Anti-hate measure splitting Congress

Vague resolution protects lawmaker’s anti-Semitic words, Republican says

Rep. Liz Cheney speaks during a TV interview Friday at the U.S. Capitol after her vote against the House resolution. Cheney on Sunday accused Democrats of covering up “bigotry and anti-Semitism” by not directly rebuking Rep. Ilhan Omar over her past comments on Israel.
Rep. Liz Cheney speaks during a TV interview Friday at the U.S. Capitol after her vote against the House resolution. Cheney on Sunday accused Democrats of covering up “bigotry and anti-Semitism” by not directly rebuking Rep. Ilhan Omar over her past comments on Israel.

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., said Sunday that House Democrats were trying to protect Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., with last week's resolution broadly denouncing hate.

Elsewhere, a Democratic co-author of the measure pushed back, arguing that "history is going to judge" those who voted against it.

Cheney was one of 23 lawmakers, all Republicans, who opposed the resolution, which condemned anti-Semitism and discrimination against Muslims in equal measure and overwhelmingly passed the House on Thursday. Democrats had introduced the resolution in an effort to move past comments by Omar, a Muslim and a freshman member of Congress, that critics deemed anti-Semitic.

In an interview on NBC News' Meet the Press, Cheney described the House resolution as "clearly an effort to actually protect Ilhan Omar, to cover up her bigotry and anti-Semitism by refusing to name her."

"They are protecting her by failing to put a resolution on the floor that names her and strips her of her committee assignment," Cheney said.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., one of the resolution's lead sponsors, disagreed in an interview on MSNBC on Sunday afternoon. He called it the most powerful measure targeting anti-Semitism "in the history of the United States Congress" and argued that those who opposed it were wrong to do so.

"History is going to judge them very harshly for that," Raskin said.

He went on to take aim at President Donald Trump for his campaign's closing TV ad during the 2016 race. The ad -- which featured images of billionaire philanthropist George Soros, Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein and then-Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, all of whom are Jewish -- was "the most anti-Semitic TV ad in American history," Raskin said.

After last week's vote, Omar issued a statement with fellow Muslim Reps. Andre Carson, D-Ind., and Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., calling the vote "historic on many fronts" for denouncing "all forms of bigotry."

"Our nation is having a difficult conversation and we believe this is great progress," they wrote.

Omar has been the subject of verbal attacks and threats in recent weeks, including a poster displayed in the West Virginia State Capitol that showed the World Trade Center after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. It was captioned, "Never forget," and paired with a photo of Omar captioned, "I am the proof -- you have forgotten."

Asked about concerns among House Democrats that naming Omar would have made her a target of more threats in the future, Cheney argued that Democratic leaders were nonetheless "enabling anti-Semitism" by crafting a broad resolution.

"I think it is absolutely shameful that Nancy Pelosi and [House Majority] Leader [Steny] Hoyer and the Democratic leaders will not put her name in a resolution on the floor and condemn her remarks and remove her from the House Foreign Affairs Committee," the Republican lawmaker said.

Trump has sought to use the resolution against Democrats, arguing on Friday that the party has become "anti-Israel" and "anti-Jewish."

"I thought [Thursday's] vote by the House was disgraceful," he told reporters. "I thought that vote was a disgrace, and so does everybody else if you get an honest answer."

Democrats on Sunday disputed that characterization, with Rep. Katie Hill, D-Calif., noting that the resolution passed on a bipartisan basis.

"I don't think that there's any validity to what he's saying," Hill said in an interview on Fox News Sunday. She added that "if we're going to condemn one sort of behavior, then why should we isolate it to one group? We should condemn all forms."

Rep. Will Hurd, R-Texas, said that while he backed the resolution, he understood why some members of his party chose not to.

"I voted for it because you shouldn't hate people, period, end of story," Hurd said on CNN's State of the Union. "We learn that stuff in kindergarten. What I think many of my colleagues were doing in voting against it was lodging their being upset about [the fact] that this was watered down; it wasn't narrow."

The broadness of the measure was previously cited by Rep. Rick Crawford, R-Ark., the only House member from Arkansas to vote against the resolution.

"If Democrat Leaders wanted to specifically address anti-Semitism and a member of their conference who has repeatedly made anti-Semitic comments, this resolution failed in nearly every way possible," Crawford said in a statement last week.

Crawford's official Twitter account has since retweeted statements from Cheney and conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, who both called it "a sham resolution."

Information for this article was contributed by Mike DeBonis of The Washington Post.

A Section on 03/11/2019

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