Party Crashers

A New Generation Of Fired-up Insurgents Is Shaking Up The Political Establishment

- Rebecca Nelson

When Rashida Tlaib decided to run for Congress, her party told her it wasn’t her turn. Tlaib, an attorney and former Michigan state legislator, made the decision last December, when Representative John Conyers, a Democrat, resigned in the wake of sexual-harassment allegations. As the daughter of Palestinian immigrants, Tlaib felt her Muslim faith was under threat since President Donald Trump’s incendiary campaign. In 2016, she was one of 12 women hauled away by security after shouting questions every two minutes in protest at Trump’s speech at the Detroit Economic Club. (Her contribution: “Have you ever read the U.S. Constitution?”)

A member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), Tlaib, 42, has long advocated for Medicare for all, stronger environmental protections, and the abolition of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE). But by the time she decided to run for Congress in Michigan’s 13th Congressional District, the city’s formidable Democratic establishment had already decided which candidates to support. Tlaib recalls one person in the party’s leadership telling her to back out because she hadn’t paid her dues yet. Her response? “I didn’t know there was a line.”

In August, Tlaib won the Democratic primary, defeating five other candidates, including Brenda Jones, the Detroit city-council president, who had deep establishment support, broad name recognition, and dozens of endorsements. Because no Republican candidate is running for the seat, Tlaib is nearly assured victory in November, as well as a place in history: She will be the first Muslim woman to serve in Congress. The president’s long history of Islamophobia only makes that milestone sweeter. “He can ban us from coming into the country,” Tlaib says, “but he can’t ban us from getting elected to U.S. Congress.”