we get Medicare for All ready as legislation, so that in '29, when we have the House, the Senate and the White House, we can sign it into law on day one. It is absolutely unacceptable that we are still the only country in the developed world that does not have universal healthcare. We have the money. We have the resources. We have the plan to get it done. And it's now that we have to end this cycle of over 100,000 Americans dying every single year because they don’t have access to healthcare. We need to pass Medicare for All. We need to start getting the work done now to get it ready in ’29.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Melat, in addition to Medicare for All, what was it that you heard most frequently from voters there?

REP.-ELECT MELAT KIROS: The number one issue that I heard from voters was corruption, was that they no longer trust our government. They no longer trust any party to meaningfully actually fight for working families, no matter what district or part of the country they belong to. I traveled to Michigan. I traveled to Missouri, as well. I spoke with voters all across this country that are saying, “We don’t trust the government anymore.”

The only way we earn back that trust is by delivering material changes. That’s why I fought or ran a campaign on Medicare for All, on housing first, on universal childcare and elder care, and making sure that we’re holding our government elected officials accountable, to make sure that we are not allowing corruption to continue to be the corrosive force in our politics that it is today.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But on this issue of corruption, the enormous, almost obscene, amounts of money that are being poured into political campaigns and into maintaining people of both parties, Democrats and Republicans, in office makes you wonder: Are you also going to see about trying to launch a campaign against corruption within the — among Democrats, as well?

REP.-ELECT MELAT KIROS: I mean, that’s what my entire primary campaign was about. It was about people calling themselves progressives, people saying the right things, but not actually meaningfully doing anything to move the agenda along, because corruption in our country isn’t as simple as, you know, some quid pro quo: “I’ll give you some cash for a vote.” Oftentimes what these corporations and these special interests are buying in exchange for now is, you know, stagnation. What they’re paying for is making sure that Medicare for All, despite having all these co-sponsors, despite having all this popular support among the American public, will have no path to actual passage in Congress. And in order for us to actually meaningfully address corruption, we have to clean up house on our own side of the aisle. And that means making sure that Democrats — we want to win again — if we want to lead on the issue of corruption, that we lead by example.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask you about what happened when you wrote a letter, posted a letter around Palestine. You were fired as a lawyer, then went to work as a barista? Explain your position.

REP.-ELECT MELAT KIROS: Yeah, I was a law student myself a few years prior, protesting the genocide that had happened in the northern region of Ethiopia, which is where my family is from. When I was protesting as a law student, no one was threatening to expel me or to suspend me or trying to dox me or my job offer getting revoked. But that’s what I saw happening with the students that were protesting for Palestine, the students that were calling out the genocide that was rapidly developing in Palestine.

And I decided to write an article defending their right to not only protest, and our responsibility as lawyers and law firms to protect that right, but also to defend the legitimacy behind their position, the legitimacy of calling this a genocide, the legitimacy of holding Israel, a state, a government, accountable for their actions, and holding our country, our elected officials, accountable for their own complicity in allowing this genocide to unfold in the way that it has.

And, you know, my firm didn’t like that. They asked me to take it down. I said no, and I was fired within a day. And I would do it all over again, because we need more people standing up, calling out genocide, and more people calling out the people in power to hold them accountable for their actions and their complicity in this genocide, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: So, how do you take that to Congress? And I also want to ask what you make of President Trump saying today that by the end of the year they will stop giving $4 billion to Israel, clearly in reference to Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, hoping, it looks like, to affect that race, to prevent him from winning in Michigan, if he, the Republican president, said he would be doing this. What do you make of this? And how do you take this to both the Democrats and Republicans in Congress?

REP.-ELECT MELAT KIROS: I think this is more evidence of the importance of organizing, the importance of demonstrating to the people in power that the American people are not going to accept this genocide continuing with our tax dollars, with our complicity any longer.

That being said, I have no faith whatsoever in Donald Trump and whatever he has to say about this matter. If I’m not mistaken, what he’s actually just going to do is end the aid, but move it into funding through the Pentagon, where there is going to be far less accountability for those tax dollars, that are still going to be complicit in this genocide. And the American people are demanding not just that we withdraw our aid, but that we end this genocide with whatever leverage we have.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Melat, what are the issues that you would — you will pursue in Congress, in particular on Israel-Palestine, of course, but foreign policy, more broadly, and American — American foreign policy?

REP.-ELECT MELAT KIROS: I think our responsibility, if we are going to call ourselves leaders of the free world, is to actually hold anybody who takes our tax dollars to the same level of accountability. And to me, that means not sending our tax dollars to any country that is violating basic human rights. That’s not just Israel. That includes Egypt. That includes Saudi Arabia. That includes the UAE. Any country that is actively violating human rights right now should not be having our tax dollars as aid. We should not be trading in weapons with any of these countries, either.

That’s the kind of foreign policy that’s actually in line with the values of the American people and would actually lead to true peace building and true cooperation on the global stage, that we are desperately in need of, especially in this moment as we’re facing the crises of things like AI and climate change. We have to start working together, and we have to start leading in making sure that peace building and diplomacy is what we are building out right now, not the wants and the needs of the military-industrial complex, that has for too long been at the helm of our foreign policy.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Melat, I’m wondering — there have been several news reports now that both in Israel and here in the United States that Trump and Netanyahu have been considering that as soon as these elections are over, that there will be renewed attacks on Iran and ramping up of the war in the Middle East. I’m wondering your sense of what is the role of progressives now if Trump then decides to embark on that course.

REP.-ELECT MELAT KIROS: I think our responsibility is going to be to hold him to account. This is a madman. This is a deranged person who does not take seriously human life. He will throw it away at his whim if he feels slighted. And if that leads to more loss of life, innocent loss of life, in Iran and in places where those strikes might occur, we cannot allow that to happen. We cannot accept that as normal. And we’re going to have to demand some accountability.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Melat Kiros, the congressmember-elect for Denver, Colorado, 29 years old, Ethiopian immigrant, attorney and member of the Democratic Socialists of America. According to NPR, she’ll be the first Gen Z woman in Congress. In June’s primary, she defeated the longtime Democratic incumbent Diana DeGette. Juan González, Nermeen Shaikh and I spoke to her on Tuesday night during our election broadcast special, which you can check out at democracynow.org or on our Democracy Now! channel on YouTube.

When we come back, we’ll talk about corruption in politics — in many cases, the number one issue for voters across the United States in this election cycle. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: “Songbird” by Henry Ferland.