The thing about congressional hearings, as anyone who's covered them knows, is that they are generally pointless exercises in which nothing really happens. Lawmakers occasionally "grill" witnesses in hopes of getting a few good soundbytes, but these events are mostly just kabuki theater; the law writing and the votes happen elsewhere. Porter, though, has in her very first term managed to do in these hearings what lawmakers have been pretending to do in them for decades: speak truth to power, generate actual results, and enact change. She has arguably become one of the most effective members of the entire House of Representatives.
The great irony is that during Porter's campaign, she was forced to defend her fitness to serve in Congress as a single mother who survived domestic violence. In April 2018, when she was still a candidate in a tough primary, the down-to-earth Iowa-born professor sat across a table from me at a Washington, D.C., Marriott hotel and sobbed for a full hour as she recounted the story of her ex-husband's physical and psychological abuse. He had allegedly ripped dental floss out of her hand one night and shattered the faceplate on the light switch with his bare hand because he said she was "brushing her teeth too slowly." She said he shoved her into a wall, threw things at her, called her a "dumb bitch" in front of their three young children, and would pound so hard on her bedroom door at night that she had to prop a chair against it to keep him out.
Porter successfully obtained a restraining order against her husband in 2013 and briefly went into hiding with her children. And five years later, while she was running for Congress, that court document became the subject of a whisper campaign in the competitive Democratic primary for California's 45th congressional district. Several Orange County delegates told Porter they'd heard there was something "disqualifying" in her divorce records, and she wasn't sure what that meant until a donor to one of her opponents called her "Katie 'Restraining Order' Porter" on Twitter.
On top of that, Porter told me voters would frequently ask her how she could handle being a congresswoman as a single mom. "People come up to me and say, 'If you win, who will care for your children?'" she said. "I'm a tenured professor―I'm doing it. I had three babies on the tenure track and took no delay. I know how to raise kids and work. Half of all the moms in America are single moms, and there should be more of us in Congress."
One advantage of having a regular, working single mother in Congress-Porter is the first single mom raising young children while in office-is that they know quite a bit about health care and what it costs, especially at a time like this. They are used to having to multitask, be extra organized and work twice as hard as people with more support. When she tells the CDC chief that "fear of these costs are going to keep people from being tested, from getting the care they need and from keeping their communities safe," she is speaking from experience and from the heart, and that's part of what makes her questioning so powerful and effective.
It's a stark contrast to the response of Republican members of Congress like Texas senator Ted Cruz and Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, who have been more concerned with protecting Trump's reputation throughout the crisis and helping the president downplay it, even as they themselves have to go into quarantine, than considering how they might use their power to help stop the epidemic from spreading. Gaetz mockingly wore a gas mask on the House floor to make fun of the media for overhyping the crisis. Cruz posted a video of himself defending Trump from his home isolation and lamented having to miss an Eagles concert.
Porter is focused on expanding the accessibility of coronavirus tests for all people. In addition to securing a commitment from Redfield, she is leading the effort in the House to pressure the administration to allow academic medical centers to assist the rest of the medical community in testing new patients. No one should be surprised that in this spiraling public health crisis, it took a single mom brand new to Congress to find the empathy, grit, and preparedness to step up and show the country what a leader should look like.
Laura Bassett is a GQ columnist.
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