Chris Van Hollen was born in 1959 to parents serving in the U.S. Foreign Service in Pakistan. After a childhood moving throughout Pakistan, Turkey, India, and Sri Lanka, he went to high school in Massachusetts before attending Swarthmore and graduating with a B.A. in philosophy in 1983. After graduation, he earned a master of public policy from Harvard Kennedy School of Government and a J.D. from Georgetown Law Center. He was a staffer for Sen. Charles Mathias, for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and for Maryland Governor William Donald Schaeffer before being elected to the Maryland House of Delegates in 1990. He was elected to the Maryland Senate in 1994, to the U.S. Congress in 2002, and to the U.S. Senate (D-MD) in 2016.
In these elected offices, Van Hollen has prioritized progressive economic policy and environmental protection, advancing and often passing legislation for a stronger social safety net, campaign finance reform, and diplomatic foreign policy, among other causes. To discuss how his approach to electoral politics has evolved over this long career, what he thinks about pressing political crises of our time, and how these topics relate to Swarthmore and the liberal arts, Sen. Van Hollen sat down for a Zoom interview with The Phoenix. A transcript of that conversation — edited for clarity — is below.
Daniel Perrin: First of all, thank you so much for talking with us. I want to jump in by asking what projects and issues have been taking up most of your time recently.
Chris Van Hollen: My major focus has been to defend our democracy, to defend the rule of law, and to defend the country against the onslaught of illegal actions by Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Working to fight these illegal actions in the courts is consuming a lot of time. I’ve been working closely with lawyers and groups who are filing the suits, pushing back in Congress, and attending many community meetings to get the word out as to what’s happening.
I’ve been standing in solidarity with the federal employees who are being harmed and others whose rights are threatened, but also trying to help get the word out around the country. In my view, this is a moment for every patriotic American to stand up and protect the Constitution.
DP: On that note, thinking about the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and other Trump projects, I’m curious how you approach this moment. Do you view these projects as an extreme version of the austerity politics that conservatives have been pursuing for a long time? Or do you kind of think of it as a different thing altogether?
CVH: I think this is a radically different enterprise. That doesn’t mean there aren’t some through lines in the story, but what we’re witnessing with the Elon Musk endeavor is a radical effort to dismantle big parts of the federal government. This has nothing to do with government efficiency. If it had to do with government efficiency, you wouldn’t start by firing all the independent inspectors general whose job it is to root out waste, fraud, and abuse. This is literally taking a chainsaw to major parts of the federal government that serve the American people, and I say chainsaw because that’s what Elon Musk himself brandished when he had a meeting before the Conservative Political Action Committee.
So this is a very radical endeavor, and it’s accompanied by Trump trying to do, through executive orders, many things that he’s not authorized to do unilaterally under the Constitution. You asked about the Musk enterprise, but of course Trump is issuing all sorts of other executive orders that exceed his authority.
We’ve filed over 120 lawsuits around the country and we have judges working every day to protect the rule of law by issuing temporary restraining orders, preliminary injunctions, and final decisions. But I’ve never, in all my time in public service, witnessed a moment as dangerous as this.
DP: I want to talk a little bit about how the Democratic Party is responding to this crisis long term. As you mentioned, you’ve been active in D.C. responding to and fighting against the Trump administration’s attacks on the federal government, especially given your role as a senator representing so many federal employees. At a distance, however, it seems that the Democratic Party is at a bit of a crossroads, and I’m curious about how you think about this. What needs to change and what needs to stay the same about the party and progressive politics at large to fight Trumpism long-term, and more broadly, to do what’s necessary for a better government to be achieved?
CVH: I do believe the Democratic Party needs to do a lot better and a lot more, not only to fight the illegal activities of the Trump administration, but to present an alternative to the actions of the Trump administration. On the first point, there was talk early in the Trump administration about somehow trying to find a way to work with the new administration. I think anybody who believed that was possible for more than a week was deluded. But I also disagree strongly with those who say that we should just roll over and play dead, because they’re going to do a lot of bad things and people will see those bad things.
There was also a view that they’re going to flood the zone with a lot of issues, and we shouldn’t chase after every single one. I agree that we shouldn’t chase after every single thing, but there is a through line to what they’re doing, and it is what I call “The Great Betrayal.” Donald Trump promised during the campaign that he was going to bring down prices, that he was going to look out for kitchen table issues for every American. Instead, he’s focused on everything but that. From the beginning, when he spoke of a new golden age for America, he was really referring to the people sitting right behind him on Inauguration Day: Elon Musk and the billionaire cabinet. We need to make clear how Donald Trump is betraying the very people who voted for him, along with the rest of the country.
But we do need to present an alternative, and I think one big opportunity to do that will be in the upcoming fight over the Republican tax bill that will disproportionately benefit the very wealthy at the expense of everybody else. Tax policy and budget policy ultimately is an expression of values and what you care about for the country. I’ve been arguing strongly within the Senate Democratic Caucus that in addition to showing how bad the Trump tax plan will be for the American people, including its cuts to things like Medicaid, we should have an alternative. Our alternative [budget] should show that we’re very focused on providing greater opportunities to working Americans, to close tax loopholes that benefit the very wealthy and big corporations, and invest some of those revenues on things like increasing childcare opportunities, strengthening parts of Social Security and a host of other things.
Sometimes you can beat something with nothing if that something is really, really bad, which their plan will be. But I think it’s also smart to present an alternative vision.
From the beginning, when he spoke of a new golden age for America, he was really referring to the people sitting right behind him on Inauguration Day: Elon Musk and the billionaire cabinet. We need to make clear how Donald Trump is betraying the very people who voted for him, along with the rest of the country.
DP: You mentioned Elon Musk and the billionaire cabinet, a great segue into my next question. You’ve done a lot of work on campaign finance reform, financial regulation, and taxation at large. The exponential growth of wealth in the hands of only a select few almost feels inevitable and invincible in a way that is often very discouraging and disempowering for young people. This wealth also often seems to go hand in hand with political power, as the Trump Admin embraces a kind of oligarchy and elections at all levels of government are influenced from the outside. How do you think about and approach responding to this issue?
CVH: The threat of huge amounts of money, literally unlimited expenditures, is a great risk to our democracy. I think we’re witnessing the most corrupt bargain in American history. Elon Musk spent $280 million to help elect Donald Trump, and Donald Trump has now given him the keys to much of the federal government. And that’s just one of many stories. Trump also promised Big Oil that, if they gave him buckets of money, that he would do their bidding for them. We’re witnessing that as well.
Years ago, I authored a bill in the House called the DISCLOSE Act, which would at least require that individuals and groups spending unlimited amounts of money disclose to voters who they are. This was a “right-to-know” piece of legislation. It got out of the House but failed by one vote in the Senate on a filibuster. There were 59 votes in favor of the bill, but because of a sort of twist of history, Ted Kennedy passed away, Scott Brown took his place, and we never passed that. At least we would have gotten rid of secret money in politics.
That said, the problem of overall money in politics, especially independent unregulated expenditures, is real poison to our democracy. The hard part about this is solving it because we have this Supreme Court decision: Citizens United. It’s one of the worst decisions in American history, and it was a 5-4 ruling that essentially said, ‘We’ll treat corporations as individuals for the purpose of spending money in elections.’ So, in order to get to the root of that, you need a constitutional amendment or a Supreme Court that would reverse that bad precedent.
The alternative is to try to come up with other ways that candidates can compete financially and in races. I worked with my former colleague from Maryland, Congressman John Sarbanes, on legislation to create more public funding sources. But unfortunately, we’ve not been successful at getting that over the finish line. Many of the forces that like the status quo don’t like creating that alternative.
Beyond that, I believe that we need to find ways to reach voters outside the normal channels, and that will be the big challenge coming forward. We’ve gotten to a place where there’s so much information on the internet and it’s overwhelming, but people tend to get into their own echo chambers and just listen to the storylines that they already agree with. This has really created segmentation and polarization throughout the country, but is not a new problem. In preparation for talking to you, I was just going back to look at remarks I made at a Swarthmore commencement address in June 2009, and I made the point then that people get into their information silos, and we need to find a way to break out of them. There are always new technologies, but I will say Democrats need to do a much better job of adapting to the new information ecosystem.
DP: Before you were a U.S. Senator, you served in the Maryland General Assembly and won big legislative victories on things like cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay, gun control, and increasing funding for healthcare and education. You’ve certainly passed big legislation in the Senate on some of these same issues, but I’m curious how you approach change-making at a state level in a safely Democratic state versus the very gridlocked federal legislative scene. More broadly, how do you think we should be imagining the role of different levels of government in this new political era?
CVH: Well, that is a big question, so let me start by saying that there are so many differences, of course, between the Maryland General Assembly and the Congress that it’s difficult to compare and contrast. For one thing, as you indicated, Maryland is a predominantly Democratic state. We’ve had Republican governors and Democratic governors, but the General Assembly, for some time now, has had a veto-proof majority in both the House of Delegates and the State Senate. So yes, when I was in the Maryland General Assembly, I was able to pass sweeping pieces of legislation and enact them on everything from more equitable school funding to protecting the Chesapeake Bay to clean energy to a host of other issues. Of course, it did help that I was in a body that had a majority of Democrats, and while I was there, we had a Democratic governor as well.
Contrast that to the [U.S.] Congress, which has been very polarized. There have been a couple of times since I’ve been in Congress that the Democrats have had the House and the Senate and the White House, which is a parallel structure to what we had in Annapolis. During those moments, I have been able to pass legislation. Now, I will say the margins were always much tighter in the Congress, in terms of Democrats to Republicans, so most of the opportunities there arose with what’s called reconciliation bills. These are a way that one party can pass things in the Senate, avoiding the 60 vote filibuster requirements. So I’ve been able to pass significant legislation on clean energy through that form, as well as a number of other initiatives.
You did mention the Highway to Nowhere in West Baltimore. My work on that was a provision I included in the infrastructure modernization bill, which was a bipartisan effort, called “Reconnecting Communities.” This was a national program for dealing with so much of the 1960s infrastructure that split mostly urban communities and mostly Black communities into pieces in order to make way for big infrastructure projects. So while it’s a national provision, the reason it’s in that bill is because of the Highway to Nowhere in West Baltimore.
Beyond passing those major initiatives through that [reconciliation] process, I have tried, wherever possible, to enact bipartisan legislation. I have done that in many areas in Congress, both on foreign policy and national security issues where there’s often more common ground, but also things like protecting the Chesapeake Bay at the national level and robust funding levels to support the EPA program. So even in areas of divided government, I’ve done my best to try to advance bipartisan proposals. There are many other examples of this, but I will end by saying we are in a particularly challenged time right now.
There are always new technologies, but I will say Democrats need to do a much better job of adapting to the new information ecosystem.
DP: I want to talk a little bit more about issues relevant to Swarthmore. Of course, one of the biggest subjects of controversy on college campuses like Swarthmore’s has been how to respond to devastating violence in the Middle East. You’ve been one of only a handful of Senators to publicly advocate and fight for legislation for a foreign policy more conscious of the brutal violence against Palestinians. What has that somewhat lonely fight been like and what do you say to young people who feel increasingly distant from their government on this issue?
CVH: I appreciate you raising this very important matter. I do want to start by acknowledging the horror of the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7 and saying that I have consistently supported Israel’s right to defend itself. But I’ve also pointed out that a just war needs to be fought justly and in a way that minimizes civilian harm, and that clearly has not been the case with the way the Netanyahu government has conducted the war in Gaza. We’ve seen huge numbers of civilian casualties, and we’ve witnessed ongoing efforts to dramatically restrict, and in some cases, cut off humanitarian assistance to innocent people.
My view is that the United States should adopt a values-based, principles-based foreign policy that we apply equally to friend and foe alike. If we don’t do that, we have no credibility. We’re obviously not perfect, and it’s not a perfect world. It’s hard to apply those values in an always perfect manner. But I do think that we should try to do that. I grew up in a Foreign Service family. I was proud to be part of a family that represented the United States overseas, but what distinguished the United States was our emphasis on democracy, on the rule of law, on trying to support human rights. However imperfectly, that was our North Star.
My view is that the Biden administration failed to apply those values with respect to what’s happening in the Middle East, and the Trump administration has totally abandoned the whole notion of a rules-based, values-based, principles-based foreign policy. They’ve gone to a totally different model of a dog-eat-dog world. When you have the president of the United States proposing the forcible displacement of two million Palestinians from Gaza, that is just another name for ethnic cleansing and we are in a very dark world.
DP: Continuing to talk about colleges but on a slightly lighter note, I’m wondering if you could tell us more about your relationship with Swarthmore. What do you remember about your academic and overall experience here, and how have you related to the college since graduating and rising through politics?
CVH: First of all, let me say I have very fond memories of Swarthmore and I had wonderful experiences there. I went back to look at my 2009 remarks because they focused on what I learned from my Swarthmore experience. One of the main takeaways was that there was this very healthy debate on every issue on campus, where people were encouraged to challenge assumptions. Back in the day, there was a bumper sticker that said “question authority,” and I think that’s a very important part of the Swarthmore education experience: questioning assumptions, including many that I myself might bring to the table. I think it’s important to really test ideas and to force people to have their ideas challenged, sometimes in uncomfortable ways.
I also always appreciated the ethic at Swarthmore that learning had a moral component to it. There was a real sense that people respected others despite differences in race, religion or ethnicity, and that people did want to build a better world and use their education to advance not only themselves, but to help build a more perfect union at home and a better world overseas.
When I was at Swarthmore, I was very engaged in the Swarthmore Anti-Apartheid committee. We advocated for Swarthmore to divest from US companies that were investing and doing business in apartheid South Africa. It was a long road, but the college did ultimately divest. I raise that not only because it was part of my Swarthmore experience, but because, years later, I worked for a US Senator named Mac Mathias (R-MD) while Congress passed the anti-Apartheid legislation that demanded the release of Nelson Mandela from prison and imposed sanctions on South Africa until it lifted its apartheid system. That legislation passed in a bipartisan way in the Senate, but was vetoed by President Reagan, who believed in what they called the policy of constructive engagement at the time: don’t rock the boat with the Apartheid regime, let’s just try to incrementally change it. This was clearly, in my view, a broken approach. In today’s world, this would probably never happen, but the United States Senate and the House overrode President Reagan’s veto. The Senate was in Republican control, and they overrode the veto of a president of their own party on the anti-Apartheid legislation.
I relay that story partly because I got to see the trajectory of the anti-Apartheid movement all the way from a grassroots mobilization effort on college campuses to, many years later, finally, the United States Congress catching up with the students of Swarthmore. That student mobilization, engagement, and grassroots effort is really the fuel that has made the most important changes in our country from the abolitionist movement to the women’s rights movement to the labor rights movement to the environmental movement, the gay rights movement, and on and on. All of that has started at the grassroots level, and sometimes on college campuses. About things that people would say were impossible, students often said, ‘well, it is possible to make these changes.’ So I just want to say that that’s one of my lessons from Swarthmore: the ability of student and grassroots engagement to make change.
In my experience, right now, while we’re dealing with these threats to our democracy, it’s going to require people around the country to mobilize and help protect our institutions.
DP: Any final words for the many young people at Swarthmore who are passionate about social justice?
CVH: I would again emphasize the fact that the voice of the students of Swarthmore matters. Your voice matters, your actions matter, and you do have the power to bring about change. I think in this current moment, Donald Trump would like nothing more than for everybody to feel helpless and give up. But it’s more important than ever that people get fully engaged to protect our democracy, protect the rule of law, and protect our Constitution.
Terrific interview.