Rep. Cummings's stand against Trump wasn't separate from his work for his constituents.
They were one and the same.
Rep. Cummings, perhaps more than anyone, was uniquely positioned to grasp just how much the anti-democratic and autocratic assaults of the current administration - and the Republican Party that backs it - are intertwined with the attack on voting rights (and other rights and the very lives) of the poor and working classes of this country, beginning with and most harshly toward people of color. Cummings, a black man and sharecropper’s son himself who represented Baltimore, understood this on a very PERSONAL level.
The INEVITABLE corollary of a President or any other leader who is above the law is that the rights and resources of the People, especially the most oppressed and marginalized already, are robbed by that undemocratic, anti-democratic leader’s subversion of the law for his own personal, corrupt gain.
How can we have a democracy of any sort when “our” President and his party and cronies are only accountable to their fellow criminals - foreign and domestic (Putin, among others, being notable among the former)?
Furthermore, is it really any coincidence that these same deeply corrupt, criminal leaders are not merely subverting and undermining democratic institutions, but the very demos itself - that is, We the People?
We are being stripped of our power and resources so that Trump and his family and their friends and backers in the Kremlin and elsewhere can be above any law, any accountability, anything that would remotely reign them in. Representative Elijah Cummings understood that as much as anyone.
Rest in Peace, Congressman. The only way to honor you is also the only way to save ourselves, our future, that of future generations, and that of the planet itself. In other words, to continue and expand on your work, as long as it takes. I hope and I pray that we can all do that.