Jamie Raskin gave a fiery speech during a recent House floor debate over parental oversight of K-12 schools. The Democratic representative from Maryland called out the ‘irony of Republicans’ efforts to ban books’.

The 60-year-old was wearing a bandana. Twitter users pointed it out and asked why.

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Raskin on December 28, 2022 announced that he was diagnosed with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma cancer. He said it is a “serious but curable form of cancer.” Popular guitarist Steven Van Zandt, who is a member of Bruce Springstein’s E Street Band, gifted the US Representative a heads scarf, which he now wears.

“@RepRaskin @jamie_raskin Rocking a Little Stevie bandana! (I’m guessing.),” a Twitter user said on Thursday.

Raskin on Thursday said,”Two years ago, more than 1600 books were banned in the United States of America. Here are three of the key books that the right-wingers have been going after.” He pulled out a copy of Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood and George Orwell’s 1984.

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“Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner about the dangerous fanaticism, authoritarianism, and abuse of the Taliban, a right-wing religious fundamentalist movement all about censorship and repressing women’s control over their own bodies and their own fertility,” Raskin said.

“The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood’s extraordinary dystopian novel about a right-wing, misogynist movement which uses high technology and depraved religious ideology to control not only the minds of their followers, but the private and public lives and the fertility of women. And, of course, George Orwell’s 1984, because they have no sense of irony! They’re always trying to censor this one,” he added.

When a member interjected saying Raskin’s time had expired, the Washington native said, “We need more politicians reading books in America and fewer politicians trying to censor books in America. And I tell you, it is amazing to me.”

He then wrapped up his speech, saying that he is amazed to see politicians who opposed ‘a universal, violent criminal background check and who defend assault weapons after the massacres at Columbine, after Parkland, Florida, after Sandy Hook in Newtown, Connecticut, after Uvalde, after Santa Fe, Texas’ are keeping children safe by banning The Handmaid’s Tale.