I'm Brian Lehrer.

This is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios.

It's Friday, April 30th.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand is my first guest today and in a different way than usual.

As many of you know,

the senator from New York generally comes on with us once a month to take calls from constituents,

and she will do that today. But today is also different because one of the changes that she's been trying to bring as a member of the Armed Services Committee seems to be on the verge of a breakthrough. Her goal is

to have sexual assault cases in the military prosecuted by someone other than the local

commanding officer, the reason they too often protect the perpetrators. We'll talk about other things

too, including the implications for women's rights of the U.S.

withdrawal from Afghanistan, President Biden's American Families Plan, and more depending

on time. But her possible breakthrough on prosecuting sexual assault in the military

is our lead. So Senator Gillibrand, always good to have you. Welcome back to WNYC.

Brian, it's a pleasure. Senator, would you remind people of the problem you're trying to address

with sexual assault in the military and how cases of that are handled?

So the problem is there's a scourge of sexual violence in the military and the justice system

in the military isn't working to help and to provide justice for survivors.

2018, every two years, the military has an estimate of how many sexual assaults there are.

In 2018, that estimate was about 20,000.

But when you look at the details of how many people

reported and how many people got their cases moved forward to trial and how many cases

ended in a conviction, the rate of prosecution and the rate of conviction has gone down,

...