Tag: GOP racism

30 House Republicans introduce bill to stop government from fighting racism

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The bill was filed by Rep. Burgess Owens of Utah.

Thirty House Republicans on Friday introduced legislation that would prevent the federal government from supporting efforts to fight racism, sexism, and gender discrimination.

The bill was introduced by Rep. Burgess Owens (R-UT) and has 29 co-sponsors, including Reps. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC), Lauren Boebert (R-CO), Brian Mast (R-FL), Chip Roy (R-TX), and Ronny Jackson (R-TX).

H.R. 3235, if passed, would reinstate an executive order issued by Donald Trump that prevented the federal government from funding programs that included material on combating racism and gender stereotypes in the workplace. Continue reading.

In Rick Santorum’s simplified version of American history, Native Americans are a footnote

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An underrecognized component of the presidency is the frequency with which presidents issue statements about arcane subjects. Most weeks and months are at some point designated as awareness months for various causes; many international events trigger formal responses that generally evade the American public’s attention.

On Saturday, though, the Biden administration issued a statement that actually raised some interest. In an annual statement about Armenian Remembrance Day, President Biden’s team inserted one controversial word: genocide.

“Each year on this day,” Biden’s 2021 statement read, “we remember the lives of all those who died in the Ottoman-era Armenian genocide and recommit ourselves to preventing such an atrocity from ever again occurring.” Compare that with the phrasing in 2016, when Biden was vice president: “Today we solemnly reflect on the first mass atrocity of the 20th century — the Armenian Meds Yeghern — when one and a half million Armenian people were deported, massacred, and marched to their deaths in the final days of the Ottoman empire.” Continue reading.

Oklahoma Governor Signs Law Granting Immunity for Drivers Who Kill Protesters

Republican Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt has signed a new law that would grant protections for drivers who hit and kill protesters while attempting to drive away from a protest and implements harsher penalties on people who block roads or highways during a protest. Democrats and activists decried the law as stifling protest and citizens’ First Amendment rights.

HB 1674, which Republican legislators passed earlier this week, grants civil and criminal immunity for drivers who “unintentionally” harm or kill protesters while “fleeing from a riot,” as long as there is a “reasonable belief that fleeing was necessary.”

“This legislation is not about safety,” said Nicole McAfee, director of policy and advocacy at the Oklahoma American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), in a statement. “It is about centering the convenience of people who already have the power and protections of the law. It is about responding to calls for transparency by protesters and the media with the criminalization of those transparency efforts.” Continue reading.

‘Clean up your mess, Kevin’: Hakeem Jeffries slams House Minority Leader McCarthy for demanding Maxine Waters’ censure

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House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has been calling for a censure of Rep. Maxine Waters in response to her recent comment that if former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin is acquitted on the charges he is facing in connection with George Floyd’s death, activists should be “confrontational.” And McCarthy was the target of some scathing comments from Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, who found it laughable than he was so offended by Waters’ rhetoric in light of the extremists who are welcome in the GOP in 2021.

Jeffries, on the House floor, declared, “When you think that Kevin McCarthy has the nerve to say something about anyone when he supported the violent insurrection after the mob attacked the Capitol, threatened to assassinate Nancy Pelosi, kill other members of Congress, hang Mike Pence. He then came back to the Capitol, voted to support the Big Lie — which ignited the violent insurrection — and continues to play footsie with Donald Trump. When you’ve got a situation where Lauren Boebert is a mess. Matt Gaetz is a mess. Marjorie Taylor Greene is a mess. Clean up your mess, Kevin.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has defended Waters, saying that the California congressman was advocating peaceful protest, not violence. And she is opposed to censuring Waters. Continue reading.

McCarthy slammed for threatening Maxine Waters with censure: ‘She didn’t incite an insurrection’

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House Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is under fire after threatening U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), the chair of the Financial Services Committee, with censure and claiming she “broke the law.” Waters is being used by the right as a straw man after she traveled to Minnesota to speak with Black Lives Matter protestors and telling them they must continue confrontations.

“We’ve got to stay on the street and we’ve got to get more active, we’ve got to get more confrontational. We’ve got to make sure that they know that we mean business,” Waters said on Saturday as activists protested the killing of 20-year old Daunte Wright by a Brooklyn Center police officer.

Waters on Monday clarified her remarks after right wing uproar. Continue reading.

Rep. Greene tries to distance herself from ‘America First Caucus’ document denounced as racist

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Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene on Saturday tried to distance herself from a document published by Punchbowl News that purportedly outlined the goals of a new “America First Caucus” being formed by Greene and other hard-right GOP lawmakers. The document had received blowback from Democrats and some Republicans for promoting nativist policies and perpetuating the falsehood that there was widespread fraud and corruption in the 2020 election.

On Saturday, Greene (R-Ga.) described the document as “a staff level draft proposal from an outside group” and claimed she had not read it. She blasted the media for “taking something out of context,” but did not specify to which policies in the document she objected.

However, Greene did not deny plans to start an “America First Caucus” and ended a lengthy Twitter thread by saying she supported former president Donald Trump’s “America First agenda.” Continue reading.

“I Felt Hate More Than Anything”: How an Active Duty Airman Tried to Start a Civil War

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Steven Carrillo’s path to the Boogaloo Bois shows the hate group is far more organized and dangerous than previously known.

It was 2:20 p.m. on June 6, 2020, and Steven Carrillo, a 32-year-old Air Force sergeant who belonged to the anti-government Boogaloo Bois movement, was on the run in the tiny mountain town of Ben Lomond, California.

With deputy sheriffs closing in, Carrillo texted his brother, Evan, asking him to tell his children he loved them and instructing him to give $50,000 to his fiancée. “I love you bro,” Carrillo signed off. Thinking the text message was a suicide note from a brother with a history of mental health troubles, Evan Carrillo quickly texted back: “Think about the ones you love.”

In fact, Steven Carrillo had a different objective, a goal he had written about on Facebook, discussed with other Boogaloo Bois and even scrawled out in his own blood as he hid from police that day. He wanted to incite a second Civil War in the United States by killing police officers he viewed as enforcers of a corrupt and tyrannical political order — officers he described as “domestic enemies” of the Constitution he professed to revere. Continue reading.

Trump put far-right radio barker Michael Savage in charge of a national park — and disaster ensued

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Former President Donald Trump last year appointed far-right talk radio host Michael Savage to the board of directors of the Presidio Trust — and it quickly turned out to be an epic disaster.

Mother Jones reports that Savage used his position on the board to attack the Presidio Trust, which runs the massive urban park in San Francisco near the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge, for building a museum dedicated to remembering America’s racist policy of interring Japanese Americans during World War II.

“You would think that the military heritage museum would show us the greatness of the US Army at the Presidio, but it doesn’t,” he complained during a broadcast this past December. “Instead, it shows us big things about the Japanese internment.” Continue reading.

‘Racist much Mike?’: Huckabee slammed for bigoted tweet amid rise in violent hate crimes

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Amid near-daily reports of horrific hate crimes against Asian Americans and transgender Americans, Mike Huckabee is under massive criticism for posting a hateful, racist, anti-Asian, transphobic tweet that’s also anti-democracy, amid a rise in vicious and violent hate crimes.

Huckabee is the host of “Huckabee” on the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), and is the father of Arkansas GOP gubernatorial candidate Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the former Trump White House press secretary. For decades Huckabee has played the part of a conservative Christian, using his faith as a sword and a shield.

“I’ve decided to ‘identify’ as Chinese,” Huckabee tweeted Saturday. “Coke will like me, Delta will agree with my ‘values’ and I’ll probably get shoes from Nike & tickets to @MLB games. Ain’t America great?” he asked, mocking the millions of Americans furious about Georgia Republican Governor Brian Kemp signing the nation’s worst voter suppression bill into law. On Friday Major League Baseball pulled the All-Star Game out of Atlanta and hundreds of corporations and organizations have denounced the legislation designed to make voting even more difficult, especially for the state’s Black and low-income voters. Continue reading.

More GOP-led states risk corporate backlash like Georgia’s

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The corporate backlash against Georgia’s new voting law is putting other states on alert.

Texas, Florida and Arizona are among the Republican-led states considering similar legislation, setting the stage for potential clashes with companies headquartered there.

Industry experts are closely watching how things unfold in Georgia to see whether there is a boycott and loss of business similar to what North Carolina experienced with regard to its “bathroom bill” from 2016. That picture became clearer on Friday when Major League Baseball announced it won’t hold this year’s All-Star Game in Georgia as initially planned. Continue reading.