Two Democratic lawmakers are threatening to force repeated votes to expel a fellow Democrat from Congress if Texas voters send her to Washington this November.
Reps. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., and Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., say they will force repeated votes to remove Texas Democrat Maureen Galindo from the House over comments calling for the jailing of “American Zionists.”
Galindo, a sex therapist running in a Republican-leaning district, has not backed away from a campaign proposal to turn a local ICE processing center into a “prison for American Zionists and former ICE officers for human trafficking.” She also claimed in a social media post that many Zionists — broadly defined as those who support the Jewish people’s right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland — are pedophiles who should be castrated.
“I don’t care if she gets sent here. I will vote to expel her and force a vote to expel her every single day,” Moskowitz told Fox News Digital in an interview.
“My grandmother was part of the Kindertransport out of Germany. Her parents were killed in Auschwitz. My kids are never going to concentration camps,” he added.
The Galindo campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Galindo’s flurry of antisemitic comments comes as she is vying in a May 26 runoff election after winning the most votes in the Democratic primary for the San Antonio-based district. Republicans redrew the district lines earlier this year to boost the GOP’s chances of flipping the seat, though Democrats could still make the race competitive.
She has accused her runoff opponent, Johnny Garcia, a sheriff’s deputy in Bexar County, of being paid by “Zionist terrorism and trafficking.”
“When Maureen gets into Congress, she’ll write legislation so that all Zionism and support of Zionism is undoubtedly Anti-Semitic, since it’s Zionists harming the Semites,” Galindo’s campaign wrote on social media last week.
Moskowitz said Democrats should do whatever they can to ensure Galindo does not get that chance.
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“The Democratic Party can’t get to power because we’ve expanded our tent so big to include this sort of insane behavior,” the Florida lawmaker told Fox News Digital.
“It’s gone from the super extreme side to now almost mainstream,” he continued, referring to antisemitism. “We’ve crossed the Rubicon with the stuff.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said Galindo’s comments are “disqualifying” and accused GOP groups of seeking to prop up her candidacy.
“Texans will not be fooled and will reject her at the ballot box next week,” Jeffries said in a joint statement with Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) Chairwoman Suzan DelBene, D-Wash.
Both Moskowitz and Gottheimer suggested Galindo’s comments reflect a broader rise in antisemitism in the political sphere.
“Both parties: There should be zero tolerance for antisemitic-driven hatred that we’re seeing right now,” Gottheimer told Fox News, adding that Republicans should uniformly condemn podcaster Candace Owens, who frequently traffics in antisemitic conspiracy theories.
Gottheimer penned an op-ed in The New York Times earlier in May criticizing some members of his party for cozying up to the far-left streamer, Hasan Piker.
Piker has doubled down on his claim that Hamas is “a thousand times better” than Israel, referred to some Orthodox Jews as “inbred,” and downplayed the sexual violence that occurred during the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, among other controversial statements.
Still, Reps. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and Summer Lee, D-Pa., and Michigan Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed are among the prominent Democrats who have chosen to associate themselves with Piker.
Asked whether Democrats are doing enough to combat antisemitism within the party, Moskowitz did not hesitate to respond.
“No. We are not doing enough,” he said.
