So First off, we heard about your
diagnosis for a type of cancer.
Just how you doing? How you feeling?
Yeah, I'm hanging tough.
I I have 6 chemo treatments.
I've done one of them,
and I'm hanging tough.
And the doctors are very optimistic.
And I'm extremely optimistic,
you know, based on what they told me.
But, you know, feeling a little
cold and tingling in my fingertips,
the neuropathy and then.
Uh, they they're assuring me my hair is going
to fall out and it's starting to, you know,
starting to feel a little thin, brittle.
So it is what it is.
I might end up wearing a bandana where
one of my friends on the Capitol
police force offered me a hat today.
He said get me a capital police
officer hat so I might end
up going down that road.
You just talked a lot about
the physical symptoms.
What about just mentally?
I know it can't be easy
hearing those words.
You have cancer. Yeah.
Yeah, I mean it's obviously
a heavy thing for you know,
a family to to hear that.
But the good news is that the the kind of
cancer that I've got which is a diffuse
large B cell lymphoma is extremely treatable.
They say it's curable and they found
it early. In my case it's stage two.
So they're very optimistic and I'm very
optimistic and I really obviously hope,
but I I plan on getting through this.
Treatment look like so far and how has
it impacted your role down on the floor.
I hear that they've got you sort
of in a closet or something.
Well yeah the the main problem is
that I'm immuno immunocompromised
because when you do chemo it destroys
your your white blood cells and
so your immunities are way down.
So I'm I'm not able to be out on the
floor with all the other members
for an extended period of time
which means that last week when we
were there for you know whatever.
60 or 70 hours.
I was in a little office off of
the floor and then I would come in
for five or 10 minutes to vote.
And you know,
and that's that's tough for a
natural born political extrovert
like me because I wanted to hang
out with my colleagues,
but I I just ended up tweeting a lot.
I'll
go right to that.
What was it like last week?
I know you didn't quite
have a first hand view.
You had the room adjacent
first hand room,
yeah, I mean.
Well. I I think that as time went on.
The magnitude of the dysfunction began to.
Settle in on people,
because here we were taking up.
Huge amount of time, huge amount of
energy at the Congress for what has
been for a century a very simple task,
which is electing the speaker based on
the person who's won in their caucus.
But because of the dysfunction in
the Republican conference, you know,
they forced McCarthy to 15 different votes
and he had to just give the store away
on his path to assembling a majority.
And it was just a lot of.
Gaps in a lot of dysfunction that we
had to live with and I think it was a a
pretty shocking thing for a lot of our
new colleagues who just got elected to see.
And I I want to talk some politics with you.
But first, just to return to
your cancer diagnosis. I mean,
it's been a tough couple years for you.
You had the loss of your son and then
the heaviness of January 6 and now this.
I mean, what's been your
emotional state over this time?
And has it made you want to stay in
politics more or more likely to get out?
No, no, I, I'm,
I'm in it for the long haul, man.
I, I'm very committed to, you know,
doing those things that I originally
ran on in terms of strengthening
democracy and voting rights.
And we obviously have democracy under
attack all over the world, from, you know,
Russia's brutal invasion of Ukraine
to the assault on voting rights and
political freedoms and lots of societies,
including ours.
So I feel extremely passionate
and devoted to this work and.
Uh, you know,
I obviously carry the the memory and spirit
of my son Tommy with me in this work.
He was somebody who was a great
champion of human rights and political
freedom and animal rights as well.
And so I.
You know, I've made that part of my mission.
And um, you look,
we had a great Congress in the
last Congress in terms of the
investment in infrastructure,
$1.2 trillion investment in the roads
and the highways and the subways and
the ports and airports and broadband
in the rural areas and so on.
The Inflation Reduction Act with
lowering prescription drug prices,
lowering healthcare costs and so on.
So, you know,
we are making democratic
government work for people.
But we're in the middle of
that process and we've got,
you know,
a long way to go to meet the needs
of the country and then to confront
the big emergency of our time,
which is climate change.
So emotionally,
you know.
There's no doubt it's been a roller coaster.
January 6th was just a cataclysmic event
in the history of American democracy.
But I felt very good about being
on the January 6th Committee and
about the report that we did,
about the criminal referrals that we issued.
And I feel like we're making progress,
and that's good.
So when Democrats lost,
the majority of the
committee came to an end.
So that's over now.
What do you think there are lasting?
Impacts from it?
Or what do you hope are the
lasting impacts from it?
Well, look, I mean, you know,
my dad used to say that democracy
needs a ground to stand on,
and that ground is the truth. And so.
The first thing that our committee
did was to assemble the facts about
what happened and get the truth to the
American people so people can understand
what we were up against in terms of
Trump's attempt to overthrow the 2020
election and essentially set aside the
constitutional order in search of his,
you know, perpetuation of his stay in office.
So I feel that we did our job in terms
of establishing that historical record.
Somebody wants to come forward and say,
no, you got it all wrong with
your more than 1000 witnesses,
mostly from the Trump administration,
the Trump White House, the Trump family,
you got it wrong and it was
really Antifa that did it.
It wasn't Donald Trump.
Then, you know,
bring on the evidence and show the evidence.
But we looked into that.
We didn't see any evidence that Antifa
was involved in any way at all.
So.
Umm, I think that we've told that story.
I think that we have communicated the
public the necessity of fortifying
democratic institutions going
forward so that we're shoring up
voting rights and electoral process
and we are defending ourselves
against who's insurrections,
electoral sabotage and political
violence going forward.
I want to talk a little bit
about the next two years.
You guys are now the minority party,
at least in the house.
What do you anticipate?
That you may be able to find compromise on,
like when it comes to the Republican
Party that's now controlled the House,
where do you think you
could find middle ground?
Well, I'm thinking about that
very specifically in the context
of my committee because I've,
I'm taking over as the lead Democrat on the
oversight and Accountability Committee.
And there's so much important bipartisan
or nonpartisan work that we can be
doing in terms of reducing waste
and corruption and inefficiency in
government. I mean, you think about the
Pentagon budget, which is
3/4 of a trillion dollars, $750 billion,
there's so much that we can do to make sure
that that money is not going to waste and
everybody should have a common interest.
And everybody should have a common
interest in making sure that the big
laws that we passed in the last Congress
translate for people. So for example,
in the Inflation Reduction Act,
we said that diabetics in the Medicare
program are limited to 35 bucks
a month for their insulin shots.
That's a life saving measure that's
going to save thousands of dollars for
people with diabetes and it's going to
make sure that people are not rationing.
Their care.
But we need to make sure that that
promise on paper actually translates
and is making it to the population of,
you know, millions of people
with diabetes in the country.
So that's the kind of oversight
we should be doing.
But instead,
you know what my colleagues across the
aisle are promising that we are just
going to be hearing about more about,
you know,
Russia Gate or Hunter Biden and his laptop
computer and all that kind of stuff.
And I don't think.
That that is an effective use of
the resources of Congress to do
oversight to make sure that the
public is getting the benefit of.
Our public programs and our tax dollars.
So two things on the on that committee
First off that just you state the
statehood legislation come through
that committee oversight yes yes.
So it seems unlikely that they would
you would that would pass in the house
with a Republican majority to get
really deep in the weeds here what are
your thoughts on retro session which
would be Maryland taking back DC.
On TC statehood,
the first the good news for champions
of DC statehood is that the House of
Representatives has now passed it twice.
And that was something that was
considered impossible 5 or 10 years ago,
and now it's passed twice in the
House of Representatives and.
Every member of my party voted for it.
So now we've lost control
very narrowly in the house.
So it's not going to be on
the agenda for two years,
but the Senate could pass it if they
get the same kind of overwhelming
unanimous support on the democratic
side that we got on the House side.
But I think people are recognizing that
statehood is the major mechanism by
which people achieve political parity
and equality in American Society.
I mean, we started with 13 states.
We've added 37 states.
The vast majority of Americans live
in states that were admitted after
the original compact of 13 was formed,
so there's nothing weird or unusual
about adding new states to the Union.
The people who live in Washington,
DC, 713,000 of them,
are the only residents of a national
capital on planet Earth who are not
represented in their own legislature.
And, you know,
unlike the people who stormed
the Capitol on January 6, 2021,
and beat the hell out of our police
officers and tried to kill them and
spear people with Trump flags and
Confederate battle flags and American flags,
the people of Washington have
a real political grievance,
a valid political grievance.
They're disenfranchised.
They're fully taxed, they're drafted,
but they're not represented.
And the people of Washington
have not stormed the capital.
They have not attacked our officers
and they've not turned violent,
but they are seeking admission as a state.
And I think that Congress should
act as quickly as possible
to approve their petition.
And we're in a similar
situation with the people,
Puerto Rico,
3 1/2 million American citizens
there who are.
But we we disenfranchised and don't even
have the right to vote for President.
Of course people in DC do under
the 23rd amendment,
but people in Puerto Rico
are totally disenfranchised.
And retrocession, which would
give them voting rights?
Just it would be for Maryland Senators
and Maryland representatives.
Well, there's obviously an historical
precedent for retrocession in that the
Fairfax County and Alexandria and Arlington
portions of Virginia were retroceded
to Virginia by Congress in 1843 there.
It was basically slaveholders who wanted
to go back to Virginia because they
were predicting and correctly predicting
that Congress was going to abolish the
slave traffic within Washington DC.
So Congress certainly would have the
authority to redraw the boundaries
of the district,
either to create a new state or to
retrocede the lands to Maryland.
The only thing is that the people of
Washington haven't asked for that.
The people of Maryland.
Having acted on it and there are lots of
states that used to be part of other states.
For example,
West Virginia used to be part of Virginia,
Tennessee used to be part of Virginia.
You know, Vermont used to be part of New
York and Maine was part of Massachusetts.
And so, I mean,
there's nothing particularly unusual
about kind of a separate political
identity and history developing
in a community and the people.
Washington have been seeking
their their statehood and you know
that's something I think that all.
True blue democratic patriots
would want to support
retrocession is the perfect
solution except for nobody wants it.
But my next question is just,
you know, what are your goals.
You know it's been six years in the house.
If like if a Senate seat
opened up if one of the long
long serving senators retired.
Would you want that? Gee.
Well, my goals when you first said I
thought you were talking about what
my public goals are and I certainly
have lots of public goals that.
I've been working on,
and we've been making progress on lots of
the environmental stuff that I want to do.
The Chesapeake Bay Goals
we're making progress on.
We want to intensify that.
We want to expand the investment in the Bay.
And climate change remains the overarching
civilizational emergency of our time.
And, you know, those are the things that I'm,
you know, most passionate about working on.
So, you know, in terms of my
own political career ambitions.
I have had not a minute to focus on
any or all of that stuff, you know,
and I know that there are potential
different opportunities down the road.
And, you know,
I'm sure I will check everything out.
But right now,
I'm just hoping that,
you know,
do as good a job as I can do on
the oversight committee as the
ranking member for the Democrats
and to keep fighting for the
democratic program in Congress.
And I did. I did have one more career
question, but real quick I wanted
to ask about the news of the day,
your thoughts on the oversight
committee about them finding classified
documents at the the Biden facility.
What what are your,
what are you learning about that and
what's the latest you're hearing.
I mean it's obviously, you know,
alarming to hear about any
classified documents that are,
you know, set astray.
I'm glad that they,
they happened upon those,
they found them, it was a handful of
documents and they did the right thing
and they returned them immediately.
It was not hundreds of documents,
it was relatively few and they were returned,
so I don't know much more about
it at this point.
And, you know,
look forward to following the details.
Last question, as I look and we're
going over my 15 minute a lot of time,
I'm just looking back at your career
in Congress aligns with my time back
in DC I got here in September 2016
and you were elected in November
2016 and I remember meeting you at
some campaign event way back then.
What do you think you've learned
over these six years where you've
been in Congress and and since then
I should say you were a very junior
member back then in a solidly blue
district and now you're on CNN.
All the time.
And you're on cable news all the time.
I mean, what have you learned over this,
this experience in the last six years?
Well, history plays tricks on all of us,
you know, we we don't know where
history will take any of us.
Many things have happened in my life
that I never would have expected
or wanted to happen, you know?
But I'll say this that.
The struggle to protect democracy and
freedom is central in our century.
We have autocratic regimes like Putin
and Russia and Orban and Hungary and
she and China and Bolsonaro and Brazil
and Marcos in the Philippines and.
You know. You just go down the list, OK?
There, the autocrats, the dictators,
the bullies are on the March and
they believe that democracy can't
survive because of climate change,
because of immigration.
Because, uh,
authoritarianism and racism and
anti-Semitism really have to be the the
standard for what humanity can expect.
So.
The struggle to defend democracy
and make it work for people,
the struggle to defend freedom and the
Constitution are absolutely central
to politics in our century and so.
I feel like I'm in the right place
for myself sometimes people say,
do you miss teaching constitutional law?
I do miss being with students.
But I also say, you know,
I'm still teaching constitutional law.
They don't always get it,
but I'm still teaching constitutional law.
And I feel like I'm in the right place
in terms of articulating the kinds of
values that we need to hold fast to as
a society so that America will continue
to be the world's greatest multiracial,
multi ethnic, multi religious,
constitutional democracy,
the envy of the world.
I mean that's what we.
Have been, and that's what we need to be.
And we need to be a leader for democracy,
we need to be a leader for freedom,
and we need to be a leader in the fight
against climate change to save humanity.
So I feel very bound up in
that process right now.
OK. Well, I appreciate your time.
I wish you the best of luck with your
treatment. I hope all goes well.
And thank you for making the time,
Evan. Thank you very much.