Current News

/

ArcaMax

Georgia rep introduces measure to censure Tlaib over Palestinian conference remarks

Melissa Nann Burke, The Detroit News on

Published in News & Features

WASHINGTON — A Georgia Republican congressman introduced a measure Wednesday to censure Michigan U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib over remarks she gave at a Palestinian conference in Detroit over the weekend.

Rep. Buddy Carter, who is running for the U.S. Senate in Georgia, cited Tlaib's criticism of GOP and Democratic lawmakers in Congress as "sellouts" for their support of Israel, claiming she was "vilifying" fellow politicians and had framed support for Israel as "soul corrupting."

In the measure, Carter wrote that Tlaib should be censured for "promoting and cheering on terrorism and antisemitism" at the People's Conference for Palestine and claimed that she "cheered on one of the most radical and antisemitic conferences in America."

"I’m a big supporter of Israel and of the Jewish people, and her comments I found to be vile and disgusting and certainly not appropriate for a member of Congress to be making, nor to be participating in the conference she was participating in," Carter told The Detroit News.

"They had other controversial speakers, plus what she was saying was being applauded and cheered by the crowd and, of course, the content of what she said is what was so upsetting to me."

Tlaib's office didn't immediately respond Wednesday afternoon to a request for comment.

It wasn't clear when the censure resolution might be brought to the floor ― something that Carter said he still had to discuss with the House GOP leadership.

"I certainly want it to be dealt with swiftly," he said.

Tlaib, the only Palestinian-American member of Congress, was censured by the GOP-led House nearly two years ago in 2023 over other remarks about Israel. Censure is the House's most severe form of punishment for members short of expulsion.

The Republican-led House on Wednesday afternoon tabled a separate censure resolution targeting New Jersey Rep. LaMonica McIver. The Democrat has pleaded guilty to criminal counts related to a May visit to an immigration detention facility where she had a physical altercation with officers.

At the conference last weekend, Tlaib told activists in attendance that her colleagues in Congress are "scared" by protesters at their district offices and by town hall attendees questioning U.S. arms sales to Israel.

She also said activists are "winning" outside of Washington, D.C., and encouraged conference attendees to continue mobilizing for Palestinian rights, boycotting companies that support Israel's war and protesting the U.S. support of Israel.

"Change doesn't come from the cowards or warmongers in Congress. It comes from the streets," Tlaib said, as quoted in Carter's resolution. "It comes from all of us mobilizing and seizing power to resist and fight back."

 

The resolution also refers back to Tlaib's 2023 defense of a Palestinian Liberation Organization chant, "From the river to the sea," that Israelis consider a call-to-arms to end the Jewish state and which was featured prominently in her prior censure. "Supporters of terrorism have no place in the United States Congress," the Carter resolution stated.

"If we in Congress have reached a point where we’re just going to tolerate this, we’ve reached a low point," Carter said. "Any time she does it, she shouldn’t get away with it."

Carter's resolution spends several pages quoting other speakers at the conference who are not Tlaib.

It said one speaker called for disrupting the supply chain for building F-35 aircraft, and another said global political leaders who oppose a Palestinian state should be "locked up, taken out, neutralized to save children and humanity."

Carter last month introduced a resolution to condemn remarks by U.S. Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Illinois, as "anti-American" after Ramirez said she is “a proud Guatemalan before I’m an American.”

The Detroit conference was organized by pro-Palestinian groups. Other speakers included doctors who have worked recently in Gaza, a local civil rights attorney, journalists, artists and activists, including Mahmoud Khalil, who was detained for 104 days for his role in pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University.

Israel has maintained that its war against Hamas is a mission of self-defense in response to the Oct. 7, 2023, assault by Hamas that killed roughly 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and captured 251, with some hostages still being held.

Since it started its campaign in 2023, Israel has killed more than 63,000 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry. The United Nations in August declared there was famine in Gaza alongside the increasing spread of preventable diseases, a contention that Israeli officials said is based on "gross forgeries."

Tlaib was flooded with campaign contributions in the wake of her 2023 censure, raising nearly $3.7 million toward her reelection bid during that quarter in a predominantly Democratic district.

_____

(Staff writer Carol Thompson contributed.)

_____


©2025 The Detroit News. Visit detroitnews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

 

Comments

blog comments powered by Disqus