Audio: Ditmas Park and Flatbush Rep. Says She'll 'Act Up' Against Trump

DITMAS PARK and FLATBUSH, BROOKLYN — Brooklyn Congresswoman Yvette Clarke said Friday that while she hopes to be able to work with President Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled House of Representatives to benefit her constituents, she is "not going to stand quietly" if their policies hurt her district.

Clarke, who represents parts of Park Slope, Prospect Heights, Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, Flatbush, Ditmas Park, Windsor Terrace and Brownsville, skipped Trump's inauguration on Friday, opting instead to visit the Bed-Stuy Campaign Against Hunger.

In a Monday statement explaining her decision, Clarke said "the 2016 presidential election lacks integrity" due to Russian interference.

Asked Friday if Trump's election had legal legitimacy, Clarke said, "Under what we know, he's the president of the United States." But she called for continued investigations into Russia's actions to discover if the workings of the U.S. government have been compromised by hacks.

Could such an investigation discover facts that would lead her to call for Trump's removal from power?

"I don't know yet," Clarke said. "I just don't know what I don't know, and I don't want to jump to any conclusions. There is enough that we don't know that needs to be pursued in a bi-partisan way so that we can get the type of closure we need in an era of cyber attacks and insecurity."

Listen to Patch's complete interview with Rep. Yvette Clarke below, with questions from reporters John V. Santore and Sarah Kaufman:

On Monday, Clarke also said she is "deeply concerned about the threat Donald Trump presents to the community I am honored to represent," adding that his nominees to key posts "have devoted their careers to denying the civil rights of and creating a false, demeaning narrative about African Americans, Latinos, women, Muslims, and immigrants."

On Friday, she highlighted Trump's December 2016 call for a ban on Muslim immigration to the United States, saying she disagrees with, "the idea that [Muslims and Muslim immigrants] would not be able to freely move about this nation for fear of reprisals, being stigmatized, or unable to travel to their homeland to see about aging parents."

Asked if she would support the re-institution of any kind of registry system for Muslims, as some believe Trump intends to do, Clarke said she would not.

"I don't know how it would be used, and I was never one to believe that peoples' civil liberties should be suspended under any circumstances anyway," Clarke said. "There are much smarter means by which we can identified those who mean us harm without stigmatizing an entire ethnicity [or] religion."

She objected to the idea that funding for Planned Parenthood should be cut, something she said will hurt both women and men, and said Sen. Jeff Sessions, whom Trump has nominated for Attorney General, isn't committed to protecting minorities.

"Our civil rights have always been negotiable, unfortunately," she said, referring to non-white Americans. "Our voting rights have always been a protracted struggle. The fact that we're re-litigating this blows my mind all the time."

Clarke said she will not vote for the repeal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), chalking Republican opposition to the legislation up to partisan maneuvering designed to harm former president Barack Obama.

"If the repeal occurs, it's going to be a struggle for us," she said. However, she said New York's legislators "will make sure that they undergird the gains that we've made in health care and health insurance" to the extent possible. She also urged people to contact members of Congress to tell them the ACA should be protected.

Clarke said she won't vote for funding to construct a new border wall between the United States and Mexico, and won't support allocating more money to federal deportation forces.

Regarding immigration policy, she said "it's hard to tell" what Trump intends to do, but said any policy that doesn't allow undocumented people to work toward legal residency would not be "human" or "just."

Going forward, Clarke said she intends "to organize my constituents" and inform them of developments in Washington using any tools available to her, including town halls in the district and email blasts.

She wouldn't speak to any particular tactics she intends to employ in an attempt to block Republican or Trump policies she disagrees with, but added, "I want my constituents, no matter their faith or background, to pray for me, because I'm going to act up."

Pictured at top: Rep. Yvette Clarke. Photo by John V. Santore.