This House Republican majority has turned even the most routine functions of government into divisive spectacles.
Last week, the GOP blew up the annual defense authorization bill — which had enjoyed overwhelming bipartisan support — by trying to turn it into a vehicle for blocking abortion access, banning books, honoring Confederate generals and dismantling racial diversity initiatives.
This week, they took the normally sleepy markup of the humdrum Transportation, Housing and Urban Development appropriations bill and turned it into a vehicle for overt bigotry against gay and lesbian Americans.
Republicans on the Appropriations Committee combed through all 2,680 earmarks that had been cleared for inclusion in the bill by Republicans and Democrats, then issued an amendment striking precisely three of them — all programs providing housing and related assistance for those in need in the LGBTQ+ community. To add insult to injury, the amendment also banned the display of “extraneous flags” (read: Pride flags) at funded facilities and forbade discrimination “against a person who speaks or acts in accordance with a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction of what constitutes traditional marriage.”
But discriminating against LGBTQ+ people is apparently a-okay.
Press Enter to skip to end of carousel
Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), championing the anti-gay amendment, didn’t conceal his ugly intent. He alleged without evidence that the programs “groom young children.” He likened the programs to the Ku Klux Klan and said the programs support communists. His spokeswoman didn’t respond to my request to substantiate the congressman’s allegations.
Democrats denounced the “hateful” amendment, as Rep. Mike Quigley (Ill.) called it.
Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), who is gay, made a powerful, personal appeal. “If you were to take away earmarks because they went to the NAACP or the Urban League, you would, rightfully so, be called racist bigots!” he shouted. “But when you do it to the LGBT community, it’s another frickin’ day in Congress.”
Pocan spoke of when he received a piece of mail with the words “Dead ******” over his photo, and when he was once beaten bloody and unconscious with a baseball bat after leaving a gay bar. “This is what you guys do by introducing amendments like this,” he said, adding that the action was “spitting on every single person who is LGBTQ+.”
Repeatedly, Harris rose to demand that Democrats’ words be “taken down” for impugning his motives. His hysterics forced Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Kay Granger (R-Tex.) to call a series of recesses, causing the hearing to drag on for hours.
But Harris’s own words impugned his character more than any Democrat’s could. The 30 other Republicans on the committee, witnesses to this ugly spectacle, had not one but two chances to distance themselves from such flagrant discrimination. But in a pair of party-line votes on the amendment, they instead planted themselves firmly on the side of prejudice.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (Wash.) had called Israel a “racist state” over the weekend. After dozens of her Democratic colleagues and House Democratic leaders denounced her statement, she issued an apology and clarified that “I do not believe the idea of Israel as a nation is racist.”
Still, House Republicans, sensing a political opportunity, rushed to the floor with a resolution affirming that “the State of Israel is not a racist or apartheid state” and that “Congress rejects all forms of antisemitism and xenophobia.” Noble sentiments both (it’s one thing to call the Netanyahu regime racist but entirely different to so brand the entire Jewish state), and the resolution passed by an overwhelming 412-9 vote. Jayapal herself was among the “ayes.”
Press Enter to skip to end of carousel
Only one lawmaker spoke on the floor against the resolution, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.). Unlike Jayapal and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who showed contrition and sought conciliation after causing offense, Tlaib, as I have detailed, has been an unrepentant antisemite. She continued in that dishonorable tradition on the House floor this week, absurdly claiming as an example of Israel’s racism that Israel’s president “has long advocated against interracial marriage.” (His actual concern is about the loss of Jewish identity in interfaith marriages.)
Tlaib’s bigotry is no more acceptable than Andy Harris’s. Happily, Democrats made clear that they won’t defend the haters in their party just because they have the letter “D” after their names. Would that Harris’s colleagues had the same courage.
Fresh from its pious denunciations of antisemitism, the House Judiciary Committee proceeded with a hearing two days later featuring Robert F. Kennedy Jr., now a prominent antisemite. Days before his House appearance, Kennedy had alleged that covid-19 could be a “bioweapon” that was “ethnically targeted” to spare “Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.” But this is a bigot Republicans are happy to tolerate — because he’s mounting a primary challenge to President Biden.
Kennedy, at the hearing of the “weaponization” subcommittee, labeled the charges of bigotry “defamations and malignancies that are used to censor me.”
But they are his own words. He previously suggested that public-health restrictions during the pandemic were worse than life for Jews in Nazi Germany, because “you could hide in an attic, like Anne Frank did.”
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) tried to defend Kennedy’s vile comments, entering into the record a medical study that Kennedy said supported his claims. But the study said nothing about ethnic targeting or bioweapons.
Kennedy’s crackpot ideas go well beyond covid to the debunked claim that childhood vaccines cause autism, that WiFi causes “leaky brain,” that chemicals in the water supply might turn children transgender, that AIDS might not be caused by HIV, that Republicans stole the 2004 election and that 5G networks are used for mass surveillance.
Press Enter to skip to end of carousel
End of carousel
But Republicans on the panel accepted at face value Kennedy’s claims that he’s a victim of government censorship — claims he incongruously has made in his many media appearances, in tweets to his 2 million followers, and, of course, in this week’s televised congressional hearing, carried live on Fox News. (Unhelpfully to the Republicans, Kennedy also testified that he was censored by the Trump administration.)
The weaponization panel’s Republican chairman, Rep. Jim Jordan (Ohio), opened the hearing with an example of the “censorship” of RFK Jr.: A 2021 tweet in which Kennedy said baseball great Hank Aaron’s death was “part of a wave of suspicious deaths among elderly closely following administration of covid vaccines.”
Jordan said Kennedy was “just pointing out facts” in the tweet, yet the Biden administration was “trying to censor the guy who’s actually their Democratic primary opponent.”
In reality, Aaron’s death, from natural causes, wasn’t suspicious. And Kennedy wasn’t Biden’s primary opponent in 2021. More to the point, committee Democrats noted that Twitter never took down the tweet, which remains online to this day.
Apparently, Jordan and Kennedy have both lost their minds as well as their decency. Must be something in the water.
Last week, the GOP blew up the annual defense authorization bill — which had enjoyed overwhelming bipartisan support — by trying to turn it into a vehicle for blocking abortion access, banning books, honoring Confederate generals and dismantling racial diversity initiatives.
This week, they took the normally sleepy markup of the humdrum Transportation, Housing and Urban Development appropriations bill and turned it into a vehicle for overt bigotry against gay and lesbian Americans.
Republicans on the Appropriations Committee combed through all 2,680 earmarks that had been cleared for inclusion in the bill by Republicans and Democrats, then issued an amendment striking precisely three of them — all programs providing housing and related assistance for those in need in the LGBTQ+ community. To add insult to injury, the amendment also banned the display of “extraneous flags” (read: Pride flags) at funded facilities and forbade discrimination “against a person who speaks or acts in accordance with a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction of what constitutes traditional marriage.”
But discriminating against LGBTQ+ people is apparently a-okay.
Press Enter to skip to end of carousel
Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), championing the anti-gay amendment, didn’t conceal his ugly intent. He alleged without evidence that the programs “groom young children.” He likened the programs to the Ku Klux Klan and said the programs support communists. His spokeswoman didn’t respond to my request to substantiate the congressman’s allegations.
Democrats denounced the “hateful” amendment, as Rep. Mike Quigley (Ill.) called it.
Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), who is gay, made a powerful, personal appeal. “If you were to take away earmarks because they went to the NAACP or the Urban League, you would, rightfully so, be called racist bigots!” he shouted. “But when you do it to the LGBT community, it’s another frickin’ day in Congress.”
Pocan spoke of when he received a piece of mail with the words “Dead ******” over his photo, and when he was once beaten bloody and unconscious with a baseball bat after leaving a gay bar. “This is what you guys do by introducing amendments like this,” he said, adding that the action was “spitting on every single person who is LGBTQ+.”
Repeatedly, Harris rose to demand that Democrats’ words be “taken down” for impugning his motives. His hysterics forced Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Kay Granger (R-Tex.) to call a series of recesses, causing the hearing to drag on for hours.
But Harris’s own words impugned his character more than any Democrat’s could. The 30 other Republicans on the committee, witnesses to this ugly spectacle, had not one but two chances to distance themselves from such flagrant discrimination. But in a pair of party-line votes on the amendment, they instead planted themselves firmly on the side of prejudice.
But he’s our bigot
With irony in short supply, Republicans went from the scene of Harris’s bigotry to the House floor — where they denounced bigotry. This particular type of bigotry was different, however, because it came from a Democrat.Rep. Pramila Jayapal (Wash.) had called Israel a “racist state” over the weekend. After dozens of her Democratic colleagues and House Democratic leaders denounced her statement, she issued an apology and clarified that “I do not believe the idea of Israel as a nation is racist.”
Still, House Republicans, sensing a political opportunity, rushed to the floor with a resolution affirming that “the State of Israel is not a racist or apartheid state” and that “Congress rejects all forms of antisemitism and xenophobia.” Noble sentiments both (it’s one thing to call the Netanyahu regime racist but entirely different to so brand the entire Jewish state), and the resolution passed by an overwhelming 412-9 vote. Jayapal herself was among the “ayes.”
Press Enter to skip to end of carousel
Only one lawmaker spoke on the floor against the resolution, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.). Unlike Jayapal and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who showed contrition and sought conciliation after causing offense, Tlaib, as I have detailed, has been an unrepentant antisemite. She continued in that dishonorable tradition on the House floor this week, absurdly claiming as an example of Israel’s racism that Israel’s president “has long advocated against interracial marriage.” (His actual concern is about the loss of Jewish identity in interfaith marriages.)
Tlaib’s bigotry is no more acceptable than Andy Harris’s. Happily, Democrats made clear that they won’t defend the haters in their party just because they have the letter “D” after their names. Would that Harris’s colleagues had the same courage.
Fresh from its pious denunciations of antisemitism, the House Judiciary Committee proceeded with a hearing two days later featuring Robert F. Kennedy Jr., now a prominent antisemite. Days before his House appearance, Kennedy had alleged that covid-19 could be a “bioweapon” that was “ethnically targeted” to spare “Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.” But this is a bigot Republicans are happy to tolerate — because he’s mounting a primary challenge to President Biden.
Kennedy, at the hearing of the “weaponization” subcommittee, labeled the charges of bigotry “defamations and malignancies that are used to censor me.”
But they are his own words. He previously suggested that public-health restrictions during the pandemic were worse than life for Jews in Nazi Germany, because “you could hide in an attic, like Anne Frank did.”
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) tried to defend Kennedy’s vile comments, entering into the record a medical study that Kennedy said supported his claims. But the study said nothing about ethnic targeting or bioweapons.
Kennedy’s crackpot ideas go well beyond covid to the debunked claim that childhood vaccines cause autism, that WiFi causes “leaky brain,” that chemicals in the water supply might turn children transgender, that AIDS might not be caused by HIV, that Republicans stole the 2004 election and that 5G networks are used for mass surveillance.
Press Enter to skip to end of carousel
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...c_magnet-opcovidguidance_inline_collection_20End of carousel
But Republicans on the panel accepted at face value Kennedy’s claims that he’s a victim of government censorship — claims he incongruously has made in his many media appearances, in tweets to his 2 million followers, and, of course, in this week’s televised congressional hearing, carried live on Fox News. (Unhelpfully to the Republicans, Kennedy also testified that he was censored by the Trump administration.)
The weaponization panel’s Republican chairman, Rep. Jim Jordan (Ohio), opened the hearing with an example of the “censorship” of RFK Jr.: A 2021 tweet in which Kennedy said baseball great Hank Aaron’s death was “part of a wave of suspicious deaths among elderly closely following administration of covid vaccines.”
Jordan said Kennedy was “just pointing out facts” in the tweet, yet the Biden administration was “trying to censor the guy who’s actually their Democratic primary opponent.”
In reality, Aaron’s death, from natural causes, wasn’t suspicious. And Kennedy wasn’t Biden’s primary opponent in 2021. More to the point, committee Democrats noted that Twitter never took down the tweet, which remains online to this day.
Apparently, Jordan and Kennedy have both lost their minds as well as their decency. Must be something in the water.
