Jason Crow is a decorated army veteran, lawyer, and current Democratic representative for Colorado’s 6th Congressional District. Rep. Crow serves on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and on the House Armed Services Committee, where he is Ranking Member on the Subcommittee on Intelligence and Special Operations. The Harvard Political Review sat down with Rep. Crow during his visit to the Harvard Institute of Politics to discuss district representation, U.S. military conduct under the Trump administration, and the future of the Democratic Party.
Harvard Political Review: What’s one thing your constituents might be surprised to learn about you?
Jason Crow: Probably that I’m known for my very pizazzy sock collection, including my very famous axolotl socks. I have always loved reptiles and amphibians.
HPR: You were the first Democrat elected in your district in Colorado. What did you learn about how to win the trust of voters who had never supported a Democrat before?
JC: Showing up is the most important. You can’t have a conversation with people and earn their trust if you don’t show up. And you have to go to them. You can’t expect folks to come to you because they’re busy. They’re working multiple jobs. They’re working a night shift. They’re taking kids around to athletic practices. They’re building families, building businesses. You have to figure out where they are and go to them and create opportunities to meet and hear from them. That’s the second part: You don’t begin conversations by explaining or telling them, you have to listen to them first and understand what’s most important to them and their families, what their fears and hopes and dreams are.
HPR: What is most important to the Coloradans you’re listening to?
JC: Right now, it’s the crushing cost of living. People can’t afford homes; they can’t afford health care. They are being squeezed from every direction, and the American Dream — which is the ability to buy a home and raise a family and pay for education — is out of reach for a lot of people.
HPR: I wanted to ask you about the video you released last year with your colleagues, urging U.S. military service members to resist illegal orders. Why did you think it was important to make that video?
JC: We have a president right now, unfortunately, who’s made a series of remarks and threats to use our military in unlawful ways, whether that’s shooting protesters in Lafayette Square, killing the children and families of terrorists, going to war with the city of Chicago, sending troops to polling stations — which is a violation of U.S. criminal law — or, more recently, trying to wipe out an entire civilization, which would be an obvious war crime. He’s a president that has shown a disdain for rule of law and for our Constitution.
What we wanted to do was start a national conversation about what that means for our military service members, the very difficult position that they might be put in, so that when they are faced with that difficult decision, they actually understand that Americans in this country and their members of Congress will be behind them if they obey the law, if they fulfill their oath, and if they do the right thing.
HPR: Do you ever worry that messages like the one in that video could unintentionally undermine trust in the chain of command or generally in American military response? How do you weigh that risk?
JC: No, I never had that concern, because having served in the military and done three combat tours to Iraq and Afghanistan, I know that this is an essential part of military service. From the earliest days of training, people are trained in the military about how to obey the law, what the law of war says, what the Geneva Conventions say, and what the difference is between a lawful military objective and a civilian one. This is an essential part, a core element, of what it means to serve. I’ve been in situations where you have to make split-second decisions about a target, whether to pull a trigger, whether to call in an airstrike, and you have to know whether that’s a valid military objective or a civilian target. You have to make that decision; those are the types of decisions that our military is faced with every day.
So this notion that [military service members] are incapable of making those decisions, or that it’s somehow confusing to them, is actually a fundamental misunderstanding of what military life and service is really about. It’s an essential part of service.
HPR: In response to that video, the president said it was “seditious” and “punishable by death.” The president ultimately walked back his statement, but I’m curious: That hostile rhetoric between the executive and elected members of Congress — that to me indicates a breakdown of democratic norms. How do you approach policymaking in that hostile climate?
JC: Well, first of all, the president’s threats to have us hung and tried for treason, and then him following through with those threats and attempting to indict us in February, tells you everything you need to know about his disdain for the Constitution, and the rule of law, and his approach to trying to silence dissent and intimidate his political opponents — it was very telling. So you fight back against it, as we have.
We’ve been very firm. We’ve tried to show clarity and moral courage, making it really clear that we’re not going to be threatened and intimidated and we’re not going to back down. Because ultimately, his threats were not about the video. There is nothing sensational about this video, which says simply “follow the law and the Constitution.” The threats weren’t about us either. What they were about was the president attempting to send a message to his opponents, and to Americans more generally, that if you dissent, if you step out of line, if you question him, he will use the power of government to crush you. So the costs are too high, and that is not a message that any of us were willing to allow him to send.
So what do we do? We push back against it when it happens, and we still find ways to legislate, and we find partners across the aisle as few and far between as they even are sometimes. You still try to legislate and build coalitions.
HPR: As your party looks ahead to the midterm election cycle, and beyond to 2028, what aspects of the Democratic Party’s platform should they rethink, and what should Democrats double down on? What’s worked?
JC: Certainly our democracy reform initiative and our willingness to correct the fundamental deficiencies in our government that aren’t working, from gerrymandering to campaign finance reform to judicial reform, are going to remain very important.
A few things that I think we have to be able to recognize as falling short is making sure that we prioritize public safety in cities. In areas where Democrats have governed and public safety hasn’t been prioritized, it’s been very clear that there has been blowback against Democrats and people governing those areas. So public safety is important, and we have to make sure we’re focusing on it.
Similarly, the cost of housing is way too high because we don’t have enough housing inventory. We have to make it easier and cheaper to build in America to resolve that crisis. We cannot be the party of the working class if the working class can’t afford to live in the areas where we govern.
Those are two notable areas that I think we have to address for reform, and that is reducing bureaucracy and red tape. There is a problem with government inefficiency, and I think that’s why we saw DOGE appear. DOGE is the wrong response; it’s a drastic overreaction. But it’s an outgrowth with a broader frustration that government is not moving fast enough and is not efficient enough and not responsive enough for 21st century America, and that we have to reform a lot of those systems and agencies.
HPR: What, if anything, makes you optimistic right now?
JC: The people I’m meeting around the country and in Colorado. This is not going to be fixed, ultimately, by elected officials and people in Washington. Now, we have a really important role to play, a leadership role, and I’m taking that seriously. I’m willing to step up into the fire and go where the fight is.
But ultimately, to get ourselves out of the polarization and the deep dysfunction that we’re in as a country, that’s going to require people across this country, Americans stepping up and having uncomfortable conversations and learning how to debate again without viewing each other as enemies. If we view each other as enemies, there’s just no place to go. There’s no debate to be had, and no collaboration that can happen. So we have to figure out how we can have healthy debate and step back from the intensity of this moment.
