U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) unleashed on Republicans and President Donald Trump for what she described as hypocrisy over the Trump administration’s establishment of a $1.7 billion “anti-weaponization” fund for militia groups like the Proud Boys and Neo-Nazis, whom she noted are identified as “white supremacists.”
During a Wednesday House Judiciary Committee hearing on the Southern Poverty Law Center, which was indicted by the Trump administration for its work investigating and exposing white supremacist groups, Crockett questioned witnesses about whether the Proud Boys and Neo-Nazis, who particiapated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol over Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was rigged, are considered white supremacist groups.
Most of the witnesses struggled to say definitively that the militia groups are white supremacist organizations, with the exception of Maya Wiley, President and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
“Let me be clear. Proud Boys are freaking white supremacists. Neo-Nazis are too. And this president, who loves to coddle white supremacists, has decided that they should be given checks,” said Crockett.
At the heart of the hearing is Republicans, backed by the Trump administration’s recent indictment, accusing SPLC of committing fraud for its years-long program in coordination with the FBI that pays undercover informants to infiltrate and collect intelligence on racist extremist groups plotting to harm Black and other minority groups.
Crockett, however, sought to bring the attention back to the white supremacist groups, rather than the SPLC, the group working to expose them and their growing movements across the U.S.
“It is clear that neo-Nazis as well as Proud Boys joined in on January 6. Yet this slush fund that they keep talking about is specifically to give them money. So how dare this majority sit here and…try to lecture this organization about money,” said the always outspoken Texas congresswoman.
Crockett continued: “Now we’re not talking about taxpaying dollars as we are in that slush fund. But you’re telling me the two billion dollars in the same country that …still hasn’t thought that reparations made sense for Black folk in this country, but at the same time, they’ve decided that people that are in organizations that are absolutely white supremacy organizations should get our tax dollars because they decided to tear apart or attempt to tear apart our democracy. They are being rewarded.”
Those convicted for the Jan. 6 attack were charged with various crimes, including assaulting, resisting, or impeding law enforcement officers, obstruction of an official proceeding, and seditious conspiracy. After being pardoned by Trump, many J6ers have reoffended for crimes, including sexual abuse and threatening to murder Democratic U.S. House Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries.
“This president on day one…was around doing things like letting them go…and now putting money in their pockets,” said Crockett.
The congresswoman then went down a laundry list of mass shootings and police killings committed by white supremacists or motivated by anti-Black hate, including the killings of Ahamud Arbery and George Floyd, the 2015 church murders of nine Black parishioners in South Carolina and the 2022 mass shooting of ten Black Americans inside of a grocery store in Buffalo, New York.
“All of these were murdered by white supremacists who are empowered by the Republican party’s racist rhetoric and policies,” said Crockett, who connected the Republican Party’s policies to ideologies embraced by white supremacist groups.
“This is the same party that wants to drag us back to the Jim Crow era. Some say that there aren’t poll taxes, and I guess it’s because they’re not listing the amount of money, but when you tell somebody that they’ve got to go and pay for something, say, like a passport that costs over $100 in order to be able to vote, that looks like a poll tax to me,” Crockett asserted.
She continued, “Some of y’all need to read up on your history books, the very same ones that the Republicans have decided that people should not hear about because you don’t want real history taught in our schools because you’re afraid that it’s going to hurt people’s feelings to know that their ancestors were so savage that they would enslave Black folk.”
Referring to the Supreme Court’s recent gutting of the Voting Rights Act and the subsequent state maps redrawn to eliminate the voting power of Black Americans in the South, Crockett said, “You don’t want them to understand why the 14th Amendment mattered then and it matters today. You don’t want them to understand that when they draw these racist lines and tell Black folk that they shouldn’t have representation in this country that it is against the constitution.”
She added, “You want them to be ignorant so that they can sit up here and be your token for your mission.”
