Marjorie Taylor Greene Constituent Compares Her to Woman Who Lied About Emmett Till

A constituent confronted Marjorie Taylor Greene and compared her to Emmett Till’s accuser—and the Georgia representative responded by doubling down on racist comments about a Black colleague.

During a town hall on Friday, a Black woman stood and said Greene’s claim that she felt “threatened” by Representative Jamaal Bowman was just as “reckless” as Carolyn Donham’s accusation against Till.

Donham, who died in April, accused Black teenager Till of whistling at her and accosting her in 1955. Donham later admitted to lying and making Till’s offense seem more extreme, but not before her then-husband and brother-in-law lynched Till in response. They were acquitted but later confessed to the murder in a magazine interview. Till’s killing helped galvanize the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.

“You had no business saying, ‘Oh, he’s so big, oh, I feel so—like he’s gonna hurt me!’” the constituent continued, over boos from the crowd. “That’s the same thing Carolyn Donham said that got Emmett Till killed, and that was reckless.”

“You did a reckless thing, and if anything happens to Jamaal Bowman, it’s gonna be on your hands.”

The constituent was referring to Greene’s claim that Bowman led a mob to surround her car in April when she went to New York to support former President Donald Trump while he was criminally indicted. In reality, the people were counterprotesting Trump supporters and were unrelated to Bowman.

Greene later said Bowman yelled at her and called her a white supremacist, which she took “great offense to.” She also said he was “aggressive” and that she felt “threatened,” playing up the “scary Black man” stereotype.

At the town hall, Greene doubled down, insisting that Bowman “came with a crowd and brought a crowd around my car,” to the point that security officials had to shepherd Greene into her vehicle.

Greene also said that Bowman calling her a white supremacist was a “horrible thing to say” and that it was “derogatory and it’s wrong.” She also said it wasn’t about skin color but about a woman feeling threatened by a much larger man.

All of that is pretty rich coming from a woman who has repeatedly spread harmful conspiracies about Jewish people, Muslim people, people of color, and LGBTQ people. It’s also ironic that Greene claims to fear a “mob,” given how she has called for sedition and encouraged the violent January 6 mob.

Just over a week after Ron DeSantis announced his bid for president, Showtime has mysteriously pulled an investigative episode into the Florida governor’s time working at the infamous Guantánamo Bay detention facility.

The Hollywood Reporter reports that the documentary (episode 4 of Vice’s fourth season), “The Gitmo Candidate & Chipping Away,” was slated for May 28 but was instead replaced with repeat programming. Now the June 4 episode is marked as episode 4.

Mentions of the episode have reportedly been erased from Showtime’s website and press portal, as if the episode has not been rescheduled but removed entirely.

“We don’t comment on scheduling decisions,” a Showtime spokesperson told The Hollywood Reporter.

“As with all current affairs programming, there can be scheduling changes, and we are very much still in discussion about the scheduling of this episode,” a Vice representative said, offering little other clarity. “We are proud of our reporting and of our continuing partnership with Showtime.”

The episode certainly did not bode promisingly for DeSantis. “Seb Walker investigates allegations from former Guantánamo Bay detainees that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis witnessed acts condemned by the United Nations as torture during his past service at the controversial detention camp as a Navy JAG officer,” an episode description read.

DeSantis has drawn intense scrutiny surrounding his time as a U.S. Navy lawyer overseeing “investigative tactics” (torture) at Guantánamo. It’s a background the presidential candidate has been extremely cagey about, emotionally lashing out at the press (shocker) when asked about it.

DeSantis had come to Guantánamo while detainees were conducting hunger strikes in protest of their treatment; DeSantis was tasked with dealing with it.

What did that entail? Well, DeSantis has openly talked about force-feeding as among the mechanisms officers like him would recommend to prison guards. The Florida governor was sent to Guantánamo the same year three inmates died, at the time a record high of deaths in one year at the prison facility. Official reports, including from DeSantis himself, rule the deaths as suicides; many, including a former guard, dispute the idea.

Two former Guantánamo detainees, Abu Sarrah Ahmed Abdel Aziz and Mansoor Adayfi, have both come out with their dark recollections of DeSantis and his real role at the camp.

Aziz said DeSantis promised over and over again to make sure senior officials heard of prisoner’s complaints of abuse. Instead, conditions got even worse.

“It was a face I could never forget. I had seen that face for the first time in Guantánamo, in 2006—one of the camp’s darkest years when the authorities started violently breaking hunger strikes and three of my brothers were found dead in their cages,” Adayfi wrote in Al Jazeera.

Adayfi recalls an instance of being force-fed and seeing DeSantis watching from behind a fence, “smiling and laughing with other officers as I screamed in pain.”

Presidential hopeful Nikki Haley believes that the biggest issue for women right now is transgender girls playing girls’ sports.

During a CNN town hall on Sunday, Haley blasted the idea of letting trans girls play on girls’ teams and grossly blamed inclusive sports policies for the high number of teenage girls who considered suicide last year.

“I mean, the idea that we have biological boys playing in girls’ sports, it is the women’s issue of our time,” Haley told CNN, which continues to let Republicans push extreme views and falsehoods on air.

“How are we supposed to get our girls used to the fact that biological boys are in their locker rooms? And then we wonder why a third of our teenage girls seriously contemplated suicide last year?”

Haley’s comments are both offensive and factually incorrect. It has been scientifically proven that trans women and girls do not have a biological advantage over cisgender women and girls. Athletic ability varies from person to person, no matter their gender.

Haley also insists that girls need to be protected, a common argument among Republicans. Many of the laws banning trans people from playing on teams that match their gender identity do not address trans boys. This implies that cis women are weak and need extra protection, while also pushing the dangerous stereotype that trans women and girls are really just sexual predators. In reality, trans people—both men and women—are four times more likely than cis people to experience violent assault, including sexual violence.

While Haley was mostly correct that a third of teenage girls have considered suicide (the study was for 2021, not 2022), she vastly oversimplified and wrongly attributed the reason. The authors of the study, which was conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, did not cite any one reason for the spike in suicidal ideation among girls. But they said that Covid-19 may have increased people’s anxiety and sense of isolation.

The study also found that teen girls of color were more likely to consider suicide than white girls, and LGBTQ girls were more likely to consider suicide than heterosexual ones. Other studies have found that girls are experiencing increased rates of bullying, threats of sexual violence, actual sexual violence, and anxiety from social issues. So if anything, stances like Haley’s could actually increase rates of suicidal thoughts among teenage girls, because they make trans girls feel alone.

Five months after the disastrous Norfolk Southern train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, the rail giant is looking to dismiss a mass class action lawsuit it faces.

Norfolk Southern is seeking to shut down the case, which is in fact a consolidation of over 30 separate lawsuits filed against the railroad company.

“The first car to derail did not belong to Norfolk Southern,” the company’s legal team claimed in its motion to dismiss the slate of lawsuits, filed Friday evening. “Nor did Norfolk Southern construct the wheel bearing that allegedly ‘overheated’ and ‘caused the train to derail.’”

“And Norfolk Southern,” the memo continued, “as a common carrier, was required by federal law to transport vinyl chloride, a hazardous chemical with numerous industrial uses.”

In the motion, Norfolk Southern’s lawyers labored to argue that the plaintiffs’ array of claims fell short. “Norfolk Southern is committed to making things right,” the memo read, listing off efforts the company says it has pursued to assist the community: “millions of dollars” in financial aid, committing to create a health care fund, a property fund for homeowners who sell their homes, and a water-testing fund.

“Plaintiffs’ claims are based on conduct that Norfolk Southern allegedly undertook in this heavily regulated environment,” the company’s legal team continued, arguing that the claims against the company “would unreasonably burden railroad transportation” in general. In other words, how could Norfolk Southern be responsible when regulation of the industry already exists?

The finger-pointing legal argument is risible when you recall that Norfolk Southern has funneled some $100 million into politics since 1990, buying deregulation (yes, the same regulatory atmosphere the company now points to as giving it immunity). The company was a big proponent of rolling back an Obama-era rule that could have required trains, like the one that derailed in Ohio, to use updated electronic brakes instead of Civil War–era ones, for example.

East Palestine residents to this day report a range of troubling symptoms, including rashes, bloody stools, and vomiting bile. Some also say that Norfolk Southern is denying relocation assistance claims or reimbursements for expenses like chemical exposure tests—leaving people to pay out of pocket for it all. After the derailment, the company also reportedly left dozens of maintenance workers out to dry, directing them to clean up the crash site without giving them personal protective equipment.

The motion to dismiss the lawsuit comes after the Supreme Court followed the lead of conservative members of Congress in weakening the Clean Water Act, opening up even further avenues for corporations to try evading legal responsibility for their own disastrous actions.

In the meantime, Norfolk Southern also faces a since-consolidated lawsuit brought by both the Justice Department and the Environmental Protection Agency, and the state of Ohio.

“No community should have to go through what East Palestine residents have faced,” EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan said in March upon the agency’s lawsuit filing. “With today’s action, we are once more delivering on our commitment to ensure Norfolk Southern cleans up the mess they made and pays for the damage they have inflicted as we work to ensure this community can feel safe at home again.”

A Utah school district has banned the Bible for younger students after someone complained that it contained too much sexual content—in an interesting twist on the book bans sweeping the country.

Utah passed a controversial law last year intended to remove “sensitive material” from school libraries and classrooms. The law defines “sensitive material” as subjects that are pornographic or indecent. Anyone can request that a book be reviewed by a committee for propriety. School librarians and teachers saw a huge spike in review requests after the law was passed, mainly for books that dealt with racial justice, gender ideology, and LGBTQ representation.

In December, someone filed a review request with Davis School District officials for the Bible. The challenge specifically mentioned Utah Parents United, a conservative parents rights group that backed the book ban law. The person’s name was redacted when the request was shared with the local news outlet KSL.

“I thank the Utah Legislature and Utah Parents United for making this bad faith process so much easier and way more efficient. Now we can all ban books and you don’t even need to read them or be accurate about it. Heck, you don’t even need to see the book!” the person said in the request, highlighting the ridiculous nature of book bans.

The person referred to the Bible as “one of the most sex-ridden books around” and pointed out the text mentions incest, bestiality, prostitution, genital mutilation, and rape. They included a list of examples.

“You’ll no doubt find that the Bible … has ‘no serious values for minors’ because it’s pornographic by our new definition. Get this PORN out of our schools!”

Davis School District officials decided last week to remove the Bible from elementary and middle school libraries. It would still be available in high school libraries “based on age appropriateness due to vulgarity or violence,” the school district communications director Christopher Williams told KSL.

Someone filed an appeal to the decision on Wednesday, asking that the Bible be made available to all age groups. State Representative Ken Ivory said in March that the challenge to the Bible was “a backhanded slap to parents that are simply trying to keep a healthy learning environment for all students in the schools.”

The decision about the Bible comes after reports of Florida schools banning a host of materials that all deal with racial justice, including the movie Ruby Bridges, the graphic novel Little Rock Nine, and The Hill We Climb, the poem read at Joe Biden’s inauguration.

As the person who challenged the Bible highlighted, the solution isn’t to unilaterally ban books. The solution is to learn from them so we can do better.