Stead. Shes the Principal Deputy director of dni, the director of National Intelligence so shell be able to come up here and talk about some of the stuff that shes pursuing. So with that, im going to introduce jessica ditto, whos a Deputy Communications director and shell be moderating this panel. Los angeles with Heather Wilson, Heather Brand associate general attorney and sue gordon, executive director of dni. Hello. Good afternoon. Thank you for being here and thank you to everyone whos tuning in on cspan and youtube and those of you in the audience. Its not often that you get to follow the president on stage, so thats a lot of pressure for me. But lets first start by giving a round of applause to our first panel discussion, we really appreciate those of you who took your time to be here today. Lets give a round of applause to the first group of panelists that we have. We have a Diverse Group of women from a wide variety of communities across the country on stage to discuss an issue of top concern for women and frankly all americans. National security and Public Safety. Its our pleasant ure to have arkans arkans now it is my honor to introduce three more leaders of the Trump Administration to talk about the many ways we are addressing the National Security and Public Safety concerns of our nation, Heather Wilson, secretary of the air force, rachel brand associate secretary at the department of justice, and sue gordon, director of dni. Thank you, sue, for being here with us. Secretary Heather Wilson of the air force leads 660,000 active duty guard, reserve and civilian forces as well as their families and she oversees the air forces annual budget of 132 billion. Prior to joining the Trump Administration, sue was the first south Dakota School of mines and technology. Sue, thank you for being here, we welcome your remarks. You may start. Well, thank you so much jessica, i just wanted to start out by mentioning a few things. It was actually 27 years ago today that the United States air force kicked off desert storm. After Saddam Hussein invaded kuwait. So 27 years ago today. I was actually a young staff member on the National SecurityCouncil Staff in the building right next to us here. In the ensuing 27 years, the United States air force has been continuously involved in combat operations, for 27 straight years. And on this day 27 years ago, we had 134 fighter squadrons in the United States air force. Today we have 55. Last year, with last years budget submission, the president s budget submission started to turn the corner to start to restore the readiness of the force and our ability to meet future threats. We have got a long way to go. To restore that capability to defend the country, but were committed to do so. I look forward to your questions and the discussion that we have today. Thank you. Thank you. And now i would like to introduce rachel brand, associate attorney general at the department of justice. She serve as the third rank officer including the office of violence against women and the Service Members and veterans initiative. Welcome. Thank you for that introduction, and thanks to all of you for being here. Its a real honor to be on stage with Deputy Director gordon in our efforts to defend the homeland and National Security. Im going to talk about protecting americans from violence and crime. To Public Safety is essential for us to enjoy all the other things we like to do as humans and for the government to carry out every mission that it has. So we at the department of justice are really committed to bringing down Violent Crime and a variety of different kinds of crime. The first is Violent Crime. In 2015 and 2016 we saw a pretty dramatic increase in homicide rates and Violent Crimes around the country. So when attorney general sessions came on last year, he expressed a commitment to bringing those numbers down. The numbers for 2017 are too soon to know with any certainty, but those Violent Crimes have plateaued and may even be beginning to go down. And were doing everything to ensure thats the case. One of the ways we do that is express publicly that we stand with our state and local Law Enforcement officers. We believe in our men and women in Law Enforcement and were going to do everything we can to stand with them both in bringing individual cases against gangs and thats within our power. And another thing were doing is focusing on the worst of the worst violent offenders, a few criminals commit the biggest portion of Violent Crimes. You can get them out from our reign of terror of street crime. So the attorney general ordered all of our attorney generals offices around the country to do that, focus on the worst of the worst. Part of that focus is a gang known as ms13, this is a trance National Gang that prides itself on using the most brutal, violent tactics possible to commit its crimes. It also recruits members by threats of violence and force, so a lot of times teenagers dont want to be in the gang, but theyre forced into the gang. We brought vastly more charges on Violent Crime than we had in the years before at the department of justice. The second issue i would like to talk be that actually ties into ms13 and this is the issue of human trafficking. Ms13 is a Drug Trafficking organization, but has started to barrage out into other criminal enterprises such as sex trafficking of girls. I think a lot of people are surprised to learn that this is a prevalent problem are around the u. S. , we hear about it from our state and local attorneys, the victims are at truck stops, theyre in cities, theyre in depressed rural areas, theyre at kcaseiinos on the strip. Traffickers see them as a commodity, unlike drugs that you can only sell once, you can sell trafficking is something that happens to someone against their will. This is another area where we are throwing all of our resources, and of course were bringing our Law Enforcement resources to bear, prosecuting the traffickers. Part of this is really public education, because if everyone from er doctors to flight attendants to casino workers know how to spot the problems, we can make more arrests. We have turned it over to local Law Enforcement. For example there was a state Police Officer in georgia who at a traffic stop noticed a girl in the back seat and with a few well placed questions realized he was the victim of trafficking and was able to rescue her. Thats what that kind of training can do. Then were funding Victims Services providers. This is not just the right thing to do, it is the right thing to do. A traffic victim has a long, hard road of recovery ahead of her. So finding Service Providers is if a victim can be stabilized enough to participate in the prosecution of traffickers then we can bring more traffickers to justice. And a new initiative that the doj has, is sexual trafficking in housing. Sexual harassment doesnt really capture what were talking about here. This ranges from a landlord letting himself into a womans apartment and assaulting her and giving her a choice between eviction and sexual favors. We have seen this as an issue in all types of housing, its our Sexual Harassment housing initiative, we have a 1800 hot line, we have a website because we want everybody to understand that nobody has to put up with abuse. We recovered over a Million Dollars for those victims and we would love your help in getting the word out about those services and helping us help victims. Allow me to introduce our third speaker, we have the honorable sue gordon who is the fifth Principal Deputy director of the National Intelligence, she has spent her esteemed career serving our country. In particular, she focuses on advancing intelligence integration across the ic, expanding outreach and partnerships and driving innovation across the community. With nearly three decades of experience in the ic, sue has served in a variety of leadership roles. Ms. Gordon served for 27 years at the Central Intelligence agency before that, rising to Senior Executive positions in each of the agencys four director rats. There are few who know more about this issue than sue, so were happy to have you here as part of our panel, thank you. Thanks, jessica, im sorry that secretary neilson isnt here, i enjoy listening to her perspective as well, but i am delighted to be here. I love the craft of intelligence, it is to me the most fundamental of all american disciplines. I think of it as knowing the truth and seeing beyond the horizon and allowing our leaders to act before events dictate. When you think of it, you most often hear of it in terms of Counter Terrorism or counter proliferation or regional instability. Maybe cyber threats. But, you know, one of the things that you probably dont hear as much about is our role is trance National Organized Crime or humanitarian and disaster relief. When i think of the arc of my career and how the changes have been in terms of participating directly with the American People, part of it is our involvement in state and local tribal become aware of the history thats going on in the world and making it useful for some of the domestic issues that we all face. Lets face it, this is a massively interconnected world and now our ability to take the body of knowledge that we have acquired since 1947 and make it available through the other departments of the administration, to Law Enforcement and to other a activities is i think one of the great advances that we have made. Its not just through government entities, but National Security increase glkreecreasingly is pa public sector, and partnering with dhs, or the fbi in order to share our intelligence. Let me leave you with a couple of things. I think there is nothing more important than we can do is to have a conversation with the American People about what we do and why we do it. Transparency is so important. Its important to recognize that in our craft, it isnt a National Security or privacy, its a National Security and privacy. And one of the conversations that we have recently had with you all is over a thing called 702, which is protecting our ability to be able to look at whats going on overseas and make it available so we can keep america safe. So when you think about our craft and as we talk about this, i just encourage you to think of the arc of what intelligence provides, and the manner in which it affects the day to day lives of americans. As a woman, when i started in 1980, i was in office of 780 scientists and engineers and there were two of us who were professionals in that 780. If you would walk into that same office now, you would find the leadership is about 50 50. The people who are making the great advances, the interns we have coming in, so when we think about a discipline that is predisposed for diversity of thought, independent thought, big purpose, i think it is a discipline that we have seen has grown with the women in the discipline, so im especially delighted to be here with you, thank you very much. Now we get to turn to our panelists on stage with us and take some questions. With that, im going to follow our press secretarys model and have each of you pass around the microphone and introduce yourselves to our guests. Thank you. Testing. Can you all hear me . We will start with you. Please introduce yourself. Im leslie russell, arkansass attorney general, good to be with you today. Im suzanne merrill, utah, a republican and a strong trumper. My name is carolyn bunnywelch, im the sheriff of pennsylvania, just to let you know, theres 73 municipalities in chester, one of them is nottingham, so i am the sheriff of nottingham. Good afternoon, im kathy swan, state departmenti iof new. Good afternoon, and thank you for having you all here, its a pleasure to discuss womens values and womens issues. My name is lily zebo and im from colorado. I served in the state legislature for four years and now im a county commissioner in jefferson county, its the Third Largest county in the state of colorado. My name is teresa yawn, im from greensboro, north carolina, and im a consultant for an Education Company there. Im from iowa and im from the aiowa director of human rights. Good afternoon, im michelle fiore, remitting fabulous las vegas, nevada as a councilwoman and its so great and its such an honor to be here serving under a president who is making America Great again. Well, with that well go ahead and turn to our panelists for questions. Would you like to go first . So, as our president campaigned and vowed to make America Great again, he also vowed to increase military spending. And you kind of touched on it and so i want its a twopart question that i have and one is, where are we today with the readiness of if something were to happen . And where are we with funding in case of a global threat . Let me take that one. I think all of us are concerned about the longterm readiness of the force, but i got to tell you, that if the nation called, the air force tonight, we would be there. Thats the way airmen are. If we have to fight tonight, well be there. The question on readiness for all of us is not whether well go, tell me youll come back. Thats what low levels of readiness mean. So our responsibility and secretary mattis has been very clear, our number one responsibility is to restore the readiness of the force, to win any fight, any time and allow our airmen, soldiers, sailors and marines to come home again, thats what were trying to achieve. The president s budget that he put forth for fiscal year 18 that were already four months into or so starts to restore the readiness of the force and turn the corner. But for the ninth year out of ten, we have started this year with a continuing resolution, and the air force, and the department of defense is not going to see kwequester ourselv but we still live under a law called the budget control act, that if there isnt an agreement in congress to get the budget control act or to lift the defense caps, we would have a sequester, if we have a continuing resolution at last years levels, it is effectively sequestered. The air force had to go through sequester once before and it was particularly devastating. We need pilots. If we go through sequester, if we dont figure out a way to get beyond this continuing resolution, we will have to we will have no new starts for new programs. I wont be able to assign more contracts for things like additional munitions. And the Pilot Shortage will get worse because im under sequester, about a third of the air force would sit on the ramp and not fly for the last quarter of this year. So unless youre going to combat, or spinning up to combat, youre not flying. Thats devastating. And you cant recover from that, you cant say well well not fly for four months and then recover from it in the next four months. It takes year to recover from a readiness set back like that. So the most important thing that we can do for the readiness of the force is to take this thing off of Cruise Control and get the congress back to budgeting in a normal way and give us some predictability with respect to budgeting, the president s budget that i think will be rolled out on the fourth of february or so will continue to restore the readiness of the force and constantly modernize the force to face the threats of the future and i think the new National Defense strategy will effectively recognize that there are emerging threats that are not just violate extremist threats that are from nation states that we have to prepare for and we have to confront those head on. Ill just briefly add that intelligence is always at war. And so everything secretary wilson said, applies to the Intelligence Community that does everything it can to make sure that we have the most information to best prepare our women and men of the armed forces, but also the weapon systems that we need. So we reduce the uncertainty. What i find the impact of the ten years that the secretary mentioned when we were under budget uncertainty, is that we must attended to the present and what we tend to steal is sour futu our future. The investment in those things going forward. Lays out an objective to show what we need to get there. But it is a challenge, i think the budget that the president has submitted will help us in that direction, but it is a challenge when we dont have budget certainty to be able to prepare for the inevitabilities that unfortunately we have. All right, thank you. And that was such a timely question given the debate thats raging on the hill this week. And thank you, secretary, for laying that out for us. All right, whos next . Thank you, how does the policy of America First different from this administration to that of previous administrations . We have a National Security strategy now, within about a within about a month or so, we will have a new National Defense strategy and a Nuclear Posture review which will then guide our budget submissions. I would say that one of the key elements of that National Defense strategy is working closely with allies and partn s partners. That America First doesnt mean america alone, and we are actually stronger when we have allies and partners with whom we can operate. And where we have interupability, we have a Coalition Today that has been fighting isis in the middle east, destroyed isis, and it was a combination of exquisite intelligence, supported by american Ground Forces and some fantastic airpower that destroyed isis. And i would much rather that we play away games rather than play home games against isis. Were very concerned about the sanctuary cities. And that we know that our president needs to end those sanctuary cities and we are happy about that. But we also know theres mayors across the nation, because the sanctuary cities create a tremendous amount of lack of safety for the states. And especially nknotting california wants to become a own state. How are you going to not let that happen . Do you have any ideas . We share your concern about sanctuary cities, the attorney has been in sanctuary jurisdictions, one state has already enargumected legislatio. Its really baffling because the main concern here is illegal aliens who have committed crimes. Criminal aliens and many of these jurisdictions prohibit their local Law Enforcement from working with the federal immigration. If these sanctuary jurisdictions will say no, we wont cooperate with, we would rather let them go, kmcommitted a homicide, or something, but we would rather let them go than let you have them. The attorney general has limited doj Law Enforcement grants by saying if youre going to receive a doj grant, the condition of that grant is that you dont do that anymore. Its more technical than that obviously, but thats effectively what is done. Some of those agencies have sued us. But its really important that federal immigration authorities have the ability to access state and local Law Enforcement and correctional facilities to deal with that problem, so were concerned about it too. Thank you, first i want to say within one month after our president came into office, he invited ten of the nations sheriffs in to speak with him. And he brought us in not to talk to us, but to hear from us. And he wanted to know what were our concerns in our various jurisdictions and our counties and parishes and states. In that room, there were nine men, north carolina, texas, indianapolis, indiana, and i was the only female sheriff, in fact of 3,020 sheriffs in the United States, there are only three elected sheriffs. I know theres been an increase in various levels, maybe more on the federal levels, perhaps on the state, but i can tell you on the local level, its very difficult to encourage women to enter the field of Law Enforcement. While those of us in the field encourage and try to mentor women, i wonder if theres anything on a National Level or a federal level to encourage more women. We can probably all contribute to that one. But let me start out with that one, 20 of the United States air force today is women. 20 . 63,000 women serve in the United States air force. Which 63,000 is more than the entire raf. And all careers are open to them. And i remember 27 years ago, for the first time, i graduated from the air force academy in 1982, served as an officer in europe during the cold war, for the first time in the first gull war, i remember our senior leaders, colin powell at the time and general schwarzkopf on national television, saying, talk about our men and women in harms way, our men and women in uniform. I had never been included in that way before. It was always before that, our men in harms way. And i remember just being absolutely struck by that i was on a team. I was part of something. Think about the most protective person you know in your life, the person who no matter what, would keep you safe. Theres a lot of people in this room today who are thinking about their moms. Nobody we dont know anyone more protective than a mother whose offspring is threatened. If we want to talk about the protectors, theyre not all guys. And those who seek to serve and protect others who are called to serve, are welcome. In the United States air force. I dont think we talk as much as we might about these things. About the consistency of those values. I think there are a lot of things between intelligence, the military, national service, local service, that are fundamentally about a higher purpose. Doing things for a reason. A feeling of wanting to feel the weight of responsibility, and to make a difference. I think we need to talk more about it. I think we need to go to more schools, where youre at that point where youre trying to decide, i think we need to do more at the junior high, high school levels, where students are trying to decide what theyre going to become, i think any time we talk about it, its inspiring to us. And i think we need to do a little bit more of not letting hollywood be the per va yours of who we really are, because if we talk about who we really are and why we do what we do, i think theres something fundamentally consistent with the values of those protectors, of those achievers, of those aspirers. I think we can do it. Thank you, jessica. Well, first of all, before i direct my question to secretary wilson, i want to say how fantastic it is to be on stage with all these other women, and particularly a female sheriff, that, you know, when i was running for attorney general in arkansas and some of you all may have faced similar questions, but they would ask me, they would say are you tough enough to do the job . And i would simply respond, let me tell you if a girl can get through junior high, she can do anything. They really dont give us enough credit for those years. So my question, madam secretary is, as you probably well know, arkansas and Little Rock Air base, any man or woman going through the air force and working on piloting a c130 comes through little rock. As a matter of fact i have here with me today the spouse of one of our c130 pilots, amandas here with me, and her husband just got are transferred to Little Rock Air base. We love having these men and women there in little rock. We want to have more than our 7,000 active duty, we want to have more than those 5,500 spouse and family members, what can we do more and what are all of the armed forces to recruit and retain folks to be at bases just like Little Rock Air base . The air force doesnt have a problem recruiting people. And heres an interesting thing. No one has ever been drafted into the United States air force. Were all volunteers. No woman has ever been drafted, ever, into the american military. Over 2 million women have served. Every single one of them has been a volunteer. We dont have a problem today in retention. And you know the challenge is that the airlines are hiring, theres a mandatory retirement for Airline Pilots and in order to fly for the airlines, you have to have 1,500 hours of flying time. And its hard to get that if you havent been in the service. So theres a tremendous demand out there, and i think one of the things we worry about, not only for our c130 pilots, but for everyone, is the high operational tempo that we have been asking our airmen to support over the last 27 years. Surge has become the new normal. And so, you know, in a fouryear assignment at Little Rock Air base, you may be deployed twice for six months at a time, your temporary duty, even when youre home, youre not home. You get to the point where theres that balance, you love to serve, youve been called to serve, you feel like youre doing something that matters in your life thats important, but you also have missed every birthday this year, and its that balance thats really important to be able to retain. That means we have got to grow. Were too small for what the nation is asking of us and asking of our airmen and their families, and thats why we have proposed a steady increase in the size of the service and a reduction of the disspiriting duties that airmen have to do when theyre not deployed forward. And theres one other rule, and that is that you recruit an aman and you retain a family. And a little more focus on our families and support for them by the communities in which they live would really matter a lot. And i would say for those of you who are part of state legislatures or active in your communities, there are two things that would help our families a lot. One is universal reciprocity and professional licensure for the spouse for those who are on active service. If you can cut air hair in new mexico, you can probably do it well in colorado without getting relicensed. If you ore a lawyer or a cpa or a teacher or a nurse or an lpn and your husband or wife gets moved to a neighboring state, you should be able to continue to get a job. So universal recognition of licensure and the quality of our schools near our base. Theres nothing that makes you an american airman is more likely to have a College Degree than the population as a whole. They care a lot about the education of their children and so that would make a difference. Good afternoon, i have a question about human trafficking. We live in iowa which has the middle of the capital and the intersection i grew up in impala. You did . Oh, wow, great. A few years ago, aian a a few years ago, aian iowians, say the intersection of 80 and 35, cutting across the country, so the whole idea of kids being but a lot of times at the local level, its hard because they come from all over and they dont stay any place too long and they move on. And i just wanted to see if you have any ideas of how at the state and local level we can work with you, so happy to hear thats a priority at the federal level. We would love to talk with you directly about the issues youre seeing in iowa. We have been working with state and local agencies around the country. Whenever i i was in for example cincinnati a while back and met with the Sheriffs Office and the Police Department and other agencies and you know in some places they have a great collaborative model where all the agencies are working together to find victims, physician your out what is the right prosecutor to prosecute the defender, whether its some local agency that can help the victim, other places dont have as much of a focus on it. One thing that i have heard from Law Enforcement in several different places is that trafficking crimes are often not charged as trafficking crimes, theyre often charged as a drug case or a gun case which is easier to prove because you dont have to prove force fraud or coercion. So if we dont have those numbers, the resources dont follow. So increasing awareness and the prevalence of trafficking, and the fact that it might be happening in your district if your d. A. Didnt prosecute a trafficking case that year, it might be prevalent. We have a problem in America Today and in my community and a lot of the other communities and im sure the sheriff can attest to this, its the lack of trust in our Law Enforcement. What can we do to encourage these communities to have more diversity so that their community of Law Enforcement looks like their Actual Community . It seems like people in general are more comfortable with people like them. So what can we do to encourage that . Well, i think youre right that public trust in Law Enforcement generally is extremely important to the effectiveness of Law Enforcement and many Law Enforcement agencies are very focused on Diversity Efforts for exactly the reasons youre talking about and were focused on that at the federal level as well. In addition to that, i think its really you know, its hard to recruit to Law Enforcement agencies when they feel like theyre under attack or that the public doesnt appreciate the work that theyre doing, and so it may seem like a small thing, but i dont think it is, that the attorney general has really sent a message that we stand with Law Enforcement and we believe that the overwhelming majority of Law Enforcement officers, state, local and federal are keeping us safe every day and are doing their jobs in good faith. At the same time, where theres a bad actor, well absolutely go after that person, because their bad actions undermine the integrity of everybody else. That does not mean that we paint with a broad brush and say that all Law Enforcement officers are bad. To say that we believe in Law Enforcement, i think that will help more people to go into Law Enforcement. With that, we are down to our final seconds. A i want to thank all of our panelists, thank you to our guests that were on stage with us and lets give them a round of applause. Thank you, everyone for coming. As you know, my name is kelly sadler, you all have my email address. If you would like to get information about what were doing, emails about what our priorities are, please let me know and i will include you on that list, additionally, we encourage you all to tweet and share your stories about today, this is an ongoing series and well be having more of these moving forward throughout the year, so thank you so much for your time this afternoon. Sunday on cspans q a, author and harvard law professor noah felt marine, the three lives of james madson. The constitution is James Madisons monument. The whole three part structure of government, the way that the government interacts, the way people speak to each other, they exercise their free speech. All of that is madisons monument. Sort of as was the case in st. Pauls after christopher ran his monument, as you seek his monument, look around you, if you seek madisons monument in washington, d. C. , look around you and youll see it everywhere. Thats sunday night at 8 00 eastern on cspan. Sunday night on afterwards, womens march on washington cochair Linda Sarsour reflects on the 2017 march, and the author of together we rise. And shes interviewed by Heather Mcgee and dmos action. What do you say to them to say to their sisters, that dont march but to otherwise share their culture and beliefs. I say they may not feel like this but were fighting for them too. And we believe in their potential to do the right thing and i know they continue to often times to disappoint, and including to disappoint their white sisters, the 59 that dont vote for republicans. Im not actually loyal to any Political Party and i have been known as a big critic of the Democratic Party for a long time. And i say to people vote your values and your principles and dont assume what this movement is about. And the reason i say that is last year we got into a controversy about pro abortion, pro life and do pro life women need to come and join this movement . We are pro choice, we are a movement that believes that a woman should have the agency to choose whatever it is that she feels is right for her and her family and her body. Ahe dr. David shulkin on Veterans Health care and homelessness. Then later, women foreign ambassadors talk about their careers in global politics. This is followed by an empowering womens symposium hosted by the white house. Cspans washington journal live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. Coming up saturday morning, were getting your reaction to the latest in the debate over funding the government. And politifact editor will discuss her groups report on ca