MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Senator Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat, represents Michigan, where investigators are still searching the ruins of the burned church in Grand Blanc. Senator, thank you so much for joining us this morning.
ELISSA SLOTKIN: Thanks for having me.
MARTIN: And if you could convey our condolences to all the people affected by this, we would appreciate it. How are people in Grand Blanc doing?
SLOTKIN: Well, I think, look, it's just extreme shock. This is the community just next door to the one I live in. It's a small community. It just - it sees fender benders. It doesn't see this kind of violence, so you can imagine this kind of complex act that was literally designed to create terror. It was not just the shooting. It was the fire, and the community is just trying to understand what happened. It is a testament to law enforcement.
I think - I wish people could have seen what they did yesterday, responding to the complexity of this attack. It's just been - they're setting an example, I think, for all of us. They just put their heads down, got to work. There's plenty of time for us to figure out what happened and what the motive was for this man, but it just - it doesn't matter at this point. These people are victims and they're survivors and this community is going to have a long road back to healing.
MARTIN: So the FBI has taken over this case, and it says that the attack was an act of targeted violence. What does that mean?
SLOTKIN: Well, look, I mean, there was obviously premeditation. This man wanted to target this church, and he took a bunch of means to do it. His vehicle. He lit the place on fire. He used, you know, an automatic or semi-automatic weapon to shoot people inside to create real fear, but we just don't know yet why. I think, you know, look, we'll - we will find out in the next few days if there is even - I mean, I don't know what the justification could be, but I think the bigger picture here is just this epidemic of violence. And I think we need to just grapple with the fact that we have people all over the country who are using violence as a way to convey how they feel, whether they're going through mental hardship or they've got an agenda, and it is just a real - just we have to grapple with it as a country.
MARTIN: I was going to ask you about that because we've seen, as I think everybody knows who's paying attention, we've seen a number of shootings recently. We've seen them in all different kinds of venues - at schools, at churches, including a church in Wayne, Michigan, in June. You know, President Trump said that this appears to be a, quote, another "attack on Christians," unquote. You just pointed out this is a complicated subject. We could spend the hour just talking about this. But what do you think needs to happen to keep things like this from happening again?
SLOTKIN: Well, I think we first need to acknowledge we have a problem. I mean, this is going on at a frequency that I think everyone is just astonished at. Acknowledging you have a problem is the first step to recovery, and then we have to understand we've clearly got mental health issues. We've got an issue, particularly with people across the country who feel like there's no threshold to violence, like it's an option for them.
And then we have, you know, of course, just very easy access to guns. And for Michigan, we've had many shootings, you know, in the past four or five years, high school shootings, college shootings, church shootings. And it's all, to me, part of the same thing that people have this, like, no threshold to violence, and we need to grapple with that both on law but also just on support for people who clearly need help.
MARTIN: So before we let you go, I did want to ask you about the spending bill. Republicans need the support of Senate Democrats in order to avoid a shutdown this week. Are you convinced that shutting the government down is the right approach here to force negotiations?
SLOTKIN: Well, look, I'm very happy that President Trump is meeting with congressional leadership today. That's a big step and important. You know, the Republicans have the White House, the House and the Senate. So if they want to have a negotiation, they've got to sit down and talk with people. And certainly, for me, if you want to have a conversation about, you know, getting my vote, you need to talk about what is going on with health care right now. And between these cuts that they've put forward on health care and the fact that every single person listening is going to get a letter from their private employer insurance saying that rates are going up as of January 1 because of that, if you want my vote, you've got to talk about health care.
MARTIN: Twenty seconds here. If you get the concessions that Democrats are seeking, do you trust that President Trump will honor the spending agreement?
SLOTKIN: Well, look, we - that depends on the agreement. The agreement's going to have to lock it down. He's not been living up to some of the commitments in the basic Constitution, that Congress appropriates the money, and he then goes and, you know, funds the government. So it depends on the agreement, that's for sure.
MARTIN: That is Senator Elissa Slotkin. She's a Democrat who represents Michigan. Senator, thank you so much for your time this morning.
SLOTKIN: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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