Rashida Tlaib

Rashida Tlaib

: Photo from Wikimedia Commons / Author of Photo: U.S. Congress

Overview

* Served in the Michigan House of Representatives from 2009-2015
* Member of the Democratic Socialists of America
* Was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2018
* Member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus
* Anti-Semite


Birth Through Election to Congress[1]

The eldest of 14 children, Rashida Tlaib was born to Muslim parents on July 24, 1976 in Detroit, Michigan. Her mother hailed from a region near the West Bank city of Ramallah, and her father was born in an Israeli suburb outside of Jerusalem.

Tlaib earned a BA in Political Science/Government from Wayne State University in 1998, and a JD from Thomas Cooley Law School in 2004. She subsequently found employment as a social worker before taking jobs at the International Institute of Metro Detroit, the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services, and the Sugar Law Center for Economic and Social Justice — where a majority of her co-workers were, by Tlaib’s description, “pretty much socialists” whom she “love[d].”

Tlaib entered the world of politics in 2004 as an intern to Michigan State Representative Steve Tobocman.

In October 2006, Tlaib was a guest columnist who contributed an op-ed piece titled “Bills Must Stop Deportations for Minor Offenses” to The Final Call, a newspaper and website headed by Nation Of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. In her article, Tlaib lamented that immigrants were in constant fear of being arbitrarily deported for what she described as small violations such as paperwork errors.

In 2008 Tlaib was the Arab-American outreach coordinator for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in Michigan. Later that year, Tlaib herself was elected, as a Democrat, to the 12th District seat in the Michigan House of Representatives, where she would serve from 2009-15. On March 11, 2010, the Detroit News reported that Tlaib’s father, Harbi Elabed, was accusing his daughter of having lied “big-time to get elected” during her 2008 campaign. According to Elabed, Tlaib had falsely claimed on an election affidavit to be a resident of the 12th District (in southwest Detroit) – a requirement for anyone seeking that office – when in fact she lived in the city of Dearborn, which was not a part of the District. Tlaib denied her father’s allegations. According to The Epoch Times in July 2019:

“Tlaib used her father’s address on her affidavit to run for the 12th District state House seat, formerly held by her political mentor Steve Tobocman, for whom she worked as an aide in 2008, and on her voter registration in March 2008…. Verizon Wireless records show that Tlaib first started using her current apartment in Detroit one day before she announced her congressional campaign on Feb. 6, 2018.”

As a member of the Michigan House, Tlaib was a strong advocate for abortion rights. Years later, she would recall having said at one event hosted by the Center for Reproductive Rights: “Yo, yo, yo, I don’t know what you’re so freakin’ obsessed with what I decide to do with my body, maybe you shouldn’t even have sex with me, or with you, or with any woman.”

In 2010, Tlaib’s first re-election campaign received support from the People For the American Way Action Fund.

In August 2016, Tlaib was one of 14 protesters whom police forcibly removed from a Donald Trump campaign speech in Detroit, when she heckled and shouted at Trump from the audience.

Tlaib is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which in 2018 endorsed her campaign to fill Michigan’s 13th Congressional District seat in the U.S. House; Democrat John Conyers had vacated that seat when he resigned amid scandal in December 2017. At a February 2018 DSA meeting in Detroit, Tlaib was asked if she planned to openly “run as a socialist.” She replied: “Yeah, um it’s, it’s — we got to win.” Tlaib then lamented that “people have tainted that word,” and said she saw it as her duty to proudly “explain [that] the labor movement was founded on socialism.”

Other supporters of Tlaib’s congressional bid included J StreetMichael Moore, Noam Chomsky, and Linda Sarsour, the latter of whom spent a day campaigning door-to-door with Tlaib.

During the 2018 campaign, Tlaib proposed amending the Civil Rights Act to allow lawsuits based on “disparate impact” rather than requiring plaintiffs to prove that they were victims of deliberate discrimination.

On August 7, 2018, Tlaib won the Democratic primary for her congressional race. On November 6, 2018, she won the general election with 84.6% of the vote.

Soon after being sworn into office, Tlaib joined the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

Tlaib once received a fellowship from the Center for Progressive Leadership. In addition to her political duties, she currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Arab American Institute.

Tlaib’s Views Regarding Israel, Jews, & Islamists

Over the years, Tlaib has cultivated noteworthy ties to a number of Islamist organizations. In 2009 she received a Community Service Award from the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). In March 2010 she praised CAIR for its “invaluable” and “vital” “advocacy efforts” on behalf of “those who don’t have the resources to defend themselves.”[2]  In her 2010 congressional re-election campaign, Tlaib received strong support from the Arab American Political Action Committee. In 2013-14, she received numerous financial donations from individuals affiliated with CAIR, the Islamic Society of North America, the Muslim Students Association (MSA), and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC). In 2014 she spoke at a CAIR banquet in Los Angeles, and at the annual joint conference of the Muslim American Society (MAS) and the Islamic Circle of North America. And in a January 2015 tweet, Tlaib noted approvingly that the head of Islamic Relief USA – a branch of Islamic Relief Worldwide, which had recently been designated as a terrorist organization by the United Arab Emirates – had come to Detroit to discuss “water relief from Gaza to Detroit.”

In an October 2015 tweet, Tlaib linked to an article in The Nation lauding Black Lives Matter activists in Chicago for supporting “a Palestinian woman threatened with deportation.” The woman in question was Rasmea Odeh, a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist who had played a central role in a deadly 1969 terrorist bombing in Jerusalem, and had committed felonious immigration fraud in the U.S. years later.

In a November 2017 tweet, Tlaib criticized U.S. Senator Kamala Harris for having met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss cooperation between California and Israel on water management, agriculture, and cyber-security issues. “I am one of your supporters & donors,” Tlaib told Harris. “Hoping you are still part of the resistance to racism against ALL people. This picture [of Netanyahu] says otherwise.”

In December 2017, Tlaib shared a Facebook post in which Muslim activist Linda Sarsour had expressed support for Ahed Tamimi, a 17-year-old Palestinian girl whom Israeli authorities had recently incarcerated for assaulting an IDF soldier and proclaiming that “everyone must” attack Israeli Jews by means of “stabbings, martyrdom-seeking operations [i.e. suicide bombings], throwing stones.” “Absolutely inhumane to target a young girl for fighting against racist policies,” wrote Tlaib. “Her voice should be lifted.”[3]

In December 2017 as well, Tlaib was a plaintiff in a lawsuit that attorney Shereef Akeel filed against U.S. President Donald Trump and two members of his cabinet. Condemning “the Trump Administration’s regular and vulgar attacks against Islam and Muslims,” and its “multipronged attempt to demonize Islam and marginalize Muslims in the United States,” the suit challenged an executive order by which Trump was seeking to temporarily suspend all travel visas to the United States for people hailing from six Muslim-majority countries that were hotbeds of Islamic terrorism. Other plaintiffs in the case included such notables as Linda Sarsour, Nihad Awad, and Dawud Walid.

In February 2018 Tlaib joined a Facebook group called the “Palestinian American Congress,” which commonly demonizes Jews. The group’s Palestinian-American founder, Maher Abdel-qader: (a) served as a donor, fundraiser, and event organizer for Tlaib’s 2018 congressional campaign; (b) has accused Israeli settlers of training children “to terrorize Palestinian civilians”; and (c) once used his Facebook page to share a video claiming that “satanic” Jews secretly control the media, have no historical claim to Israel, and grossly exaggerated the death tolls associated with the Holocaust.

  • In a March 28, 2021 social media post, Abdel-qader praised Tlaib for having been a keynote speaker at a “great successful fundraiser” that had recently been held, via Zoom, for Sam Rasoul, a Palestinian American seeking election as Virginia’s next lieutenant governor. Just three weeks earlier, on March 7, Abdel-qader had used his Instagram page to share an image comparing Israel to Nazi Germany. Titled “Israel’s vision for a Palestinian state,” the image included a drawing of a wall topped with barbed wire and outfitted with watchtowers bearing machine-gun nests. The drawing also showed a man wearing a yarmulke saying in a speech bubble: “It looks like a modern version of the Warsaw ghetto.”

By August 2018, Tlaib and her congressional campaign had raised — for that election cycle alone — more than $30,000 from Islamists affiliated with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), the Muslim Students Association (MSA), the Islamic Society of North America, and the Muslim American Society (MAS).

Prior to the August 7, 2018 Democratic primary, Tlaib was unequivocal in voicing support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That position was a key factor that enabled her to win the support of the influential organization J Street. But immediately after her victory in the primary, Tlaib completely reversed her position. When asked in an interview to describe a proper “solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, she replied: “One state. It has to be one state. Separate but equal does not work…. This whole idea of a two-state solution, it doesn’t work.”

Upon winning the Democratic primary on August 7, Tlaib draped herself in a Palestinian flag while celebrating with her supporters. In her victory speech, she promised to “fight back against every racist and oppressive structure that needs to be dismantled.” When she was subsequently asked by Great Britain’s Channel 4 News if she planned to vote against U.S. military aid to Israel, Tlaib responded: “Absolutely, if it has something to do with inequality and not access to people having justice…. If you’re going to be a country that discriminates on somebody solely based on their faith, solely based on their skin color … I will be using my position in Congress so that no country, not one, should be able to get aid from the U.S. when they still promote that kind of injustice….”

When Tlaib won her congressional election on November 6, 2018, CAIR founder and CEO Nihad Awad congratulated her on her “historic victory of becoming the first Muslim and Palestinian woman in the U.S. Congress.”

In December 2018, Tlaib became just the second U.S. lawmaker — the first was Ilhan Omar — to publicly voice support for the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. “I personally support the BDS movement,” Tlaib said in an interview with the news website The Intercept. “I want us to see that segregation and how that has really harmed us being able to achieve real peace in that region.”

On January 3, 2019 — her first official day as a new Member of Congress, which was now in Democratic control for the first time in eight years — Tlaib told a raucous crowd of supporters at a MoveOn.org reception near Capitol Hill that Donald Trump’s days as President were numbered: “We’re going to go in there, and we’re going to impeach the motherfu**er.” When she was sworn into office, Tlaib wore a red thobe (a traditional Palestinian gown) and took her oath by placing her hand on a copy of the Koran. That same day, a member of Tlaib’s entourage used a Post-it bearing the name “Palestine” along with an arrow pointing to Israel on a wall map in Tlaib’s office, to indicate that this should be Israel’s new name.

A notable attendee at Tlaib’s swearing-in ceremony was the executive director and co-founder of Al-Awda, Abbas Hamideh, who has repeatedly: (a) stated his belief that “Israel does not have a right to exist”; (b) equated Zionism with Nazism and the genocidal ideology of ISIS; and (c) voiced support for Hezbollah and its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, whom he regards as “the most honorable Arab-Muslim leader of our lifetime.” Moreover, Hamideh in 2015 had publicly lamented the death of “the legendary Hezbollah martyr” Samir Kuntar, who years earlier had murdered a 31-year-old Israeli Jew named Danny Haran as the latter’s four-year-old daughter, Einat, watched in horror, before proceeding to kill the girl as well by smashing her skull against a rock with his rifle. Following Tlaib’s swearing-in ceremony, Hamideh posted to his Twitter account a photo of himself and Tlaib holding up a large painting of the newly elected congresswoman. He also attended a private celebratory dinner with Tlaib, her family, and a number of her friends and activists.

Also on her first full day as a Member of Congress, Tlaib embraced and posed with Islamic activist Linda Sarsour.

During the first week of January 2019, Tlaib used her Twitter account to condemn her Congressional colleagues who backed a bill designed to allow local, state, and federal agencies to avoid doing business with companies or organizations that supported the Boycott-Divestment-Sanction (or BDS) movement against Israel. “They forgot what country they represent,” Tlaib tweeted. “This is the U.S. where boycotting is a right & part of our historical fight for freedom & equality. Maybe a refresher on our U.S. Constitution is in order, then get back to opening up our government instead of taking our rights away.”

In March 2019, Tlaib posed for a photograph with Palestinian activist Nader Jalajel, who in February 2018 had mourned the death of Hamas terrorist Ahmed Jarrar, the leader of a January 2018 shooting attack that killed a rabbi in Israel. On his Facebook page, Jalajel wrote “Allah Yerhamo,” or “May God have mercy on him,” above a photo of a rifle-brandishing Jarrar, who, by Jalajel’s telling, had died “after a long battle resisting the brutal Israeli occupation and defending his people and his land.” In August 2019, Jalajel articulated similar condolences after IDF personnel killed four heavily armed Hamas terrorists who had crossed the border from Gaza into Israel. “LONG LIVE THE RESISTANCE!!!” Jalajel wrote.

On April 8, 2019, Tlaib spoke at an American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) event in Washington, where she stated that she typically felt “more Palestinian” while doing her work in Congress, than she felt anywhere else. Moreover, AMP’s New Jersey chapter posted a photograph of Tlaib outside of her Capitol Hill congressional office with some of its members during the AMP event. One of those members was Joe Catron, a longtime anti-Israel activist has openly supported Islamic terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah. Catron was also the U.S. coordinator of the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, Samidoun, an arm of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

After Israel shot some Hamas-affiliated Palestinian militants who were attempting to sabotage the border fence between Gaza and Israel in May 2019, Gazan terrorists fired hundreds of rockets into Israel (killing several civilians), which in turn prompted Israel to launch airstrikes against terrorist strongholds in Gaza. Taking exception to a New York Times headline that read: “Gaza Militants Fire 250 Rockets, and Israel Responds with Airstrikes,” Tlaib tweeted: “When will the world stop dehumanizing our Palestinian people who just want to be free? Headlines like this & framing it in this way just feeds into the continued lack of responsibility on Israel who unjustly oppress & target Palestinian children and families. #FreePalestine.”

During a May 2019 appearance on the Yahoo News podcast “Skullduggery,” Tlaib credited the Palestinian people with having helped Jews establish a homeland after the Holocaust, only to have their (Palestinians’) benevolence met with ingratitude and oppression by Israelis: “There’s always kind of a calming feeling, I tell folks, when I think of the Holocaust, and the tragedy of the Holocaust, and the fact that it was my ancestors — Palestinians — who lost their land and some lost their lives, their livelihood, their human dignity, their existence in many ways, have been wiped out, and some people’s passports. And, just all of it was in the name of trying to create a safe haven for Jews, post-the Holocaust, post-the tragedy and the horrific persecution of Jews across the world at that time. And, I love the fact that it was my ancestors that provided that, right, in many ways, but they did it in a way that took their human dignity away and it was forced on them.”

In July 2019, Tlaib and fellow Democrat John Lewis co-sponsored a House Resolution supporting the BDS movement and comparing Israel to apartheid South Africa and Nazi Germany. Introduced by Ilhan Omar, the Resolution called on House members to oppose “unconstitutional legislative efforts to limit the use of boycotts to further civil rights at home and abroad,” a reference to resolutions that had been passed in several states to prohibit the granting of government contracts to companies that backed BDS.

In July 2019 as well, Tlaib was one of just 17 House members who voted against House Resolution 246, a bill designed to oppose boycotts targeting Israel. In an impassioned speech which she delivered just prior to the vote, Tlaib referenced the yearning of her Palestinian grandmother “to experience equality, human dignity and freedom.” She then added: “I stand before you as the daughter of Palestinian immigrants, parents who experienced being stripped of their human rights – the right to freedom of travel, equal treatment. I cannot stand by and watch this attack on our freedom of speech and the right to boycott the racist policies of the government and the State of Israel.” Moreover, Tlaib emphasized the noble history of past boycotts, saying: “What was the Boston Tea Party but a boycott? Where would we be now without the boycotts led by the civil rights activists in the 1950s and ’60s?” And she went so far as to evoke the memory of Nazi Germany to help make her case against Israel: “Americans boycotted Nazi Germany in response to the dehumanization, imprisonment and genocide of the Jewish people.”

In August 2019, Tlaib and fellow congresswoman Ilhan Omar shunned a bipartisan congressional delegation to Israel and announced that they would instead schedule an independent trip – sponsored by the notoriously anti-Israel nongovernmental organization Miftah – to the Jewish state. But Israel’s government – in accordance with an Israeli law barring the issuance of visas to any foreigners who, like Omar and Tlaib, advocate boycotts targeting Israel – stated that the two congresswomen would not be permitted to enter the country. Shortly thereafter, the Israeli government — in response to a plea in writing where Tlaib asked for permission to visit her elderly grandmother (whom she had not seen in 13 years) in the West Bank village of Beit-Ur al-Fauqa — softened its stance and agreed to allow the congresswoman to enter the West Bank. In her letter, Tlaib said: “I would like to request admittance to Israel in order to visit my relatives, and specifically my grandmother, who is in her 90s and lives in Beit Ur al-Fouqa. This could be my last opportunity to see her. I will respect any restrictions and will not promote boycotts against Israel during my visit.” But after receiving permission to enter the country, Tlaib promptly rejected the offer, tweeting: “When I won [election to Congress], it gave the Palestinian people hope that someone will finally speak the truth about the inhumane conditions. I can’t allow the State of Israel to take away that light by humiliating me & use my love for my [grandmother] to bow down to their oppressive & racist policies. Silencing me & treating me like a criminal is not what she wants for me. It would kill a piece of me. I have decided that visiting my grandmother under these oppressive conditions stands against everything I believe in — fighting against racism, oppression & injustice.”

Tlaib had consistently portrayed Beit-Ur al-Fauqa as a village beset by horrible living conditions due to Israeli oppression, but that portrayal was false. As the publication Israel Haymon reported in August 2019:

“[T]he World Bank said in 2014 that the village is one of the richest in the region. The poverty rate in the village stood at 7.4 % in 2014, compared to the overall rate of 21% in the Palestinian Authority. Only a handful of villages have a lower poverty rate in the PA and employment in the village is also among the lowest in the PA. But perhaps the most important statistic is this: The rate of social mobility in Beit-Ur al-Fauqa is among the highest in the PA.

“According to a 2017 PA report on the quality of life of Palestinians, the village has 230 households. The report says that 215 structures are considered private residences and four of them are actually single-family homes, attesting to their wealth. More than 115 of the households are in apartments that have 5 bedrooms or more, and 65 of the households have four bedrooms. And of course, all the structures are privately owned. According to the report, almost every home has satellite TV, and most have LCD screens in their living rooms. Almost everyone in the village has access to the internet and a mobile phone. Half of the families own a car.”

Moreover, members of Tlaib’s own family who lived in Beit-Ur al-Fauqa were among the wealthiest people in the village, as evidenced by the photos that they themselves posted to their own Facebook accounts. For example, Raja Tlaib shared pictures of himself wearing an expensive suit, posing next to his new Mercedes, and working out in a state-of-the-art gym. Anas Tlaib, for his part, showed photos of his own Mercedes. Mawaid Tlaib uploaded pictures of his vacations in Italy and other places. Samach Tlaib displayed photos of his BMW automobile. And Niaf Tlaib, owner of a Corvette convertible, uploaded pictures of himself posing next to his new, three-story home which was under construction.

Tlaib had a noteworthy reaction to the August 2019 honor killing of a 21-year-old Palestinian Muslim woman named Isra Gharib, in the town of Beit Sahour (near Bethlehem). An aspiring make-up artist with a large following on Instagram, Gharib posted a video of herself and her boyfriend together at a local coffee shop, in violation of a fundamentalist Islamic custom prohibiting a girl and boy from being seen together in public before they are officially engaged. To punish Gharib for her transgression, her brothers and a brother-in-law beat her so severely that she was forced to jump out of a second-or third-story window to escape them, suffering a spinal cord injury in the process. While the woman was subsequently being treated in a hospital, her father, her brothers, and a brother-in-law came to her bedside to administer yet another beating. The family then removed Gharib from the hospital, and one of her brothers promptly killed her by means of repeated blows to the head. Tlaib, for her part, chose not to condemn the barbaric practice of honor killings. Instead, she tweeted out an article by a Palestinian blogger that blamed Gharib’s death on such things as patriarchalism, corruption, colonialism, and the Israeli “occupation.” “Isra’s death illustrates an ever-present toxic masculinity and control over women’s bodies and lives,” wrote Tlaib.

In December 2019, Tlaib’s congressional re-election campaign received a $1,000 donation from Salah Sarsour, a Hamas sympathizer and a national board member of American Muslims for Palestine. Sarsour on his Facebook page had previously praised the radical Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated preacher Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a longtime advocate of terrorism and genocide against Israeli Jews. Sarsour also used his Facebook page to mourn the death of Mohammed Mahdi Akef, the late Muslim Brotherhood leader who characterized the Holocaust as a “myth” and described Israel as a “cancer to root out.”

In late November 2020, Tlaib and fellow Democrat congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Betty McCollum spoke at an American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) conference that featured appearances by several people with ties to Islamist terrorism:

  • One of those individuals was Tarek Hammoud, executive director of the Palestinian Return Center, which hosts Hamas leaders on a regular basis, and which foreign law-enforcement agencies classify as a Hamas front group in the United Kingdom.
  • Another featured speaker was Kifah Mustapha, chairman of the Quran Muslim American Society Institute of Chicago. According to The Clarion Project: “He is listed in court documents for the Holy Land Foundation terror funding case as an individual who is or was a member of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee and/or its organization. He is also listed in the documents as an individual who was a Holy Land Foundation employee, director, officer and/or representative.”

On November 30, 2020, Tlaib scrubbed, from her Twitter page, her recent retweet of an anti-Semitic slogan often used by terrorist groups that favor Israel’s destruction: “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free.” (This means that Palestinians should control all the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, which is precisely the territory where Israel is located.)

During a January 19, 2021 interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!, Tlaib asserted that Israel, by having failed to include the roughly 4.5 million Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in its coronavirus vaccination program, had once again shown itself to be a “racist state” and an “apartheid state.” Said the congresswoman:

“I mean, I think it’s really important to understand Israel is a racist state and that they would deny Palestinians like my grandmother access to a vaccine, that they don’t believe that she’s an equal human being that deserves to live, deserves to be able to be protected by [sic] this global pandemic. And it’s really hard to watch as this apartheid state continues to deny their own neighbors … [by means of] these oppressive policies, these racist policies that deny them access to public health, deny them access to freedom of travel, deny them access to economic opportunities.

“It is so critically important that we call it out. Our country [the U.S.] continues to enable that country [Israel] and continues to enable Netanyahu, who continues to spew anti-Arab rhetoric that allows violence towards Palestinians to continue in a way that is so inhumane and doesn’t follow international human rights…. I hope our country sees what the Palestinians have been trying to tell us for a very long time. That Israel has no intention of ever being caring or allow equality or freedom for them as their neighbors. And you can see it with the distribution of vaccine. You also saw it with the testing and tracing. My family told me they didn’t have access to testing…. They had no access at all for any preventive measures, any medication…. [Israel has] the power to distribute that vaccine to the Palestinian people … and it doesn’t — if anything, it just reiterates what the Palestinian people and even human rights groups have been telling us, is that this [Israel] is an apartheid state.”

On May 5, 2021, Tlaib retweeted an article that cited Palestinian media sources and the anti-Israel organization B’Tselem claiming that Israeli “settlers” had set massive, destructive fires on Palestinian lands. Tlaib herself wrote: “Stealing Palestinian homes and burning their lands. The actions of an apartheid state. We cannot stand by and watch this happen. @SecBlinken [Secretary of State Antony Blinken], billions of U.S. taxpayers dollars support Netanyahu’s government and this racist violence. We must condemn this swiftly.” It was subsequently learned that the fires had actually been started by Palestinian arsonists.

When Israel launched a May 2021 military bombing attack targeting infrastructure strongholds of Gaza-based Hamas terrorists who had recently fired nearly 2,000 Iranian-made missiles into the Jewish state, Tlaib, wearing a keffiyeh, went to the House of Representatives’ floor to condemn “Israel’s apartheid government” and to call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against the Jewish state. She lamented that “[o]ur party leaders have spoken forcefully against BDS, calling its proponents anti-Semitic, despite the same tactics being critical to ending the South African apartheid mere decades ago.” The congresswoman complained further: “What we are telling Palestinians fighting apartheid is the same thing being told to my black neighbors and Americans throughout that are fighting against police brutality here: There is no form of acceptable resistance to state violence. As long as the message from Washington is that our military support for Israel is unconditional, Netanyahu’s extremism right-wing government will continue to expand settlements, continue to demolish homes, and continue to make the prospects for peace impossible.”

On May 19, 2021, Tlaib supported Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s introduction of a measure to block America from selling Israel a $735 million precision-guided weapons kit capable of converting unguided or “dumb” bombs into precision-guided munitions. Also leading the effort to block the weapons sale were Reps. Mark Pocan and Ilhan Omar. At the time, Israel was engaged in a military conflict with Hamas, whose Gaza-based terrorist operatives had recently fired more than 3,000 rockets toward Israeli population centers, prompting Israel to respond by using precision-guided bombs to target Hamas weaponry and infrastructure.

On September 23, 2021, the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly – by a 420 to 9 margin — to pass legislation providing $1 billion in supplemental military assistance to help fund Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system. The 9 opposing votes included Tlaib and fellow Democrats Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, Cori Bush, Raúl Grijalva, Marie Newman, Jesus Garcia, and Andre Carson. Only one Republican voted against the bill, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky. Democrats Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Hank Johnson voted “Present.” “I will not support an effort to enable war crimes and human rights abuses and violence,” said Tlaib. “We cannot be talking only about Israelis’ need for safety at a time when Palestinians are living under a violent apartheid system, and are dying from what Human Rights Watch has said are war crimes.”

“The bill claims to be, quote, a ‘replenishment’ for weapons apartheid Israel used in a crisis it manufactured when it attacked worshipers at one of the most holiest Islamic locations, the Al-Aqsa Mosque, committing again numerous war crimes,” Tlaib added. “Israel is an apartheid regime — [these are] not my words, but the words of Human Rights Watch and the words of Israel’s own human rights organization B’Tselem. I urge my colleagues to please stand with me in supporting human rights for all.”

On May 16, 2022, Tlaib introduced a resolution in the House calling for the 1948 creation of the state of Israel to be officially classified as a “catastrophe.” In a tweet regarding the resolution, she wrote: “Today, I introduced a resolution recognizing the Nakba (catastrophe), where 400 Palestinian towns and villages were destroyed, over 700,000 Palestinians uprooted from their homes, and made refugees.”

During a livestreamed September 20, 2022 “Palestine Advocacy Day” conference organized by Americans for Justice in Palestine Action, Tlaib said: “I want you all to know that among progressives, it has become clear that you cannot claim to hold progressive values, yet back Israel’s apartheid government. We will continue to push back and not accept this idea that you are progressive, except for ‘Philistine,’ any longer.” “When we center our beliefs and our actions on the truth …  that every person deserves to live free of fear and have the opportunity to achieve their full potential, the need to oppose Israel’s government’s apartheid rule is obvious,” she added. “The path to freedom for Palestine is long and daunting, we must see through to its end. We owe it to not only Palestinians, but oppressed people all over the world who understand that our struggles are linked to one another.”

On May 1, 2023, Tlaib tweeted that: “[T]he apartheid state of Israel was born out of violence and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. 75 years later, the Nakba continues to this day.”

Late on May 9, 2023, Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy — saying it was “wrong for members of Congress to traffic in antisemitic tropes about Israel” — canceled an anti-Israel event that Tlaib was scheduled to host in the U.S. House the following day. Titled “Nakba 75 & the Palestinian People,” the purpose of the event was to commemorate the upcoming 75th anniversary of Al-Nakba, or “The Catastrophe,” as many Arabs and Jew-haters had long referred to Israel’s May 14, 1948 creation.

Tlaib responded in a statement that said, among other things, the following:

  • “We fully plan on moving forward with this event and we will continue to ensure that Palestinian voices are heard. We will not be silenced.”
  • “Our hope is to create opportunities for Palestinians, both here at home and abroad, who continue to experience the impacts of the Nakba, to tell their stories. The trauma and painful loss of their connections to family, villages they grew up in, and so much more needs to be acknowledged, not only for healing, but also to create an honest pathway for peace.”
  • “Speaker McCarthy wants to rewrite history and erase the existence and truth of the Palestinian people, but he has failed to do so. This event is planned to bring awareness about the Nakba and create space for Palestinian-Americans who experienced the Nakba firsthand to tell their stories of trauma and survival.”
  • “The Nakba is a well-documented historical event that is recognized by the United Nations. We cannot allow the same people who want to ban books and erase history simply because they’re uncomfortable with the truth to silence Palestinian voices..”

Tlaib’s event was ultimately held in the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee hearing room in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill. Senator Bernie Sanders personally made the room available to Tlaib for her conference, which was organized by such groups as the Institute for Middle East Understanding, Americans for Justice in Palestine Action, Project48, Democracy for the Arab World Now, the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, the American Friends Service Committee, the Virginia Coalition for Human Rights, Emgage Action, and Jewish Voice for Peace Action.

Invitations promoting the event said: “Seventy-five years ago, Zionist militias and the new Israeli military violently expelled approximately three-quarters of all Palestinians from their homes and homeland in what became the state of Israel. To uplift the experiences of Palestinians who underwent the Nakba, and educate Members of Congress and their staff about this history and the ongoing Nakba to which Israel continues to subject Palestinians, we’ve partnered together to host this congressional and community educational event, to be followed immediately afterward by dinner.”

On July 18, 2023, Tlaib was one of nine Democrats who voted against a House resolution (introduced by Republican Representative August Pfluger) that affirmed U.S. support for Israel. The resolution passed by a margin of 412 to 9. The other eight representatives who opposed it were Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, Cori Bush, Jamaal Bowman, Summer Lee, Andre Carson, and Delia Ramirez.

At daybreak on October 7, 2023 — which was the major Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah — the Islamic terror group Hamas carried out a massive, multi-front, surprise attack against Israel, firing thousands of rockets from Gaza into the Jewish state, while dozens of Hamas fighters simultaneously infiltrated the Israeli border in a number of locations by air, land and sea. The attack had been planned in conjunction with officers from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, along with agents of three other Iran-sponsored terrorist groups. “In an assault of startling breadth,” reported CBS News, “Hamas gunmen rolled into as many as 22 locations outside the Gaza Strip, including towns and other communities as far as 15 miles from the Gaza border. In some places they gunned down civilians and soldiers as Israel’s military scrambled to muster a response.” By , October 8, at least 600 Israelis had been killed and 1,800 wounded, making it the deadliest day Israel had seen in decades. Moreover, Hamas took hundreds of Israelis hostage, including dozens who were American citizens, and moved them to the Gaza Strip. The terrorists also paraded Israelis’ mutilated bodies through the streets of Gaza, to cheering crowds of Palestinians. By October 19, the official casualty toll in Israel had reached more than 1,400 dead (including at least 32 Americans) and 4,500 injured.

Soon after the October 7 terrorist attacks, Tlaib called for “lifting the blockade, ending the occupation, and dismantling the [Israeli] apartheid system that creates the suffocating, dehumanizing conditions that can lead to resistance.” She added, “The failure to recognize the violent reality of living under siege, occupation, and apartheid makes no one safer…. As long as our country provides billions in unconditional funding to support the apartheid government, this heartbreaking cycle of violence will continue.”

On the evening of October 10, 2023 in the U.S. Capitol building, Fox News correspondent Hillary Vaughn asked Tlaib to comment on reports that Hamas terrorists — in the aforementioned campaign of butchery they had started three days earlier — had murdered dozens of Jewish babies, decapitating many of them. “Congresswoman, Hamas terrorists have cut off babies’ heads and burned children alive, do you support Israel’s right to defend themselves against this brutality?” the reporter asked as Tlaib silently scurried away through the mostly empty hallway. “You can’t comment about Hamas terrorists chopping off babies’ heads?” Vaughn persisted, to no avail. “Congresswoman, do you have a comment on Hamas terrorists chopping off babies’ heads? You have nothing to say about Hamas terrorists chopping off babies’ heads?” Vaughn repeated as she followed Tlaib through the hallway. “Do you condone what Hamas has done, chopping off babies’ heads, burning children alive, raping women in the street?” Tlaib remained silent. “You have no comment about children’s heads being chopped off?” Vaughn again asked as Tlaib and her companions headed toward an elevator without speaking. “Congresswoman, why do you have a Palestinian flag outside your office if you do not condone what Hamas terrorists have done to Israel?” Vaughn asked as Tlaib and her party entered the elevator. “Do Israeli lives not matter to you?” But Tlaib continued to say nothing, and then the elevator doors closed.

On October 10, 2023 as well, Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin pointed out Tlaib’s selective grief and outrage vis-a-vis the treatment of children. Melugin posted a video of Tlaib stoically and robotically ignoring Hillary Vaughn’s questions about the children recently slaughtered by Hamas, and contrasted it with a photo from a 2019 congressional hearing where Tlaib had openly wept because of the “traumatic” and “inhumane” Trump policy of separating illegal-alien migrant children from their illegal-alien parents at America’s southern border. (Click here to view the the video and the photo.)

On October 18, 2023 outside the U.S. Capitol, Tlaib addressed a large crowd at a pro-Hamas rally calling for an immediate ceasefire in the newly erupted Hamas-Israel conflict. In her speech, the congresswoman repeated the false and thoroughly debunked allegation that Israel, in its military reprisal for the October 7 Hamas attack against the Jewish state, had bombed a Gaza hospital and killed 500 civilians in the process. But U.S. and Israeli intelligence sources had already demonstrated – with video, audio, and radar evidence – that the strike in question had been caused not by Israel, but by a misfired rocket launched by the terrorist organization Palestinian Islamic Jihad. As National Review reported: “The IDF … released footage showing a rocket launched from Gaza failing and plummeting back into Gazan territory. Intercepted communications between Palestinian terrorists also appear to confirm the finding. Images of the impact site show damage mostly to the hospital’s parking lot, not the building itself.” Moreover, the death toll was about 50, rather than the originally reported 500.

Notwithstanding all of the foregoing facts, which were well known by October 18, Tlaib tearfully told the crowd:

“We continue to watch people think it’s OK to bomb a hospital with children. You know what’s so hard sometimes is watching those videos, and the [Palestinian] people telling the kids, don’t cry. I’m like, let them cry. And they’re shaking, and some of you know this. They keep telling them not to cry, in Arabic. They can cry. I can cry. We all can cry. If we’re not crying, something is wrong. And so I’m telling you right now, President Biden, not all of America is with you on this one. And you need to wake up and understand that. We are literally [INAUDIBLE] watching people commit genocide and killing the vast majority just like this. And we still stand by and say nothing. We will remember this. But all of you, you need to know. I swear to God, [INAUDIBLE] [? Allah, ?] you [in the crowd] are on the right side of history. You are. You’re doing everything possible to save lives. What is wrong with that? Stop it with trying to politicize this.”

In an October 23, 2023 statement to Haaretz, Tlaib again gave voice to her pro-Hamas, anti-Israel, anti-American narrative, as she reiterated her belief that Israel may have intentionally bombed a Gaza hospital a few days earlier:

“Media outlets and third-party analysts have raised doubts about claims and evidence offered by both Israel and the Gaza Ministry of Health, and I agree with the United Nations that an independent investigation is necessary. I cannot uncritically accept Israel’s denials of responsibility as fact, especially in light of confirmation from the World Health Organization that Israel has bombed numerous medical facilities in Gaza and reports from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society of ongoing threats from the Israeli military to evacuate hospital.

“Both the Israeli and United States governments have long, documented histories of misleading the public about wars and war crimes — like last year’s Israeli military assassination of Shireen Abu Akleh and the false claims of weapons of mass destruction that led our country into the Iraq War — and cannot clear themselves of responsibility without an independent international investigation. This debate should not distract us from the urgent need for a ceasefire to save innocent civilian lives.”

On October 25, 2023, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 412-10 in favor of H.R. 771, a resolution titled “Standing with Israel as It Defends Itself against the Barbaric War Launched by Hamas and Other Terrorists.” The resolution stated, among other things, that the House of Representatives “reaffirms Israel’s right to self-defense”; “calls on all countries to unequivocally condemn Hamas’ brutal war against Israel”; “reaffirms the United States’ commitment to Israel’s security”; “condemns Iran’s support for terrorist groups and proxies, including Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad”; and “urges full enforcement of United States sanctions against Iran to prevent Iran’s funding of terrorist groups.”

On November 3, 2023, Tlaib used her X (Twitter) account to post a video in which she demanded that President Biden support a cease-fire in the recently erupted Israeli-Palestinian war, so as to stop what the video characterized as “the genocide of the Palestinian people.” The video included footage of protesters chanting: (a) in Ohio, “No peace on stolen land!”; (b) in New York, “End the blockade, Break the Siege!”; (c) in Illinois, “The occupation’s got to go” and “Free! Free! Palestine!”; and (d) in Michigan, “From the river to the sea” — a common anti-Semitic slogan calling for the total and permanent eradication of the Jewish state (from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea). Responding to critics who subsequently condemned the congresswoman for her countenance of that phrase, Tlaib tweeted: “From the river to the sea is an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate. My work and advocacy is always centered in justice and dignity for all people no matter faith or ethnicity.”

On November 6, 2023, Republican Rep. Rich McCormick of Georgia introduced a privileged resolution to censure Tlaib for her repeated use of anti-Semitic rhetoric while criticizing Israel’s military response to the October 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas. After a motion to table the resolution failed on November 7, the House conducted a final vote on the measure later that evening, and the resolution passed by a margin of 234 yeas to 188 nays, with four members voting “present” and seven not voting at all.

On January 31, 2024, Tlaib and Rep. Cori Bush were the only two U.S. House members to vote against a Republican-sponsored bill known as H.R. 6679, The No Immigration Benefits for Hamas Terrorists Act, which passed in the House by a margin of 422-2. Aiming to build upon an already-existing law that prevented any members of designated terror groups like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad from entering the United States even if seeking asylum, 6679 sought to extend the ban to also cover members of the Palestine Liberation Organization as well as anyone who had “carried out, participated in, planned, financed, afforded material support to, or otherwise facilitated any of the attacks against Israel initiated by Hamas beginning on October 7, 2023.” Such people, said 6679, would be “inadmissible” to the U.S. and “ineligible for any relief under the immigration laws.” “H.R. 6679 is unnecessary because it is redundant with already existing federal law,” Tlaib said in a statement. “It’s just another GOP messaging bill being used to incite anti-Arab, anti-Palestinian, and anti-Muslim hatred that makes communities like ours unsafe.”

Two 2018 Campaign Events Were Organized by Alleged Terrorism Financiers

On July 18, 2022, the Washington Examiner reported the following:

“Two men who held key positions at nonprofit groups that were found liable in a Hamas terror financing scheme helped organize campaign fundraising events for Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) in 2018. The men, who organized events that were paid for by Tlaib’s campaign, were associated with a network of nonprofit groups that were found liable by a federal jury in 2004 for financing the terrorist slaying of an American teenager, David Boim, at a bus stop in the West Bank in 1996. A federal judge ordered the three groups to pay Boim’s parents a $156 million judgment for funding Hamas, a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization.

“The groups — the Holy Land Foundation, the American Muslim Society, and the Islamic Association for Palestine — never paid up. They shut down shortly after they were ordered to pay the landmark judgment to the Boim family. The Holy Land Foundation ultimately had its monetary assets seized by the United States, and five of its leaders were sentenced to decades in prison in 2008, for providing material support to Hamas.

“The first Tlaib campaign organizer, Rafeeq Jaber, testified during a deposition in 2003 that he served as president of the American Muslim Society and the Islamic Association for Palestine. Jaber testified that the two groups, while under his control, worked to ‘promote [Holy Land Foundation] in every way we can’ and also distributed pro-Hamas documents, including an August 2001 editorial that advocated martyrdom operations and the killing of Jewish people.

“Jaber was identified as a member of the ‘Hosting Committee’ for a Tlaib campaign fundraiser in July 2018, according to a flier posted on Facebook. The event was paid for by Tlaib’s congressional campaign, the flier stated. Jaber was also filmed sitting in the front row of an intimate Tlaib campaign fundraising event in March 2018, footage of the event uploaded to Facebook shows. Jaber later urged his followers to support Tlaib’s reelection campaign in 2020, writing in a July 2020 Facebook post that the pro-Israel AIPAC, ‘radical right wingers and the white supremacists’ want Tlaib out of office. He also wrote in November 2020 that Tlaib and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) help and serve the cause of Palestine and suggested that abstaining from casting a vote in the election does nothing to stop ‘the support for Criminal Israel.’

“The Boim family sued Jaber in 2017, alleging that he shut down the American Muslim Society and the Islamic Association for Palestine in 2004 and spun up a new group, American Muslims for Palestine, in order to avoid paying the $156 million judgment. American Muslims for Palestine ‘is nothing more than a disguised continuance of IAP/AMS — stripped of the burden of the Boim Judgement and the ignominy of having been found liable for aiding and abetting the murder of an American teenager,’ the Boim family’s 2017 lawsuit stated.

“Jaber and American Muslims for Palestine are now subject to discovery in the case following rulings by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in August 2021 and by a federal district court in Illinois in May 2022. The case is on track to be heard before a federal jury before the end of 2023, the Washington Examiner previously reported. […]

“The second Tlaib campaign organizer, Salah Sarsour, helped raise money for the Islamic Association for Palestine and the Holy Land Foundation around the time of Boim’s killing and, in one case, allegedly wrote checks from his business’s bank account to funnel money to a Hamas militant. ‘I passed money over to Adel Awdallah several times, and my brother sent money to him through me several times too,’ Salah Sarsour’s brother, Jamil Sarsour, confessed to the Israeli government in December 1998.

“Israeli commandos killed Awdallah in a raid in September 1998 for allegedly planning a terrorist attack. Israeli officials found wigs and a small cache of weapons, including hand grenades and submachine guns, at the hilltop compound Awdallah was killed in.

“’The checks that my brother Salah gave me were from a (UI) bank in Milwaukee, from the business account,’ Jamil Sarsour said in his confession. ‘We didn’t want to use personal checks from either one of us so that the government shouldn’t trace the checks back to us personally. We did it this way so we could take checks abroad and send money to Adel Awdallah.’

“Salah Sarsour also played an active role in raising funds for the Holy Land Foundation ‘that is actually for HAMAS,’ a 2001 FBI memorandum stated.

“American Muslims for Palestine identifies Salah Sarsour as a member of its national board on its website.

“Salah Sarsour co-hosted a fundraising event for Tlaib’s campaign on July 28, 2018, according to a flier posted to Facebook. The event was ‘paid for by Rashida Tlaib for Congress,’ the flier stated. He then appeared in multiple photos with Tlaib at the fundraiser. Tlaib reacted to a Facebook post containing three photos of her posing with Salah Sarsour at the fundraiser with a heart symbol from her personal Facebook account.”

Tlaib’s Views Regarding America & Americans

In an April 2018 interview, Tlaib recalled how, in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, she feared for the safety of herself and her family. “I was probably in my second year in law school when 9/11 happened,” said the congresswoman. “And I was really terrified of what was going to happen to my husband, who was only a green card holder at the time. I immediately called my brothers and told them to be very careful who you hang out with, telling my sisters, you know, just be real careful out there, and being really afraid of my fellow Americans.”

In a September 2019 Twitter post, Tlaib wrote: “We have to make the tough, courageous changes that completely transform a political and economic system that is now built for corporations (and profits), not people. Choosing the status quo means doing nothing and giving up. We need a political revolution.”

Tlaib’s Views on Race & Racism

In a February 2019 House committee session, Tlaib accused Republican congressman Mark Meadows of committing a “racist act” in presenting Housing and Urban Development official Lynne Patton, a black woman, as a refutation of former Donald Trump attorney Michael Cohen’s claim that President Trump was a “racist.” “[J]ust because someone has a person of color, a black people working for them, does not mean they aren’t racist,” said Tlaib. “And it is even insensitive, some would even say the fact that someone would even use a prop, a black woman in this chamber, in this committee, is alone racist in itself.”

While Detroit police chief James Craig in October 2019 gave Tlaib a tour of the Real Time Crime Center wherein department analysts used facial recognition technology to identify criminal suspects, Tlaib told him: “Analysts need to be African-Americans, not people that are not. It’s true, I think non-African-Americans think African-Americans all look the same!” Craig, who is black, replied: “I trust people who are trained, regardless of race, regardless of gender.” After Craig showed Tlaib how his analysts examined the software’s results before making determinations, the congresswoman said: “See if you can get some of our [taxpayers’] money back until they fix it.” Craig, in turn, said “No.” When a Detroit News reporter subsequently asked Tlaib if she was “saying white people are not qualified to –,” the congresswoman interrupted him and said: “No, I think there’s actually been studies out that it’s hard for, you know, like African-Americans would identify African-Americans, similar, Latino same thing.” When asked if African-Americans, by that same reasoning, should not be permitted to identify white people, Tlaib said “Look it up” and walked away.

On July 8, 2020, Tlaib endorsed fellow Democrat congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s recent call for “dismantling the whole system of oppression” in the United States. “My sister @IlhanMN said it best: We must begin with dismantling the whole system of oppression wherever we find it,” Tlaib wrote on Twitter. “Pass it on.”

On March 18, 2021, Tlaib tweeted: “Fuck white supremacy.” The following day, she complained about some criticism she had received vis-a-vis her use of profanity: “People are policing my words while completely failing to fight against white supremacy. This really speaks volumes on where we are and the work we have to do.”

Calling for $20-Per-Hour Minimum Wage

In July 2019, Tlaib called for a federal minimum wage of $20 per hour for all workers, including waiters, busboys, and other employees who generally depended on tips for most of their income. “Think about that for one minute,” said Tlaib. “People cannot live on those kind of wages, and I can’t allow people to be living off tips, you know, relying on tips for wages. It’s just not enough to support our families…. It should be $20 an hour — $18 to $20 an hour at this point…. They say all of this is going to raise the cost, but I can tell you, milk has gone up, eggs have gone up, everything has gone up. The cost of a lot of things that we need has gone up already.”

Tlaib’s Illegal Use of Campaign Funds to Cover Personal Expenses

In November 2019, the House Ethics Committee (HEC) announced that it was investigating Tlaib 0ver internal messages which she had sent in 2018 asking her congressional campaign for money to cover her personal expenses, which is a criminal act. Tlaib’s case was referred to HEC by the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE), which alleged: “Rep. Tlaib’s campaign committee, Rashida Tlaib for Congress, reported campaign disbursements that may not be legitimate and verifiable campaign expenditures attributable to bona fide campaign or political purposes. If Rep. Tlaib converted campaign funds from Rashida Tlaib for Congress to personal use, or if Rep. Tlaib’s campaign committee expended funds that were not attributable to bona fide campaign or political purposes, then Rep. Tlaib may have violated House rules, standards of conduct, and federal law.” According to Fox News’ Gregg Re: “Texts and emails released by the Ethics Committee show Tlaib frantically contacting members of her staff for financial help. The OCE also attached scans of checks made out to Tlaib from her campaign, totaling thousands of dollars.”

According to The Daily Signal:

“The alleged violations stem from $17,500 that her campaign paid her, apparently to cover personal expenses, after she was elected to Congress.

“Text messages and emails between Tlaib and her campaign staff show that throughout her campaign she repeatedly asked her campaign for money to cover personal expenses like ‘car maintenance, child care, and other necessities.’  At one point, Tlaib asked her campaign to give her $2,000 every two weeks. Between May 7 and Nov. 16, 2018, it did so. Then, on Dec. 1, 2018, it paid her $15,500. In total, Tlaib’s campaign gave her $45,000 over seven months.

“Federal campaign finance law … prohibits the use of campaign funds for personal use. The law, including the regulations promulgated by the Federal Election Commission, defines ‘personal use’ very broadly. Personal use includes any ‘commitment, obligation, or expense of a person that would exist irrespective of the candidate’s campaign duties.’ That plainly includes car maintenance, child care, and ‘other necessities.’ …

“While candidates may take a salary from their campaigns, there are very strict limits on that. Among the litany of restrictions is this one: The salary can only be paid for work performed before the election. The salary has to end the day the candidate is either elected or withdraws from the race and is no longer a candidate.

“Tlaib’s eligibility for a salary paid from her campaign funds ended on Nov. 6, 2018, when she was elected to the House of Representatives. Yet her campaign continued to pay her through the end of December. She collected $17,500 after the election.

Tlaib Says: “F*** a National Day of Prayer”

After President Trump proclaimed March 15, 2020 as a national day of prayer in the midst of the coronavirus (COVID-19) fears that were plaguing the country, Tlaib retweeted a Twitter message by anti-gun activist teenager David Hogg that read: “Don’t let this administration address COVID-19 like our national gun violence epidemic. Fuck a National day of prayer, we need immediate comprehensive action.”

Condemning President Trump’s Effort to Quell Violent Riots in Portland

In the aftermath of a highly publicized May 25, 2020 killing of a black criminal suspect by a white police officer in Minneapolis, numerous American cities were overrun by weeks of protests and violent riots led by Black Lives Matter and Antifa. One of the cities where the riots were most destructive was Portland, Oregon. Following a 50-day period during which Portland’s mayor refused to take any serious measures to quell the mayhem, President Trump announced that he was sending federal troops to that city in an effort to restore order. In response to the president’s decision, Tlaib tweeted on July 20: “They’ll have to arrest me first if they think they’re going to illegally lay their hands on my residents” (in Michigan’s 13th Congressional District).

Co-Sponsor of the BREATHE Act

In July 2020, Tlaib and fellow congresswoman Ayanna Pressley partnered with the Movement for Black Lives — a coalition closely tied to the Black Lives Matter movement — in promoting the BREATHE Act, a bill that called for:

  • defunding police departments nationwide;
  • abolishing the Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency and the Customs & Border Protection (CBP) agency
  • decriminalizing illegal border entry by foreign nationals into the United States
  • eliminating state gang databases
  • establishing a commission to design a reparations plan for African Americans
  • “enfranchising all formerly and presently incarcerated people in federal elections”
  • drastically reducing the U.S. Department of Defense budget
  • “incentivizing States to pass laws that expand voting access”
  • “allowing local and State resident voting for undocumented people”
  • ensuring “full and free access” to a “lifetime of education for undocumented people”
  • creating a jobs program to aid the “most economically disadvantaged individuals, including groups that disproportionately include Black cis- and trans women, formerly incarcerated people, undocumented people, and disabled people”
  • ending life sentences in prison
  • repealing all existing state juvenile offenses
  • decriminalizing and retroactively expunging state drug convictions
  • abolishing the “three strikes” criminal law
  • prohibiting pretextual stops and “consent” searches
  • eliminating tools to track parolee location such as ankle monitors and smartphone applications
  • closing all federal prisons and immigration detention centers
  • “removing police, armed security and metal detectors and other surveillance equipment from schools and government offices that provide social services”
  • “eliminating all fees and surcharges within the criminal-legal system and forgiving outstanding court debt”
  • developing school curricula that “examine the political, economic, and social impacts of colonialism, genocide against indigenous people, and slavery”
  • establishing commissions that “design reparations for mass criminalization—including the War on Drugs, the criminalization of prostitution, and police violence; border violence; and the systemic violation of the U.S. Government’s treaty obligations to Tribal nations”

Lauding the Protesters and Rioters in America’s Streets

In an August 2020 photo essay in which Vanity Fair magazine “celebrat[ed] the founders of Black Lives Matter [BLM] … and more on the forefront of change,” Tlaib lauded the massive wave of BLM-and-Antifa-led protests and riots that had swept the country since George Floyd’s death in late May. Said the congresswoman: “It just gives more credibility to why I ran. It gives more credibility [to] why I fight to [lift] people out of poverty, why I am saying enough with structural racism, and ending mass incarceration, and ending the injustices that we see in our school system. When I see this movement on the street—that’s where transformative change really starts and it’s hitting us right here in the halls of Congress. It’s been powerful to watch it happen.”

Urges Muslims at CAIR Event to Help Democrats Win Senate

In an online “vote-a-thon” co-hosted in December 2020 by the Georgia chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Georgia Muslim Voter Project, Tlaib claimed that Muslim voters in Georgia had been given an opportunity from “Allah” to help elect Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Osoff to the U.S. Senate in their upcoming runoff elections, and to thereby give Democrats a majority in the upper chamber of Congress. “I hope that you realize just the opportunity here that Allah has given us to show the power of Muslims in Georgia,” Tlaib stated. “I want people to be like, oh my God, I didn’t even know Muslims are in Georgia… Exactly! Because we’re going to show them in droves of numbers… I want to, mash’allah [what Allah has willed] be able to say, ‘Look at the voting in these precincts and guess what? It was the Muslim vote that delivered Georgia.’” Other noteworthy figures who spoke at the CAIR event included Ilhan Omar and Linda Sarsour.

Calling for an End to “Policing,” “Incarceration,” & “Militarization”

Tlaib voiced outrage after an April 11, 2021 incident where a white female police officer in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota accidentally shot and killed a young black man named Daunte Wright, who was resisting arrest and attempting to flee. The congresswoman tweeted: “It wasn’t an accident. Policing in our country is inherently & intentionally racist.” “Daunte Wright was met with aggression & violence,” she added. “I am done with those who condone government funded murder.” Tlaib also wrote: “No more policing, incarceration, and militarization. It can’t be reformed.” In addition, she retweeted a tweet which, mocking the notion that Wright’s shooting was “accidental,” stated: “You spelled murder wrong again.”

Tlaib Is One of 35 House Democrats Who Call for Change in Immigration Policies That Target Gang Members for Deportation

In mid-May 2021, Tlaib was one of 35 House Democrats (led by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) who wrote a letter to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Tae Johnson, demanding changes to immigration policies allegedly rooted in America’s “discriminatory legal system.” According to the 35 legislators, an interim enforcement memo issued by ICE: (a) did “not adequately protect the liberty interests of asylum seekers,” and (b) unjustifiably presumed that illegal migrants who had been convicted of aggravated felonies should necessarily be regarded as “border security and enforcement and removal priorit[ies].” “This blanket presumption will effectively mean detaining an untold number of people who have fled persecution,” the lawmakers wrote.

The letter further claimed that the “definition of an aggravated felony” was nothing more than a “relic of the racist War on Drugs.” “‘Aggravated felonies’ as a category have been designed to ensure that people have as few rights as possible to fight detention and deportation,” wrote Tlaib and her colleagues. “Moreover, we are concerned that the memorandum only requires ICE officers have a ‘good faith belief’ that someone has an aggravated felony conviction even while acknowledging that such a determination is ‘a complex question.’” The lawmakers also claimed that the ICE memo “invites racial profiling” by designating migrants convicted of participating in gang activities as “public safety enforcement and removal priorit[ies].” “We are in a moment of racial reckoning in this country, with communities across the country calling for an end to mass incarceration and racist policing,” the letter said. “It is time to end the carceral approach to immigration, which relies on these same flawed systems.”

Aside from Tlaib and Ocasio-Cortez, the 35 signatories to the letter included such notables as Reps. Ayanna Pressley, Jamaal Bowman, and Carolyn Maloney.

Tlaib Calls for Elimination of Funding for the Immigration-Related CBP, ICE, and DHS Agencies

In a July 6, 2021 conversation with Julie Mao from Just Futures Law, Tlaib declared that the United States “must eliminate funding for our CBP, ICE, and their parent organization DHS” (Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Department of Homeland Security). “Time after time,” said the congresswoman, “we have seen it as advocates on the ground, as human services agents on the ground, to continue to see over and over again to see that these agencies are inept.” Tlaib added that while these agencies ought to be “humanely guiding migrants through our immigration system,” they instead “terrorize migrant communities located within our communities.”

In early August 2021, Tlaib gave a speech at the national convention of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), where she portrayed Jews as the orchestrators of a worldwide conspiracy to oppress Muslims and blacks for profit. Some examples:

  • “We also need to recognize — and this is for me as a Palestinian American — we also need to recognize as I think about my family and Palestine that continue to live under military occupation and how that really interacts with this beautiful black city [Detroit] that I grew up in. You know, I always tell people cutting people off from water is violence from Gaza to Detroit. And it’s a way to control people, to oppress people. And it’s those structures that we continue to fight against.”
  • “I know that you all understand the structure that we’ve been living under right now is designed by those that exploit the rest of us for their own profit. I don’t care if it’s the issue around global human rights and our fight to free Palestine or to pushing back against those that don’t believe in the minimum wage or those that believe that people have a right to health care and so much more. And I tell people, those same people, that if you open the curtain and look behind the curtain, it’s the same people that make money and, yes they do, off of racism, off of these broken policies. There is someone there making money and you saw it!”

As writer Rick Moran noted in PJ Media: “’Behind the curtain’ was a very effective Nazi propaganda theme during the 1930s.”

Tlaib Parties & Dances Maskless at Crowded Indoor Wedding Reception After Advocating Mask Mandates to Stop the Spread of COVID-19

On August 8, 2021, Tlaib attacked Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky for urging Americans to ignore the constantly-changing CDC guidelines on mask-wearing, the latest of which called for all people, even the fully vaccinated, to wear masks indoors if they lived in areas with significant or high rates of COVID-19 transmission. Wrote Tlaib in a tweet: “The KY Senator is throwing a tantrum as his state is being swallowed whole by this virus, again. People are getting sick and dying. He needs to put politics aside, and put people first. Start resisting the virus.”

That very same day, Tlaib partied and danced without a mask at a crowded indoor wedding reception in Wayne County, Michigan, an area where, according to the CDC, there was a “substantial” risk of community transmission.

As TheFederalist.com reported: “The congresswoman can be seen dancing, holding hands, and hugging other people, none of whom appear to be wearing masks, in video footage uploaded to Instagram by the band that performed at the wedding, Bassam Saleh.”

Tlaib Admits She Only Wears Mask for Cameras

After doing an event in Detroit with Housing and Urban Development (HUD) secretary Marcia Fudge on October 4, 2021, Tlaib conversed with a maskless attendee who mistakenly thought the the congresswoman had admonished him for being “the one unmasked guy” in the area. Tlaib pulled her mask away from her face and replied: “Oh, no, oh, not you! No, no, no—I’m just wearing it because I’ve got a Republican tracker here.”

Massive Social Media Presence

As of late October 2021, Tlaib had approximately 1.5 million followers on Twitter and 493,000 followers on Instagram.

Tlaib Condemns the Kyle Rittenhouse Jury Verdict

On August 25, 2020 — during a violent Black Lives Matter/Antifa riot which followed an incident where a white Kenosha, Wisconsin police officer had shot and permanently disabled a knife-wielding black criminal named Jacob Blake — Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old white youth from Antioch, Illinois, drove to Kenosha, where his father resided, with the intent of: (a) helping to prevent further vandalism in that city, and (b) providing medical aid to people injured in the melee. At the scene of the unrest, Rittenhouse was armed with a semi-automatic rifle that had been purchased (with his money) and held for him by his friend Dominick Black, a resident of Kenosha. When white rioter and Kenosha resident Joseph Rosenbaum — who had spent 15 years in prison for multiple child molestation convictions that included anal rape — chased Rittenhouse, threatened to kill him, and tried to take away his rifle, Rittenhouse fatally shot Rosenbaum. While subsequently being chased by a crowd of approximately a dozen rioters, Rittenhouse ran down a street toward police vehicles, in hopes that the officers might protect him from his pursuers. But the fleeing Rittenhouse tripped and fell to the ground, at which point he was struck on the head by a 39-year-old white man who jump-kicked him. Then, while Rittenhouse was still on the ground, white Silver Lake resident Anthony Huber — a domestic abuse repeater and an ex-convict who in 2013 had pleaded guilty to multiple felony counts of strangulation, suffocation, and false imprisonment — struck him on the head and neck with a skateboard and attempted to pull away his rifle, at which point Rittenhouse killed Huber with a single gunshot to the chest. And when white West Allis resident Gaige Grosskreutz — who had a long arrest history that included multiple misdemeanors and felonies — then approached the fallen Rittenhouse and pointed a handgun directly at him, Rittenhouse shot him once in the right arm, wounding but not killing the man. Rittenhouse was subsequently tried on six criminal charges which included homicide, reckless endangerment, and possession of a dangerous weapon by a person under the age of 18. A large number of leftists portrayed him as a racist, Trump-supporting white vigilante who had recklessly fired his gun at “social justice” and “racial justice” demonstrators in Kenosha.

After a jury found Rittenhouse not guilty on all counts on November 19, 2021, Tlaib tweeted: “Our justice system is broken. It protects white supremacy. The two people who were killed deserved justice and so did our communities who continue be targeted with violence like this.” She added that this “painful verdict sends a horrifying message that bringing violence to a protest for racial justice is acceptable.”

Tlaib Calls for Student Loan Forgiveness

On December 5, 2021, Tlaib, who was earning a $174,000 annual salary as a member of Congress, went to the House floor and called for a federal bailout of college student loans, including her own. Said the congresswoman:

“I worked full time, Monday through Friday, and took weekend classes to get my law degree. And still, close to $200,000 in debt. And I still owe over $70,000, and most of it was interest. And guess what? I didn’t go to [work for] the for-profit entities, I went to legal aid, I worked at the nonprofit organization fighting for the right to breathe clean air, to fight for the worker that was getting their wage taken and stolen from their employer. I went and worked on immigrant rights and so much more.”

Notably, almost half of all student debt at that time was owed by people in households that had graduate degrees and could more easily pay back debt than others. As the Urban Institute had previously reported:

“[M]ost outstanding student debt is held by people with relatively high incomes. According to our updated analysis of the Survey of Consumer Finances for 2016 (the best available data, though imperfect), the most affluent households—the top 25 percent of households with the highest earnings—held 34 percent of all outstanding education debt…. This debt represents loans for both current and past students and is a combination of students borrowing for their own education, and parents or grandparents borrowing to help their children or grandchildren pay for college. Households in the lowest income quartile (with household incomes of $27,000 or less) hold only 12 percent of outstanding education debt. In other words, education debt is disproportionately concentrated among the well off.”

Michele Perez Exner, a communications coordinator for House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, tweeted this observation: “For almost four years, Rep. Tlaib has been making an annual salary of $174,000 as a House member. But she wants the rest of us to chip in to pay off her law degree.”

Blaming “White Supremacy” for Mass Shooting in Buffalo, NY

On the afternoon of May 14, 2022, an 18-year-old white man shot and killed 10 people in a Buffalo, New York supermarket located in the heart of a predominantly black community. Eleven of the 13 people who were shot, were black. The following morning, Tlaib tweeted: “Heartbreaking that Black folks can’t grocery shop, go to church, march against police brutality w/o being targeted by white supremacists. White supremacy gets a pass in our country. Prayers are not enough. We need courage + the will to take on white supremacy as the threat it is.”

Rejecting the Supreme Court Decision to Overturn Roe v. Wade

On May 2, 2022, Politico reported that an unidentified individual had leaked an initial draft of a 5-4 majority opinion, written by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, in which the Court had decided to strike down the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. After the Court officially announced its decision on June 24, 2022, Tlaib told pro-abortion activists: “Abortions are still legal in Michigan. We must fight for every person to control their bodies. We won’t stop fighting. I will see you in the streets.”

Arrested at Pro-Abortion Rally

On July 19, 2022, Tlaib was one of at least 17 House Democrats who were arrested outside the Supreme Court building in Washington, where they were attending an abortion-rights rally to protest the Supreme Court’s recent decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Those arrested included the following:

Tlaib Collected up to $100,000 in Rent While Pushing Rent Cancellation During COVID Pandemic

On August 12, 2022, Fox News reported:

“Rep. Rashida Tlaib … has pocketed up to $100,000 in rental income during the [COVID-19] pandemic despite pushing to cancel rent, according to disclosure forms reviewed by Fox News Digital. Tlaib filed her latest annual financial disclosure report [on August 11], which reveals she collected between $15,001 and $50,000 in rental income from a Detroit property in 2021. The Michigan Democrat reported the same rental income for 2020 last August, meaning she now made between $30,000 and $100,000 from rent payments during the pandemic.

“Tlaib, however, collected the rent checks despite co-sponsoring a bill alongside other ‘Squad’ members that sought to cancel rent during the pandemic. In early 2020, Tlaib joined Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., and others in co-sponsoring Rep. Ilhan Omar’s, D-Minn., bill to ‘institute a nationwide cancellation of rents and home mortgage payments through the duration of the coronavirus pandemic.’

“Later, in March 2021, the progressive firebrands re-introduced the bill, which would have canceled rent through April 2022. ‘I’m joining Rep. @IlhanOmar and fellow colleagues for a press conference on the Rent & Mortgage Cancellation Act,’ Tlaib tweeted at its re-introduction. ‘Our residents need help during this ongoing pandemic & this legislation seeks to provide that help to ensure our neighbors have the housing they need.’”

Advocating an End to Oil & Gas As Energy Sources

During a September 21, 2022 hearing in the U.S. House, Tlaib asked JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon if he and his bank would be willing to cease all future investments into oil and gas companies — so as to slow down the phenomenon of “climate change.” “Please answer with a simple yes or no, does your bank have a policy against funding new oil and gas products,” Tlaib asked Dimon. “Absolutely not and that would be the road to hell for America,” Dimon replied. Tlaib, in turn, then derided JPMorgan-Chase and — alluding to criticism which Dimon had earlier directed against President Biden’s plan to forgive up to $20,000 in student debt for many former college students — articulated her hope that large numbers of such individuals would cancel their accounts with Dimon’s bank. “Sir, you know what, everybody that got relief from student loans — has a bank account with your bank — should probably take out their account and close their account,” said an irritated Tlaib.

Voting Against a House Resolution Honoring Police Killed in the Line of Duty

On May 15, 2023, Tlaib and fellow Democrat Cori Bush were the only two members of Congress to vote against H.Res. 363, a resolution that: (a) memorialized police officers killed in the line of duty, (b) expressed “unwavering support” for law-enforcement officers generally, and (c) offered “condolences and solemn appreciation” for the bereaved loved ones of lost officers. Moreover, the resolution pledged that the House of Representatives would acknowledge “that police officers and other law enforcement personnel, especially those who have made the ultimate sacrifice, should be remembered and honored” for their “heroism.”

“Reparations Now” Resolution to Compensate Blacks for Slavery & Jim Crow

On May 17, 2023, Tlaib joined with fellow House Members Cori BushJamaal Bowman, and Summer Lee in unveiling a “Reparations Now” resolution seeking $14 trillion from Congress to compensate present-day black Americans for the allegedly enduring historical effects that slavery and the Jim Crow era had set in motion.

Tlaib Abstains from Condemning Hamas Sexual Violence Againt Jews

On February 14, 2024, the U.S. House of Representatives passed — by a vote of 418 to 0 — a bipartisan resolution condemning Hamas’s use of rape and sexual violence against Jews during and after its deadly October 7, 2023 terrorist attack on Israel. The only House member not to support the measure was Tlaib, who voted “present.” Tlaib later said in a statement that she could not back the resolution because it “completely ignores and erases any sexual violence and abuse committed by the Israeli forces against Palestinians, especially children.”

The Times of Israel, however, pointed out that Tlaib was unjustified in suggesting that Israeli military personnel had perpetrated any sexual crimes against Palestinians:

“While the evidence and testimony of horrific sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas on October 7 have been widely documented, there have been no credible reports of sexual violence perpetrated by the IDF [Israeli Defense Forces] in Gaza. The resolution noted that the Israel Police has gathered ‘thousands of testimonies from eyewitnesses of Hamas violence on October 7, 2023, including countless instances of rape, gang rape, sexual mutilation, and other forms of sexual violence,’ and [the resolution also] reaffirmed the U.S. government’s ‘support for independent, impartial investigations of rape and sexual violence committed by Hamas on and since October 7.’”

Footnotes:


  1. “Rashida Tlaib” (Keywiki.org, Votesmart.org, & Ballotpedia.org); “Bills Must Stop Deportations for Minor Offenses” (by Rashida Tlaib, The Final Call, 10-6-2006); “Rashida Tlaib’s Father Says She ‘Lied Big-Time To Get Elected’ In Resurfaced 2010 Newspaper Article” (Daily Wire, 5-3-2019); “Candidates in Michigan Call for Censuring Rep. Tlaib Over Lying About Her Address” (The Epoch Tmes, 7-15-2019);
    Under Trump, a Growing Number of Metro Detroit Millennials Are Turning to Socialism” (Detroit Metro Times, 2-21-2018); “Tlaib Proposes Changes to Civil Rights Act” (Detroit News, 7-11-2018).
  2. In July 2010, Tlaib was a panelist hearing testimony from CAIR-Michigan representatives at a special town hall meeting on racial profiling in Detroit. Other panelists included Center for Constitutional Rights Executive Director Vincent Warren, and officials of the ACLU-Michigan and the Mexican American Legal Defense Educational Fund.
  3. Since the age of ten, Tamimi had repeatedly been sent out by her parents to “confront” Israeli soldiers by cursing at them or striking them while her family filmed the encounters for propaganda purposes. The girl’s aunt, Ahlam Tamimi, was the mastermind of an August 2001 suicide bombing that killed 15 people and wounded 130 in the Sbarro Pizzeria in Jerusalem.

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