Democrats Drop Resolution to Censure Rep. Who Compared Palestinians to Nazis

One day after 22 House Democrats voted alongside Republicans to censure Representative Rashida Tlaib for voicing support for a cease-fire in Gaza, the blue party also decided to pull its own censure resolution against Florida Representative Brian Mast, who compared “Palestinian civilians” to “Nazi civilians.”

Mast received blowback for comments he made on the House floor last Wednesday, saying he would “encourage the other side to not so lightly throw around the idea of ‘innocent Palestinian civilians,’ as is frequently said. I don’t think we would so lightly throw around the term ‘innocent Nazi civilians’ during World War II.”

“There is not this far stretch to say there are very few innocent Palestinian civilians,” Mast said.

That was enough for Representative Sara Jacobs to put Mast in the hot seat, drafting her own censure resolution against the Florida congressman on Monday.

Two days later, however, a Democratic aide familiar with the legislation told The Hill that the legislation has been dropped for now. The source added that Jacobs is still working with Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on what the timing on the bill should be.

Meanwhile, nearly two dozen Democrats voted with Republicans to censure Rashida Tlaib in a late-night vote on Tuesday.

In the month since Hamas militants killed 1,400 Israeli civilians in the October 7 massacre, more than 10,000 Palestinian lives have been lost in the conflict, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

The Biden administration has urged the Israeli government to avoid civilian casualties but has so far rejected calls for a cease-fire in the region. Meanwhile, the White House has also called for emergency aid to Israel as part of a $105 billion national security package that includes military and humanitarian assistance to U.S. allies around the world, including Ukraine and Taiwan.

Those decisions have decimated Biden’s popularity among Arab American voters, with support plummeting from 59 percent to 17 percent since the presidential election, according to a poll by the Arab American Institute.

“Something horrible is happening to these people, and this administration is turning a blind eye to it,” James Zogby, the group’s president, told Democracy Now! “There are going to be electoral consequences.”

Iowa chapters of the far-right group Moms for Liberty endorsed 13 candidates in school board races across the state. Only one was elected.

The Tuesday loss is a stinging rebuke of Moms for Liberty, a “parental rights” organization that the Southern Poverty Law Center designated as an extremist group. What happened in Iowa mimics similar defeats suffered by the group and by Republicans in general throughout the U.S.

In Iowa, the only Moms for Liberty candidate who won was Nathan Gibson. He was elected school director for the Interstate 35 district, a rural district with fewer than 1,000 students.

Moms for Liberty was founded in 2021 to push back against Covid-19 restrictions in schools. It has since expanded to opposing classes on diversity, curbing the rights of LGBTQ students, and banning books.

But on Tuesday, voters across the country pushed back on the Moms for Liberty agenda. The organization endorsed more than 130 candidates across the country, and the vast majority of them lost—with some failing to get more than single-digit support.

All four Moms for Liberty-backed candidates in Minnesota lost, as did all four in Washington state. The group endorsed 19 candidates for school boards in New Jersey, but only four won.

Moms for Liberty backed 25 candidates throughout Ohio, but just five were elected. And of the six candidates the group endorsed in Virginia, only one won her race.

Voters issued similar rebukes to the Republican Party in general. Ohioans also voted overwhelmingly Tuesday night to enshrine abortion protections in the state constitution, despite the state GOP making multiple desperate attempts to prevent such an outcome. In Virginia, Democrats took control of both the state House and Senate in a stunning upset.

This story has been updated.

Conservatives reeled in shock and awe Tuesday night as traditionally red states voted blue in their off-year elections, defying polls over one key issue: abortion rights.

Abortion was a linchpin issue in states like Ohio, Kentucky, and Virginia, where voters showed up en masse to steer their options toward access. Yet for many Republicans, the results came as a surprise. Despite a swath of polling results that indicated Americans increasingly view abortion access as an essential right, Republicans geared their hopes on polls hinting at sinking morale among Democrats under President Joe Biden’s leadership.

“Kentucky is a red state. Ohio is a red state,” Kayleigh McEnany said on Fox News’s Hannity. “Tonight, the midterm elections, the last few elections, we must recognize as a party, good polling does not always translate into resounding victory.”

“On the issue of abortion, in Ohio tonight, we continue a losing streak in the pro-life movement. Every ballot initiative has been lost post-Dobbs for the pro-life movement,” McEnany said.

McEnany also pointed out that conservatives won’t win women back on this issue until conservatives get behind initiatives to bolster young mothers.

“As a party, Sean, we must not just be a pro-baby party. That’s a great thing. We must be a pro-mother party,” McEnany said.

“There’s legislation we must put forward as a party to support women,” McEnany added. “We’ve got to get Trump behind it, the speaker of the House behind it, and have a national strategy to help vulnerable women because the results of next year’s election could be determined by that.”

Sean Hannity himself conceded that although he’s pro-life, he “recognize[s] that’s not where the country is.”

“Voters vote, polls don’t,” a Biden-Harris fundraising email noted after the results began to roll in.

Former Senator Rick Santorum complained that the major election losses Republicans suffered are actually a sign of how “pure democracies” are a bad form of government.

Republicans faced devastating losses on Tuesday, as voters in Ohio overwhelmingly chose to legalize marijuana and enshrine abortion rights in the state Constitution. In Virginia, Democrats flipped the state House of Representatives, taking control of the entire legislature. While abortion was not explicitly on the ballot, the future of reproductive rights in Virginia hinged on which party controlled the government.

“You put very sexy things like abortion and marijuana on the ballot, and a lot of young people come out and vote. It was a secret sauce for disaster in Ohio,” Santorum whined Tuesday night on Newsmax.

“Thank goodness that most of the states in this country don’t allow you to put everything on the ballot, because pure democracies are not the way to run a country.”

Putting aside Santorum’s weird choice of descriptor (sexy, really?), his actual complaint is laughable. Santorum is upset that democracy is working.

As Republicans across the country try to push more extreme agendas, many issues such as protecting abortion, legalizing marijuana, and raising the minimum wage are being put forward for ballot referendums. Republicans lose those votes every time.

But rather than take the actual lesson here and start proposing policies that voters like, Republicans are digging their heels in. Take, for instance, Santorum’s other gripe, that young voters turned out because the issues were “sexy” (again, ugh).

Maybe young voters didn’t want to just hop on some social trend. Maybe young voters actually care about protecting their rights.

Abortion is officially enshrined in Ohio’s state Constitution, with residents voting overwhelmingly Tuesday to increase protections despite Republicans’ last-ditch attempt to thwart them.

The Associated Press projected the victory of the Issue 1 ballot measure at 9:02 p.m. As of 9:14 p.m., the “yes” vote was leading at 57 percent.

Issue 1 will create a new amendment allowing people to decide for themselves about all reproductive health. The state can restrict abortion access only after a doctor determines the fetus is viable or could survive outside the uterus. And even then, abortions can be performed if the patient’s health or life is at risk.

State Republicans tried multiple times to block the measure. In August, they tried to raise the threshold for constitutional amendments to a 60 percent vote instead of a simple majority. Although they insisted the move was to protect Ohio’s Constitution from special-interest groups, Secretary of State Frank LaRose later admitted the measure was “100 percent” about blocking the abortion referendum.

An overwhelming 57 percent of Ohioans rejected that change, so Republicans tried again. The Ohio Ballot Board voted 3–2, along party lines, to change the text of the amendment on Tuesday’s ballot. Instead of the full text, the ballot displayed a summary written by LaRose. LaRose’s version was littered with inflammatory and fearmongering language, such as using “unborn child” instead of “fetus,” likening abortion to infanticide, and making it appear as if state officials could still intervene.

Finally, LaRose ordered that 26,666 voter registrations be purged in late September. He did not publicly announce his decision at the time and only acknowledged it when local outlets began reporting it.

But even with all of their desperate attempts, Republicans could not prevent Ohioans from choosing abortion rights.