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Just five months after being sworn in as president, Donald Trump has embroiled the U.S. in a shooting war in the Middle East, a trade war with our allies and neighbors, and a culture war with those who oppose his policies.
Trump has deployed the National Guard and the U.S. Marines into the streets of a major American city over the objections of a mayor and a governor, and unleashed masked agents to snatch unsuspecting immigrants off the streets and ship them off to foreign prisons.
This seemed like a good moment to check in with Rep. Becca Balint. Balint, D-Vt., was elected to Congress from Vermont in 2022 and is a member of the House Judiciary Committee and the Budget Committee. She serves on the Congressional Progressive Caucus as Vice Chair for New Members and as a Co-Chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus.
She spoke to me on Tuesday, June 24, from her congressional office in Washington D.C.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. The unabridged audio version of this interview can be heard by clicking the audio bar above.
David Goodman
I checked the temperature in Washington, D.C., and it is 100 degrees outside. I’m wondering if it’s even hotter inside the building where you are.
Rep. Becca Balint
It’s pretty hot. Members on my side of the aisle are furious. You had the Trump administration bomb Iran over the weekend, and we still have not received a members’ briefing on it. Members of the House were supposed to have a classified briefing this afternoon but that was just canceled by House Republican leadership. Not only did the president not come to us ahead of the attack, but he also iced out any Democratic members on the intelligence committees and the committees that deal with national security. He has surrounded himself with yes men and even his own people that he’s appointed to advise him on intelligence and national security, he did not listen to them ahead of this. So there is a lot of anger, but also generally fear about the future.
When you have a president who is extremely emotional, seems to make decisions on a whim and does not ask for any kind of deep analysis ahead of the decision making — so yeah, things feel pretty hot and pretty tense right now.
David Goodman
What is your response to the US bombing of Iran?
Rep. Becca Balint
I think it was the absolute wrong thing to do. We never should have walked away from the Iran nuclear deal. We have to continue with diplomacy. I feel like, in this moment, it seems pretty clear to me that our president is not only being played by Vladimir Putin, but he’s also being played by Benjamin Netanyahu.
David Goodman
Explain how this plays into Netanyahu’s interests.
Rep. Becca Balint
This is what Netanyahu has wanted for years, to have an American president intervene in Israel’s longstanding conflict with Iran. And Americans have said repeatedly, they want no more wars. They want us to pursue a path of peace. And that was a campaign promise that the president made as well, right? He said if you elect Harris-Walz, you’re going to be involved in a war within six months of office, right? This is not only exactly what Benjamin Netanyahu wanted for his own political survival, but also to give him breathing room on Gaza, to enable him to take more power in Gaza and the West Bank. It is a way for (Netanyahu) to consolidate power and control.
I don’t feel that this president plays chess. I feel like he makes decisions based on the whim at the moment and who is flattering him, and who is making promises to him or where he thinks he is going to get that feeling that he craves. This is a man who craves people praising him, and that is no way for us to be making foreign policy decisions.
David Goodman
One commentator wrote that your feelings about the attack on Iran either fall into one of two categories: one, that you think this is the end of a war, or two, that you think this is the start of a war. Which do you think it is?
Rep. Becca Balint
Interesting framing. I am highly skeptical of any information that we are getting from this administration, and so I have said in the last 36 hours that there’s a lot that’s happening right now that feels very similar to what happened in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq. You had in this situation of President (Bush) saying this was imminent, that the uranium that was being enriched was going to be used in a nuclear weapon against Israel. It was going to threaten the world. And then you had people within his own administration saying it wasn’t imminent, that actually the intelligence didn’t show that. It’s difficult, if we’re not getting any kind of information from this administration, for us to make an educated decision about what should happen here. Time will tell whether this is the end of the tensions. I have a hard time believing that that’s the case, and we’ll see if this ceasefire holds.
You’ve got a president who, seemingly on a whim, tweets that we have a cease fire between Israel and and Iran and next thing you know, they’re bombing each other and they say that we never agreed to a cease fire. So what is actually happening here? We would like the opportunity to ask this administration directly, as that is our job as Congress to be serving in a position of oversight.
David Goodman
You signed on to a resolution calling for the War Powers Act to be invoked. Explain what that is and what Congress’s role is in these situations, and why you think that’s warranted.
Rep. Becca Balint
Congress has the authority to declare war and to commit offensive force and troops. That is within our purview, that is not within the purview of the executive branch, which I know is confusing for some people, because you have the president as commander in chief. But it makes sense, too, if you’re committing resources, where do you go to commit resources? You have to come to Congress. Congress makes those decisions. And after Vietnam happened, and obviously years and years of the American people and Congress feeling like they had been quite rightly lied to by numerous administrations about how the war was going, there was a strengthening of congressional power through the War Powers Act in the 1970s.
Thomas Massie, who’s a Republican from Kentucky, has put forward a bipartisan agreement to demand that the president comes to us to get that authority to declare or to engage in war with Iran. And obviously that hasn’t happened, but many of us were relieved that Thomas Massie has been a strong voice on these issues his entire career in Congress. We disagree on a lot of things, but as you know, politics makes strange bedfellows, and I was very happy to sign onto his bill.
David Goodman
Let’s turn from violence abroad to violence at home. The murder of former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband and the shooting of another Minnesota lawmaker put a spotlight on rising political violence. And earlier this spring, Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) stated publicly how afraid she was. She said “I am oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice because retaliation is real.” I wanted to get your thoughts on this and also ask, have you felt threatened in any way?
Rep. Becca Balint
I think every single member of Congress feels threatened, feels in danger. We have all lost a sense that we can navigate this job without experiencing some kind of a dangerous situation, either for ourselves or our families, every time that we are asked to be at an event in Vermont and elsewhere too. In Vermont, my team, the first thing they need to do is they need to go over a safety plan with me. They need to call local law enforcement. I need to know exactly where the car is going to be. How are we going to get out of the building? Who is going to be my go-to? This is happening in every single district.
We do not have security details as member of Congress. I was in a huddle with members this morning as we talked about heading out for the Fourth of July parades that we’re all going to be doing, and that you can’t have a security plan for a parade. We were talking for the first time like, is this the year we all start wearing bulletproof vests? This is not what it’s supposed to be like to represent your constituents. You should not fear for your life. You should not feel fear for the safety of your family.
David Goodman
What do you attribute the rise in political violence too.
Rep. Becca Balint
I think a lot of it, not all of it, can be traced back to the kind of rhetoric that this president has used in both of his campaigns. It has been dehumanizing. It’s been demonizing. It has been attacking viciously people that he doesn’t think belongs, whether it is immigrants or migrants, whether it is women, whether it is trans people. I mean, he is attacking viciously the LGBTQ community and it is picked up. He has broken the rules about what is acceptable discourse. Social media has always been a place where people felt that freedom. But it’s not just happening there. It’s happening in the halls of Congress. It’s happening in committees. It’s happening that constituents feel emboldened to say anything, do anything. This movement in which everything is acceptable isn’t going to go away when Trump is no longer president.
David Goodman
A number of Democratic leaders have recently been arrested. Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, New Jersey Representative Lamonica McIver, and of course Senator Alex Padilla of California, who was thrown to the ground and handcuffed for trying to ask Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem a question. And then we saw New York City Comptroller Brad Lander manhandled and arrested. What is the through line that connects all of these instances of high profile arrests of these officials?
Rep. Becca Balint
Silence and intimidation is the goal. It is to create a situation where if a member of Congress is being arrested, if a senator is being wrestled to the floor, if they will do that to a mayor, if they will do that to a comptroller, they will do that to anyone, and they are doing that to anyone. It is about intimidation and silence so that they will have no oversight over what they’re doing, and when we feel fear, when we feel intimidated, then we are not able to do our oversight, but also we won’t have collective action, right? People say to me, Is it safe for me to go out and protest? Is it safe for us to be seen together? I’ve especially gotten this question from people of color. Am I going to make myself a target? That’s what they want, and it’s going to take all of us to stand up to that, because they’re not going to stop until we say collectively No. And they can’t arrest all of us. They can’t.
David Goodman
What should Democrats be doing right now to confront what’s going on?
Rep. Becca Balint
Well, a couple things. One, there’s a lot more happening than people see. Every single day in the house in every single committee, you have Democrats going toe to toe with Republicans who are trying to push the most outrageous legislation. And we need to be listening more than we’re talking.
What’s happening is this administration is burning everything to the ground, and it is horrible. People are losing their jobs. There are resources that are not being invested in the NIH and research, there are attacks on Medicaid. These things are going to hurt people. And we also have to be thinking a few steps ahead, which is, where is the opportunity in that to not rebuild what we had before that didn’t feel like it was serving people.
People want to see us fighting. They want us to see us showing up in difficult conversations and not backing down. I heard from Democrats across Vermont and across the country, they want to see us pushing the envelope more and using power when we have it and not being so timid.
David Goodman
The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that states can restrict access to transgender care, and you delivered an impassioned speech in a House committee. You asked why, with all the problems that the country and the world are facing, there was this obsession among Republicans about trans kids. How do you answer that?
Rep. Becca Balint
It was a strategic decision that was made by the Republican Party. This is no accident. They sat down with their strategists and they realized that they had sort of lost the battle on rights for gay Americans, and they were looking for a new enemy. And what they realized is that most Americans didn’t have a lot of knowledge about the lives of trans people, and it was a very easy target for them. This is a tiny percentage of the population. That is their answer to anything that we bring up in committee, trans people are to blame. Don’t focus on the fact that you can’t pay your bills, somehow the fact that trans people want health care, that’s to blame. Don’t focus on the fact that you’re being screwed over by tax policy, it’s the fact that you’ve got a 13-year-old trans girl who wants to play field hockey. It is a concerted effort to draw attention away to all the ways in which this administration is lawless, corrupt and not meeting the needs of individual people, and they’re preying on the this group because they’re trusting that most Americans don’t have a lot of experience talking about these issues, and it makes them uncomfortable, because they don’t feel like they know a lot about it.
A reporter asked me, “Why do you think you have become sort of a champion in fighting for the rights of these individuals?” I said, for me, it comes down to every single individual having access to health care, period. And if nobody else is going to speak up, I’m going to speak up, because this is a basic core value for me. I don’t necessarily feel like I’m the best spokesperson for this. I am not a trans person. I haven’t had this experience. I don’t have a trans person in my family. But damn it, if someone’s coming for the rights of one of my constituents, are coming from their health care, I’m going to fight with everything I’ve got.
David Goodman
One of the things that we’re supposed to be distracted from looking at is the budget reconciliation bill that is moving through Congress that includes some $800 billion in cuts, largely to Medicaid and health services. In Vermont, this may result in cutting or reducing food assistance for up to 13,000 Vermonters, and potentially result in hospital closures. Talk about this budget and its potential impact on Vermont. What aspects of it are you most concerned about?
Rep. Becca Balint
I was meeting with folks in healthcare from Vermont here in my office today and they’re deeply concerned that tens of thousands of Vermonters are going to lose their health care and that facilities will close. A lot of people don’t realize Medicaid is the margin that keeps open a lot of rural health care centers. This is the case that I made to my Republican colleagues on the Budget Committee. I said, it’s not just blue states. Your rural hospitals are going to close too. And many of them didn’t believe us, because I feel like their leadership was not honest with them about what was in there, and they were not curious enough to find out.
David Goodman
President Trump’s mass deportation program has now come to Vermont. Farm workers are being rounded up. There have been high profile arrests in Vermont, such as the case of Mohsen Mahdawi. Now it appears that Trump is targeting states that do not support him or his deportation policies. What is your response to these developments and what can be done about it?
Rep. Becca Balint
We always knew this wasn’t going to be about going after “criminals” or “the worst of the worst.” We knew that because you can’t implement a mass deportation program supposedly going after millions of criminals. He was going to have to go after people who were showing up at the Home Depot to buy tools to be able to go and do their jobs every day, or students — people here legally — swooping in on folks when they are just at their court appearances. These supposed criminals are showing up (in court) following the rules, and that’s when they’re being detained, arrested, in some cases, shipped off to other countries.
(Podcaster) Joe Rogan, who was a huge Trump supporter, was questioning on his show, what are we doing here? We’re now going after people who are living here peacefully, they’re contributing to our communities — this doesn’t make sense. And so this is another situation where we have to be standing up together. We have an obligation as members of Congress to do oversight. And I think that those of us who saw this happening on the campaign trail, we knew exactly what was coming, because we know who Stephen Miller is. He is the mastermind of all of this. He would like to have a white country devoid of brown people. That’s what this is all about. This is about white supremacy.
David Goodman
You ran in your last race centering your own personal story about your family being Holocaust survivors. I wonder if you could take the temperature on the state of our democracy right now. What is it? Where are we?
Rep. Becca Balint
If you’re only looking at what this administration is doing, what you see is a very bleak story. You see a president who is exceeding his authority and his power. You see him testing the judicial branch and trying to run roughshod over Congress, and you see a dysfunctional House and Senate not able to do the work of the people. But that’s not all of it. Democracy is a structure that is based on founding documents. It’s an idea and it only works when we’re engaged in it.
When I look at the kind of outpouring that we saw for the No Kings rallies — I did three rallies, one in Jamaica, Vermont, one in Burlington, one up in Saint Albans. There was great turnout in every single spot. The entire drive up through Vermont along Route 7, there were people out along the side of the road, massive turnout across the country. So when you look at the ways in which Americans are responding in this moment, I feel very hopeful. I have a lot of confidence in the resilience of Americans, of our creativity, of our perseverance, of our insatiable desire to want better for ourselves and our kids. So I actually feel like we’re going to prevail in this moment. We are going to prevail because broadly speaking, the American electorate does not want what this administration is offering right now. It’s slowly sinking in for some people and for a lot of us, we knew what was coming. And it’s even worse than perhaps we thought. But it is sinking in among people like Joe Rogan, it is sinking in.
I met a woman in Saint Albans, an elderly woman. She pulled me aside and said, “I’ve never protested anything in my life. I’ve never been to a rally. But I’m here, and it feels terrific because I was feeling so alone, and now I’m out here.”
So when I am outside of DC meeting with people and what they’re working on and what they’re working on locally and within the state, I know we’re going to get through this.
