In terms of your other questions, let’s start with whether or not it’s a fair ballot, as you say. So much of the Machiavellian manipulation of our elections takes place long before Election Day. Take North Carolina, where I’ve been several times over the course of the campaign. The Democrats have won the governorship. The Democrats have won the attorney-general position. The Democrats are about to win, in a very resounding way, the U.S. Senate position, with Roy Cooper. So, when you look at what’s happening statewide, the Democrats are dominant. But then when you look at the U.S. House delegation, North Carolina’s congressional delegation, that’s ten Republicans and four Democrats.
That’s kind of strange, right? The Democrats are clearly a majority in the state, and yet the Republicans dominate the congressional delegation. Why is that? It’s very simple. It’s because the Republicans have been gerrymandering themselves into power in the state legislature for decades, and, by doing that, they are able to gerrymander the U.S. House delegation as well.
So when you say, “Will it be a fair ballot?” No, it’s definitely not a fair ballot. The Republicans swear by gerrymandering. The Democrats have tried—in the Democracy for All Amendment, in the For the People Act, and in the Fair Representation Act—multiple times to mandate independent, nonpartisan redistricting commissions in every state in the Union. Every Democrat has voted for it, and every Republican opposes it.
And then Trump created this mid-decade, extreme gerrymander in Texas, to squeeze out five more districts. It might backfire on him; nonetheless, it’s certainly worked in some other states, and they’re going to make it work more in 2028. So, if you just start with the gerrymandering—and don’t even get to the other forms of voter suppression that are taking place—no, it has not been fair balloting. Nonetheless, we accept the rules as they are, and we are fighting to win within those rules.
Let’s say Democrats win, at a minimum, the House of Representatives. What maneuver, what form of rhetoric or action, do you fear the most, and what seems the most likely to come from the White House?
Well, the most dread prospect is that Democrats will win U.S. House seats, but the various election officials in charge will somehow try not to grant the certificates of election, requiring everybody to go to court.
Where are Democrats most vulnerable on that score?
Texas is one place where the ground is totally shifting in a pro-Democratic direction. Those five gerrymandered seats that Donald Trump wanted to squeeze out—certainly we’re going to win two or three of them, and we could win four or five. And so there will be so much frustration and embarrassment on the side of the White House that they may try to create some kind of fraudulent pretext for attempting to block them. So that’s the kind of thing that we’re ready for.
We remember when Donald Trump called up Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, and said, “Just find me eleven thousand seven hundred and eighty votes.” That was not Donald Trump trying to stop election fraud. That was Donald Trump trying to commit election fraud. He was caught red-handed, and the whole country saw it. We know that they have been trying to replace the Brad Raffenspergers of the world in red states with people who will simply do Donald Trump’s bidding. And so I suppose that that would be my biggest fear.
But I don’t want that to overshadow the great hope I have that we are going to see a massive repudiation of the authoritarianism, the war, the illegal tariffs, and the corruption that have descended upon our government.
You are the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, and you would have a lot of sway on impeachment proceedings—should that ever happen. If the Democrats take the House, do you think that impeachment proceedings are far off for Donald Trump?
I’ve got a lot of thoughts and ideas about this. First of all, the Democratic caucus is not afraid to impeach. We impeached Donald Trump twice. He has fifty per cent of all the Presidential impeachments in American history. We understand that it’s a political device that’s been put into the Constitution by the Framers, and it’s been put into the political branches. They literally debated whether or not the trial for high crimes and misdemeanors should take place in the Supreme Court, and they decided, No, it belongs in the political branches.
So what does that mean? When Democrats say, “Well, should we start off impeaching Donald Trump for his palpable transgressions against the Constitution, or should we start off by getting everybody their Medicaid back, and their A.C.A. tax credits back, and getting everybody that we can their health care?”—that’s not an illegitimate question to pose. That’s precisely the question the Framers wanted us to pose, because impeachment is a political instrument reposed in the political body.
So we have to consider it in the full context of the public-policy agenda. And we’ve got to meet the needs and the agenda of the public very quickly, for millions of people. For example, the destruction of SNAP benefits—we’ve got to get those people back on SNAP benefits. So—
But, Congressman, if I may, I think what I’m reading here, then, is someone who at once believes in his heart and in his mind that a potential impeachment, technically and legally, could be there, but who senses the greater politics and desires of the public to move on with it, and do things that affect their pocketbook. And senses their greater sense of urgency, perhaps with it in mind that two attempts didn’t work the first time—it didn’t go all the way. Is that fair?
That’s all fair, but, when you use the phrase “move on with it,” it makes it sound like the public doesn’t care about constitutional corruption and transgression; the public cares deeply—
Not that it doesn’t care but that it’s a matter of priority.
Well, that’s absolutely right, and the point I’m making about the history, the Framers, and the creation of the impeachment power is that that’s precisely the calculation the Framers wanted us to be engaged in. We’re not afraid of impeachment, and we’re not even afraid of a trial in the Senate—despite the fact that Donald Trump has only tightened his political stranglehold over the Republican Party. Liz Cheney is gone. Adam Kinzinger is gone. Mitt Romney is gone. He got rid of Senator [Bill] Cassidy. So we know he’s exercising even tighter control now.
