Welcome back to The Red Letter.
Congressman Jason Crow is launching an ambitious new End Corruption Caucus with AOC and Rep. Mike Levin at a moment when Donald Trump is testing the limits of presidential power and turning the presidency into a vehicle for personal enrichment.
The target is obvious: a White House where family businesses, foreign deals, crypto ventures, and executive authority increasingly blur together. But if Democrats want corruption to become a winning issue, they’ll have to answer a tougher question first: Are they willing to police their own side?
In my conversation with Crow, a Democrat from Colorado, we dig into his plan to tackle dark money, congressional stock trading, lobbying loopholes, and the revolving door between government and special interests. But I also press him on the uncomfortable realities inside his own party: members who trade stocks, take corporate PAC money, benefit from taxpayer-funded settlement funds for sexual harassment complaints (ahem, Eric Swalwell) and operate within the same political ecosystem voters increasingly distrust.
Crow argues that Democrats can’t credibly take on Trump’s corruption without cleaning their own house first — and says the caucus intends to do exactly that. The question is whether reform can survive contact with the political incentives of Washington itself. And whether they’re truly willing to call out their own.
I asked Crow point-blank: If he's serious about ending corruption, would he publish a list of Congress's most corrupt members?
Can Democrats make corruption a defining issue of the midterms? Or will voters see another partisan exercise that ignores the misconduct happening closer to home?
Watch my full conversation with Congressman Jason Crow.
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