Audio: Rep. Jennifer McClellan (D-VA04) Says We Are “Absolutely” in a Constitutional Crisis – “This is fascism, this is something I never thought I would see in the United States”

See below for audio and highlights of Rep. Jennifer McClellan (D-VA04)’s latest interview with Zerlina Maxwell. But first, I’ve just got to say that it’s striking how much better, in terms of the quality of questions and the time/space to respond in depth, than you’d get with almost any “mainstream media” interview with a politician. I mean, imagine about how this interview would have gone if Rep. McClellan had gone on “Meet the Press,” “Face the Nation,” “This Week,” etc., and as you listen to this interview on Zerlina Maxwell’s show, compare/contrast in your mind. To me, the difference is enormous, both a credit to Zerlina Maxwell on the positive side and a sad commentary of the state of the corporate media on the negative side…

With that, here are some highlights, followed by the audio.

• “I always focus on how we can address the maternal health crisis generally and the fact that Black women are three times more likely to die in child birth than white women…Black women tend to have disparities across the health care spectrum and the maternal health crisis is just one example of all of that.”
• “So…in Congress and in many states we’ve expanded Medicaid coverage…It used to only cover the first six weeks after birth for pregnant women and we expanded it to cover the first full year, because again a lot of women and black women in particular, they don’t die from complications in the first 6 weeks, they do within the first year.“
• “So all of the Republican efforts to cut Medicaid, which they they keep lying and saying they’re not going to – but the Congressional Budget Office has said they can’t reach their 880 billion dollar goal in cuts in energy and commerce committee that covers healthcare without it – these cuts are going to make the maternal health crisis, and many of the other health care disparities that we see worse.“
• On the “SAVE Act”: “So essentially it’s a poll tax…what it does is it requires every voter to provide documents to prove your citizenship before you can register to vote. And oh by the way, the only documents allowed under the act cost money. So it’s a real ID, a passport, a certificate of citizenship – these range from $42 to over $1,000, and the only ID that is free is a military ID if you also have all of your papers…that shows where you’re stationed. But oh by the way, the bill basically eliminates mail and online registration forms, so if you’re military stationed overseas or away from your residence, you have to show up to register in person. And what a lot of people don’t realize is if your name is not the same as what was on your birth certificate, it’s a lot harder to get a real ID or a passport and you’ve got to basically prove your chain of custody of your name. Well, 80% of women that get married change their name. So now you said to married women, you said to active duty military personnel, you said to homebound voters, you can’t register or we’re going to make it very difficult for you to register. This is voter suppression 2025, this is poll tax 2025, this is Jim Crow 2025.”
• “[Republicans] are very good at propaganda and they are very good at obfuscation and misinformation. And so they say this bill is to stop this crisis of non-citizens voting, which that crisis doesn’t exist – it’s already illegal for non-citizens to vote, they can go to jail for it, I haven’t seen anybody prosecuting anybody for this. So we’ve seen no evidence that it’s actually happening and when they present the bill they say, ‘Yeah this is all it does, it just says you know you have to provide these documents.’ They don’t go the next step to say ‘Well these documents cost money.’ And that was a red flag for me, because you know Zerlina, I took my oath of office on the Bible that my father kept his poll tax receipt in from when he first registered to vote in 1947. So the minute I saw this bill, I asked my staff, ‘What are the documents that count and how much do they cost?’ And every single one costs money. And I’m like, ‘That is a poll tax which is illegal under the Constitution, under the 24th amendment.’ But most people who are watching the news or hearing this,  they’re not triggered to ask that question because their parents didn’t have to pay a poll tax. So [Republicans are] very good at wrapping up their voter suppression in the propaganda and blaming their boogeyman for some fake crisis that makes people not ask questions.”
• Are we now in a constitutional crisis, given Trump ignoring court orders, deporting people with no due process, etc.? “Absolutely! And Zerlina, it’s worse than you said…He wasn’t just removed. I mean, imagine you are driving home with your 5 year-old child, you were pulled over by masked men, who grab you, handcuff you, throw you in a car, transport you to an airport, put you on a plane, send you to an El Salvador prison where your head is shaved and then they say ‘Oops we sent you by mistake.’ They admit to the court ‘We did that by mistake.’ And now they say ‘Oh well we can’t get you back.’ And have the president of El Salvador sit in the White House with the president of the United States and say ‘oh we’re not sending him back, never mind the Supreme Court in a unanimous decision said to do it.’ So this is not just a constitutional crisis, this is fascism. This is something I never thought I would see in the United States. And now he’s talking about sending American citizens, right? It’s horrifying. And every American should be outraged by it.” 
• “The images from that prison reminded me so much of scenes from the Holocaust. And again, these are things we never thought could happen in America, where we have a due process clause in our constitution that prevents exactly that from happening. And this president who swore an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, is ripping it to shreds – while congressional Republicans sit by and do nothing.”
• “At the end of the day, it is going to be the courts and the American people who are the final backstop to determine if our republic survives. And so our job is to make sure the American people know what’s happening and make their voice heard. And we can help them do that. And then we can make sure that these lawsuits get to the courts…I still have faith that at the end of the day, the Supreme Court is going to do its job of oversight. But if we put enough pressure on my Republican colleagues to do their job, we only need three in the House. And we have seen when the American people start to turn on the president’s policies, he backs down. So it really is an all-hands-on-deck moment…We need the press to do its job, we need members of Congress to do their job, but ultimately we need the people to make their voice heard and say ‘This is not what we voted for, this is not who we are as Americans, we demand that you stop.'”
• “If it can happen to him, it can happen to you. What Donald Trump is doing, it begins a slippery slope where you can be disappeared if you disagree with the leader. And I believe that the vast majority of the American people, even if they think that we have a crisis at the border, even if they think – and Democrats agree that we have to reform our immigration system, but we have to do it in a way that recognizes the humanity of immigrants…again go back to the SAVE Act, the SAVE Act is designed to target immigrants…and designed to target non-citizens. But by requiring citizens to jump through hoops to be able to vote…it’s not just about brown people with tattoos, it’s about human beings, it’s about a father who was in his car with his 5-year-old son going home from work who is not a gang member, who did nothing wrong and is now sitting in a prison in El Salvador. And the administration admits it was by mistake. If it can happen to him, it can happen to you”