203 House Republicans on Wednesday voted against legislation to help monitor and prevent domestic terrorism just days after an avowed white supremacist and antisemite drove 200 miles to a Buffalo neighborhood and slaughtered 10 Black people at a local grocery store. Only one Republican, Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, voted with all the Democrats to pass the bill.
Three Republicans were original co-sponsors of the legislation. All three voted against it.
The bill is similar to one that passed the House just two years ago. Many Republicans who voted for that bill voted against the one that passed Wednesday by a 222-203 margin.
The move to try to block every Democratic bill they possibly can followed 192 House Republicans voting against a bill to help protect and expand the nation’s access to baby formula amid a shortage, and 9 Republicans voting against expanding access to families on government assistance.
“House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) urged members of his party to vote against the legislation,” The Washington Post reports. “He argued, in part, that the Justice Department had previously ‘targeted and labeled rightfully concerned parents as domestic terrorists for speaking out at school board meetings’ — a false claim that The Washington Post’s Fact Checker has awarded Four Pinocchios.”
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) blasted the GOP.
“The problem is not that the Republican Party is racist; it’s that the Republican Party won’t call out the racists in its midst,” Nadler said. “They won’t call the insurrection … on January 6th of last year what it is: an insurrection. They call it ‘legitimate public discourse.’ It is not ‘legitimate public discourse’ when police officers are attacked, when the members of this House are attacked, when the members of the Senate are attacked. That’s domestic terrorism.”