Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin represents Maryland’s eighth congressional district, but in another sense, he’s the democracy-at-large member of Congress. He’s helped craft legislation to repair the basic foundations of representative democracy, and to codify reproductive rights now imperiled by the U.S. Supreme Court. He’s also recently held hearings to face down the state level gag-orders banning honest discussion of our racial past in American classrooms. Raskin is best known for serving as the House manager of former President Donald Trump’s second impeachment, for Trump’s role in fomenting the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. He now is a select member of the House subcommittee investigating the uprising, which he candidly describes as an attempted coup from the right.
The Forum is pleased to publish the second installment of its interview with Rep. Raskin. Forum Editor-in-Chief Chris Lehmann spoke with the congressman in early May; the discussion has been edited for clarity and length.
Chris Lehmann:
We’ve all heard you and others on the January 6 commission speak so eloquently to the real mortal threat to our democracy—using the word coup, using the term sedition. Why aren’t we hearing this sort of language more widely on the Democratic side? Don’t we have to force people to look at reality, and to understand that the Republicans are going to kill American democracy if they’re not defeated?
Rep. Jamie Raskin:
That’s right.
Lehmann:
And they are now the party of sedition and the coup.
Raskin:
Yeah. So many members of Congress, including me, were on the inside and did not see the full dimensions of the violence and brutality that were trained on our officers. There were 150 of our officers, many of whom are Black and Hispanic, who suffered broken jaws, necks, noses, vertebrae, fingers, arms, legs, concussions and traumatic brain injury.
But on the inside, we didn’t see that. It wasn’t until the impeachment trial that people began to get a glimpse of the character of the assault on Congress and on the people defending us. Similarly, those of us who are immersed in the details now, understand that the attempted coup was an attempted coup. Not everybody sees that. It’s still possible for people to look at the whole situation and just see chaos and mayhem.
But there was a method to the madness, and that’s the burden of our hearings, to demonstrate both the premeditated political assault on the election in order to destroy Joe Biden’s majority in the Electoral College. And then also to examine the violent insurrection that was unleashed against us parallel to the attempted coup.
Lehmann:
I know you can’t divulge what you expect will surface in the hearings, but what would you like to be the three main takeaways from the final January 6 commission report?
Raskin:
Well, I don’t want to get ahead of myself by doing that. But I believe that we will do our job if we are able to reconstruct the sequence of events leading up to the attempt to overthrow Biden’s majority in the Electoral College and seize the presidency for Donald Trump.
But we also have to demonstrate how the violent insurrection happened and what were the coordinate intersections between the violent insurrection and the attempted coup. That’s what I’m aiming for. That’s the first part of it. And then we need to address how America can repair and fortify our democratic institutions and processes in order to prevent the success of coups and insurrections in the future. The political scientists tell us that the key indicator of a successful coup coming is whether there has been a recently failed coup where the coup plotters can map out the weaknesses in the existing structure and improve their methods going forward.
Lehmann:
Right—it’s like a stress test, but to create more stress.
Raskin:
That’s right.
Lehmann:
I want to discuss the prospects ahead for Democrats this midterm cycle, particularly in light of the leaked draft opinion overturning the Roe decision and rolling back reproductive rights. Could this be something of a wake up call to a lot of people on the liberal center, broadly speaking, who practiced an instinctive politics of institutional deference? I was very heartened to see you go on The Rachel Maddow Show right after the leak and remind viewers that the bulk of the Supreme Court’s history has been one of acute reactionary support for the agendas of the wealthy.
Raskin:
Yeah. Reactionary and conspiratorial politics basically.
Lehmann:
And now we’re seeing that veering back in that direction after what was, I think, just an aberrant phase really—a handful of decisions from the Warren Court, and that’s about it.
Raskin:
Yeah. Well, you and I see it exactly the same way.
If we lose the House, if we lose the Senate, then we could be looking at federal anti-abortion legislation that makes it a crime everywhere.
Lehmann:
Right. And I guess my question now for small-d democratic politics is what are the best paths forward to rescue the rights that are now being openly endangered by this elite reactionary institution? Not only the right to choose but obviously, voting rights, and the monied capture of our election process. What is the best way to exert pressure and to channel energies away from institutional deference—i.e., the tradition of hoping that Ruth Bader Ginsburg somehow could live forever?
Raskin:
Well, let’s see. I mean, in the narrowest frame, if we can hold the House and we can win as few as two senators too so that we would be up to 52. But I guess, 53 would give us a margin of easy breathing. But basically, if we could hold the House and we win at least a working 52-vote majority in the Senate, we could do what the House has already done, which is to codify Roe v. Wade with the Women’s Health Protection Act. Get it through the Senate by virtue of either overthrowing the filibuster or at least, cutting out an exception to the filibuster for the vindication of basic personal rights and civil rights. And then we’d be able to pass it there, and we’d be able to codify Roe and create that as a federal right.
Lehmann:
But isn’t the obvious objection there that there will be an immediate set of court challenges? And with this majority, the Supreme Court would strike down any such legislation.
Raskin:
Well, yeah. What they would have to say is that the exercise of Congress’ powers, under section five of the 14th Amendment, cannot extend to the protection of personal privacy rights that don’t exist. Although, there are, of course, a bunch of other cases, contrary authority, that say that the Congress can use its enforcement powers to go beyond what the Supreme Court has said. It’s one way to move forward.
The other way, of course, would be to legislate in such a way as to at least, leave it up to the states. Because let’s imagine the alternative: If we lose the House, God forbid, if we lose the Senate, then what we could be looking at is federal anti-abortion legislation that makes it a crime everywhere.
Lehmann:
Right. And I assume people in Democratic leadership are figuring out how to get that message front and center going forward?
Raskin:
Yes. There have been nonstop meetings since all of this has happened. And one of the interesting points that surfaces for me is that the pro-choice groups and leaders are emphatic that we not treat this as a done-deal decision. One, because it’s not. Then two, because we don’t want to let them off the hook if and when they come back with this draft decision as a decision or something worse. And we want to make sure that it doesn’t function like an inoculation.
Lehmann:
Right—and speaking of conspiratorial thinking, it seems plausible that this leak was at the behest of a true believer on the right wing of court politics who wanted to commit to the Alito version early.
Raskin:
Yeah. I mean, it’s quite possible that what we have is a leak by somebody on the right—including Ginni Thomas, whose name I’ve heard several times from others in Congress. This would be in order to lock in the conservative majority and to prevent any untoward erosion by Chief Justice Roberts. It looks like it might be an attempt to seal in an anti-choice majority and then expose Roberts to attacks on the right.
Lehmann:
Are the Ginni Thomas reports credible? Are you able to connect the dots?
Raskin:
Well, no. I don’t know. I mean, it’s just certain members of Congress on both sides of the aisle speculating that this is where it may have come from. And it certainly might have played a double role of displacing some of the attention from January 6. Although, I think it will have the opposite effect, really, of underscoring the importance of the January 6 hearings. Because the same people who are willing to override the constitutional order on January 6 and have Trump seize the presidency, are also happy to override the last half century of precedent of personal liberty rights.
Lehmann:
Exactly. If there were a clear Ginni Thomas connection here, wouldn’t there be additional grounds—in conjunction with his spouse’s role in January 6—to pursue an impeachment of Clarence Thomas?
Raskin:
Well, of course, Clarence Thomas would have to be impeached for something that he has done. We need to show high crimes and misdemeanors of somebody who’s being targeted for impeachment.
The same people who are willing to override the constitutional order on January 6 and have Trump seize the presidency, are also happy to override the last half century of precedent of personal liberty rights.
Lehmann:
Wouldn’t releasing the draft opinion to one’s spouse count as a high crime or misdemeanor?
Raskin:
Well, theoretically, that would. In other words, if the leak was from Clarence Thomas to Ginni Thomas and Ginni Thomas to the press. I think then—I mean, that would only be poetic justice for all of the right wingers who are now out looking for the leaker like this is the worst thing that they’ve ever seen.
There’s also a push [from the right] against our select committee to investigate the January 6 insurrectionary violence, which took more than a half dozen lives and nearly toppled the government. They don’t want an investigation into that; they’re demanding an investigation into [the leak from] the Supreme Court. But it would be indeed be poetic justice if it led to their hero Ginni Thomas—which to me, seems like the single most credible hypothesis I’ve seen.
Even the handful of clerks on the court who worked for liberal justices, most of them just want to be law professors. And I can’t imagine that any of them would go out on a limb and endanger their entire career just to get this out early. But it does seem comical to me that my right-wing colleagues in Congress find this so egregious and they’re trying to distract everyone from the substance of the draft decision. I mean, it’s like if somebody had leaked the Dred Scott decision or leaked Plessy v. Ferguson. All right—you can talk about it for a moment, but the real story is what’s in the decision.
Lehmann:
I also wanted to ask you, in your book, you’ve written very movingly about the emotional trauma of losing your son just prior to the January 6 insurrection and how so much of your work in trying to preserve the structures of our democracy is in homage to his memory. How have you found this fortitude to continue this effort amid unthinkable adversity in your family life? And more immediately, where do you get the wherewithal just to do the work you’re doing right now and continue to have hope?
Raskin:
My dad always used to tell us when everything looks hopeless, you’re the hope. I grew up with that sense of built-in responsibility and guilt along with the other kids in my family.
And this is definitely the work that we are in. And I don’t want to leave it unfinished. I want to see it through. And I do feel like I honor Tommy when I do work that I think he would be proud of. I don’t see this as a vacation from grief and mourning. I see it as an enactment of Tommy’s highest values and beliefs.
I get a lot of hope from the young people I see all over the country. And they’re a great generation that is really beyond the racism and antisemitism and misogyny and fascism.
I also derive a lot of hope from the struggles that Americans have had in the past because this has been a very tough time on people, especially young people. Covid 19 was isolating and demoralizing. The whole Trump administration has been depressing as hell for liberals and was designed that way.
Chris Lehmann is editor-in-chief for the African American Policy Forum, and editor at large for The Baffler and The New Republic. He is also the author of The Money Cult: Capitalism, Christianity, and the Unmaking of the American Dream (Melville House, 2016).
