This week, Representative Eric Swalwell joins host Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush to discuss the ongoing challenges facing American democracy, lessons not learned in the January 6th Capitol riot, and the critical role of faith communities in this time of division. Together, they explore the importance of political engagement, especially in the face of significant threats to fundamental democratic norms and vital public services.
Reflecting on his experience during the January 6th attack, Congressman Swalwell shares his outrage that heroic law enforcement officers who saved lives that day are now being vilified while the perpetrators are pardoned and exalted. He emphasizes the need for Congress to protect essential services like healthcare and education – and to remain committed to fighting for justice, fairness, and security for all Americans.
“Go one more rung up the ladder of where you are right now. Go one more rung up the ladder to give yourself more agency and put yourself higher and closer to where decisions are being made. And if you’ve never gone to a local city council meeting before and you care deeply about what’s happening in your community, go to a city council meeting. And then the next time you go, speak at the city council meeting, and then find out when those council members are up for election and find one that you can get involved with.”
Congressman Eric Swalwell is a seven-term member of Congress, representing California’s 14th District. A former prosecutor who led the Hate Crimes Unit in Alameda County, his experience in local government prepared him for his Congressional role, where he served on the House Intelligence Committee and played a key role in the investigations into Russian interference and President Trump’s impeachments. Known for his bold voice, both on the House Floor and across his social media platforms, Rep. Swalwell consistently speaks out on issues that matter to everyday Americans, never shying away from standing up for what he believes in.
Please share this episode with one person who would enjoy hearing this conversation, and thank you for listening!
—INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT—
REV. PAUL BRANDEIS RAUSHENBUSH, HOST:
And now to my guest. The Honorable Eric Swalwell is a seven-term member of Congress representing California’s 14th district. A former prosecutor and the son of a Republican police officer, he has a particularly good understanding of the influences driving our government today, and the courage to say what he really thinks on both the floor and his social media accounts. At a time when many voters are unhappy with what is seen as timidity on the part of elected representatives, that’s one label that won’t stick here.
Representative Swalwell, thank you so much for joining me on the State of Belief.
REP. ERIC SWALWELL, GUEST:
My pleasure. Thank you, Reverend. It’s really nice of you to bring me on.
PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:
Listen, you have been so helpful to so many of us right now, so I’m starting from a place of gratitude in this conversation. I want you to know how much it has meant to so many of us to have your voice in the public square, sometimes saying what we really want to say and you can say it.
And I want to start just by checking in; just doing a spiritual, mental, physical, health check and saying, like, how are you doing? Because this takes a toll, and I am not assuming that you are the iron Superman’s man of steel. How are you doing?
ERIC SWALWELL:
Thank you for asking. No, it’s rough. It’s not easy times. It’s not easy times for many people who are losing their jobs right now or having their Medicaid potentially cut. So I don’t feel too sorry for myself.
But if I’m being really honest with you, every morning I have to get a 7-year-old, a 6-year-old, and a 3-year-old out of bed, dressed, fed, off to school. And that hour is always the hardest hour of the day. And so it gets much easier no matter how challenging it is. So I’m a father first. And, yeah, that’s the hardest part of my day. Put any other challenge or colleague in front of me and it’s easy compared to that.
PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:
I love that. I have a 10-year-old and a 6-year-old, and so I will say it’s the best part of my day, and the most challenging. I love spending time with them. I love, okay, and now would you please eat your eggs so that we can move along with the day. They are your hardest audience to convince.
ERIC SWALWELL:
You know, Reverend, my days typically consist of bribery, hostage negotiations, empty threats – and that’s just getting my kids out of bed and off to school.
PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:
I love that. Yeah. and then, if I may be so bold as to say, then you have to deal with a toddler in the White House. And so, almost, it’s been a good warmup.
I do just want to say, from the bottom of my heart and as a pastor – just, please take care of yourself. I’m saying that to everyone. I also appreciate the fact that this is hard on our representatives, but there are people who are being directly targeted. There are real consequences to what is happening here.
ERIC SWALWELL:
Well, I’ll tell you one person I checked in with today, John Sexton, NYU, a religious scholar. He wrote a book called, Baseball as a Road to God and drew parallels between baseball and faith.
And I actually, just for my own mental welfare check today, I just called John and I said, John, tell me what I’m not thinking about that I should be thinking about. And that, actually, really helped me just set the table for what’s ahead. So he’s always a good, just, life coach to reach out to.
PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:
I love that. He’s a great idea, but we should all have those people around us who expand the aperture of what is happening right now so that I don’t get so narrowly focused that I lose a bigger picture that maybe other people can introduce me to. And I think that’s the reason not to isolate. It’s the reason to be in conversation with as many people as possible.
I was fascinated by your background because you come from a very solid, you’re going to have to correct me if I’m wrong, but your parents were Republican, your mother was a small business owner. Your father was involved in the police force. It’s a very grounding place to be from. Tell us a little bit about your background, because, I think, when we see representatives like yourself, we think they came out as that. But actually, everybody’s from somewhere. Where are you from?
ERIC SWALWELL:
I was born in Iowa. In Western Iowa, Sac City. My dad was a police officer. My mom made wedding cakes and made ceramics and sold those to the community. And my earliest memory, Reverend, was, I was six years old and my mom and dad were talking about my dad potentially being fired. And I remember that because I thought, like, literally he was going to be put in a fire. That’s why it stayed in my head.
But in a very Iowa way, he was standing up as a police chief to small town corruption. And he had a mayor who thought he could have the police chief just do what he wanted, or make cases go away that he wanted to go away.
And in a very Iowa fashion, it came to a head at the Kosooth County Fair, when the mayor and other council members parked in the fire lane and the fire chief called my dad and said, chief, these guys say they can park wherever they want. What do you want me to do? And my dad, being, really, such a boy scout and a rule follower, said, no, that’s for emergencies. If they don’t move, ticket and tow them.
They didn’t move. They were ticketed and towed, and in a nakedly corrupt way at the next city council meeting, the mayor told my dad, if you don’t reverse those tickets, I’m going to fire you. And my dad held his ground, said that’s not the way it works, and lost his job.
And we picked up our little family and that’s how we ended up out west and ultimately in California. And I would later go and read the Des Moines Register coverage of this. And I was just shocked that the mayor would be so openly corrupt, and that the editorial page of the Des Moines Register was also equally shocked.
But what I learned from my dad and what stayed with me – and it frankly was frustrating as a kid growing up in such a rules-based household – was that he was willing to lose his job to do what’s right. And now I work at an office, so to speak, where I have a lot of colleagues who are not willing to lose their job. And they see their first duty as: how do I protect my job? And then do what’s wrong, oftentimes – and I say this because privately they’ll tell me they don’t like what they see the president doing, but they’re afraid of being primaried or losing an election. So that was my earliest memory and that was my upbringing.
But I went to Sunday school on on Sundays, and we went to church. We were raised Lutheran. I would later go to a Christian college on a soccer scholarship. Campbell University, a school in North Carolina. And my faith evolved, as well.
And then my local church is Cornerstone, which is in Livermore, California, and, the founder of that church, pastor Steve Matson, he was a part of my wedding with my wife Brittany back in 2016.
PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:
Wow. That story is so powerful, about your background. First of all, I’m from Wisconsin, so I knew I liked you. I knew I liked you, and also had a slight rivalry, but all good.
ERIC SWALWELL: That’s good, I married a hoosier, my wife’s from Southern Indiana.
PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:
Oh my goodness. We’re having a Midwestern festival here today. But that kind of integrity is actually a lesson you never forget. They set the bar, and then you have to decide: where do I fit with that bar? But that bar has been set for me, and that’s really strong. And I think that’s so admirable that he didn’t back down. Because it was all: we can all make this go away if you just back down.
ERIC SWALWELL:
Reverend, I was talking to my dad a couple nights ago and he said to me, he said, I’m so worried about your security and your kids, and we were talking about baseball tryouts for my son. And he said, do you think maybe you could just be quieter and not speak out as much? And I said, dad. I said, you know why I’m so loud and not going away? I said, it was you! Lik,e it’s because of the way that you were.
He would later go on, there was a local school board member, when I was in high school, who kept picking up DUIs and was trying to use school funding to make renovations on his house. And my dad would read me these stories and he was so outraged. And I finally said to him, I said, dad, why don’t you run against this guy? Like, why don’t you run for the school board, and he did. And he won. So I’ve always had this model of somebody who wouldn’t just take it and wouldn’t just accept it. And when others wouldn’t do the right thing, he would take it upon himself to do it.
PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:
Well, thank you to your father. What’s his name?
ERIC SWALWELL:
Eric. It’s also Eric.
PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:
Thank you Eric, for that incredible lesson for all of us, actually, right now, because we’re all faced with this choice.
This is not an aside, but one of the first things that the president did was pardon all of the J6 rioters, which must have really… It must have hurt you on a couple different levels: as someone who was threatened that day; as an American who saw American democracy attacked; and then also as someone who comes from a family that has the force involved in it, the police force involved with it. And what they did that day, and then the incredible washing, and say, oh, they were tourists. it’s unbelievable. So that must have been for you, like, oh, I see what’s happening. I see what is about to go down.
I think that was the first time that many Republicans were like, what? Even the violent offenders!
ERIC SWALWELL:
Reverend, that day in the chamber, we waited and sheltered in place as the rioters closed in on us, and you could hear this thumping on the doors outside.
And it was a haunting sound because there’s not many windows in the chamber; so you can’t see, you can only hear. And we saw the Capitol police officers scramble to stack chairs and desks against the doors so that they couldn’t make their way in. And we waited for their orders. They told us, please don’t leave yet. We’re securing an evacuation route. And we followed them out, and many of them stayed back to protect the chamber. As one young woman broke her way through the glass, the last barrier, one of those lieutenants, had to make that decision. I’m sure he, it was the right decision, but as an officer, I don’t think you ever take pleasure in taking somebody’s life, but he saved many others. And so as we were leaving, that gunshot was fired, and these officers would be beaten, one lost an eye, one lost a finger. Many would die by suicide, in the days following.
And yes, to me, first and foremost, as a son of a cop and a brother to two cops. I’m grateful to their service. And I thought, very naively, even as we were fleeing – and as we’re on that evacuation route, I’m running with Republicans. I, at one point am pushing Madison Cawthorn, a Republican who’s in a wheelchair, who attended the rally earlier in the morning with the president and spoke, I’m pushing his wheelchair up a ramp because it’s too steep. And he looked back at me in terror and said, push me. And so I’m pushing this guy up who helped convene the rioters in the first place.
And I thought, naively, this is rock bottom, and we’ll come together now. And I thought it would almost be like a September 11 moment where we would come together and that those police officers ultimately would be honored and lionized And instead, they’ve been villainized, and we’ve been told by President Trump that the heroes of the day were the people who attacked the Capitol. So yeah, it is a punch in the gut. And I’m very close with many of the officers from that day. I’v, spent a few Thanksgivings with Officer Mike Fanon, who had voted for Donald Trump in the past, and showed up that day and suffered a traumatic brain injury and a heart attack. And so yeah, it it still stings, to see how this has been turned.
PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:
And the absolute pardon was a foretaste of the kind of, just, wrecking ball that has been taken to our society, our democracy…
ERIC SWALWELL:
And I think that, blessed are the peacemakers for they’re the children of God. That’s what we learned at the earliest of ages from the book of Matthew. And they were peacemakers and they, I know, in the eyes of God, he knows who were heroes that day.
PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:
Thank you for preaching a little bit there. I think you may have a vocation after you, go all the way with politics. That’s exactly right. They were the ones who were trying to keep the peace; and there were those who were, really, attacking and they have continued to attack at all the pillars of our democracy. All the ways that government can function to support and to help people live and thrive in our country. And we can’t go through the laundry list, because it’s too long. We would just spend time going, da, da, da, da, da. But what tools do we have? What tools do you feel are… As we’re recording this, I think an EO is coming out just abolishing the Department of Education, and by the time people listen to this, that may be old news; there might be another thing that has happened.
So many things have happened. Social security, USAID, people are going to die because of all of this. Just let’s take the lens back. How do you understand this moment, and what are the tools that Congress has in this moment?
ERIC SWALWELL:
We should pick fights that we can win and go into battles where we can win and not waste our constituents’ time and energy on ones where we cannot. And so I think being candid and honest about what we can do – and Donald Trump has bragged: this is his government, he has the House and the Senate and the White House – but we’re not helpless, because we picked up 10 seats in the House. And so they can only lose one or two votes on every vote. So we’re not helpless. But we also should be careful not to fall into any trap that the Democrats could shut down the government. I would say first, this is Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s government; and second, they’re already shutting it down.
When you lay off FAA employees, there’s plane crashes and near collisions. You’re shutting it down. you lay off CDC employees as measles is raging through Texas. You’re shutting it down. And as you lay off FBI agents when we started the year with a terrorist attack and we’re more vulnerable to terrorism than ever, you’re shutting down the government.
But we have, in the next couple days, a vote to continue or not continue funding this Trump-Musk government. And what Democrats should do is to not co-sign the status quo. Getting rid of the Department of Education, where we would want our kids to be smarter than Donald Trump, right? We should want every kid to have the best education. Whereas I said they’re making us less safe from terrorism, they’re threatening our healthcare security, so we shouldn’t give them the votes to continue that. If they need our votes.
And Reverend, in the last two years, in the majority, about six times, Republicans needed Democratic votes to keep government open – and it wasn’t just one vote, it wasn’t 10 votes. The majority of the votes to keep government open came from Democrats. And we shouldn’t be such cheap dates about this. There should be a cost. And, to me that cost is to to protect people first and foremost. So any of the cuts that are hurting people, we have to put the funding back in place. And two, I wouldn’t give the president more than 30 days funding at a time – because if we gave him a nine-month or a twelve-month budget, it would be shame on us, because I wouldn’t trust him to honor it. and so almost have a probationary budget if they need our votes. So that’s one fight where we can win.
There’s a Wisconsin Supreme Court race coming up, and on the political side, there are six Republicans in the Wisconsin delegation – to go back to your home state – and two Democrats. Yet you have a Democratic governor, a Democratic senator there, a Democratic lieutenant governor… But through gerrymandering, these dirty maps, it’s a six-two split. That Supreme Court race could bring that to a four-four split, which would get us two-thirds of the way to where we need to be to even win the House in 2026.
And then finally, just by showing fight inside the Congress, we make waters warm outside the Congress, as candidates across the country are making consequential decisions right now as to whether they’re going to sacrifice everything to run for Congress. And so we have to make sure that we show fight inside so that they want to fight outside, to be our colleagues, in two years.
So there’s a lot that we can do. We’re not helpless. And I think about that every day.
PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:
The, whatever that was that Trump did in front of the Congress, it wasn’t a State of the Union, the words escape me to describe what a simultaneously offensive and nothingburger that speech was. But Representative Al Green, who I’m sure you’ve interacted with before, stood up and just said, you don’t have a mandate. You don’t have a mandate. And later he talked about, my constituents are scared because they’re cutting Medicaid. I felt like I had to stand up.
They just voted to censor him. I’m just curious, I’m not trying to put you on the spot here, but there was some of us who just felt like, oh, someone’s standing up. And I know you had your own way of dealing with that moment, but it is, I don’t know, we’re all trying to figure out, this is not a normal moment. The kind of decorum and the kind of deep respect that I’ve always had for our political process, trying to, respect that. I just don’t know, actually, how to understand what civility is and decorum and protocol. So I’m just curious your reaction.
ERIC SWALWELL:
I went to the speech. I didn’t stay for the whole speech. Frankly, it was boring.
PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:
It was boring. That was the weird thing, it was both horrific and boring at the same time.
ERIC SWALWELL:
Halfway through, I didn’t hear any offer to work with us on border security, on legal immigration pathways, on making our communities safe, on lowering costs. He spent more talking about brands, sports, than he did talking about the cost of eggs. But you know, what I saw Al Green do, that was in the spirit of what I’ve seen John Lewis do in the past. And I think we’re, each of us, are taking our own approach to how to deal with Donald Trump.
I will just say for myself, I’m of the mindset of you’re not going to outtrump Trump. This is what he does. And in fact, you have to be mindful of that. That doesn’t mean you stand up and applaud for him. I, don’t think I stood up for any of his policy agenda that he spoke about. But I actually think for us as Democrats, there’s pressure as to what is your message, what are you going to do? We need to tell a better story, yes. But it’s also, to me, it’s dance with the one that brought you – and that is the issue of healthcare. That’s, frankly, what Al Green was talking about.
That is the issue where we are most trusted. That’s why Barack Obama was elected president in 2008. That’s why we won the House in 2018 when Donald Trump tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act. And as they seek to give the wealthiest Americans a big tax cut, they have to take it out of about a third of Americans’ healthcare. And so that’s where I think we really have to go to, which is, be the guardian of what people value most in their life, which is their health.
PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:
I’m curious: for you – Interfaith Alliance, national organization, we have affiliates around the country, we have a big mailing list, we’re talking to all of our people. I’ve asked you a lot about what Congress should be doing. What should religious leaders be doing in this time? Not just religious leaders, but folks who are involved with congregations or other kinds of spiritual groups. This is a moment in democracy when we need to show up. Are we showing up correctly, and what would you like to see?
ERIC SWALWELL:
I think what our faith community does best – and I’m blessed that in my own district, 40% of my constituents were born outside the United States, so we have a number of different faiths. We have one of the largest Muslim populations in the country outside of Detroit. We have as many mosques as we have synagogues in our district. And, so you have an interfaith environment, as well. But what the faith community does best is they show up when people are at their lowest points. And to counter hate that you would see coming from Donald Trump, and cruelty; to show compassion and kindness and service, as you do in hurricanes and floods and fires.
And, the faith community did that in Southern California. And in fact, churches in my Northern California district showed up to help folks in Southern California during the fires. But I think just creating that sense of community: as a national leader speaks to divide us, local leaders can unite us and to help people.
A lot of people are losing their jobs because of these policies. I met yesterday with credit union leaders from my district, and they told me that delinquencies right now are on the rise and the highest that they’ve seen in 10 years. So people, financially, are struggling. I think that’s where the faith community is always at its best.
I would also say one I guess quote from a faith leader that I’ve always drawn on – I’m a Christian, but it’s from Rabbi Nackman from Breslov, which is: The world is a very narrow bridge, and the most important part is to have no fear. And I think about that as it’s a narrow bridge over this steep canyon that we’re going through right now, and to just keep walking. And I think he adds the second part, to have no fear, because I believe what he’s saying is: God is with you as you take that walk, but you have to be fearless to get there. And so we fearlessly have to go across that canyon at this point in our country’s very, very challenging time.
PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:
Thank you so much. That is an unfamiliar quote to me, and I feel very blessed to have heard it.
We work closely with, Interfaith Alliance, with Democracy Forward, which is a legal organization that’s doing a lot of great litigation. And one of the things that Skye Perryman said, who is also on our board, the head of the Policy Commission, she said, right now, actually the religious groups have been so courageous in the way they have shown up fearlessly to litigate. That stuck with me, this idea of religious groups showing up with courage – the root of that is “cour”, which is “heart” in Latin.
And the idea of bringing heart to this moment is such a kind of counterintuitive thing to do, but that is the religious call. And also, bringing people together in a time when – authoritarianism thrives on isolation and people feeling that they have no friends, no community, and so the only place that they can look is towards this leader. And I think that it’s another piece to it.
I know we’re wrapping up here, but talk a little bit about the way you feel that you communicate best with Americans – your constituents, but also with Americans. You’re very much on social media. And social media has, like ugh, social media… Social media is social and it’s media, and people are getting their information from that. It is not a negative word. It can be used negatively, but like anything, it also can be used incredibly well, and you’re one of those people who is doing it incredibly well.
Can you say, first of all, what channels and how people can follow you, for our listeners? But then talk about what’s the ethos behind what you try to do there? So let’s start with, actually, where people can go to follow you, because that’s really important. And then a little bit about what you bring to that.
ERIC SWALWELL:
It’s at @EricSwalwell on Instagram, Blue Sky, and X. And what I hope I bring to that is just the real me, and that people see, as I try and be as real as possible, and bring people into this world where I work. And I also don’t shy away about talking about my family. I protect my family, but my family is very much just who I am and what motivates me.
You’re like contractually obligated to be optimistic when you have three little kids under seven, and so that’s a part of what drives me. But I try and be, as I said, real. nd I’m not perfect. And if I’m recording a video and I stumble over my words or I say something wrong, we put that out. We do first takes only when we record, because I think we have a tendency – and I think more so than Republicans, as Democrats, to be so polished and to be so rigid and scripted. And we think we’re projecting what people expect to see from a politician, when I think people find it refreshing when you talk to them like you would talk to them at church, at the bar, at a bus stop. Just be yourself. And I tell my colleagues, just be yourself. We have a president who was convicted of 34 felonies in the Oval Office. You should now be liberated to just be yourself, and you’re not trying to win a Harvard Law School moot court competition. You’re just trying to win a gut check, and your values will be reflected if you’re yourself. They may not be, as I said, perfect; but nobody is – and nobody wants that anyway.
PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:
A hundred percent. I think that’s amazing. And I love the idea of first takes – that is very not the rule for social media. Get the take. Oh no, that’s not, your head is tilted the wrong way, get the right take. And then it’s so processed that it doesn’t land. And what you’re trying to be is a real person who’s actually talking to real people. I love that. And it is so refreshing.
As we come to the close, I’m just, first of all, so grateful to talk to you. But for the couple years I had this show before the last election, I would ask people: what gives you hope? I’m not exactly doing that right now. I’m trying to get a little more tangible, although a lot of times hope was tangible. What is the one thing that you hope people can do in this time? What’s that one thing that you feel, that piece of advice, do this one thing? And if everybody just does that one thing – that can be different for people, I’m not saying it’s prescriptive – but what’s the one idea that people should hear from you right now?
ERIC SWALWELL:
Go one more rung up the ladder of where you are right now. Go one more rung up the ladder to give yourself more agency and put yourself higher and closer to where decisions are being made. And if you’ve never gone to a local city council meeting before and you care deeply about what’s happening in your community, go to a city council meeting. And then the next time you go, speak at the city council meeting; and then find out when those council members are up for election and find one that you can get involved with.
So that’s just an example, but just go one more rung up the ladder – and you’re going to find that your agency is not that you registered to vote or that you went and voted. It’s that you were a part of the process, and that’s why you’re important to the people who make decisions in your lives.
PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:
I love that, one more rung. It’s about whatever that is for you. What is that one more rung to put yourself out there?
And so with that, Representative Eric Swalwell, thank you so much for your time and your wisdom and your service to our country.
ERIC SWALWELL:
Thanks, Reverend. And thank you to your listeners.
