WASHINGTON — In the spring of 2023, a most unlikely friendship took root after a House Oversight Committee hearing ended and members chatted before hurrying off for a two-week congressional recess.
Colorado Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert, a conservative firebrand and one of President Donald Trump’s top supporters, told Montgomery County Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin, a liberal darling who is Boebert’s political opposite, that she was excitedly awaiting the birth of her first grandson in several weeks.
Raskin was enduring chemotherapy for a serious form of cancer and confided that he hoped to be around long enough to become a grandparent himself one day.
She comforted him. Something passed between them.
In the months following that tearful conversation two years ago, Raskin, 62, and Boeb