Cori Bush has something to say
In an exit interview with Once Upon a Hill, the two-term congresswoman dishes on Trump’s return to Washington, the collapse of Build Back Better, the war in Gaza and her AIPAC-backed successor.
Cori Bush arrived in Washington at an inflection point: President Joe Biden had just successfully convinced voters he could save themselves and, as he put it, the soul of the nation from another four years of Donald Trump as the leader of the free world and a stain on American democracy.
Before she dethroned a 52-year political dynasty to become the first Black woman to serve in the House from Missouri, Bush worked on the front lines of the Black Lives Matter movement in St. Louis to call attention to police brutality and anti-Black racist violence following the killing of Michael Brown, an 18-year-old who was shot and killed by a Missouri police officer in 2014.
Her policy goals—affordable housing and child care, Black maternal health, reproductive freedom, worker empowerment and cuts to military funding—were informed by her working-class roots and lived experience as a domestic violence survivor, homeless mom of two and nurse.
She wasn’t alone in advancing them either. Progressive power was on the rise in the Democratic Party by the time she won her election, especially within the Squad, her chosen political family of House progressives, which initially comprised four members elected two years before Bush: Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.).
With Biden’s blessing and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s legislative might, House Democrats passed the Build Back Better Act—a massive $2.2 trillion package of Squad-approved provisions, including paid family and medical leave, an extension of the expanded child tax credit and Affordable Care Act subsidies, clean energy tax credits, universal pre-K, expanded access to home-based care and more.
But once the legislation made its way to the Senate, it was rebuffed by Sens. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, two conservative Democrats who would later change their party affiliation to independent. Sinema opposed raising the corporate tax rate to pay for the provisions and Manchin thought the legislation was too expensive altogether. Bush and five House progressives voted against a related infrastructure bill in an attempt to gain leverage for BBB but to no avail. Manchin disassembled Build Back Better and reconstructed the climate, health care and tax pieces as the Inflation Reduction Act. Several of those aforementioned policy goals have seen marginal progress despite Bush’s relentless advocacy.
The bookends of Bush’s tenure—the Jan. 6 insurrection on the Capitol and the war in Gaza—left an indelible mark on the country and the congresswoman. The People’s House would be home to hostility for Bush from members of her own party and colleagues on the other side of the aisle. And as one of the first members to demand a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, Bush became one of the faces of a grassroots anti-Israel movement often branded as antisemitic and a betrayal of the US’s closest ally in the Middle East.
Now two terms in, Trump is on his way back to the White House and Bush is headed out to door after suffering a primary defeat to Wesley Bell, the AIPAC-backed prosecuting attorney for St. Louis County. She joins Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) as the first two Squad members to lose primary challengers in the two most expensive primary elections in US history.
But before she wraps up her official business next week, Bush hopped on the phone with me for a candid, wide-ranging chat on how she’s handling Trump’s looming second act, if she stands by that controversial infrastructure vote, why she feels Biden should have reached out to her about Gaza, if she’s spoken to her successor and what’s next after Congress.
The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
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How are you doing? How are you handling not just your election loss but the prospect of Trump 2.0?
It’s a lot. It really is. It’s a lot happening just personally making this transition. It’s been tough because I fought to get here. Nothing was handed to me. No one gave me a bunch of money to run and just said, “Hey, you don’t even have to know anything about the policies, just run and we'll pay for it.” I didn’t get here that way. I fought and I scraped my way here.
And then entering Congress, Trump was the president. My third day was the insurrection on the US Capitol, where I didn’t even have a panic button yet, we didn’t have any water in our office. We didn’t have anything. So that was my entrance.
It was during COVID. We impeached Donald Trump again just days later. And to think that after the insurrection—I introduced a bill to investigate and expel any members of Congress that participated in the insurrection—and to now know that we are going back to Donald Trump being the president in what, some 40 days or so?
And so it’s tough because at this time, the Republicans having the White House, the Senate and the House, just understanding the damage that will be done because this just with the Republicans gaining control of the House this Congress, the things that they were trying to do and some of the things that they did, some of the legislation that they at least pushed out of the House was horrendous. And so to know that they would have Donald Trump as the president, and they’ll have this free reign, pretty much, I’m thinking about the people who will be impacted, not only the people who are here now in the world but our children’s children and how this will impact them.
Almost every departing member I speak to—whether they leave on their own terms or not—says they didn’t get everything done that they had hoped during their time in Congress. I’m sure that’s the case for you too. But what are you most proud of what you were able to achieve for St. Louis during your service?
We were able to deliver over $2 billion to the district and counting in the last four years, which is phenomenal. And $41 million of that was community project funding—money that went directly to community organizations and governments that did not have to go through another channel to be directed to them. And so we've been able to see those organizations to do well, to be able to scale up, to continue to take care of the people in the district. So I'm really proud of that.
We’ve been able to help businesses who were having trouble getting their [Payment Protection Plan] loans forgiven. One business alone had been working for two years to get that done to the tune of $800,000 and their businesses were about to close when they reached out to our office, and we got it done pretty much in one day.
We were able to help a veteran in our community who reached out for something else and with our case worker doing the digging that we do, taking care of the community the way that we do, she kept digging—the person never said they were a veteran—she just kept digging and found out this person was a veteran, contacting the VA and found out that this person had benefits that were just sitting waiting on him that were over $300,000 that changed that person’s life.
And so that type of work—being able to take care of the community, showing up when the one-in-one-thousand-year flood happened twice in one week, being able to be there on the ground in the community, 10:00 at night, walking through sewage and walking through the flood waters with the community trying to get them what they need just to at least be able to make it through the night.
The eviction moratorium, 11 million people were at risk for eviction, and I decided to, okay, do what I know to do. If I was in St Louis, what would I do? I would protest.“
I’m actually going to come back to your roots as an organizer, as an activist, as a nurse before and during the peak of the Black Lives Matter movement. But I wanted to get to a couple of other things before my time is up.
Let’s talk about the infrastructure law real quickly. Obviously, during the primary you were criticized for your vote. I know you and five of your colleagues opposed splitting infrastructure and Build Back Better. But given how that vote was weaponized against you on the campaign trail, do you still stand by that vote?
Yeah, so we saw that just recently with the latest election where the electorate clearly wanted a government that would deliver on kitchen-table economic issues.
What was in Build Back Better was precisely the priorities that the people want to see, policies that could have been enacted had Democrats remained united and held the line. We pushed for raising the federal minimum wage, which we know has not been raised in 2009. We pushed for the universal pre-K, affordable child care, paid [medical and family] leave, and so much more. Those [free] school meals, permanent expanded child tax credit.
And so I feel validated. I did the right thing. We, as progressives, The Squad, we did the right thing. And if we would have gotten that done, if people were able to point back directly to that and to see how that changed what happens in their kitchen, in their front yard, at their kids’ schools, I think there would have been able to be a different campaign and maybe a different result.
You were the first members to call for a ceasefire in Gaza just days after Oct. 7. Biden is weeks away from leaving office without securing a ceasefire and hostage release. How disappointed will you be if your term ends without the permanent ceasefire you fiercely advocated for?
I’m disappointed now. I’m disappointed every time I hear that we’re working on a ceasefire and then Congress is bypassed to send more funding to send more weapons [to Israel].
I’m disappointed every time that I see a video, that I hear from people who are in Gaza or who were in Gaza and I hear the stories of what’s actually happening on the ground.
I’m disappointed that we’re here, that we are probably somewhere around 200,000 dead at this point—not 45,000. And so will I be disappointed if he leaves office and there is no actual ceasefire, there is no end to the occupation and all of the things that we’ve been asking for, there is no end to the starvation happening? Yes, but just as disappointed as I am right now.
When I checked in with you in October, it was one year since White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre described calls from you and other House progressives as “repugnant” and “disgraceful.” You told me at the time that you had yet to receive an apology or any meaningful outreach from the White House.
Are you also disappointed in the lack of engagement? Do you think that it would have made a difference if you had had more active engagement with President Biden on this issue? Do you think that would have changed anything?
No, absolutely. I should have heard from the President. And not only me because this isn't about me, but this movement. When we’re talking about people in Congress that are actually able to do something as far as legislation is concerned on the federal level, he should have had a conversation with us. He should have had a conversation with those of us who are part of the ceasefire now resolution, who are the signers and the sponsors. He should have had conversations with us. We should have been able to be to be brought to the table and then also open that up to folks like even part of the Uncommitted Movement and others who who have valid concerns and who lost family members and loved ones.
[Editor’s Note: Abbas Alawieh, one of the founders of the Uncommitted Movement, previously served as Bush’s chief of staff.]
During that October check-in, you told me in a statement that your advocacy for the issue didn’t start for you as a member of Congress and that you would continue championing issues of human rights and equal rights for all people, including Palestinians. You also said, “My commitment to justice for all marginalized people is unwavering, and whether inside or outside of traditional political spaces like Congress, I will keep pushing for real, transformative change rooted in equity, dignity, peace and liberation for all.” Have you decided what that looks like for you? In other words: What’s next?
I’m keeping the door open to many different possibilities. But for right now, all I can tell readers is I am not going anywhere that this is only the beginning. I’m just getting started and as I said the night of the election in my speech that leaving Congress only cut the strings. It only cut strings that have been placed on me since I’ve been a member of Congress.
So now I won’t have those strings and so I'll be able to do more. I’ll be able to go more places, speak even more freely, [and] organize. So that’s what I plan to do. When we think about what's happening in Gaza, I will continue to do that work, and maybe I’ll be able to do it on an even deeper level because I’ll be able to dedicate a lot more time to it. But also what's happening in Sudan, in Haiti, in Congo, you know, as well as what's happening in the United States, I can show up more and I can I feel like I can be effective that way because I walked into Congress with a voice. Congress did not give me my voice. And so leaving Congress will not take it away.
As I mentioned, you came to Congress as a nurse, activist and organizer. The most common professions for members are law, business, and previous public service in local or state government. With folks like you and Jamaal Bowman leaving and other working-class colleagues under attack, do you depart Congress with more or less faith that the institution can become a better reflection of the people it’s supposed to serve?
With the influence of corporate money in politics, it makes that very difficult because we need people to represent their communities based on what the community needs, what the community wants, not based on the donors or based on lobbyists, not about how much money I can stow away in my campaign coffers, to make sure I can come back and I get reelected.
So people like us, people who are not wealthy, people who come from backgrounds like ours— because the one thing about it is we come from backgrounds of regular, everyday people like in our communities, which means that that is also our network. So we don’t have, the billionaires, millionaires and all of those folks around us to help us. And so it hurts Congress.
Congress needs to represent the people by being of the people and we’ve missed the mark. And we have seen how much we’ve missed the mark by this most recent election.
Have you had any conversations with your successor?
No, he has not reached out at all. There has been zero attempt from him to reach out.
Would you be open to speaking with him?
If he reached out, I mean, he can call me. He’s had my phone number for what, eight years or more. So yeah, he can call me.
And I’ll say this: When I won after unseating a 52-year family dynasty, I called the congressman and I reached out to him and said, “Can we meet?” I reached out to him the same month, and I was able to get a meeting with him in his office. My staff reached out. The incoming staff reached out to him and his staff. So we worked, we had conversations over the next several months before I ever entered Congress. I came to the Hill for orientation and came to his office, and was able to have some conversations with him in person, and my staff met with his staff in person.
That is how that should work. But yeah, I have not heard anything from him, but he says he knows everything, and that he knows how to do this right and do this the best way. So I guess he doesn't need anything. I just want him to take care of St Louis.
Before we hop off, I want to give you the last word. Is there anything you want to say that I didn’t ask about or that we didn’t get to?
Yeah, one thing that I do want to say is I know that a lot of people are disillusioned right now. A lot of people are feeling like, “I’m done with politics” and looking at Trump coming in and all that Trump is doing, looking at the reality show that he's bringing in the door with the cast of actors. People are frustrated and disappointed.
And I know that Black women—it’s been this big conversation about we’re resting or let somebody else do it, we’re not doing it anymore and we’re not going to fight right now, you know?
And I just want to say this: I get it. I’m hurt. If anybody’s hurt, I’m one of those folks after losing my race and my livelihood to the same Republicans [who] were able to dictate the outcome of this Democratic seat and so those same people work to get Donald Trump elected.
But this is not the time to say, let somebody else do it. I’m not belittling anyone. I’m on the same team. I’m just saying that who hurts will be our children and our children’s children, who hurt our loved ones right now who won't have their needs met. This serial liar Donald Trump and all of the people that he’s bringing in, they will come in and hurt our communities and destroy what we have built and destroy what we’ve been trying to build. And we can’t let that happen.
So I just want to say, take some time to get yourself together. Take a mental health break. Love on yourself. Do something for your family and all of that, but then get back in the fight. We cannot allow them to destroy our communities because our preferred candidate didn’t win a race or because our emotions are heightened. We cannot do that. We have to continue to fight we have to fight. We have to fight harder right now because what cannot happen is that they become the change we don’t need and we did nothing.