Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) won praise Monday for a House floor showdown that left Republicans bruised, a columnist wrote.
The confrontation came on Thursday when she shut down House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer and Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), wrote Ja’han Jones for MSNBC.
During a hearing on diversity, equity and inclusion, the committee turned to what was being done ahead of the 2030 census — which would affect federal funds available to congressional districts.
“Comer had called the hearing to push the unsupported claim that the bureau has been conducting its count of American residents in ways designed to benefit Democrats and that Democrats have been aiding this effort by “facilitating” unfettered immigration,” Jones wrote.
“Mace helped fuel this baseless claim when she suggested there was something nefarious afoot in the census' counting of "illegal aliens," despite this being a longstanding policy (and for good reason).”
But Crockett hit back, smashing the “bogus” claim with hard facts, Jones wrote.
“Ahead of the 2020 Census, Donald Trump’s administration and Republicans did everything in their power to meddle with that year’s census, and the result was a large undercount of Black and Latino people in the United States,” he wrote.
“ … That very point was the subject of Crockett’s line of questioning, which she began by bemoaning that some of her colleagues — she means you, Rep. Mace — don't seem to understand what the census is even meant to do.”
And she also cited census figures that showed Texas had grown by 4 million people from 2010 to 2020.
“Of those 4 million people, do you wanna take a guess at how many were Anglos?” she asked.
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“180,000 — that’s it, of 4 million people.
"So get this: We added 4 million people. They were people of color. Texas got two new seats. So they took those Black and brown and Asian bodies, and guess what? Do you think we got a new Black or brown or Asian seat? Somehow, the way that they do their Republican math in the state of Texas, that amounted to two new white seats. Guess what? White, Republican seats.”
The feisty putdown was exactly what the Democratic Party should be doing more of, Jones argued.
“The Democratic base longs for fighters who won't shrink when facing off against MAGA extremism,” he wrote.
“ In this case, Crockett exposed truth being camouflaged by right-wing talking points and provided a blueprint for her Democratic colleagues to do the same.”
