House Democrats have yanked a resolution to censure GOP Rep. Brian Mast (Fla.) for his comments appearing to compare Palestinian civilians with Nazis in the wake of Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel last month.
Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) moved to force a vote on her resolution censuring Mast on Monday. She called the censure measure to the floor as a privileged resolution, which compels leadership to act on it within two legislative days.
But the resolution did not appear on the House schedule at all this week, and on Wednesday, a Democratic aide and a source familiar with the situation told The Hill the legislation had been pulled from consideration. The source said Jacobs is still working with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’s (D-N.Y.) team to consider the best timing to move forward with the resolution.
The vote was expected to come directly on the heels of a vote to censure Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Congress’s only Palestinian American, for her sharp criticisms of Israel following last month’s deadly Hamas attacks, which left more than 1,400 Israelis dead.
That resolution passed Tuesday night, but an overwhelming majority of Democrats voted to protect Tlaib from censure, with most arguing that, while they did not support her sentiments, they would defend her First Amendment right to express them.
“To my mind this is easy,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.). “I’m a professor of constitutional law. This is all about the freedom of speech and the speech and debate clause.”
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That argument raised immediate questions about where Democrats would land on the Jacobs resolution, which was also based on controversial, race-based remarks by a sitting lawmaker. Some Democrats had suggested this week that they were ready to vote against the Jacobs resolution, to remain consistent with their opposition to Tlaib’s censure.
“What he said is horrible,” Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) said of Mast. “But my inclination right now is just to say let’s not do that; let’s not do censuring.”
Jacobs, who voted to defend Tlaib’s free speech rights, also sought to carve a distinction between Tlaib’s remarks and those of Mast, arguing that only his comments crossed the line into the realm of inciting violence. And as recently as Tuesday morning, Jacobs said she still intended to force the vote this week.
“Freedom of speech is important. And also there is a difference between being able to say anything and being able to incite violence,” Jacobs said Tuesday. “And what Brian Mast said — saying that all Palestinians are Hamas — in my view directly incites violence and encourages it against any Palestinian.”
Jacobs’s resolution censuring Mast cited comments the Florida Republican made on the House floor earlier this month.
“As a whole, I 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,” Mast said.
Mast defended those remarks on Monday, calling the censure effort “idiotic” and doubling down on his comments.
“I would challenge anybody, find me a better, single word that you could use to describe the Palestinian relationship to Jews than Nazi,” he said. “I would say Nazi is the singular word that you could use to describe how they feel about Jews.”
Jacobs viewed the remarks in a very different light, calling Mast’s remarks “incredibly dangerous and dehumanizing as we continue to push for humanitarian aid to reach Palestinians in harm’s way in Gaza and as Islamophobic hate crimes rise.”
“The United States stands for the rule of law both here at home and abroad – and these comments denigrate those values and cause real, tangible harm,” she said in a statement announcing her resolution.
Updated at 11:29 a.m.