Rep. Mondaire Jones (D., N.Y.), an ally of the far-left "Squad," on Thursday called Democratic senators Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) "white nationalists" for voting to keep the filibuster.
"Yesterday, on the Senate floor, white nationalists used the Jim Crow filibuster to block voting rights legislation," Jones said on the House floor.
Democrats' voting bills collapsed on Wednesday after Sinema and Manchin, along with all 50 Senate Republicans, voted against changing the chamber's rules to allow the bills to pass with fewer votes than needed.
The bills would have mandated a nationwide system of no-excuse, mail-in voting and ballot drop boxes. Voters who mailed in ballots or put them in drop boxes were more likely to vote for President Joe Biden in the 2020 election, the Pew Research Center found. They also would have loosened state voter ID laws and restored full voting rights to released felons, among other things.
Dark-money groups and ultrawealthy Democratic donors were behind the push for the controversial legislation, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
This is not the first time Jones has called his political opponents white supremacists. In an April Washington Post op-ed, he compared anyone who disagrees with his positions on voting, gerrymandering, and public campaign financing to 1890s racists who "killed whomever they had to in order to overthrow multiracial state governments."
Jones is not the only House Democrat to describe Sinema and Manchin in such extreme terms. Fellow New York congressman Jamaal Bowman on Jan. 13 called Sinema a "traitor" to "our democracy" for voting against changing the rules. Bowman was arrested on Thursday for blocking a barricade while protesting at the Capitol.