Greene County Democrat

Tag: Charlie Kirk

  • Newswie : With seats of Congressional Black Caucus members under attack, Trump again targets Rep. Ilhan Omar

     Rep. Ilhan Omar (D. MN)

    By Lauren Burke, NNPA Congressional Corespondent

     


    On December 4, during a White House cabinet meeting, President Trump launched into a hateful, racist rant against Congressional Black Caucus member Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN).
    “Those Somalians should be out of here. They’ve destroyed our country. And all they do is complain, complain, complain. You have her – she’s always talking about ‘the constitution provides me with uhhhh,’” Trump ranted, speaking of Congresswoman Omar.
    Trump has targeted Rep. Omar and other members of Congress’s “Squad” before and during his first term in office. Those attacks by Trump included Reps. Ayanna Pressley, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Many political observers wonder if Trump’s latest rant was a strategy to deflect from bad economic news. Either way, Trump’s latest racist tirade isn’t new.
    Rep. Omar’s family fled Somalia during a war and then earned asylum in the U.S. in 1995. She became a U.S. citizen at age 17 and has represented Minnesota’s 5th congressional district since 2019.
    In 2019, Trump said that the congressional group nicknamed “the squad” should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came.” During his 2024 campaign for the White House, Trump made anti-immigration rants a predictable part of his campaign rallies.
    The Congressional Black Caucus responded to the latest attacks by Trump and other Republicans in an era of brazen anti-Blackness.
    “From the recently leaked texts of Republican officials using the n-word and praising Hitler to President Trump’s comments in the Cabinet Room, it’s beyond clear that the Republican Party’s racism truly knows no bounds,” wrote the Congressional Black Caucus in a press release in defense of Rep. Omar on December 4.
    The attacks heighten the tension of national political discourse. The level of political vitriol would appear to have real-world applications. Great Britain’s paper The Independent exclusively reported on Dec. 8, a serious threat to Rep. Omar. The Congresswoman has had to add personal security to her team in recent years.
    “A 30-year-old Florida man is facing up to a half-decade in federal prison after confessing to posting violent threats on social media that promised to decapitate Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, murder her ‘monkey children,’ then eat the kids ‘for protein,’ according to plea agreement papers reviewed by The Independent,” the Dec. 8 post by the newspaper relayed. The news arrived days after Trump’s attacks, though the matter appeared to be related to comments the Congresswoman may have made after the murder of Charlie Kirk.
    The latest attack on Rep. Omar is only one of a series of pressures on the Congressional Black Caucus. Several members are now facing challenges to their power as several members are facing sudden redistricting changes in states with Republican Governors. These include Missouri, Texas, and Indiana.
    In August, Texas Republicans began the back-and-forth onslaught that became the current partisan redistricting fight. California answered the call by passing a ballot initiative that will likely lead to the elimination of several GOP congressional seats. In Virginia, there is open talk by Democrats of altering the congressional delegation in a way that could produce ten Democrats in the Virginia delegation out of eleven.
    Several members of the CBC, including Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO), Al Green (D-TX), Andre Carson (D-IN), Jasmine Crockett (D-TX), and Marc Veasey (D-TX) are dealing with the special challenge of chasing district lines for partisan reasons.
    Rep. Crockett was drawn out of her own district during the GOP-driven map redraw in Texas. On the evening of December 8, Crockett announced she would be running against Republican Senator John Cornyn for U.S. Senate in 2026.
    The race was forced in part by the onslaught of redistricting fights that are likely to get more complicated in the early part of next year.

  • EDITORIAL: The Political Violence of Trump-Vance policies


    By John Zippert, Co-Publisher and Editor

    Since the unfortunate assassination in Utah of Charlie Kirk, leader of Turning Point USA, a right-wing youth organization, there has been a great deal of attention focused on the detriment of political violence in our nation.
    We agree with the many political leaders who have condemned the direct political violence of shooting a youth leader, who was using his free speech rights on a college campus to express right-wing nationalistic and sometimes racist points of view. No one in America should condone this type of direct political violence from anyone across the political spectrum, from the extreme right to the extreme left.
    President Trump has attempted to blame the problem of political violence in America on “left wing radical lunatics”, without evidence and without reference to the political right in this country, which has a much clearer record of political violence with guns – study January 6, the Buffalo supermarket shooting, many attacks on schools, synagogues and other houses of worship.
    Upon reflection on the killing of Charlie Kirk, I came to the revelation of the political violence of Trump-Vance’s policy choices, as a factor in the continuing violence against vulnerable people in our society. And a continuing factor in how we stop and deescalate political violence going forward.
    Is there not a degree of political violence, when you cut off a family’s food stamps and leave them hungry; or cut off people’s health care when they are sick and may die; or end the LIHEAP program which provides heating assistance in the cold of winter to pay utility bills; or cutting Title I educational programs and school lunches to help our children learn more and better; or cutting off USAID assistance to hungry and diseased people around the world. All of these are actions that the Trump-Vance Administration celebrates.
    There is evidence that people will die – political violence – based on the policies of the President, Vice-President and their enablers and supporters. Will those pollical assassinations of poor families, homeless people, hungry people, sick people, get as much attention and condemnation as the killing of Charlie Kirk.
    As one who has called for the citizens arrest of Alabama Governor Kay Ivey for “mass murder” because she refused to extend Medicaid services to 250,000 working people in our state, I am using my free speech rights to call attention to her failing. These families are in a coverage, because they do not make enough money to pay for their health insurance premiums on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) Marketplace and are going without needed and critical health care services.
    National studies by health care experts have calculated that 300 to 500 hundred people each year have died in the decade from 2014 until today, because the state government of Alabama has not expanded Medicaid. In the decade since these funds have been available – 3,000 to 5,000 in our state have died; that is mass murder to me!
    The Trump-Vance Budget Reconciliation bill will reduce Medicare/Medicaid spending by 20% and deprive millions of their healthcare. This is not justice. This is political violence by policies!
    We must resist this and fight these dangerous, anti-humane, violent policies, non-violently, but with determined social action and mobilization in the streets, civil disobedience, voting and every other peaceable, proactive, productive and creative means we have available to us.