How one politician devoted his battle for democracy to his lost son. Photograph by Erin Schaff / The New York Times / Redux A Democratic member of the House, Raskin is fifty-nine and represents Maryland’s Eighth District. He was at the Capitol with his colleagues on January 6, 2021, to witness what should have been the routine certification of Joe Biden’s election as President. Instead, he witnessed an insurrection. This bloody assault came just one day after the burial of Thomas Bloom Raskin, the congressman’s beloved twenty-five-year-old son, who had taken his own life. At the Capitol, Raskin told me, he could still hear the sounds of the day before: the prayers of mourning, the clods of dirt shovelled onto the casket. Meanwhile, maniacs shouting deranged slogans and threats were storming down the hallways of Congress in search of enemies. Not long after the insurrection failed, Nancy Pelosi tapped him to be the lead manager of Trump’s second impeachment trial, a task he performed with eloquence and organizational skill. Now, as a member of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, he is once more at the center of the struggle over the Trump legacy and the future of constitutional democracy. —David Remnick, from “A Person of the Year: Jamie Raskin” Read the rest of story. |
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