The Democratic Women’s Caucus (DWC) this week announced the election of Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández (D-N.M.) as DWC’s chair for the 119th Congress, which starts in January. Leger Fernández served as the DWC vice chair in the 118th Congress and will now lead the largest ever DWC, which includes a record-breaking 96 members in the new Congress.
Leger Fernández is a 17th-generation daughter of rural New Mexico. She served on the American Bar Association Commission on Women in the Profession, and as a public interest lawyer, she helped secure nearly a billion dollars for Head Start and healthcare clinics in New Mexico and solved jurisdictional issues that contributed to the abuses of Native American women.
Ms. executive editor, Kathy Spillar, sat down with Rep. Leger Fernández, to discuss priorities for the DWC—both to fight back against what will be repeated attacks by the Trump administration on women’s rights and programs benefiting women and their children, as well as strategies for moving forward toward equality.
This interview has been lighted edited for clarity.
Kathy Spillar: It’s so wonderful to meet you, and congratulations on being elected chair of the Democratic Women’s Caucus! I have followed your work and the work of the DWC, and am very excited to talk with you today.
Let’s start by telling me a little bit about the Democratic Women’s Caucus, why it was formed, and why it’s still needed.
Leger Fernández: The Democratic Women’s Caucus is made up of all the Democratic women who serve in Congress. In the last four years, we spent a lot of time looking at policy that we could get passed, and we did great things in the 117th Congress—from the child tax credit, to looking at how we address reproductive healthcare.
We also pushed the administration, the Biden-Harris administration, to take action that supports women. And I think there are some key pillars to that, that support women’s economic prosperity, that support lowering costs for women and families, that support women’s reproductive healthcare and freedoms.
We actually have a fourth pillar: protecting women against sexual violence, because in this moment we are in, we recognize that that is also an important pillar to the work we must do, like the Violence Against Women Act, which is key to women’s safety. But right now, we have nominees to the cabinet who would not honor the Violence Against Women Act and would be likely charged if the allegations [against them] are true, under some of the provisions that the Violence Against Women Act is intended to cover.
Spillar: You’re taking over as chair of the DWC at a very challenging time, that’s for sure, because you’re going into this new administration and a very different posture than you were, obviously, with Biden-Harris. And so much of Project 2025, which is the blueprint for the Trump administration, is aimed at attacking women’s equality, women and children. To name just a few, Project 2025, calls for ending abortion, for curtailing contraception, cutting food and nutrition programs supporting mothers and their children, eliminating Head Start childcare—which I know you’ve been a very big advocate for in your home state of New Mexico, rolling back women’s workplace rights.
Where do you think the first attacks are going to come at? Have you all, as a caucus, begun to wrestle with where and when these attacks are going to come and what you can do to fight back?
Leger Fernández: Well, the reality is the attacks have already started coming. We need to acknowledge that Project 2025 was being implemented by the House Republicans under Speaker Johnson. So just today we have been debating a rule for the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a rule which would eliminate the ability of military parents to get care for their transgender children, interfering with the ability of a family to make decisions, healthcare decisions. They [the Republicans] stripped from the NDAA agreed upon provisions to allow IVF for service members.
So when we raised the alarm about Project 2025, we were saying they are doing it already. We anticipate that they’re not going to slow down and they’re going to attack each of those areas: our reproductive freedoms, our ability to make the same amount as our male counterparts, economic equality, but also economic prosperity.
We know they’re going to come after some of the programs that have led to some of the largest increases of small business applications by women, especially by Latinas. By the way, Latinas are having a marvelous surge of opening small businesses because of the Biden-Harris policies, which are actually because of the work that Democrats did in Congress. So we know it’s going to come on all fronts.
The attack on nutrition programs is in their [Republicans’] farm bill proposals that we have already seen. Now, the difference is when Democrats held the Senate and the White House, they could not get that done. But right now, that they have the trifecta, they will try harder than ever to [pass an] agenda that harms women.
The Democratic Women’s Caucus is going to look for those policy wins where we can convince a handful of our Republican colleagues that it is the right thing to do to support women and families.
Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández
I don’t understand why you would be a senator from a rural state and say we want to do away with nutrition programs. Those nutrition programs not only make sure that the children in your schools aren’t going hungry, they also invigorate your rural economy.
I represent a rural district. In fact, I am the Democrat that represents the largest rural district held by a Democrat. I know these things, and when they cut those nutrition programs, they’re hurting both my farmers and ranchers and the students in our schools. And I don’t understand why Republican senators and members of Congress will do those things to their constituents. But they do. They seem to care more about the biggest corporations, about the “billionaire bros” of Trump, than they do about their own constituents.
Spillar: Well, that’s what it’s all about, right? The billionaire bros and the largest corporations. They are creating harm for the overall economy, as well as for their constituents. And it makes no sense, because in the long run, we’re all going to pay more for the damage that’s being done.
Are they going to try and attack the contraceptive mandate in the ACA?
Leger Fernández: I do think that they will try to attack all of the provisions protecting women’s access to reproductive healthcare, yes, and especially because the ACA provisions for contraceptive healthcare are recent enough that they could go after them next year, right? So anything that was enacted after, I believe, August, we anticipate that they will go after those swiftly under the Congressional Review Act. … I anticipate that they will propose legislation to undo some of the benefits that the Biden-Harris administration was able to secure in the Affordable Care Act.
Spillar: Now the Republicans are going to have a very narrow majority to start with in the House in January. Do you anticipate being able to combat their actions?
Leger Fernández: I want to start out with this: I’m overjoyed that the Democratic Women’s Caucus is going to be 96 strong next Congress. That’s our largest-ever caucus, which shows you that slowly, the Democratic Congressional Caucus is looking more like America.
The members of the DWC range from every part of this country. We are Latinas and Asian Americans and Native Americans and Black Americans. We have varied life histories. We also have suffered through many of the pains that our American women constituents suffer—we’ve had miscarriages, we’ve had abortions, we’ve almost died during pregnancy. We’ve had family members who’ve died from suicide and drug overdose. We’ve struggled. We come from households that have struggled to pay rent, from single-mother households.
We represent America’s women because we are America’s women, and that background is so key to how we govern and legislate—because we know what our own families have suffered and gone through, and what their aspirations are, and so that’s what we bring to the table, is we look like America. We are America, right? And we bring that to the table when we fight for these issues.
Spillar: And the problem, of course, is that the underrepresentation of women in Congress all too often means that women’s voices and life experiences are missing from the deliberations, the debates—even from consideration, because you’ve got a whole crowd there that isn’t and doesn’t look like America and hardly understand these critical issues. That’s the importance of women’s representation. It’s absolutely critical to getting better decisions made in this Congress.
Leger Fernández: I didn’t hold former Speaker McCarthy in very high regard for lots of reasons, but one of the things he said that was true, he said that when Democrats stand up to applaud a president during the State of the Union, we look like America, [but] that when Republicans stood to applaud, they looked like an exclusive golf club.
Spillar: Yes, you can see it immediately when you watch [the State of the Union] on television! There’s no question about it. No question. Ms. used to publish photos of Congress, of corporate boards, gatherings of technology executives, of meetings of foreign heads of state … and the captions asked, “what’s wrong with this picture?” It’s the same problem just about everywhere.
I want to ask you about the mass deportations that Trump has promised. And obviously, you come from a border state, many of the families in New Mexico will be impacted. What are strategies for fighting back as this starts to happen?
Leger Fernández: Well, there’s going to be a lot of legal issues. It is both unconstitutional and against existing law to separate families, as the incoming president has suggested. How cruel is it to say that we will deport citizen children because their parents might not have their documents? So, one strategy is to appeal [to the courts], both how mean these policies are, and they are unconstitutional. You cannot deport citizens from the United States, and when they do roundups, they will be rounding up American citizens who are adults as well, because that just is what happens when you try this. When they’ve tried this in the past … you happen to look Chinese, you happen to look, you know, Mexican or Salvadoran, you happen to look like somebody who you don’t think should be in the country – you are violating, you will violate American’s civil rights.
But a more important aspect of this is the economic perspective. Immigrants perform some of the most essential tasks in this country, from caring for your children in daycare centers to caring for your grandmother and grandfather in nursing homes. They are doing those difficult jobs of picking our food, of [working in] poultry facilities that are difficult, that are smelly, that are dangerous, so they are doing jobs that we rely on. And if we engage in mass deportation, we are going to impose an incredible penalty on American families where they’re going to be paying more for their childcare, for their elder care, for their food, for their construction, all of the things that Americans said we wanted to address our economic condition is going to get worse – an unabashed betrayal of the reason why certain people said they voted for [Trump]. They said we’re concerned about the economy, yet every time he speaks or his billionaire bros speak, they talk about policies that will impose an economic hardship on regular working families, right? Elon Musk was just here [at the capitol] saying, oh, there’s going to be hardship, but don’t worry about it. Right? That hardship might be something he doesn’t have to worry about with his billions. But working families, and especially families that are headed by women, are going to suffer. So, it’s a complete betrayal of the trust that voters placed in Trump, and he hasn’t even started yet.
And he’s threatening [to get rid of] birthright citizenship, is going to attack a child born in the United States of noncitizen parents. It’s just you cannot do that, and we have to remember that he is doing this to see if he can govern from a place of fear.
It is both unconstitutional and against existing law to separate families. … How cruel is it to say that we will deport citizen children because their parents might not have their documents?
Rep. Leger Fernández
Now we need to remember that this is what fascists do. And I remind everybody, it is Trump’s own generals and own people who worked with him who used that word to describe him. So people who are closest to Trump described him as a fascist. But look at what fascists have done through history: Hitler wanted to make sure he could demonize a people, and he demonized Jews, and he demonized lesbians and gays. He demonized Polish people, he demonized a wide swath of people, but it was by demonizing people that he was able to gain the power that he did to wage World War II.
This is what tyrants do. They want you to not pay attention to what your needs are, but to get angry at somebody else.
The Democratic Women’s Caucus will be telling the stories of how [Trump’s] policies impact you in ways that I think are going to be moving—because it is moving. It is the kind of pain we’re going to see that is going to tear our hearts apart. And we’ll make sure that we are telling those stories. The Democratic Women’s Caucus will be gathering and listening to the women’s stories across America so that we can retell them—whether it be rural, suburban or urban—to be able to understand what it is, but then to look forward to something better.
I want to remind everybody that when Democrats were in charge, we passed a child tax credit, which reduced the number of America’s children living in poverty, by 50 percent. What an amazing thing to celebrate! And that’s the kind of stuff that Democrats do: We bring people up. We raise families up. We support women. We do not try to control women. We support women and all of their needs—whether it be economic, whether it be health or whether it be safety. And we can work with women’s organizations across our country.
Spillar: So how can women’s organizations—organizations that are working for women’s rights and children’s rights and for equality—work more closely with the Democratic Women’s Caucus?
Leger Fernández: We are inviting people to come in to participate with us. We are moving into an era where we are going to be more aligned and connecting with all of the different organizations.
You know, first off, come to our website. We’re setting up a way so that we can connect, so when we issue policy advisories, that we will be sending them out to all of the organizations, so those organizations can then share them with their own constituents. I call it guerilla storytelling. We’re going to be engaging guerilla storytelling. We are gathering our rebel force of joyful women warriors to make sure that we call out abuses. But then look for a future where we do have these freedoms, where we can achieve economic independence and prosperity.
We call upon everybody to join forces with us, and we’ll be having hearings, we’ll be having gatherings, we’ll be sending out policy advisories that are going to be very much in the way of storytelling. You know, we’re not going to get lost in in the weeds of legislation that sometimes people say, well, it’s not section 106 subsection D. No, no. They want to take away your ability to access ideas, right? So, when they want to take away your ability to get affordable childcare, we will be being very specific about what it means in your life.
There’s a lot of firepower on the other side. But what we have is each other’s stories, and we have the policies that actually serve people better.
Rep. Leger Fernández
Spillar: Consider Ms. magazine as a portal for these stories and ideas. And from time to time, we want to be able to come to the DWC for you to recommend one of your colleagues to talk with us … about childcare investments or investments in the elder care economy or attacks on reproductive healthcare, or, you know, whatever.
Leger Fernández: That’s exactly what we want to make sure we do. The DWC is really 96 amazing experts in their field, right? We’re 96 women who are experts in their field, and who could speak to all of these things. We want to make sure that we use every mode of communication available to us. Because we know that we’re out-gunned. When you have the billionaires who control social media outlets and major media outlets, when you have Mexican billionaires who are lending their Spanish language media outlets to Trump, there’s a lot of firepower on the other side.
But what we have is each other’s stories, and we have the policies that actually serve people better. We need to make sure that we communicate those policies and what it means to America’s women. That is our goal, and because we once again, because we are the women of America, we will be able to overcome those structural challenges.
Spillar: Right, right. There’s no question the Republicans’ agenda is very unpopular. It polls very unpopular. So we have a good chance of fighting back. The feminist movement used to do more big lobby days—you know, there used to be literally thousands of people who would come in and swarm the Hill to advocate or oppose something. It’s been missing.
Leger Fernández: I would love that because, you know, somebody pointed out we didn’t have the big marches. It’s like, well, we don’t need the big marches right away, right now. What we need is a more targeted march, right?
With [the Republicans’] slim majority, we need to have women marching into certain key Republican Congress members’ offices to say: This affects me, and I’m going to tell everybody in my book club about what you did, I’m going to tell everybody you know in my neighborhood and in my Facebook where you stand on this issue.
That makes a difference, because when you have very tight races, they need to pay attention to what their constituents are doing. So doing that would be so helpful, because we only need to get two or three [Republicans] to save Head Start.
I think we can save Head Start. I think we can save the nutrition programs because there are a lot of people who don’t like the idea of cutting those.
We’re not going to be able to save everything. But let’s get the wins where we can, because the Democratic Women’s Caucus is going to look for those policy wins where we can convince a handful of our Republican colleagues that it is the right thing to do to support women and families. And the only way we do that, it’s not just by, you know, [what we do]. I can be very persuasive and insistent. I get a lot done here in Congress because – watch me on the floor. I’m always on the floor talking to someone, but what will persuade them is women from their own districts.
Spillar: Is there anything else you would like to say?
Leger Fernández: Reach out to us. And if it’s something that, you know, Ayanna Presley is the expert on. We’ll say, No, that’s Ayanna. So we get you who’s going to give you the most background.
Oh, and our incoming class is great too. They’re fabulous.
Spillar: Thank you. And again, congratulations!
