The Democrats Have Leverage. Will They Use It?
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Slate
3.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 9 September 2025
⏱️ 25 minutes
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Summary
With Republicans holding both houses of Congress and the White House, Democrats don’t have a lot of ways to stall Donald Trump’s agenda—except for refusing to further fund the government and triggering a shutdown. They already passed on the opportunity once, but is the situation now so desperate that the opposition party needs to do something—anything?
Guest: Rep. Jamie Raskin, U.S. representative for Maryland's 8th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives
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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | MI5 Official Secrets. |
| 0:03.0 | Head to the National Archives in queue to discover a hidden world of espionage. |
| 0:07.0 | In the first exhibition of its kind, |
| 0:09.0 | dozens of previously unseen top secret MI5 files are on display, |
| 0:15.0 | revealing real-life spy stories more fascinating than fiction. |
| 0:19.0 | MI5 Official Secrets is a free exhibition. |
| 0:22.6 | Visit now, no booking required. |
| 0:24.6 | What will you uncover? |
| 0:26.6 | Tap the banner to find out more. |
| 0:32.6 | Hey, Congressman, how you doing? |
| 0:36.6 | Good. Hello, Mary. When I got done Hey, Congressman, how you doing? |
| 0:39.0 | Good. Hello, Mary. |
| 0:48.3 | When I got Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin on the line yesterday, I gotta say, he sounded a lot more chipper than I expected. |
| 0:52.6 | We last talked back in November, right after President Trump's election. |
| 0:56.9 | Like a lot of Dems, he was in what the hell just happened mode. |
| 0:59.0 | He said he was reading a lot of history. |
| 1:05.7 | Raskin represents the D.C. suburbs, which means since we last spoke, a whole lot of his constituents have been doged out of work, and now they're feeling the National Guard surge firsthand. |
| 1:14.4 | Do you feel like your job has been easier or harder than you expected it to be when we last spoke? |
| 1:23.1 | Oh, you know, we're in the fight of our lives. |
| 1:30.6 | You know, I represent 55,000 federal workers, and thousands of them have been sacked, fire, dismissed without any cause, |
| 1:37.3 | without any due process. |
| 1:39.0 | You know, the immigrant community is under attack. |
... |
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