\n<\/p>\n
This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. <\/em>Sign up for it here.<\/em><\/p>\n All the comforts<\/span> of a Waldorf Astoria city-view suite did not, at that moment, seem to cheer Jasmine Crockett. The 44-year-old Texas Democrat known for her viral comebacks was frowning as she walked into her hotel room in Atlanta last month. She glanced around before pulling an aide into the bathroom, where I could hear them whispering. Minutes later, she reemerged, ready to unload.<\/p>\n She was losing her race to serve as the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, she told me, a job she felt well suited for. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus were planning to vote for the senior-most person in the race, even though that person wasn\u2019t actually a Black Caucus member, Crockett complained. California members were siding with the California candidate. One member was supporting someone else in the race, she said, even though \u201cthat person did the worst\u201d in their pitch to the caucus. Crockett was starting to feel a little used. Some of her colleagues were \u201creaching out and asking for donations,\u201d she said, but those same colleagues \u201cwon\u2019t even send me a text back\u201d about the Oversight job.<\/p>\n To Crockett, the race had become a small-scale version of the Democratic Party\u2019s bigger predicament. Her colleagues still haven\u2019t learned what, to her, is obvious: Democrats need sharper, fiercer communicators. \u201cIt\u2019s like, there\u2019s one clear person in the race that has the largest social-media following,\u201d Crockett told me.<\/p>\n In poll after poll since Donald Trump\u2019s reelection, Democratic voters have said they want a fighter, and Crockett, a former attorney who represents the Dallas area, has spent two and a half years in Congress trying to be one. Through her hearing-room quips and social-media insults, she\u2019s become known, at least in MSNBC-watching households, as a leading general in the battle against Trump. The president is aware of this. He has repeatedly called Crockett a \u201clow-IQ\u201d individual; she has dubbed him a \u201cbuffoon\u201d and \u201cPutin\u2019s hoe.\u201d Perhaps the best-known Crockett clapback came last year during a hearing, after Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia made fun of Crockett\u2019s fake eyelashes. Crockett, seeming to relish the moment, leaned into the mic and blasted Greene\u2019s \u201cbleach-blond, bad-built, butch body.\u201d Crockett trademarked the phrase\u2014which she now refers to as \u201cB6\u201d\u2014and started selling T-shirts.<\/p>\n At the time, I wrote that the episode was embarrassing for everyone involved. But clearly it resonated. Crockett has become a national figure. Last year, she gave a keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention and was a national co-chair of Kamala Harris\u2019s campaign. This year, she has been a fixture on cable news and talk shows as well as a top party fundraiser; she was in Atlanta, in part, for a meet and greet with local donors. At an anti-Trump protest on the National Mall in April, I saw several demonstrators wearing B6 shirts. Others carried signs with Crockett\u2019s face on them.<\/p>\n Crockett is testing out the coarser, insult-comedy-style attacks that the GOP has embraced under Trump, the general idea being that when the Republicans go low, the Democrats should meet them there. That approach, her supporters say, appeals to people who drifted away from the Democrats in 2024, including many young and Black voters. \u201cWhat establishment Democrats see as undignified,\u201d Max Burns, a progressive political strategist, told me, \u201cdisillusioned Democrats see that as a small victory.\u201d Republicans understand this, Crockett said: \u201cMarjorie is not liked by her caucus, but they get her value, and so they gave her a committee chairmanship.\u201d<\/p>\n Perhaps inadvertently, Crockett seemed to be acknowledging something I heard from others in my reporting: that the forthrightness her supporters love might undermine her relationships within the party. Some of Crockett\u2019s fellow Democrats worry that her rhetoric could alienate the more moderate voters the party needs to win back. In the same week that Democratic leadership had instructed members to focus on Medicaid cuts and tax breaks for billionaires, Crockett referred to Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who uses a wheelchair, as \u201cGovernor Hot Wheels.\u201d (Crockett claimed that she was referring to Abbott\u2019s busing of migrants.) In an interview with Vanity Fair<\/em> after the 2024 election, Crockett said that Hispanic Trump supporters had \u201calmost like a slave mentality.\u201d She later told a CNN host that she was tired of \u201cwhite tears\u201d and the \u201cmediocre white boys\u201d who are upset by DEI.<\/p>\n Unsurprisingly, Trump himself seems eager to elevate Crockett. \u201cThey say she\u2019s the face of the party,\u201d the president told my Atlantic <\/em>colleagues recently. \u201cIf she\u2019s what they have to offer, they don\u2019t have a chance.\u201d Some of the Republican targeting of Crockett is clearly rooted in racism; online, Trump\u2019s supporters constantly refer to her as \u201cghetto\u201d and make fun of her hair.<\/p>\n None of this appears to be giving Crockett any pause. The first time I met her, a month before our conversation in Atlanta, she was accepting a Webby Award, in part for a viral exchange in which she\u2019d referred to Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina as \u201cchild\u201d and Mace suggested they \u201ctake it outside.\u201d Backstage, in a downtown-Manhattan ballroom, I asked Crockett whether she ever had regrets about her public comments. She raised her eyebrows and replied, \u201cI don\u2019t second-guess shit.\u201d<\/p>\n This spring, I<\/span> watched Crockett test her theory of politics in a series of public appearances. At the Webbys, most of her fellow award winners were celebrities and influencers, but only Crockett received a standing ovation. A week later, Crockett flamed Republicans and the Trump administration during a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing about Immigration and Customs Enforcement. A 15-minute clip of her upbraiding ICE agents\u2014\u201cThese people are out of control!\u201d\u2014has racked up more than 797,000 views on YouTube; I know this because she told me. On TikTok and Instagram, Crockett has one of the highest follower counts of any House member, and she monitors social-media engagement like a day trader checks her portfolio. She is highly conscious, too, of her self-presentation. During many of our conversations, Crockett wore acrylic nails painted with the word RESIST<\/span>, and a set of heavy lashes over her brown eyes. The lock screen on her phone is a headshot of herself.<\/p>\n Representative Jasmine Crockett rides in a vehicle after attending events in the Atlanta area last month. (Photograph by Melissa Golden for The Atlantic<\/em>)<\/p>\n Behind the scenes, the congresswoman speaks casually. At the Waldorf, I watched her deliver a quick Oversight-campaign pitch via Zoom. It was a virtual meeting of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, she\u2019d explained to me beforehand. But then, after the call, she wasn\u2019t sure. \u201cCAPAC is the Asian caucus, right?\u201d she asked. \u201cYes,\u201d the aide confirmed. \u201cThat would\u2019ve been bad,\u201d Crockett said with a laugh. She can also be brusque. During our interview at the Waldorf, she dialed up a staffer in D.C. in front of me and scolded him for an unclear note on her schedule. Another time, in the car, after an aide brought Crockett a paper bag full of food from a fundraiser, she peered inside, scrunched her nose, and said, \u201cThis looks like crap.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, Crockett is often more thoughtful in person than she might appear in clips. Once, after a hearing, I watched as she responded to a request for comment with a tight 90-second answer about faith and service. Another time, a reporter who was filming her tried to provoke her by asking what she would say to people who think she is \u201cmentally ill.\u201d \u201cThey can think whatever they want to, because as of now, we live in a democracy,\u201d Crockett answered calmly, before taking another question. \u201cI don\u2019t want people to lose sight of the fact that this is someone with a very fine, legally trained mind,\u201d Representative Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, a mentor of Crockett\u2019s, told me.<\/p>\n Crockett\u2019s Republican critics like to say that she\u2019s a private-school girl playing a plainspoken Texas brawler for social-media clout. They\u2019re not wrong about her background. Crockett grew up an only child in St. Louis, not Dallas, and attended private high school before enrolling at Rhodes College, a small liberal-arts school in Tennessee. When Crockett was young, her father was a life-insurance salesman and a teacher, she told me, and she has talked often about his work as a preacher; her mother, she said, still works for the IRS. Crockett\u2019s stage presence precedes her political career. At Rhodes, from which she graduated in 2003, she was recruited to the mock-trial program after a team leader watched her enthusiastic performance as the narrator Ronnette in Little Shop of Horrors<\/em>, her former coach, Marcus Pohlmann, told me. She won a national award during her first and only year in the program.<\/p>\n As Crockett tells it, she became interested in the law after she and a few other Black students at Rhodes received anonymous letters containing racist threats. The school hired a Black female attorney from the Cochran Firm, a national personal-injury-law group, to handle the case, Crockett told me. The attorney became Crockett\u2019s \u201cshero,\u201d she said, and inspired her to attend law school herself. When I asked for the name of her shero so that I could interview her, Crockett told me that she did not remember. I reached out to a former Cochran Firm attorney in Tennessee who fit Crockett\u2019s description; she remembered the incident in broad terms but was not sure if she had worked on the case or with Crockett. Although Rhodes College had no specific records of the incident, two people who worked at the college at the time told me that they recalled it.<\/p>\n Crockett worked for a few years as a public defender in deep-red Bowie County, Texas, before starting her own law firm, where she drew attention for defending Black Lives Matter demonstrators. She was sworn in to the Texas state House in 2021 and became the body\u2019s third-most progressive member, according to the Texas Tribune<\/em>, authoring dozens of bills, with an emphasis on criminal-justice reform. (None of the legislation for which she was the main author ever passed the Republican-dominated legislature.) \u201cMost freshmen come, they are just trying to learn where the restrooms are,\u201d but Crockett \u201ccame with a fight in her,\u201d Texas Representative Toni Rose, a former Democratic colleague of Crockett\u2019s, told me.<\/p>\n Having defeated an incumbent Democrat to win her seat, Crockett was already viewed as an agitator by some of her new colleagues. Then, in 2021, she became the unofficial spokesperson for a group of more than 50 Texas Democrats who fled to D.C. in a high-profile effort to stall Republican legislation. Her dealings with the press built up \u201creal resentment\u201d with Democratic leaders, one Texas-based party strategist, who was familiar with caucus actions at the time, told me. (This person, like some others interviewed for this story, was granted anonymity to speak candidly.) \u201cWhen they broke quorum and it was important that everything be secret, she was on the phone to the press talking about what they were getting ready to do,\u201d the strategist said. Both Crockett and her chief of staff at the time, Karrol Rimal, denied this version of events and told me that she had not given an interview before arriving in D.C. Rimal said that Crockett had agreed to do press only if the story would not be published until the Texas lawmakers crossed state lines. He added that state Democrats were sometimes jealous because Crockett \u201coutshined them.\u201d<\/p>\n Crockett attends a conference at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Stonecrest, Georgia, in June. (Photograph by Melissa Golden for The Atlantic<\/em>)<\/p>\n The state-House drama was short-lived: After one term, Crockett became the handpicked replacement for 15-term U.S. Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson. Crockett sailed to victory, and less than a year later, her breakthrough moment arrived: While questioning a witness in a committee hearing, Crockett held up a photograph of several boxes in a Mar-a-Lago bathroom. The classified documents, she said, looked like they were \u201cin the shitter to me!\u201d Trump critics\u00a0 praised her as an \u201cabsolute star\u201d and their \u201cnew favorite Congresswoman.\u201d<\/p>\n Not everyone agreed. Johnson felt that the freshman congresswoman was dismissive of her experience and advice, according to two sources familiar with the relationship. \u201cI don\u2019t think it was a secret\u201d that by the time Johnson died, in December 2023, \u201cshe had had second thoughts about Jasmine,\u201d the Texas-based Democratic strategist said. Crockett strongly denied this characterization and said that she had never heard it from those close to Johnson. I reached out to Johnson\u2019s son for his view, but he didn\u2019t respond.<\/p>\n The race to<\/span> replace the Oversight Committee\u2019s top Democrat, the late Representative Gerry Connolly, presented a multipurpose opportunity. Democrats could preview their resistance strategy for a second Trump administration. And Crockett, who\u2019d run an unsuccessful, last-minute bid for a leadership position the previous year, could test her own viability as a party leader.<\/p>\n In late May, Crockett brought me along to a private meeting in the green-walled office of a freshman member\u2014Maxine Dexter of Oregon\u2014where she made her pitch: The Democrats have a communication problem, Crockett said. \u201cThe biggest issue\u201d with Joe Biden\u2019s presidency wasn\u2019t \u201cthat he wasn\u2019t a great president,\u201d she explained. \u201cIt was that no one knew what the fuck he did.\u201d (Crockett acknowledged to Dexter that the former president is \u201cold as shit,\u201d but said, \u201cHe\u2019s an old man that gets shit done.\u201d) Crockett highlighted her own emphasis on social media, and the hundreds of thousands of views she had received on a recent YouTube video. \u201cThe base is thirsty. The base right now is not very happy with us,\u201d Crockett continued, and if any lawmaker could make them feel heard, \u201cit\u2019s me.\u201d<\/p>\n Crockett told Dexter that she had big plans for Oversight. She wanted to take hearings on the road, and to show voters that \u201cthese motherfuckers\u201d\u2014Republicans\u2014are all \u201ccomplicit\u201d in Trump\u2019s wrongdoing. She wasn\u2019t worried about her own reelection. \u201cI guess it\u2019s my fearlessness,\u201d she told Dexter.<\/p>\n Dexter asked Crockett about her relationship with leadership. Another young firebrand, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, had bumped up against then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi when she arrived in Congress, Dexter noted. Crockett dismissed that concern, explaining that she had never wanted to \u201cburn it down\u201d and prefers to be seen as working on behalf of the party. The national \u201cFighting Oligarchy\u201d tour featuring Senator Bernie Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez is a good idea, Crockett said, but it \u201ckind of makes people be like, Oh, it\u2019s about them, right?<\/em> Instead of the team.\u201d (Through a spokesperson, Ocasio-Cortez declined to comment. Crockett told me that the two have a positive relationship.)<\/p>\n By the end of the meeting, Dexter was ready to vote for Crockett. But she would never get the chance. Five days after Crockett\u2019s fundraiser in Atlanta, Punchbowl News<\/em> reported that she had \u201cleaned into the idea of impeaching President Donald Trump,\u201d which spooked swing-district members. Representative Robert Garcia of California was quickly becoming the caucus favorite. Like Crockett, he was relatively young and outspoken. But he had spent his campaign making a \u201csubtle\u201d case for generational change, Punchbowl <\/em>said, and he\u2019d told members that the Oversight panel shouldn\u2019t \u201cfunction solely as an anti-Trump entity.\u201d<\/p>\n The same day the Punchbowl<\/em> report was published, 62 Democratic leaders met to decide which of the four Oversight candidates they\u2019d recommend to the caucus. The vote was decisive: Garcia, with 33 votes, was the winner. Crockett placed last, with only six. Around midnight, she went live on Instagram to announce that she was withdrawing her name from the race; Garcia would be elected the next morning. In the end, \u201crecent questions about something that just wasn\u2019t true\u201d had tanked her support, Crockett told her Instagram viewers. She hadn\u2019t campaigned on impeaching Trump, she told me later; she\u2019d simply told a reporter that, if Democrats held a majority in the House, she would support an impeachment inquiry. And why not? She was just being transparent, Crockett told me, \u201cand frankly, I may not get a lot of places because I am very transparent.\u201d<\/p>\n Some of Crockett\u2019s fellow Democrats find that candor refreshing. \u201cPeople don\u2019t necessarily agree with her aggressive communication style,\u201d Representative Julie Johnson of Texas told me. \u201cI\u2019m thrilled she\u2019s doing it, because we need it all.\u201d Garcia, in a statement from his office, told me that Crockett is \u201cone of the strongest fighters we have,\u201d and that, \u201cas a party, we should be taking notes on the kinds of skills she exemplifies.\u201d But several other Democrats I reached out to about the race seemed uninterested in weighing in. Thirteen of her colleagues on the Oversight and Judiciary committees, along with 20 other Democratic members I contacted for this story, either declined to talk with me on the record or didn\u2019t respond to my interview requests. Senior staffers for three Democratic members told me that some of Crockett\u2019s colleagues see her as undisciplined but are reluctant to criticize her publicly. \u201cShe likes to talk,\u201d one of the staffers said. \u201cIs she a loose cannon? Sometimes. Does that cause headaches for other members? 100 percent.\u201d<\/p>\n Crockett said that people are free to disagree with her communication style, but that she \u201cwas elected to speak up for the people that I represent.\u201d As for her colleagues, four days before this story was published, Crockett called me to express frustration that I had reached out to so many House members without telling her first. She was, she told me, \u201cshutting down the profile and revoking all permissions.\u201d<\/p>\n Crockett does not<\/span> have supporters so much as she has admirers. Everywhere she goes, young people ask for selfies, and groups of her red-clad Delta Sigma Theta sorority sisters pop up to cheer her on. A few days before she dropped out of the Oversight race, a congregation outside of Atlanta full of middle-aged Black Georgians was giddy to host her: Here was Jasmine Crockett, recounting her feud with Marjorie Taylor Greene.<\/p>\n \u201cShe thought she could play with me,\u201d Crockett told Pastor Jamal Bryant, the leader of the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church and a progressive activist. There were a few \u201coh no\u201ds in the crowd. \u201cThe average, maybe, person in my party potentially would have just let it go,\u201d Crockett went on. \u201cI wasn\u2019t the one.\u201d There were claps and whoops. \u201cI was steaming, and I was ready,\u201d she said. \u201cI was like, \u2018Well, two wrongs gonna make a right today, baby, cause I ain\u2019t gonna let it go!\u2019\u201d The righteous anger in Crockett\u2019s voice was audible; people applauded for it, probably because it sounded a lot like their own.<\/p>\n Audience members react to Crockett during a live recording of Pastor Jamal Bryant\u2019s podcast at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church. (Photograph by Melissa Golden for The Atlantic<\/em>)<\/p>\n Crockett\u2019s fans are rooting for her to go bigger. And when I asked if she was considering running for Senate in the future\u2014John Cornyn is up for reelection next year\u2014Crockett didn\u2019t wave me off. \u201cMy philosophy is: Stay ready so you don\u2019t have to get ready,\u201d she said. Crockett imagines a world in which Democrats are associated with lofty ideals and monosyllabic slogans, like Barack Obama once was. When I asked her what the party should stand for beyond being against Trump, and what she stands for, she explained, \u201cFor me, I always just say \u2018the people,\u2019\u201d adding that her campaigns have always been associated with \u201cfire.\u201d<\/p>\n Plenty of other Democrats believe that Crockett\u2019s approach comes dangerously close to arson. Her critics argue that it\u2019s easy to be outspoken in a safe Democratic seat; they might also point out that Crockett received 7,000 fewer votes in 2024 than Johnson, her predecessor, had in 2020. You can see James Carville coming from a mile away. \u201cI don\u2019t think we need a Marjorie Taylor Greene,\u201d the longtime Democratic consultant told me. Crockett is \u201cpassionate. She has an instinct for making headlines. But does that help us at the end of the day?\u201d he said. \u201cYou\u2019re trying to win the election. That\u2019s the overall goal.\u201d<\/p>\n Crockett is not Marjorie Taylor Greene; for one, she is not peddling space-laser, weather-control conspiracy theories. Yet Crockett\u2019s combative style could be a misreading of the moment, Lakshya Jain, an analyst at the political-forecasting site Split Ticket, told me. \u201cPeople think the brand issue that Democrats have is they don\u2019t fight enough and that they\u2019re not mean enough,\u201d Jain said, but \u201cthose are all just proxies for saying that they can\u2019t get stuff done for people.\u201d In Congress, Crockett has championed progressive causes and introduced plenty of legislation, but none of the bills she\u2019s been the lead sponsor of has become law.<\/p>\n Clearly, though, lots of real-life voters want Jasmine Crockett. At the church outside Atlanta, Pastor Bryant triggered a standing ovation when he declared, \u201cJasmine Crockett for president\u201d and \u201c2028 is coming, y\u2019all!\u201d Outside, in the parking lot, someone shouted at Crockett, \u201cFirst Black-woman president!\u201d June was a disheartening month for Crockett. She was soundly rejected by her own colleagues and shut out of a chance at institutional power. But when we talked in her hotel room in Atlanta, she\u2019d framed the situation differently: If Americans on the outside could vote, she\u2019d insisted, \u201cI absolutely feel like I know where it would go.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here. All the comforts of a Waldorf Astoria city-view suite did not, at that moment, seem to cheer Jasmine Crockett. The 44-year-old Texas Democrat known for her viral comebacks was frowning as she walked into her hotel room in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12695,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[6337,6338,81],"class_list":{"0":"post-12694","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-democrat","9":"tag-era","10":"tag-trump"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12694\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}