Representative Cindy Ryu Interview Transcript

This is a transcript of an interview on August 19, 20205 with State Representative Cindy Ryu discussing the 2025 legislative session. The interview transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Oliver J Moffat: What were your top wins for the session?

Representative Cindy Ryu: Yeah… it was a challenging session.

But definitely the bill on hate crimes. Because the prosecutors were having a hard time prosecuting them and convicting them because of the way our law was written.

And the bill itself is like five different words. That's it. Five new words: “in whole or in part.”

Because the jurors thought it had to be the only motive and the only reason why a crime was committed.…

Hate crimes can happen in many different ways… It could be preplanned, or it could just happen along the way of committing a crime…

So with that tweak… it's going to make a huge difference.

OJM: Can you give some examples of how juries were getting confused?

RCR: One was a same-sex couple.

Their unit was trashed by a neighbor… and vandalized, and it had very misogynistic… graffiti in the unit.

And yet, they could not prosecute and convict the perpetrator because it was about other disputes that they had ongoing.

It was an obviously, documentable hate crime.

But because the jury's instructions were [that the hate crime] had to be the only motivation… they could not prosecute or convict on that front. Only the property damage and whatever other disputes they had.

Another one, I believe it was a Korean man, and he was, I don't remember what the exact crime was, but he was obviously called names. And, you know, the typical, which I've been also told, “go back to your country”, you know, that type of hate crime.

And so, especially having gone through the pandemic with, you-know-who calling it the “kung flu” and so on.

It's been… normalized to be hateful.

And so before this law, they would only be prosecuted and convicted of everything else.

But not the hate crime itself.

OJM: I'm also curious about the deep fake bill.

RCR: Yeah… no one showed up for [the bill signing] except me…

OJM: Was there any, you know, feedback?

RCR: No pushback whatsoever… Not that many people voted against it…

Basically, I had heard a story about a… Maryland High School Principal, where over the weekend, basically a disgruntled ex-employee who was … fired by him.

She created and posted… a meme of him saying really racist stuff…

And by the time… he got a hold of it, millions of people had actually viewed it, and so it ruined his reputation, even though it was found to be fake.

And there was nothing they could do because it wasn't a crime..

And so … we need to do something about … that.

And I thought, yeah, we should.

And … a staff member found … we already have something like that… for law enforcement and I think … one other category.

So why should they be the only ones privileged to have access to this?

OJM: Does the bill specifically call out AI?

RCR: Any fake… they use AI to do it more frequently now…

We wanted to make sure it's not the [millions of people viewing the fake], but the first person that created it and posted it knowingly that it was a fake. That would become a crime.

OJM: Any other bills you want to talk about?

RCR: How about the one that I didn't sponsor, but that I helped work on for the last six years?

Right to repair.

This is the Mia Gregerson Bill.

And she and I have a long history, some on the same side and on the other side.

The bill number is: The right to repair digital electronics. House Bill 1483…

Basically, because devices are so expensive…

Well, digital devices, especially Apple products, are designed to fail.

And so, you know, and by the way, here's the brand new and more expensive. Every time is more expensive.

And so the right to repair is a movement that is, you bought it, you own it.

Why should I have to go to either just the Apple repair or turn it in?

Basically designed obsolescence, right?

Initially, Representative Gregerson comes up with really good ideas and she does also just like me go to national conferences. And she heard about this and she absolutely agreed with them, that everyone who has bought a device should have the right to repair it… whether themselves or others are fixing it.

They actually could always do it. But independent repairers could not.

And so basically it reduces costs, obviously, for the consumer, because then they can refurbish it themselves, repair it, and so on.

But it also reduces e-waste, right? Because we are throwing away so many.

And they have the options to repair them.

And so … Apple was opposing it… The Androids are not as much a problem, because they can be substituted, you know, even if you were to buy their own parts, independent contractors, repairers could repair them.

Apple was very unique in that you had to have their people do it and their way…

And so it was basically a captive audience to be an Apple product owner. And so we loosened that up quite a bit. And so hopefully even Apple devices can now be repaired.

OJM: Looking forward, what are you excited about or maybe not so excited about?

RCR: There's so much work to be done.

One, obviously, is the BBB. I won't call it beautiful because it's not beautiful.

The Trump spending bill basically makes it so much harder, especially for Washingtonians, to access benefits…

There's going to be a minimum of 300,000 people, maybe close to 250,000 people, that will have to prove that they are looking for work… in order to access Medicaid and SNAP food stamps.

And so we have to literally bulk up our workforce… support in helping them look for jobs, finding the right job set skills…

It’s a lot of people that we have to all of a sudden, on a dime, have them operate and be educated that they must, otherwise they'll lose all these benefits.

And if they lose benefits, then their quality of life and even ability to feed themselves and their family that’s going to go down. Their access to healthcare is going to go down. Their outcomes are going to be terrible because they won't be as healthy, their nutrition needs won't be met. And especially for their children, it'll be devastating…

There's also the disaster preparedness and disaster response funding that through FEMA traditionally paid for or reimbursed us for it's always on a reimbursement basis.

And for instance, the bomb cyclone, we absolutely qualified by a factor of two or three, as to the threshold… It has to be a certain size of a catastrophe for the federal government's assistance.

They've denied it twice…

On the preparedness side, all of that funding is gone. All of that funding is gone.

So we won't be able to mitigate and reduce the potential for future disasters.

And this is even before we talk about the 9.0 earthquake, right?

So wildfires, bomb cyclones, whatever, rain storms, and floods. All of that that we've traditionally for dozens of years have depended on FEMA assistance, all gone.

OJM: Do you have legislation planned?

RCR: The military department is working on it right now.

I don't know how we can ask for more funding when all that we will be looking at will be, how do we keep people alive?

What keeps the most people as safe as possible, because disasters preparedness and response, even though the numbers are there, for every dollar, we invest, we save $6 to $13 depending on the disaster at the back end.

And we recover much faster from the disaster, which is good, of course, from the personal point of view. But from the community point of view, and economic recovery point of view, all great investments.

But because we always plan on a two-year or four-year cycle, it's not always on the top of everyone’s mind.

We typically hope for the best and keep pushing it back.

So we were operating on, I think not that long ago, like 98 people, FTEs for 8 million people.

I think we got back to like 116 FTEs, but we'll see with FEMA clawing back all the grants, we may drop again down to below 100 FTEs.

OJM: Wrapping up, is there anything else that you would like to make sure that voters hear about?

RCR: Yeah, absolutely.

I've been working on making systems work better.

It may not be that sexy, but for instance, catalytic converter thefts were a huge problem because of the rare minerals in them.

And we've managed to do it both on the recycler side of it and on the… consolidators, you know, the people who show up, text people, and say, “hey, we got cash for your catalytic converters, come and get it.”

They bring in half a million dollars, or a million bucks, bring in a trailer, fill it all up, and ship it somewhere else.

That's been resolved more or less because of the market price, as well as, of course, that if they have six or more, then it's an enhanced time unless they can prove they all came from their own vehicles, right?

So similarly, copper wire is a huge deal right now because the copper price has gone up quite a bit.

And unfortunately, these thieves, they don't know the difference.

They cut not only the copper wires but also the fiber. And it has zero value.

And yet, when that gets cut, lots of people, thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people, lose service, right?

And so T-Mobile and others have voiced concern about it. And so I'm working with Roger Goodman and the King County prosecutors…

And also the recyclers, you know, they would like to be able to buy excess copper, but not if they're stolen.

And so we're working on how to enhance the ability for them to prosecute as well as discourage the frontline thieves from going down that easy money route… Not by targeting them, but actually the consolidators that are encouraging these huge detrimental [thefts].

And, you know, they might get hundreds of dollars for that stolen copper wire, but the impact on the business and on the consumers who will eventually be paying for that additional cost, and, of course, the downtime which probably is contributing to inflationary pressures on us anyway.

So hopefully we can do that at least at the state level.