Rep. Debbie Dingell: “We Are In a State of Emergency on the Rule of Law”

The Senate acquitted President Donald Trump on impeachment charges. The president delivered a State of the Union speech that threw fuel on the fire of partisan divisions in Washington D.C. And there’s concern about the Department of Justice’s independence after Trump interfered in a case to help reduce longtime associate Roger Stone’s prison sentence.

“Last week was one of the saddest weeks that I’ve had in my career.” – Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Dearborn).

That’s the kind of two-week span that has Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Dearborn) saying she’s happy to be back home in Michigan for a couple of days.

“That city is so filled with fear, hate, division,” she says of Washington D.C. on Detroit Today with Stephen Henderson.

Listen: Rep. Debbie Dingell on the rule of law, healthcare and more.

Dingell says she turned to a colleague on the floor of the U.S. House during Trump’s State of the Union and said, “This isn’t good for anybody.”

In this conversation:

• “I think the moment that bothered me more than anything was when the president said that he was doing everything that he could to protect people with pre-existing conditions when we know that he’s in court right now trying to take away protections,” Dingell tells Henderson.
• The congresswoman also talks about her efforts to stop Iowa and New Hampshire from continuing to hold first-in-the-nation presidential nominating contests. She says those states are not representative of the country’s racial, ethnic, and economic diversity and have an outsized influence on the process.
• She discusses the president’s interference in Roger Stone’s case, saying it represents “a state of emergency on the rule of law.” And Dingell says she’s concerned about what Russian interference and disinformation on social media might mean for the integrity of our upcoming elections.

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