Senator Tammy Duckworth talks Iran War, women in combat, and SAVE Act

[00:00:00]
Brian Mackey: From Illinois Public Media, this is the 21st Show. I'm Brian Mackey. America's war against Iran began more than six months ago. It's still going on, and American soldiers, sailors, and airmen continue to be killed and wounded. Late last month, the Pentagon provoked outrage when it changed how it's accounting for those casualties, removing four of the dead soldiers and hundreds of wounded personnel from Operation Epic Fury, instead counting them as having been a part of undefined overseas operations.

This has drawn the attention and the anger of my first guest today. Tammy Duckworth is an Army veteran. She's currently in her second term as the junior United States senator from Illinois. The Senate is in session this week, and in order to accommodate her schedule, I spoke with Senator Duckworth Wednesday afternoon. As you'll hear, our conversation was interrupted when she was called away for a vote, but we did reconnect to finish the interview a little later on.

We talked about the Iran war and other changes happening in the Department of Defense, as well as the voter registration changes President Trump is calling for in the Save Act. And the issue of why so many of us feel left behind by the American economy. Because we taped this conversation, we are not taking calls for this part of the show, but I'd still like to hear what you thought about it. And the best way to do that is by email. Our address is [talk@21stshow.org]. Again, [talk@21stshow.org].

Senator Duckworth, welcome back to the 21st Show. Thanks for being with us.

[00:01:59]
Sen. Tammy Duckworth: Thanks for having me on. So the Iran war started in February. Although we've had official statements declaring it over multiple times now. It's apparently still ongoing. How do you think America is doing?

Well, America is suffering as a result of Trump's illegal war. You know, gas prices have gone through the roof. The American people still don't have a true accounting of why we're at this war, how they're conducting the war, what it's costing them, and how they plan on ending the war. And you know, as far as the conduct of the war is concerned, we have a completely incompetent secretary of defense who obviously does not know how to do his job, and now we're mired in a conflict that's starting to look like one of those forever wars Donald Trump, you know, [promised] he wasn't going to get us into.

[00:02:35]
Brian Mackey: What does it say to you? What do you make of the fact that the president has claimed there's a deal. Iran comes out a few hours later and effectively says no there isn't — on again, off again. What do you understand to be happening there?

[00:02:46]
Sen. Tammy Duckworth: A lot of incompetence is what's happening. We've got an incompetent, five-time draft-dodging coward of a president as commander in chief. We have a secretary of defense who, while [he] was an infantry officer, made it to the rank of major without ever earning a Ranger tab, jump wings, or an air assault badge or having a company command. And was taken off the streets on Jan. 6 because his military leadership could not trust his judgment during the insurrection attempt.

And you know, we're at this point dealing with people who don't know what the hell they're doing, and they put JD Vance in charge of negotiations. And so you got JD Vance coming out saying yeah we got a deal with the Iranians and then, you know, a couple hours later the Iranians saying what do you talk about, there's no deal here. So, you know, they may be used to lying to the American people and putting out, you know, fake news through their social media accounts, but the Iranians don't buy it. And Iranians are the ones who are saying, hey, you know, we're still mining the Straits of Hormuz. We don't know what you're talking about.

[00:03:50]
Brian Mackey: As we are recording this conversation, 14 Americans have been killed in what's called Operation Epic Fury. That's the military name, as you know, for the war against Iran, and that includes people killed in action, as a result of their wounds, and in non-hostile mishaps. Another 417 were wounded. The thing about that is the Department of Defense is counting that separately from another four men and women killed in action and 270 more wounded in what the administration says is a separate overseas operations. What do you make of what's going on here?

[00:04:25]
Sen. Tammy Duckworth: This is them lying to the American people. And they are trying to — just as they've been hiding the true cost of the war in terms of dollars and cents, they are hiding the true cost of the war in terms of the lives of our military heroes. It is abhorrent, it is cynical, and it should be illegal, which is why I'm, you know, introducing the piece of legislation that I am now. No administration has, you know, [done this], and so there's no law that says that they can't do this, because nobody ever thought that you'd have to pass a law to say that you would actually be honest about those who were killed in service to this nation.

But they're playing a shell game, and so the president can't on one day say that, you know, we're at war with Iran, we're negotiating an end to the war, but at the same time say, oh no, no, we're not actually at war, and so all the troops who died or [were] wounded during this time — we're not engaged in combat actions. It's hiding the numbers from the American people. But for me, and on top of that, they're stealing from those troops. Those troops deserve to have their sacrifices honored. Secretary Hegseth cannot erase the sacrifices of our heroes by changing the paperwork. And by the way, as veterans, those same men and women who've been wounded — and the survivors of those who were killed in action — get higher compensation if they were wounded or killed in combat operations. So he's literally stealing from military families when he does this.

[00:05:58]
Brian Mackey: You've anticipated my next question here, which is the consequences of this for individual soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen, and guardians and their survivors. It's, as you mentioned, veteran benefits, survivor benefits. Also, this sort of thing can play into career advancement, yeah, because you get — I don't know if the term you'd say is credit — but like, that can be helpful as one is attempting to climb the ranks.

[00:06:23]
Sen. Tammy Duckworth: Exactly. So you get more, you know, you get more campaign stripes, and you can get, you know, things in your record if you serve during combat operations as opposed to non-combat engagements. Absolutely. And on top of that, many states have additional benefits. So, for example, my home state of Illinois — one of our universities actually provides full four-year full-ride scholarships in every county to the child of a veteran, and they give the highest priority to the child of a veteran who was killed in combat. And if no child, you know, from that category applies, then the next person is somebody who was wounded in combat. And so, you know, this could affect somebody's child who wants to go to college.

[00:07:10]
Brian Mackey: So we're recording this Wednesday afternoon. By the time this goes to air Thursday, I understand you will have introduced what's going to be called the Honor the Sacrifice of Troops in War Act. I didn't have a chance to read the full text. I don't think it's been posted online yet, but I did get to see a summary. Talk about what that is attempting to do.

[00:07:28]
Sen. Tammy Duckworth: It does two things. One, it would require the secretary of defense to account for casualty statistics and prevent them from manipulating casualty records, so they can't just unilaterally declare a four-month period in the middle of a war that, oh well, we weren't engaged in combat operations in those four months, so they can no longer do that. The other is that it would force them to go back and fix the records of all of our troops so that it reflects that they served during combat, that they were wounded during combat, or that they were killed during combat.

And remember, we still have one service member who's still missing. We have a helicopter pilot who basically sacrificed his life ditching an aircraft in water to allow his crew members to escape that aircraft, and then managed to move the aircraft away. And you know, when you're a pilot ditching in water, that's one of those things — you know that you're going to die, that you get your crew out and then you go make your peace with your maker. And so that pilot is still missing. And so all of those records need to be repaired and restored to show that they truly did serve in combat.

[00:08:37]
Speaker 2: All right, unfortunately the senator has [a vote] to go [cast] right now, so we have to end

[00:08:41]
Brian Mackey: the interview now. OK, thank you so much. Well, that's disappointing. All right,

[00:08:47]
Sen. Tammy Duckworth: thank you. I don't control the floor votes unfortunately. Thank you.

[00:08:50]
Brian Mackey: Fair enough. OK, bye-bye. All right, let's pause the tape. This is the 21st Show. I'm Brian Mackey. We're listening to an interview I recorded Wednesday afternoon with Illinois U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth. And I left that interruption in because I thought some of you might be interested to hear how an interview like this comes together. Senators and representatives in Washington are often not in control of their time, which makes scheduling these things both a challenge and a leap of faith.

To her credit — and here I'll shout out Grace on the senator's communications team — to her credit, Duckworth had agreed to speak with us for 15 minutes, and she made good on that later in the afternoon. The rest of our conversation sounds a little different. We were on Zoom before, and from here on we're talking by phone, but we picked up where we left off, staying with the topic of America's military.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has called for a high-T Department of War — that's T for testosterone. Meanwhile, the administration has been firing or passing over for promotion women and people who are Black. What do you understand to be happening there?

[00:09:58]
Sen. Tammy Duckworth: What I see is a racist and misogynistic policy by the secretary of defense. When somebody makes it to the promotion ranks, they've already hit all the things they needed to do, right? They've done a good job. They've done multiple years of evaluations that put them above center mass, which is above their peers. They've done their schooling that they need to do, and then they get selected — not just by their, you know, commander, but usually it's two levels up, especially if you're going to be promoted to general. And so by the time you make it onto those promotion lists, you've done everything. You've excelled, you have outperformed your peers.

And to have a secretary of defense personally reach down into those promotion lists and take people off of them — and for him to have specifically taken off every woman who was being promoted to general or [getting an additional] star, and 50% of the Black men on that list — is purely racist and misogynistic.

And frankly, you know, this whole thing with testosterone testing is absolutely ludicrous. I mean, this is, after all, a guy who says that, you know, he doesn't want hormone replacement — he doesn't want hormone therapy. Well, it sounds to me like this is gender-affirming care. If you don't have enough testosterone, you need more gender-affirming care. So now he wants to make it available. I say, if he wants to provide more healthcare to our troops, that's great. Let's also make sure that women can get tested for their estrogen levels, and if they need additional estrogen and additional help for fertility treatments so they can have children, then let's provide IVF. But unfortunately, I don't see that happening under the secretary of defense anytime soon.

[00:11:42]
Brian Mackey: So you made a joke there that was funny about gender-affirming care. On a more serious note on that score, the Trump administration has been trying to eliminate people who are trans from the military. The New York Times recently reported that some of the service members who tried to fight this have not even been allowed to attend their own separation hearings. You know, regardless of what you think of this as a political issue in American life, the story says they refused to cut their hair and appear in the uniform of their birth sex, and the article asserts that this is treatment for troops who abuse drugs, beat their spouses, or steal. I wonder what that says to you.

[00:12:18]
Sen. Tammy Duckworth: Well, it says that we have an incompetent commander in chief and incompetent secretary of defense. Remember that these folks were allowed to serve under their new identity, their new gender identity, and by the way, are competent at their jobs. Some of these people are highly trained linguists. Some of them are pilots. You know, we spend a quarter of a million dollars just to train your average helicopter pilot, and that's when they finish flight school. That's not counting the years and years of additional training and experience that they get. So we're basically purging our military of highly competent individuals who have agreed to serve this nation, and we're doing it in a way that does not dignify their service and their sacrifice.

Just as, you know, we no longer have any four-star female generals — by the way, [Hegseth] and Trump have gotten rid of all of them — and now we're going to get to a point where they start purging us of Black officers. We're going to get to a point where we're back in, you know, the late 1800s, early 1900s, where we have enlisted troops who are, you know, Black and Brown commanded by white men, and that is not going to make our military stronger. If anything, it's going to hollow out our nation's military.

[00:13:30]
Brian Mackey: Last question I want to ask you on this general subject area, and that is about the role of women in combat. You have obviously firsthand experience of this. On the outside chance anyone listening to us does not know your story: Senator Duckworth was grievously wounded in a shootdown of a Black Hawk helicopter she was co-piloting in Iraq. The secretary doesn't seem to think women should have the roles they do in today's military, or that — I guess the generous way to say it — standards have been cut to make that happen. What do you think of that?

[00:13:59]
Sen. Tammy Duckworth: I mean, the standards were cut for him to be secretary of defense. I think it's pretty ironic that the least qualified secretary of defense in our nation's history is talking about cutting the standards for other people. Listen, our nation could not go to war without our military men and women, and we certainly could not go to war without our women in uniform.

If you look at the history — or even recent history in Afghanistan, for example — the Marine Corps stood up Marine Corps Lionesses who did all-female combat patrols because they were able to engage with and question Afghan women villagers and got important intelligence that helped us to combat the insurgents. And so it just shows the lack of competence in Mr. [Hegseth] that cutting 20% of our force is going to make America's military stronger and more effective at fighting our nation's enemies, when in fact what he's doing is hollowing out our military.

[00:14:56]
Brian Mackey: Let me reintroduce our conversation. My first guest today is Illinois U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth. She's a Democrat in her second term. If she chooses to run for reelection, that would be in 2028. In order to accommodate the senator's schedule, I spoke with her Wednesday afternoon.

We need to take a break, but when we return, we'll have more from the interview, including what Duckworth thinks of President Trump's attempt to require proof of citizenship when people register to vote, and why so many Americans feel left behind by our economy.

Before we go to break, I want to take a moment to ask you to consider subscribing to our podcasts. You can find us on Apple, YouTube, Spotify, anywhere you listen. I also want to ask: if you got something out of this conversation, or maybe yesterday's talk about election security, or the day before that where we talked about the trouble surrounding House Speaker Chris Welch, or earlier this week when we talked about Illinois prisons and mental health, or the layoffs at the Choate Developmental Center — if you got something out of those conversations, would you consider sharing it with someone in your life? We'd love to bring more people into the 21st Show family, and there is no better person to vouch for what we do than you. Thank you for listening. We will be back after a short break.

This is the 21st Show. I'm Brian Mackey. It's the 21st Show. I'm Brian Mackey. Let's get back to my interview with U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois. The Democrat is at present the junior U.S. senator from here, but she'll become the senior in January when Senator Dick Durbin's term expires. And when Democrats are hoping to gain control of both the House and the Senate — we'll talk about that in a few minutes.

We recorded this conversation yesterday afternoon, Wednesday. On our program, we had a conversation on election integrity. We didn't spend that much time on what Republicans are calling the Save Act. Can you remind us what that's about, where it stands?

[00:17:13]
Sen. Tammy Duckworth: Yeah, I call it the Save Donald Trump's Ass Act. The act is an act that the president is pushing that even Senate Republicans are not ready to vote for. It basically says that in order to vote, you have to bring documentation to prove your citizenship, and that that documentation has to match your current name. So for the 69 million women — and also some men — who changed their names after they were married, your birth certificate no longer qualifies as proof of citizenship. So your Real ID with the gold star on it that we all got — that does not qualify. Your military ID, your veterans ID will not qualify you to vote. You will actually have to bring either a citizenship certificate, which takes months and sometimes years to obtain, or you have to bring in a passport if you've changed your name from your birth name. And so it will disenfranchise millions and millions of voters from our voting rolls, and in particular the millions — the 60-plus million American women who changed their names when they were married.

[00:18:21]
Brian Mackey: You know, last week on the show I talked with Don Tracy, who's running to be the successor to your fellow Senator Dick Durbin. And he said, what's the big deal? Just go in your lockbox, get your passport out when you go to register to vote. This shouldn't be that hard. What do you say to that critique?

[00:18:37]
Sen. Tammy Duckworth: Well, most Americans don't have passports. It tells me that he — you know, this is a self-funder, right — that he doesn't have an understanding of where middle-class Americans are. And by the way, thanks to DOGE and Elon Musk, the State Department has been so gutted that it now — if you try to apply for a passport today, say you had the extra $300 to $400 laying around, and you wanted to get a passport so that you could vote this November — you probably will not get a passport in time because of the cuts that the Trump administration has made to passport services. So then, you know, OK, now I'm going to pay to expedite it. So that's another couple hundred dollars on top of that. Most Americans right now can't afford an extra $300 to $500 to apply for a passport. It just shows how out of touch this man is if he thinks that, you know, people can just go and jump in their lockboxes and pull out their passports. A lot of Americans don't have passports. And by the way, if you just want to get your citizenship certificate, that takes even longer and that costs even more money.

[00:19:42]
Brian Mackey: The last thing I think we have time to talk about is the economy, cost of living. The consumer confidence index slipped last month, continuing a general downward trajectory from the recent peak, which was in 2021, the year COVID vaccines became widely available. To what do you attribute this long, slow decline in how people feel about their economic situation — and, to be fair, across multiple administrations?

[00:20:08]
Sen. Tammy Duckworth: I think people see the effects of these policies that favor tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans over supporting working families and middle-class families. The fact of the matter is wages have not kept up with the cost of living. College is unaffordable unless you take on massive student loan debt. Gas prices in Illinois, you know, range from just under $4 to well over $4 a gallon depending on where you live. I talked to my farmers — diesel prices for them more than doubled, as well as input prices for fertilizer. And that affects our farmers, but guess what, it's going to affect the average American at the grocery store, right? When you go to the grocery store this fall, your food prices will go up because of the challenges that our farmers are facing right now.

And so, you know, we need policy to support working families. Republicans refuse to extend the tax credits for childcare — we need to do that. You know, they've cut millions of Americans off from SNAP benefits. And by the way, 20% of our nation's active-duty military have actually used SNAP benefits. So this is very much a story of an administration that has favored the very wealthiest Americans at the expense of working families.

[00:21:30]
Brian Mackey: You mentioned gas prices. Before this call, I was looking at that on GasBuddy: $4.30 in DeKalb, $4.04 [in] Harrisburg, $3.93 [in] Springfield. What can Congress be doing about that in particular — that is, you know, so visible and so painful to so many people?

[00:21:46]
Sen. Tammy Duckworth: Well, one of the things that could happen is we could end the war in Iran. My colleagues could vote on any one of these war powers resolutions to not give the Trump administration any more [authority for] wars, any more dollars to wage the war in Iran. And we could reopen the Straits of Hormuz, which would allow gas to flow again, and that would help bring down gas prices.

[00:22:07]
Brian Mackey: There's limits to what you can do as a Democrat in the minority. Should the Democrats regain control of Congress, what for you is job one?

[00:22:16]
Sen. Tammy Duckworth: Taking care of families across the country and making sure that they can afford to live their lives, right? So for me, affordability is a big issue. I would love to add an option in healthcare for people — 50-year-olds and older — to buy into Medicare. I think having a public option on the exchange so that people can get good access to healthcare — you know, I'm on the exchange. I think support for families for childcare, and I would love universal pre-K education. The fact of the matter is high school graduation rates are predicted by literacy rates in fourth grade, and the kids with the highest levels of literacy in fourth grade are the kids who attended pre-K.

We need to make sure that most American families are not spending 30% or more of their income on childcare. People can't go to work because they can't afford childcare. People can't build wealth because they're stuck in debt for medical crises and medical bills. And I would love to attack the housing affordability crisis where people can't seem to be able to afford their first homes. So there's a lot on my list of things I want to do, and always to make sure we support our nation's veterans and that they get all the care and support that they've rightfully earned.

[00:23:31]
Brian Mackey: Senator Tammy Duckworth, thank you for taking the time to speak with us today on the 21st Show.

[00:23:35]
Sen. Tammy Duckworth: Thanks for having me on.