By Belén Pizarro for El Semanario
Posted October 29, 2026
Our Publisher, Chris Frésquez, at The Weekly Issue/El Semanario sat down recently with Congresswoman Diana DeGette. DeGette has served in Congress representing Colorado’s First district since 1997. She serves on the House committee on Energy and Commerce and also belongs to the subcommittees on Health, Oversight and Investigation, and Energy. During her career, she has also been co-chair of the Congressional Diabetes Caucus, Congressional Reproductive Freedom Caucus, and Congressional Olympic and Paralympic Caucus. They discussed highlights of her nearly 30-year career serving Denver and her plans for the future following the upcoming election on November 3rd.
The following is the interview, edited for length and clarity.
El Semanario: Congresswoman, thank you for taking the time with us today. I also want to express my deep gratitude for your many years of service representing Colorado’s 1st Congressional District. It has been an honor to know you and work with you over the years. I’d like to begin by taking us back to 1996, when Congresswoman Pat Schroeder announced she would not seek reelection after 24 years in Congress. What inspired you to run for Congress, and what convinced you that this was the right time to take that step?
DeGette: Going back, I grew up in Denver, and I’m a fourth generation Denverite. I grew up in the ’70s, mostly, during the civil rights movement, and everything. And there was this TV show, and it was called Storefront Lawyers. And I grew up in a family [that] had no lawyers. My parents were pretty political, and I’m the oldest of five kids. So, I saw this TV show, the Storefront Lawyers. Because it was the 70s, they had a white guy, they had a black guy, and they had a woman, a lawyer. And they were serving the poor, and the community out of the storefront loft… I said that that’s what I want to do. I want to be a storefront lawyer. So, I went to Colorado College, and then I got a scholarship to go to NYU Law School in New York for public interest law. And I went there, and then I moved home the next day and became a public defender. And then after that, I eventually started my own law firm, and I was serving clients, one at a time, doing civil rights work and employment work. And then I just sort of stumbled into volunteering in political campaigns. And at some point, I said, I can serve my clients one at a time, or I can get elected to office and write laws that will benefit everybody. So then, in 1992, my longtime state legislator, Jerry Coble, announced he was retiring, and I ran for that seat. In those days, the legislature was Republican, Republican House, Republican Senate, and Roy Romer was the governor. But even so, I was able to pass several [bills] for clinic access. I was able to pass a law for environmental cleanup, and a lot of other bills through the legislature. So, I thought, well, yeah, I can impact a lot of different lives. So then in 1996, [former U.S. Congresswoman] Pat Schroeder unexpectedly announced she was retiring, so I decided to run for her seat, because I thought, well, if I can do this at the state level, maybe I can do it at the federal level. And Pat was very encouraging to me, and that’s how I decided to run for Congress.
El Semanario: You mentioned clinic access. Can you elaborate?
DeGette: Oh, In the state legislature, we called it the ‘bubble bill’. Because what it did was, it set up an 8-foot radius around patients going into healthcare clinics. And it was targeted at people trying to get into abortion clinics, and the protesters who were blocking them. And so, we [passed] this law. I did it with then state senator Mike Feely, and we did this to help patients get into healthcare clinics. And it passed, even in the Republican legislature, I was able to pass it, and then Roy Romer signed it. Then it went all the way to the Supreme Court, where it’s been upheld three times.
El Semanario: As we look back over your years, you’ve made many accomplishments. Beyond the ones you’ve already mentioned, which would you say has been your biggest?
DeGette: Well, I think that my biggest accomplishments have been the passage of a number of pieces of healthcare legislation that have improved people’s access to medical care, improved biomedical research, and have really targeted lower income people to be able to get healthcare. And a lot of those bills, the children’s health insurance program, which I did when I was brand new in Congress, to help kids that are just above Medicaid eligibility, but their parents can’t afford insurance. And now this is just a given, even the CHIP program.E:\1 A A AAA OCT 29 2026\FINAL OCT 29 2026\Children’s Health Insurance Program https:\www.medicaid.gov\chip But back then, it was a whole new concept. And then after that, I worked on expanding ethical embryonic stem cell research to help research be able to develop cures. We just had the 25th anniversary of that. And the doctor who was doing that research at that time, has gotten clinical trials with the stem cells. And if it works, it’s going to cure type one diabetes. And then I worked on the ACA, and a lot of the stuff I’ve worked on is to help get people more access to healthcare. I passed a bill, 21st Century Cures Act, probably the biggest bill I’ve passed. I did this with Congressman Fred Upton, who is a Republican from Michigan.
This restructured the way we do biomedical research at the NIA, and then device and drug approval at the FDA, to try to make our disease research more responsive to those breakthroughs that we’ve seen [in] cell biology and CRISPR and all this stuff. So, Fred and I did this bill, which was the last big bill that President Obama signed into law. Just as an example, one of the things it did when we had COVID, it gave the FDA the authority to enter into the public, private partnerships for Operation Warp Speed to be able to develop the vaccine. So, and even now, I’m working on several pieces of healthcare legislation.
El Semanario: What are your thoughts on the progress being made in cancer research? How close do you think we are to finding cures for different types of cancer?
DeGette: So there’s some, there’s so much exciting research going on right now in the cancer arena. Just as an example, lung cancer. My mother died of lung cancer at age 54. When she got a diagnosis of lung cancer that was pretty much a death sentence. Now, because of the new drugs that have been developed, we’re actually finding the ability to cure lung cancer. And death from lung cancer has plummeted in the last few years. And it’s probably going to go down even more. One thing that I want to do and that I hope to do after I leave Congress is the National Institute of Health, which spearheads all of this research, has not been reauthorized since 2006. So, we need to go through and see, is it structured correctly to be able to take advantage of these new advances in research? And then, is it funded adequately to do that? And so I’ve been talking with a number of leaders. Recently, I talked to—even though he was appointed by President Trump—the director of the NIH, Dr. Badataria. I was talking to him about our need for full funding for the researchers; and then for the research, and he was saying he looks forward to working with me. I like working on those issues because they impact people’s lives, and because they’re bipartisan. So, you can work on these solutions in a bipartisan way.
Now, having said that, I will say the Trump administration tried to cut funding for research last year, and Congress would not allow it. We gave the full funding. This year, Trump has proposed cutting funding for the NIH by 40%. And that won’t happen either.
El Semanario: Congresswoman, my final question is one many have been asking: Where do you go from here?
DeGette: Yes, so I really see this as an opportunity for a third chapter in my career. The first chapter practicing law, and then the legislative chapter. And now I think I can really have an impact at a national level on healthcare, and not only was I approached by a lot of people here locally, I was approached by a lot of people nationally. One of the advantages of the work that I’ve done and continue to do is a deep knowledge of healthcare policy and a reputation for working in a bipartisan way. So, Republicans and Democrats alike are reaching out to me as saying, we need help. You know, we need help in figuring out how to structure research at the NIH and the FDA, but also, we need help in figuring out ways to reduce healthcare costs. And this to me is critical. And it’s become really hyperpartisan. But it shouldn’t be hyperpartisan because again, everybody must have healthcare. And so, I see some real opportunities working with some of the national organizations to help develop strategies, to reduce healthcare costs, and to improve research. And working with these research institutions and nonprofits I’m hoping that I can help my colleagues, who are still there, who are working on this, advise them on legislation they might be doing.
El Semanario: Congresswoman, are there any final thoughts you’d like to share?
DeGette: Well one of the great honors of my career has been to represent my hometown of Denver, because we have such diversity here. And we always have, we have racial diversity, socioeconomic diversity. We’re the business center of the entire Rocky Mountain West. We have wonderful sports teams, most years. We have it all here. So, it’s a wonderful challenge to represent. So what I’ve really seen, it’s my duty to represent everybody, not just the privileged in this district. They could take care of themselves. So, for example, I’ve spent a lot of time in Denver working on communities that are experiencing environmental injustice. The communities—Elyria-Swansea, Globeville—who are getting toxic waste, not just from Shattuck, but from all of those factories up there in Commerce City.
As well as people who are experiencing homelessness. I’ve gotten a lot of money and grants for organizations serving the homeless.
I’ve worked very closely with Denver Health on a number of initiatives for wraparound services for patients and the homeless, but also trying to help get resources for community health centers to be able to serve folks. I often wonder if some of my colleagues don’t have similar constituents to mine, right? I mean, when they vote for a bill, that takes away Medicaid for people, that takes away the tax credits for people, and now they can’t afford to get insurance on the exchanges. You really have to wonder, did they never meet these people? And it’s a puzzle to me, because these are the people who are most impacted.
What I think is going to happen, I’m not sure that this Republican Congress is going to pass any legislation that will target those communities; but what I do think is [that] in the election on November 3rd, all of the voters are going to rise up, and they’re going to throw them out. I think they’re going to elect a Democratic majority in the House, and maybe even in the Senate. Then, I think that targeting these issues of cost and inequity are going to be a top priority of the Democrats in the next Congress. I think this is that one opportunity this year [to say] that enough is enough. They’re going to make the switch here, and we can’t stop there. We got to continue in the next cycle.
Belén Pizarro is an Independent Reporter for The Weekly Issue/El Semanario.
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