Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland’s Eighth Congressional District, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, told a standing-room-only crowd at Wellfleet Preservation Hall on July 11 not to give up hope about the redemption of American democracy. “A rally a day keeps the fascists away,” he said, to laughter and applause.
About 220 people paid at least $100 to attend the event, which was also a fundraiser to elect Democrats to Congress. Several, alerted by the sponsors that the turnout would far exceed the supply of seats, brought their own lawn chairs to hear Raskin speak outdoors in the garden.
A former professor of Constitutional law and longtime Wellfleet summer resident with his wife, Sarah Bloom Raskin, the Congressman spent part of his 35-minute talk explaining how President Trump’s executive orders violated the Constitution.
Article I, on the powers of Congress, Raskin said, is extensive and detailed, since the founders of the nation gave all of the lawmaking power to Congress. Article II, on the presidency, is short. Other than his power to make appointments and give pardons, his main duty is to “take care that the laws are faithfully executed,” Raskin quoted, letting the irony speak for itself. “And he is commander-in-chief of the armed forces, not commander-in-chief of the country,” he added.
“The President has been systematically violating and usurping the lawmaking powers of Congress,” said Raskin. “He has been arrogating to himself the power to defund federal departments we have created and funded, to rewrite federal laws we have passed, to destroy programs we have created, and to exercise Constitutional powers which belong plainly to us, like the power to impose tariffs or suspend habeas corpus.
“The Framers put the representative branch of the people in Article I for a reason,” Raskin went on. “We were overthrowing the tyranny of a king and establishing the overarching sovereignty of the people. The Framers repeatedly invoked the dangers of one person being able to make important decisions like going to war. … Madison said the very definition of tyranny is the collapse of the legislative and judicial powers into the executive power, and that is precisely what Trump is trying to do on a daily basis.”
Raskin began the evening by introducing local folksingers Lucy Kaplansky and Patty Larkin. Kaplansky opened with Bob Dylan’s “Chimes of Freedom” (“Flashing for the refugees on the unarmed road of flight … and for each unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail”). Larkin followed with Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land.”
Raskin, who blends wit and warmth with real erudition, recounted the experience of listening to Trump’s March 2025 address to Congress. He explained that each member is permitted to bring one guest.
He brought with him his constituent Dr. Lauren McGee, a leading pediatric researcher at the National Institutes of Health who had lost her job in the DOGE firings. “Early in his speech, Trump stated that one of his goals was to wipe out childhood cancer,” Raskin said. “Dr. McGee was amazed, since he had just wiped out the childhood cancer unit at NIH.
“At one point,” Raskin continued, “Trump said, to great amusement, that they had deleted eight-and-a-half million dollars from the NIH budget for creation of transgender mice. That didn’t sound good to me, so I asked my assistant about it. She texted me an article from 10 days before debunking that story.
“It was a line item for creation of transgenic mice — they injected them with DNA — to do research on asthma and HIV/AIDS. They obviously knew this, but they put it in the speech anyway. I turned to my guest, and I said, ‘I’m sorry, we’re being governed by morons.’ ”
Trump, said Raskin, is “turning us into a gangster state. Due process, the two most beautiful words in the Constitution, are under constant attack in the criminal and immigration justice systems, which is ironic because no criminal defendant has ever invoked due process or benefitted from it more effectively than felon Donald Trump.”
Raskin described the current Republican Congressional contingent as “a cult,” blindly following Trump’s policies. He added that he was committed to the struggle and that democracy would survive. “It’s not the heat,” he said, “it’s the stupidity.”
The event gave those listening a lift. “I was very moved by Jamie’s optimism and sense that we can be redeemed,” said Pandora Peoples, the programming director at Preservation Hall.
Robert Kuttner is the co-founder and co-editor of the American Prospect. He lives in Boston and Truro.
