Will Marsha Blackburn Be Censured for This Racist Tweet on Rashida Tlaib?

Senator Marsha Blackburn shared a racist tweet about Representative Rashida Tlaib over the weekend. Recent evidence shows she likely won’t face any consequences for it.

Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in Congress, has understandably been vocal in her support for Palestine and for a cease-fire since the war in Gaza began. The House censured her last week for her words, with 22 of her fellow Democrats joining Republicans in reprimanding her.

But Blackburn has gone a step further and accused Tlaib, with no evidence, of being linked to Hamas.

“Rashida Tlaib has alleged ties to Hamas,” the Tennessee Republican tweeted Sunday. “Based on these allegations, it’s sadly not surprising she’s calling for a genocide against the Jewish people.”

Blackburn is referring to Tlaib’s use of the phrase “from the river to the sea.” While many Jewish and pro-Israel groups say the saying is antisemitic, it has also been used by Israeli politicians. Tlaib defended her use of the phrase, saying it was a call for “freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence.” Before she was censured, Tlaib called out the rise of both antisemitism and Islamophobia.

But while Tlaib has been censured for calling for peace, there is no outcry on Capitol Hill yet over Blackburn accusing her colleague of links to an extremist group. And there may never be one.

Republicans have repeatedly said outrageous things about Palestine, primarily calling for the extermination of an entire country and people. They make no distinction between Hamas and Palestinian civilians, and yet no one is getting in trouble for it.

What’s more, House Speaker Mike Johnson has a Christian nationalist flag flying outside his district office. The creation of a Christian nation implies the elimination of all other religions, and yet no one is accusing Johnson of calling for genocide.

The closest another lawmaker got to facing consequences was when Representative Brian Mast compared Palestinian civilians to Nazis. A Democratic representative drafted a resolution to censure the Florida Republican, but it has since been dropped.

More than 11,000 Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children, have been killed in Israel’s ongoing retaliation to Hamas’s October 7 attack. The fighting has also killed at least 39 journalists and other media workers and more than 100 United Nations employees.

Ohio state Republican lawmakers are once again trying to overturn the will of the people, after a devastating loss on abortion rights.

Ohioans overwhelmingly chose to enshrine abortion protections in the state Constitution earlier this week. Republicans had tried multiple times to block the referendum, called Issue 1, but they were handily defeated every time.

So on Friday, the state GOP unveiled a new tactic: stopping the courts from allowing the new amendment to take effect.

“To prevent mischief by pro-abortion courts with Issue 1, Ohio legislators will consider removing jurisdiction from the judiciary over this ambiguous ballot initiative,” Republican state representatives said in a press release. “The Ohio legislature alone will consider what, if any, modifications to make to existing laws based on public hearings and input from legal experts on both sides.”

The new amendment doesn’t take effect until December 7, and even then, it isn’t automatically implemented. Each individual abortion restriction needs to be repealed by a court. And Ohio has a lot of restrictions.

Abortion is legal up to 22 weeks, but certain abortion procedures are banned. Patients must wait 24 hours and undergo anti-abortion biased counseling before they can undergo the procedure. State-based insurance is prohibited from covering abortion services, and minors must have the consent of a parent, guardian, or judge in order to get an abortion.

As abortion reporter Jessica Valenti explained, Ohio Republicans don’t want the courts to repeal all of these restrictions. They want the GOP-controlled state legislature to decide whether to repeal the restrictions.

In the press release, lawmakers also blamed “foreign billionaires” for interfering in the election and tipping it in favor of abortion rights. In reality, right-wing billionaires and organizations donated millions of dollars from out of state (although still domestically) to try to block Issue 1.

This isn’t the first time Ohio Republicans have blatantly ignored—and actively worked against—what the people want. In August, they tried to raise the threshold for constitutional amendments to a 60 percent vote instead of a simple majority.

When that failed, the Ohio Ballot Board voted 3–2, along party lines, to change the text of the amendment on the ballot to a Republican-authored summary littered with inflammatory and fearmongering language.

Republicans have repeatedly refused to accept the results of elections on abortion, in a massive threat to local democracy. In Kansas, despite residents voting overwhelmingly in August 2022 to keep abortion rights in the state Constitution, the state legislature is still trying to pass laws that would restrict abortion access. And in Wisconsin, after voters elected a state Supreme Court judge in large part because of her outspoken support for abortion access, state Republicans tried to impeach her.

Many Democratic lawmakers are telling their staff to let phone calls asking for a cease-fire in Gaza go to voicemail.

At least 24 lawmakers in the House and Senate have called for a cease-fire in Gaza, but Joe Biden has said there is “no possibility” of that happening. Instead, Israel agreed this week to a daily four-hour “humanitarian pause,” which it seems to think is enough time for civilians to flee bombs on foot.

Staff from more than 24 Democratic congressional offices told HuffPost in a story published Thursday that the caucus was unprepared for how many calls, emails, and letters they are receiving from constituents demanding a cease-fire. Most lawmakers do not yet have an official response.

One staffer, speaking anonymously, said that until a formal stance is developed, many of them have been told to “let it go to voicemail.”

Another staffer said that the office phone rings every five minutes with someone urging a cease-fire. A third staffer said the phone “doesn’t stop ringing at any point in the day.”

The majority of voters across party lines believe in the need for a cease-fire, and 80 percent of Democratic voters agree that the United States should call for a cease-fire and de-escalation in Gaza, according to a poll from Data for Progress.

It’s not just constituents, either. More than 100 staffers, both Democratic and Republican, staged a walkout on Wednesday to call for a cease-fire in Gaza.

But lawmakers, by and large, seem to be fine ignoring the calls. Some believe the movement will eventually just die down, and one lawmaker allegedly joked, “They weren’t going to vote for me anyway.”

Staffers are shocked at both the public unity behind the issue and lawmakers’ refusal to take it seriously.

“This building is not listening,” one Democratic aide told HuffPost. “I’ve never seen such a disconnect between where voters and constituents are and where Congress is, and that’s saying something because there’s always a disconnect.”

More than 11,000 Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children, have been killed in Israel’s ongoing retaliation to Hamas’s October 7 attack. The fighting has also killed at least 39 journalists and other media workers and more than 100 United Nations employees.

House Speaker Mike Johnson has three flags hanging outside his office: the American flag, the Louisiana state flag, and a flag representing a movement that wants to turn the United States into a religious Christian nation.

Normal stuff, you know?

The flag is white with a green evergreen tree in the middle and the phrase “An Appeal to Heaven” at the top. A report published Friday by Rolling Stone confirmed that the flag is outside his district office in Washington.

The flag was originally used as a banner during the Revolutionary War, but over the past decade, it has been embraced by a sect of Christianity called the New Apostolic Reformation, or NAR. A central tenet of NAR’s belief system is that it is God’s will for Christians to take control of all aspects of U.S. society—including education, arts and entertainment, the media, and businesses—to create a religious nation.

The NAR fully embraced Donald Trump when he announced he was running for office, endorsing him early on and helping endear him to other Christian movements. As a result, the Appeal to Heaven flag has become popular among Trump supporters.

The flag has appeared in photos of far-right politicians and election deniers such as Doug Mastriano, the Trump-endorsed candidate for Pennsylvania governor. Mastriano lost to Democrat Josh Shapiro.

The flag was also everywhere at the January 6 insurrection. Rolling Stone estimated that there may have been hundreds of Appeal to Heaven flags throughout the mob.

It should not be surprising that Johnson subscribes to the NAR belief system. He has a well-documented history of opposing abortion access, LGBTQ rights, and environmental policy on the grounds that they are non-Christian.

But it’s upsetting and deeply concerning that he is able to embrace it so openly without so much as a slap on the wrist. What’s more, Rolling Stone’s revelation comes just days after the House of Representatives censured Rashida Tlaib for her comments about Israel and Palestine.

Republicans have previously harangued Tlaib, the only Palestinian American member of Congress, for flying a Palestinian flag outside her district office. The GOP has accused her of antisemitism for showing pride in her nationality.

But even if supporting Palestinian civilians were inherently antisemitic (it’s not), it’s unclear how that is different from what Johnson is doing. The creation of a Christian nation implies the elimination of all other religions. But somehow, no one is censuring Johnson for it.

The federal judge overseeing Donald Trump’s classified documents case on Friday denied the former president’s request to delay the trial.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, seemed poised last week to hand Trump a massive win when she indicated she might delay proceedings. But Friday’s ruling means that the trial will kick off on May 20 as initially determined.

Trump initially tried to delay the trial until after the 2024 election, in part due to the many other legal cases he is facing. In her order Friday, Cannon wrote that Trump’s request to delay the trial is “premature.”

Trump was charged in Florida with keeping national defense secrets, making false statements, and conspiracy to obstruct justice, among other things, for hoarding classified materials at Mar-a-Lago. His body man Walt Nauta and a Mar-a-Lago employee Carlos De Oliveira have also been charged. All three men are accused of trying to destroy evidence, including attempting to delete security footage off a server.

Cannon received nationwide scrutiny at the start of the investigation into Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents. Following the FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago, and upset with how things were going, Trump filed a made-up motion titled a “Motion for Judicial Oversight and Additional Relief.”

Cannon agreed to hear the motion, despite having no jurisdiction to do so, and ultimately assigned a “special master” to review all of the material the FBI found at Mar-a-Lago before the investigation could proceed—a victory for Team Trump.

The Justice Department appealed the decision, and the Eleventh Circuit Court ultimately ruled that neither Cannon nor Trump had had any legal right for their actions. The appeals court threw Cannon’s decision out entirely.

This story has been updated.