In the history of workweeks that start badly, few can compete with the one Representative Jamie Raskin began on January 6, 2021, his first full morning back in the Capitol since discovering the corpse of his son six days before. Raskin, a Democrat who represents Maryland’s Eighth District, was entering his fifth year in Congress, having first been elected on the same night as Donald Trump. The previous Thursday, after preparing a breakfast smoothie, he had gone to the room where his 25-year-old son, Tommy, was staying while remotely attending Harvard Law School and had found him dead, a victim of suicide. For Raskin and his wife and their two other children, this was the start of a nightmare. “After searching frantically for my phone—which I had thrown high in the air when I came upon the scene—after dialing 911 and screaming; after I tried to resuscitate him and get him to…
