It’s been quite a month for Rashida Tlaib; here’s what’s coming next

Jan. 25--WASHINGTON -- Yes, she called the president of the United States a less-than-respectful name that got her national attention. And, yes, she thinks boycotting Israel in the name of helping Palestinians gain better living conditions is protected by the First Amendment. She's aware that hundreds of thousands of people have signed a petition for her own impeachment -- and that's just in the mere three weeks since she was sworn into Congress.

But none of this is what U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib wants to talk about.

She wants to talk about car insurance.

"My district has some of the highest car insurance rates in the country," Tlaib said, launching into a gripe well known to anyone who lives in Detroit about costs and the fact that credit scores are used to help set insurance rates, which can hurt people with limited finances or bad credit.

"One of the things people don't know is that, at the federal level, we can regulate the three credit scoring agencies and (pass legislation) so no more using of credit scores as a basis of somebody's driving record. We all know that's a common practice that's been used. ... You're basically criminalizing poor people."

OK, car insurance is not the only thing Tlaib, D-Detroit, wants to talk about. She also wants to talk about access to mortgages and credit. She wants to talk about economic opportunities in her district, the third poorest in the U.S. She wants to talk about tying the corporate tax rate to how much more executives are making than a company's workers. She wants to talk about the possibility of using eminent domain to take a closed General Motors plant and reopen it somehow, after helping lead a protest outside the annual Detroit auto show's Charity Preview.

"We were chanting 'GM got bailed out; we got sold out,'" she told the Free Press. "Put that in there."

What she's not so keen to talk about is everything that everyone else has been talking about. Her calling President Trump a "mother-----*er" as she lobbied for his impeachment the night after she was sworn in. Her defending herself from false charges that she is anti-Israel because she supports the right to boycott and believes Americans should be clear-eyed in any debate over living conditions in Palestine, where she still has relatives. About a local official in south Florida who suggested that, as one of the two first women Muslims to join Congress, she might blow up the Capitol.

That's not to say that Tlaib won't talk about those things. The fact is, she'll talk about anything, pretty much, if you ask her. And she thinks those issues -- impeachment, which she argued for in an op-ed in the Free Press and will continue to pursue, and rights in Palestine -- are important.

But they're not specifically why she's here. She's here to represent Wayne County and Detroit. But there's no getting around the fact that -- like her counterpart, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., whose every comment is likewise being parsed and her impact on Congress hotly debated -- she has become one of the most visible members of the freshman class of Democratic congresswomen for reasons other than simple policy debates.

But they're also changing the tenor of debate in Congress.

"I can tell you among all of our new class, we look at each other and say, 'Wow, what did we do?' Because the focus on us personally... it's personal attacks. And, yeah, it can be very aggressive and challenging. But we try to stay focused."

Tlaib's says her first duty is to her district

Next week, Tlaib is expected to open the first of four service centers across her district, this one in River Rouge. The idea is to give her constituents a place, not too far from their homes, where they can go to ask for help, with the idea that her staff can act as a go-between to federal services such as Social Security or protection under the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

She's already telling her staff to try to get what information they can from people who come in about their personal circumstances beyond whatever immediate problem they have -- such as whether they are renters or homeowners, or any other barriers to economic opportunity they've faced. Since one of the committees she'll be serving on --Financial Services -- deals with banking and insurance matters, she plans to take those stories and use them to question industry officials and push legislation.

And while getting laws changed to, say, block credit rating agencies from releasing reports to insurance companies will be difficult, especially with Republicans in control in the U.S. Senate, there is every reason to believe that Tlaib can use the committee as a bully pulpit from which to demand change.

"I can guarantee you when she has these service centers up and running, people are going to feel like they are being listened to. That's no small thing in Detroit," said TJ Bucholz, a Democratic consultant in Lansing who is a longtime friend of Tlaib's and worked on her campaign. As for Palestine and her language regarding Trump? "All of that's just whipped cream. It's not at the core of what she thinks about every day," he said.

Already critical of tax abatements and other breaks she says tend to help developers more than the community around their projects, Tlaib said she already has the ear of the committee chair, Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., who reached out to her about joining the panel. "She said, 'I want people there who are not going to fall in line with Wall Street,' " Tlaib told the Free Press in a wide-ranging interview in her office in Washington. "And I smiled and said, 'That's definitely not me.' She's like, 'I need your help.' .... She's going to be a tremendous mentor for me."

"So many of them (financial institutions) have benefited from the public ... bailouts, maybe various tax breaks, abatements, things that we've done to pave the way to allow these financial institutions to thrive. In exchange what we've seen is more poverty. ... In my district, less than half the families own their own home."

That's not quite true -- census figures put the rate of homeownership in Michigan's 13th Congressional District at 54 percent -- but that's still the worst in Michigan and well below what it is in most districts across the U.S.

She's aware she has been a polarizing figure

Tlaib -- a lawyer, mother, civic activist and former state representative -- has become a lightning rod, and she knows it. On Twitter, she is regularly excoriated, for her faith, for her Palestinian heritage. Her views are often mischaracterized, exaggerated. Write about her, and you receive vile responses by email.

When she complained that "right-wing media" were harassing her sister with questions about whether she was on a no-fly list at some point, critics argued that she was getting the scrutiny she deserved. After she suggested a congressional trip to the West Bank -- to complement a pro-Israel one taken by members of Congress to the Middle East each year, saying it could provide a fuller picture of conditions there -- U.S. Rep. Brian Babin, R-Texas, asked committee chairs to stop it, saying its "mere prospect" threatens the relationship between Israel and the U.S."

"Please consider the damage that a yet unexperienced and overly caustic Member of Congress may cause to Israeli relations, or the perceptions of our own Jewish-American citizens," Babin wrote. But to Tlaib, it's simply a matter of showing members of Congress a complete picture of what's transpiring in a country with complicated issues to consider, close ally or not.

And when a Palestinian activist, Abbas Hamideh, who has argued against the right of Israel to exist, tweeted a photo of himself with Tlaib at a ceremony in Detroit, it resulted in accusations that the two were somehow aligned -- even though she doesn't know him and the ceremony was open to anyone who wanted to come, no names taken.

"It is also important to note," she said, "A photo does not mean I agree with anything someone says. It is obvious this man thrives on media attention from his recent posts. It's unfortunate that he was successful. I do not agree with the statements brought to my attention."

Still, critics pounced. A spokesman for Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., called it "deeply alarming," though it's worth noting that it was an anti-boycott bill supported by Rubio that Tlaib had criticized as being un-American. It probably says something about Tlaib's rising stature, however, that Rubio felt the need to comment at all.

Meanwhile, her comment about Trump was widely denounced among the president's supporters as well as by Trump himself, who called it "disgusting" -- despite his own many breaks from the norms of civility. Those include his own past speeches, even those before he was president, where he used the F-word, and a tape in which he spoke graphically about grabbing women's genitals. Some Democrats, too, disagreed with the language she used as well as the sentiment, however.

Tlaib still thinks Trump should be impeached, believing that he has obstructed justice in connection with the Russia probe and violated the emoluments clause by allowing his business to continue taking foreign payments. House Democratic leaders have said they'll wait to see what Special Counsel Bob Mueller says before considering taking any action against the president.

John Truscott, a Republican consultant in Lansing, said he feels as though "our politics have gotten so out of control on both sides" and that Tlaib is "feeding into a narrative of extremism when I think she could make more of an impact coming back a little more toward the mainstream."

But, he acknowledged, "this whole class is a different kind of freshman" and that political norms seem to be breaking in every direction. As for Tlaib, he said, she is a known commodity in Michigan politics.

"What you see is what you get with her. It's not an act," he said. "She's being authentic and true to herself, which doesn't always fit well on a national stage."

She's most comfortable back at home

For those who don't know Tlaib, it's worth noting she's not made of marble: She chokes up. She dotes on her two young children. She talks a lot about her family -- she's one of 14 children -- and the struggles they've faced.

Her passion, when she feels it, is palpable and genuine. A veteran of civil actions and disobedience, now when she shows up to an event, her fellow protesters seem energized by her presence.

"It's like, 'I can't believe Rashida Tlaib's out here with us.' And I'm like, 'Of course, I'm going to be out here with you,'" she said. And that gets to her, too -- this feeling that she's carrying their hopes to Washington, and then coming back to them.

"I wouldn't want to be anywhere else. It's like medicine for the soul, being out there with those workers." She rails against the shutdown, too, feeling that the pain of employees and the people who count on the services they provide aren't being adequately considered by the White House.

As for any move to impeach her via an online petition, it's doomed to fail: We don't impeach members of Congress and it takes a two-thirds vote of a chamber, in this case the House, to take the extraordinary step of expelling a member: It usually only happens when someone has been abusing the powers of his or her office.

Tlaib already has apologized for the distraction caused by her using the language she did regarding the president, though not the sentiment. But when she made the remark, she was at an event being thrown by MoveOn, an advocacy group, and was pumped up being with volunteers, people who got her elected, in part, to advocate for Trump's impeachment and progressive change. In her other committee assignment, on the Oversight and Reform panel, she'll be front and center for Democratic investigations into the Trump administration, too -- so expect to hear much more from her.

"Look, I'm very raw," she said. "I'm never going to be this polished politician. Nor am I going to be perfect. But I think that's why my residents like me. I speak from the heart."

"But I am also somebody who is really not in love with the title at all," she continued as she began to become emotional. "It's actually uncomfortable."

She's in it, she says, to seek justice for people in southeastern Michigan.

In Washington, she said, much of what has happened has made her "more relatable" to colleagues who have confided the things they've said -- in private and in public --without there being nearly as much controversy.

In southeast Michigan and Detroit, she said, the residents have been mostly supportive, regardless of the language, the controversies. She maintains that the term she used to characterize the president isn't that far out of the mainstream for someone who grew up in southwest Detroit. She says her counselor from Southwestern High School even called her to congratulate her on it.

And far from being anti-Semitic herself, she said she has to remind folks in her majority African-American district sometimes that, yes, such prejudices against Jews do exist and must be battled against.

While national media may see her as a Muslim, as a Palestinian-American, she is a Detroiter first, and her people know it.

"For a lot of them, it was liberating to hear their member of Congress say exactly how they feel. ... They always have my back. They know I'm not going to be perfect. But they're OK with that."

She wants to talk about the city, about GM, about creating opportunities for Detroiters. But the conversation keeps coming back to everything that has happened.

"Tough month?" a reporter asks.

"Oh yeah," she laughs. "It's ugly. ... My mere existence here has shaken up an institution that could never imagine women like myself and others who have come with me."

"Before the comment, you sensed it. People were ... they saw only my faith and my ethnicity. You have to try to outwork it. I have to focus on the residents that elected me and not allow (others) to deter me from the work I want to do on their behalf. It's just going to make me stronger."

Contact Todd Spangler: 703-854-8947 or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @tsspangler.

Rashida Tlaib's service centers

According to her staff, the congresswoman will open four offices across the district, two in Detroit, one in River Rouge and one in western Wayne County. The River Rouge office, which will be located at City Hall, 10600 W. Jefferson Ave., will be up and running next week with a grand opening set for Feb. 21. Other offices will be opening soon.

The district offices are expected to be a place where residents can get information on accessing federal services and get help on contacting state and local officials. There will also be events on topics such as tax preparedness and other issues.

Meanwhile, her staff says residents with concerns now can also contact Larissa Richardson, district director, at 313-938-0433 or by email at [email protected].

___

(c)2019 the Detroit Free Press

Visit the Detroit Free Press at www.freep.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.