Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN) criticized Republican colleague Representative Dan Crenshaw (TX) on Thursday over the demographics of his district.
In a tweet, Crenshaw spoke out against Democratic talking points surrounding the recent “For the People Act,” a massive federal election bill being pushed by many on the Left.
Crenshaw wrote, “Let’s get some facts straight: Allowing taxpayer funded political campaigns has nothing to do with ‘voting rights.’ Asking people to prove who they say they are with an ID is not ‘voter suppression.’ Making elections more secure and transparent is not ‘Jim Crow on steroids.’”
Let’s get some facts straight:
Allowing taxpayer funded political campaigns has nothing to do with “voting rights.”
Asking people to prove who they say they are with an ID is not “voter suppression.”
Making elections more secure and transparent is not “Jim Crow on steroids.”
— Rep. Dan Crenshaw (@RepDanCrenshaw) June 22, 2021
Omar responded to Crenshaw’s tweet with images detailing the demographics of his district. “Not sure I would be so indignant if my district looked like this,” she wrote.
Not sure I would be so indignant if my district looked like this. https://t.co/qPnoH0aljd pic.twitter.com/aBwj7gEe9V
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) June 24, 2021
Omar’s criticisms appear to be directed at the shape and demographic of Crenshaw’s district that notably includes majority white and higher-earning voters. Omar later retweeted a series of tweets from The Root’s Michael Harriot who discussed the gerrymandering of the district.
The “For the People Act” has been discussed by Democrats as a bill that would expand voting rights, but Republicans have called it out for its sweeping federal overhaul of elections and the increased potential for voter fraud that it could bring.
As The Daily Wire noted, “Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said that S-1, the election bill Democrats have been pushing for months, was ‘Democrats’ transparently partisan plan to tilt every election in America permanently in their favor.’”
Last week, McConnell discussed the bill and explained Republican opposition to it, calling it “a massive takeover of our electoral system with a fill-in-the-blank rationale.”
McConnell said, “The same awful guts are all in there: There’s the plan to forcibly rewrite large portions of the 50 states’ respective election laws… And the plan to create new publicly-funded accounts. Not for building roads and bridges, expanding rural broadband, or fighting the opioid epidemic.”
He went on, “Just piles of federal dollars going to yard signs, balloons, and TV ads for candidates at least half of Americans disagree with. There’s the plan to trash a decades-old bipartisan consensus on the right way to call balls and strikes on elections and turn the even split of the Federal Election Commission into a partisan majority.”
McConnell also described how the bill could cut down on free speech, saying, “It’s such a radical proposal that even prominent voices on the Left have urged caution. Lawyers from the ACLU, no less, have sounded the alarm on its proposed encroachment on free speech.”
After the failed vote on the “For the People Act” in the Senate on Tuesday, Democrats continued to stick to their talking points, appearing to have brought the bill to the floor of the Senate in order to decry Republican opposition as further evidence of alleged racism.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) spoke on the Senate floor on Tuesday, saying, “I want to be clear about what just happened on the Senate floor. Every single Senate Republican just voted against starting debate — starting debate — on legislation to protect Americans’ voting rights.”
“Once again, the Senate Republican minority has launched a partisan blockade of a pressing issue here in the United States Senate, an issue no less fundamental than the right to vote,” Schumer noted.
A previous version of this article incorrectly referred to McConnell as majority leader instead of minority leader.