House Democrat drafting resolution to censure Greene over Holocaust comments

Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Ill.) said Tuesday that he is drafting a resolution to censure Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) for comparing COVID-19 vaccinations and mask-wearing rules to the Holocaust. 

“Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene continues to debase not only the memory of 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis, but all those who fought and died defending Democracy against Hitler and his evil,” Schneider said in a statement.

House GOP leaders have joined Democrats in condemning Greene’s comparisons of COVID-19 prevention efforts to the murder of 6 million Jews during World War II but so far have stopped short of calling for disciplinary action.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said in a statement earlier Tuesday that “Marjorie is wrong, and her intentional decision to compare the horrors of the Holocaust with wearing masks is appalling.”

Schneider called on Republicans to join his censure effort, although only 11 voted with Democrats in February to remove Greene from her House committee assignments.

“It is shameful that the Republican Conference continues to let her define their party, and dangerous that they refuse to expel her. There should be no room for such unapologetic hate and antisemitism in our politics or our government. Therefore, I am drafting a resolution to censure Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. I hope that if McCarthy truly believes that what Rep. Greene said was ‘appalling,’ he will join our effort to censure her,” Schneider said.

When asked Tuesday if Greene should be censured or expelled, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) replied, “I think she should stop talking.”

“It’s so beyond reprehensible that it, I mean, it has no place in our country,” Pelosi said of Greene’s Holocaust comparisons.

Greene first criticized Pelosi for continuing to require everyone to wear masks on the House floor — rules punishable by fines — and for saying she didn’t trust Republicans to be honest about their vaccination status.

“You know, we can look back in a time in history where people were told to wear a gold star, and they were definitely treated like second-class citizens, so much so that they were put in trains and taken to gas chambers in Nazi Germany,” Greene said late last week on the right-wing network Real America’s Voice. “And this is exactly the type of abuse that Nancy Pelosi is talking about.”

Greene doubled down on Tuesday in reaction to a news report about a grocery store in Tennessee that will allow customers who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 to shop without masks, while vaccinated employees will have vaccination logos displayed on their name badges.

“Vaccinated employees get a vaccination logo just like the Nazi’s forced Jewish people to wear a gold star,” Greene wrote in a tweet.

In a follow-up tweet responding to the subsequent backlash, Greene wrote, “I never compared it to the Holocaust, only the discrimination against Jews in early Nazi years. Stop feeding into the left wing media attacks on me. Everyone should be concerned about the squads support for terrorists and discrimination against unvaxxed people. Why aren’t they?”

Two other House Democrats are already leading efforts to punish Greene for her past embrace of conspiracy theories and endorsements of violence against prominent Democrats.

Rep. Nikema Williams (D-Ga.) introduced a resolution in February to censure Greene shortly before the House voted to rescind her committee assignments.

And in March, Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.) introduced a measure to expel Greene, which currently has more than 70 Democratic co-sponsors.