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It has been one year since the August 14, 2013 Rab'a Square massacre in Egypt, when the Egyptian police and army opened fire on demonstrators opposed to the military's July 3 ouster of President Mohamed Morsi. Using tanks, bulldozers, ground forces, helicopters and snipers, police and army personnel mercilessly attacked the makeshift protest encampment, where demonstrators, including women and children, had been camped out for over 45 days. The result was the worst mass killing in Egypt's modern history.
It has been one year since the August 14, 2013 Rab'a Square massacre in Egypt, when the Egyptian police and army opened fire on demonstrators opposed to the military's July 3 ouster of President Mohamed Morsi. Using tanks, bulldozers, ground forces, helicopters and snipers, police and army personnel mercilessly attacked the makeshift protest encampment, where demonstrators, including women and children, had been camped out for over 45 days. The result was the worst mass killing in Egypt's modern history.
The government's systematic effort to obscure what took place, beginning with sealing off the square the next day, has made it difficult to come up with an accurate death toll. But a just-released Human Rights Watch report, based on a meticulous year-long investigation, found that at least 817 and likely well over 1,000 people were killed in Rab'a Square on August 14.
The report contains horrific first-hand accounts. One protester recalled carrying the dead, piles of them. "We found limbs that were totally crushed. There were dead people with no arms, obviously a tank ran over them. Imagine you are carrying piles of bodies, it is something you can't imagine. Even the bodies that you are carrying, you carry an arm of a person, alongside the leg of another person."
A student from Cairo University recounted that the ground was a "sea of blood" and how she watched the bleeding protesters in horror, "knowing that I was not able to do anything besides watch them die."
A doctor described the scene at the mosque in the square: "I have never seen anything like what I saw when I stepped inside. The entire floor was covered in bodies. To slow down the decomposition, people had put ice around the bodies. But the ice had melted and mixed with the blood, leaving us wading in blood and water."
Human Rights Watch's executive director, Kenneth Roth, and the director of its Middle East and North Africa division, Sarah Leah Whitson, had planned to be in Cairo this week to release the report, but were held at the airport and denied entry into Egypt.
The systematic and intentional killing of unarmed protesters is a crime against humanity and those responsible should be investigated and held accountable. At the top of the chain of command during the Rab'a massacre was then-Defense Minister Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who orchestrated the military overthrow of democratically-elected Morsi. But neither Sisi nor any government officials have been prosecuted for the killings. On the contrary; Sisi has managed to usurp even more power, becoming Egypt's president via rigged elections.
Since the massacre, Sisi has overseen a year of intense government repression that has included the arrests of tens of thousands of people, including Islamists and leftist political activists. More than 65 journalists have been detained and some, like three Al Jazeera journalists, have been sentenced to 7-10 years in prison. Egypt's criminal justice system has become a cruel joke; sentencing 1,247 people to death in trials makes a mockery of the word "justice". In many cases defendants were not brought to their trials and lawyers have repeatedly been barred from presenting their defense or questioning witnesses.
Amnesty International has documented the sharp deterioration in human rights in Egypt in the past year, including the surge in arbitrary arrests, torture and deaths in police custody. Amnesty says torture is routinely carried out by the military and police, with members of the banned Muslim Brotherhood particularly targeted. Among the methods of torture employed are electric shocks, rape, handcuffing detainees and suspending them from open doors.
Gen. Abdel Fattah Osman, who heads the media department at the Interior Ministry, denied the accusations of torture and rape in prisons and declared that "prisons in Egypt have become like hotels."
I had a minor taste of this regime's "hospitality" when I attempted to enter Cairo on March 3, 2014 as part of a women's peace delegation. I was stopped at the airport, detained for 17 hours, and then thrown to the ground and handcuffed so violently that my shoulder popped out of its socket. Instead of allowing me to go to the hospital to have my arm reset, as the doctors insisted, I had my scarf stuffed into my mouth, was dragged through the airport and deported to Turkey. I was never given any explanation as to why I was detained, attacked, arrested and deported. To this day, months later, the pain in my arm is a daily reminder of the thugs who run Egypt today.
While the global human rights community has watched in horror as the basic rights of Egyptians have been torn asunder, some regional governments, particularly Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, have embraced Sisi and are providing billions of dollars of support. Perhaps this is not surprising, given that they are autocratic regimes that want to stave off democratic change in their own countries.
But what about the Western nations that pride themselves on their democratic values? European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton criticized the use of force by the military-backed government, but later assured Sisi that the EU would provide 90 million euros worth of financial assistance. And in December 2013, she even took her family on a Christmas holiday to Luxor, meeting with Egypt's minister of tourism just a few weeks after dozens of peaceful protesters were killed.
The US case is similar. According to US law, a coup is supposed to have consequences. Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, who wrote the legislation, said, "Our law is clear: U.S. aid is cut off when a democratically elected government is deposed by military coup. This is a time to reaffirm our commitment to the principle that transfers of power should be by the ballot, not by force of arms."
The US government refuses to even obey its own laws, which would entail cutting the $1.3 billion to the Egyptian military. Too much is at stake for powerful interests:
When Secretary of State John Kerry visited Sisi on June 22, he announced that the US would release $575 million of the $1.3 billion. He told Sisi, "I am confident that we will be able to ultimately get the full amount of aid." And now Kerry is strengthening Sisi's hand by making him a key player in the ceasefire talks between Israel and Gaza, despite the fact that Sisi has been an enemy of Hamas--a group he considers too closely linked with Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood.
On this terrible anniversary of the Rab'a massacre, Egyptians are still mourning the dead, nursing the injured and crying out for help from the prisons and torture chambers. But the "Western democracies", dancing with the dictator, have turned a deaf ear to their cries. That's why activists the world over are marking the occasion by showing solidarity and by calling on their governments to break ties with Sisi's regime.
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It has been one year since the August 14, 2013 Rab'a Square massacre in Egypt, when the Egyptian police and army opened fire on demonstrators opposed to the military's July 3 ouster of President Mohamed Morsi. Using tanks, bulldozers, ground forces, helicopters and snipers, police and army personnel mercilessly attacked the makeshift protest encampment, where demonstrators, including women and children, had been camped out for over 45 days. The result was the worst mass killing in Egypt's modern history.
The government's systematic effort to obscure what took place, beginning with sealing off the square the next day, has made it difficult to come up with an accurate death toll. But a just-released Human Rights Watch report, based on a meticulous year-long investigation, found that at least 817 and likely well over 1,000 people were killed in Rab'a Square on August 14.
The report contains horrific first-hand accounts. One protester recalled carrying the dead, piles of them. "We found limbs that were totally crushed. There were dead people with no arms, obviously a tank ran over them. Imagine you are carrying piles of bodies, it is something you can't imagine. Even the bodies that you are carrying, you carry an arm of a person, alongside the leg of another person."
A student from Cairo University recounted that the ground was a "sea of blood" and how she watched the bleeding protesters in horror, "knowing that I was not able to do anything besides watch them die."
A doctor described the scene at the mosque in the square: "I have never seen anything like what I saw when I stepped inside. The entire floor was covered in bodies. To slow down the decomposition, people had put ice around the bodies. But the ice had melted and mixed with the blood, leaving us wading in blood and water."
Human Rights Watch's executive director, Kenneth Roth, and the director of its Middle East and North Africa division, Sarah Leah Whitson, had planned to be in Cairo this week to release the report, but were held at the airport and denied entry into Egypt.
The systematic and intentional killing of unarmed protesters is a crime against humanity and those responsible should be investigated and held accountable. At the top of the chain of command during the Rab'a massacre was then-Defense Minister Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who orchestrated the military overthrow of democratically-elected Morsi. But neither Sisi nor any government officials have been prosecuted for the killings. On the contrary; Sisi has managed to usurp even more power, becoming Egypt's president via rigged elections.
Since the massacre, Sisi has overseen a year of intense government repression that has included the arrests of tens of thousands of people, including Islamists and leftist political activists. More than 65 journalists have been detained and some, like three Al Jazeera journalists, have been sentenced to 7-10 years in prison. Egypt's criminal justice system has become a cruel joke; sentencing 1,247 people to death in trials makes a mockery of the word "justice". In many cases defendants were not brought to their trials and lawyers have repeatedly been barred from presenting their defense or questioning witnesses.
Amnesty International has documented the sharp deterioration in human rights in Egypt in the past year, including the surge in arbitrary arrests, torture and deaths in police custody. Amnesty says torture is routinely carried out by the military and police, with members of the banned Muslim Brotherhood particularly targeted. Among the methods of torture employed are electric shocks, rape, handcuffing detainees and suspending them from open doors.
Gen. Abdel Fattah Osman, who heads the media department at the Interior Ministry, denied the accusations of torture and rape in prisons and declared that "prisons in Egypt have become like hotels."
I had a minor taste of this regime's "hospitality" when I attempted to enter Cairo on March 3, 2014 as part of a women's peace delegation. I was stopped at the airport, detained for 17 hours, and then thrown to the ground and handcuffed so violently that my shoulder popped out of its socket. Instead of allowing me to go to the hospital to have my arm reset, as the doctors insisted, I had my scarf stuffed into my mouth, was dragged through the airport and deported to Turkey. I was never given any explanation as to why I was detained, attacked, arrested and deported. To this day, months later, the pain in my arm is a daily reminder of the thugs who run Egypt today.
While the global human rights community has watched in horror as the basic rights of Egyptians have been torn asunder, some regional governments, particularly Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, have embraced Sisi and are providing billions of dollars of support. Perhaps this is not surprising, given that they are autocratic regimes that want to stave off democratic change in their own countries.
But what about the Western nations that pride themselves on their democratic values? European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton criticized the use of force by the military-backed government, but later assured Sisi that the EU would provide 90 million euros worth of financial assistance. And in December 2013, she even took her family on a Christmas holiday to Luxor, meeting with Egypt's minister of tourism just a few weeks after dozens of peaceful protesters were killed.
The US case is similar. According to US law, a coup is supposed to have consequences. Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, who wrote the legislation, said, "Our law is clear: U.S. aid is cut off when a democratically elected government is deposed by military coup. This is a time to reaffirm our commitment to the principle that transfers of power should be by the ballot, not by force of arms."
The US government refuses to even obey its own laws, which would entail cutting the $1.3 billion to the Egyptian military. Too much is at stake for powerful interests:
When Secretary of State John Kerry visited Sisi on June 22, he announced that the US would release $575 million of the $1.3 billion. He told Sisi, "I am confident that we will be able to ultimately get the full amount of aid." And now Kerry is strengthening Sisi's hand by making him a key player in the ceasefire talks between Israel and Gaza, despite the fact that Sisi has been an enemy of Hamas--a group he considers too closely linked with Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood.
On this terrible anniversary of the Rab'a massacre, Egyptians are still mourning the dead, nursing the injured and crying out for help from the prisons and torture chambers. But the "Western democracies", dancing with the dictator, have turned a deaf ear to their cries. That's why activists the world over are marking the occasion by showing solidarity and by calling on their governments to break ties with Sisi's regime.
It has been one year since the August 14, 2013 Rab'a Square massacre in Egypt, when the Egyptian police and army opened fire on demonstrators opposed to the military's July 3 ouster of President Mohamed Morsi. Using tanks, bulldozers, ground forces, helicopters and snipers, police and army personnel mercilessly attacked the makeshift protest encampment, where demonstrators, including women and children, had been camped out for over 45 days. The result was the worst mass killing in Egypt's modern history.
The government's systematic effort to obscure what took place, beginning with sealing off the square the next day, has made it difficult to come up with an accurate death toll. But a just-released Human Rights Watch report, based on a meticulous year-long investigation, found that at least 817 and likely well over 1,000 people were killed in Rab'a Square on August 14.
The report contains horrific first-hand accounts. One protester recalled carrying the dead, piles of them. "We found limbs that were totally crushed. There were dead people with no arms, obviously a tank ran over them. Imagine you are carrying piles of bodies, it is something you can't imagine. Even the bodies that you are carrying, you carry an arm of a person, alongside the leg of another person."
A student from Cairo University recounted that the ground was a "sea of blood" and how she watched the bleeding protesters in horror, "knowing that I was not able to do anything besides watch them die."
A doctor described the scene at the mosque in the square: "I have never seen anything like what I saw when I stepped inside. The entire floor was covered in bodies. To slow down the decomposition, people had put ice around the bodies. But the ice had melted and mixed with the blood, leaving us wading in blood and water."
Human Rights Watch's executive director, Kenneth Roth, and the director of its Middle East and North Africa division, Sarah Leah Whitson, had planned to be in Cairo this week to release the report, but were held at the airport and denied entry into Egypt.
The systematic and intentional killing of unarmed protesters is a crime against humanity and those responsible should be investigated and held accountable. At the top of the chain of command during the Rab'a massacre was then-Defense Minister Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who orchestrated the military overthrow of democratically-elected Morsi. But neither Sisi nor any government officials have been prosecuted for the killings. On the contrary; Sisi has managed to usurp even more power, becoming Egypt's president via rigged elections.
Since the massacre, Sisi has overseen a year of intense government repression that has included the arrests of tens of thousands of people, including Islamists and leftist political activists. More than 65 journalists have been detained and some, like three Al Jazeera journalists, have been sentenced to 7-10 years in prison. Egypt's criminal justice system has become a cruel joke; sentencing 1,247 people to death in trials makes a mockery of the word "justice". In many cases defendants were not brought to their trials and lawyers have repeatedly been barred from presenting their defense or questioning witnesses.
Amnesty International has documented the sharp deterioration in human rights in Egypt in the past year, including the surge in arbitrary arrests, torture and deaths in police custody. Amnesty says torture is routinely carried out by the military and police, with members of the banned Muslim Brotherhood particularly targeted. Among the methods of torture employed are electric shocks, rape, handcuffing detainees and suspending them from open doors.
Gen. Abdel Fattah Osman, who heads the media department at the Interior Ministry, denied the accusations of torture and rape in prisons and declared that "prisons in Egypt have become like hotels."
I had a minor taste of this regime's "hospitality" when I attempted to enter Cairo on March 3, 2014 as part of a women's peace delegation. I was stopped at the airport, detained for 17 hours, and then thrown to the ground and handcuffed so violently that my shoulder popped out of its socket. Instead of allowing me to go to the hospital to have my arm reset, as the doctors insisted, I had my scarf stuffed into my mouth, was dragged through the airport and deported to Turkey. I was never given any explanation as to why I was detained, attacked, arrested and deported. To this day, months later, the pain in my arm is a daily reminder of the thugs who run Egypt today.
While the global human rights community has watched in horror as the basic rights of Egyptians have been torn asunder, some regional governments, particularly Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, have embraced Sisi and are providing billions of dollars of support. Perhaps this is not surprising, given that they are autocratic regimes that want to stave off democratic change in their own countries.
But what about the Western nations that pride themselves on their democratic values? European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton criticized the use of force by the military-backed government, but later assured Sisi that the EU would provide 90 million euros worth of financial assistance. And in December 2013, she even took her family on a Christmas holiday to Luxor, meeting with Egypt's minister of tourism just a few weeks after dozens of peaceful protesters were killed.
The US case is similar. According to US law, a coup is supposed to have consequences. Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, who wrote the legislation, said, "Our law is clear: U.S. aid is cut off when a democratically elected government is deposed by military coup. This is a time to reaffirm our commitment to the principle that transfers of power should be by the ballot, not by force of arms."
The US government refuses to even obey its own laws, which would entail cutting the $1.3 billion to the Egyptian military. Too much is at stake for powerful interests:
When Secretary of State John Kerry visited Sisi on June 22, he announced that the US would release $575 million of the $1.3 billion. He told Sisi, "I am confident that we will be able to ultimately get the full amount of aid." And now Kerry is strengthening Sisi's hand by making him a key player in the ceasefire talks between Israel and Gaza, despite the fact that Sisi has been an enemy of Hamas--a group he considers too closely linked with Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood.
On this terrible anniversary of the Rab'a massacre, Egyptians are still mourning the dead, nursing the injured and crying out for help from the prisons and torture chambers. But the "Western democracies", dancing with the dictator, have turned a deaf ear to their cries. That's why activists the world over are marking the occasion by showing solidarity and by calling on their governments to break ties with Sisi's regime.
"I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away," said the Right Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde.
The inaugural interfaith service at the Washington National Cathedral on Tuesday proceeded with the usual prayers and music, but after delivering her sermon, the Right Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde appeared to go off-script and made a direct appeal to President Donald Trump.
Recalling the Republican president's assertion on Monday that he was "saved by God" after a bullet hit his ear in an assassination attempt in July, Budde asked Trump, who was seated in the church, "in the name of our God... to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now."
"There are gay, lesbian, and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and Independent families," said Budde, "some who fear for their lives. And the people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meatpacking plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals. They may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals."
"I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away, and that you help those fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here," said Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington, D.C.
Budde's appeal followed Trump's signing of 26 executive orders in his first day in office, with dozens more expected in the first days of his second term. The president signed orders ending birthright citizenship—provoking legal challenges from immigrant rights groups and state attorneys general—and pausing refugee admissions, leading to devastation among people who had been waiting for asylum appointments at ports of entry. Official proclamations declared a national emergency at the southern border and asserted that the entry of migrants there is an "invasion."
Trump also took executive action to declare that the federal government recognizes only two sexes, male and female.
"May God grant us the strength and courage to honor the dignity of every human being, to speak the truth to one another in love, and walk humbly with each other and our God for the good of all people in this nation and the world," said Budde in her address to Trump.
The president kept his eyes on Budde for much of her speech, at one point looking annoyed and casting his eyes downward. Vice President JD Vance leaned over and spoke to his wife, Usha Vance, as Budde talked about undocumented immigrants, and raised his eyebrows when she said the majority of immigrants are not criminals.
Trump later told reporters that the service was "not too exciting."
"I didn't think it was a good service," he said. "They can do much better."
Democratic strategist Keith Edwards applauded Budde's decision to speak directly to the president, calling her "incredibly brave."
Budde "confronted Trump's fascism to his face," he said on the social media platform Bluesky.
The study was published as President Donald Trump was blasted for an executive order that one critic said shows he wants to turn the Alaskan Arctic into the "the world's largest gas station."
For thousands of years, the land areas of the Arctic have served as a "carbon sink," storing potential carbon emissions in the permafrost. But according to a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change Tuesday, more than 34% of the Arctic is now a source of carbon to the atmosphere, as permafrost melts and the Arctic becomes greener.
"When emissions from fire were added, the percentage grew to 40%," according to the Woodwell Climate Research Center, which led the international team that conducted the research.
The study, which was first reported on by The Guardian, was released the day after President Donald Trump issued multiple presidential actions influencing the United States' ability to confront the climate crisis, which is primarily caused by fossil fuel emissions, including one directly impacting resource extraction in Alaska, a section of which is within the Arctic Circle.
Sue Natali, one of the researchers who worked on the study published in Nature Climate Change, told NPR in December (in reference to similar research) that the Arctic's warming "is not an issue of what party you support."
"This is something that impacts everyone," she said.
As the permafrost—ground that remains frozen for two or more years—holds less carbon, it releases CO2 into the atmosphere that could "considerably exacerbate climate change," according to the study.
"There is a load of carbon in the Arctic soils. It's close to half of the Earth's soil carbon pool. That's much more than there is in the atmosphere. There's a huge potential reservoir that should ideally stay in the ground," said Anna Virkkala, the lead author of the study, in an interview with The Guardian.
The dire warning was released on the heels of Trump's executive order titled "Unleashing the Alaska's Extraordinary Resource Potential" that calls for expedited "permitting and leasing of energy and natural resource projects in Alaska," as well as for the prioritization of "development of Alaska's liquefied natural gas (LNG) potential, including the sale and transportation of Alaskan LNG to other regions of the United States and allied nations within the Pacific region."
The order also rolls back a number of Biden-era restrictions on drilling and extraction in Alaska, which included protecting areas within the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from oil and gas leasing.
"Alaska is warming four times faster than the rest of the planet, a trend that is wreaking havoc on communities, ecosystems, fish, wildlife, and ways of life that depend on healthy lands and waters," said Carole Holley, managing attorney for the Alaska Office of the environmental group Earthjustice, in a statement Monday.
"Earthjustice and its clients will not stand idly by while Trump once again forces a harmful industry-driven agenda on our state for political gain and the benefit of a wealthy few," she added.
Trump wants to turn the Alaskan Arctic into the "the world's largest gas station," said Athan Manuel, director of Sierra Club's Lands Protection Program, in a statement Monday. "Make no mistake, Trump's rushed and sloppy actions today are an existential threat to these lands and waters, and the communities and wildlife that depend on them."
The U.N. ambassador nominee also shrugged off the Nazi salutes made by Elon Musk on Inauguration Day.
As U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik faced questioning by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday regarding her nomination for a top diplomatic position, the rights group Jewish Voice for Peace Action called on lawmakers to consider her "record of antisemitic, anti-Palestinian, anti-immigrant, and anti-democracy rhetoric and policy" and block her confirmation.
Stefanik's (R-N.Y.) record was reinforced at the hearing as she was asked about her views on Palestine, expressions of antisemitism in the United States, and far-right Israeli leaders' political agenda, with Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) recalling a meeting he had with the congresswoman after President Donald Trump nominated her to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
At the meeting, Van Hollen said, Stefanik had expressed support for the idea that Israel has a Biblical right to control the entire West Bank—a position that is held by Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and former National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, but runs counter to the two-state solution that the U.S. government has long supported.
"Is that your view today?" asked Van Hollen, to which Stefanik replied, "Yes."
Van Hollen noted that Stefanik's viewpoint also flies in the face of numerous U.N. Security Council resolutions and international consensus about the Middle East conflict.
"If the president is going to succeed at bringing peace and stability to the Middle East, we're going to have to look at the U.N. Security Council resolutions," said the senator. "And it's going to be very difficult to achieve that if you continue to hold the view that you just expressed, which is a view that was not held by the founders of the state of Israel."
Stefanik also refused to answer a direct question from Van Hollen regarding whether Palestinian people have the right to self-determination, saying only that she supports "human rights for all" and pivoting to a call for Israeli hostages to be released by Hamas.
Jenin Younes, litigation counsel with the New Civil Liberties Alliance, said Stefanik expressed "religious fanaticism, pure and simple" at the confirmation hearing—which was held as Israeli settlers and soldiers ramped up attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank.
"That [Stefanik] will now play a major role with respect to our foreign policy in the region is terrifying," said Younes.
Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) Action noted that in addition to supporting "the Israeli government's brutal genocide of Palestinians," Stefanik has also "amplified the antisemitic Great Replacement theory"—which claims the influence and power of white Christian Americans is being deliberately diminished by Jewish Americans and immigration policy.
Despite her support for the debunked conspiracy theory, Stefanik made headlines last year for her accusations against college students, faculty, and administrators over the pro-Palestinian demonstrations that exploded across campuses as Americans spoke out against Israel's U.S.-backed assault on Gaza. The congresswoman said the protests were expressions of antisemitism and pushed for the resignation of university leaders who declined to discipline students who spoke out against Israel.
The hearings where Stefanik lambasted college leaders "were part of a broader campaign to silence anti-war activism and dissent on college campuses while forwarding the MAGA culture war campaign against [diversity, equity, and inclusion], critical race theory, and LGBTQ+ rights," said JVP Action.
An exchange between Stefanik and Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) on Tuesday also raised questions over Stefanik's views on antisemitism. Murphy asked the nominee about the Nazi salute twice displayed by billionaire Trump backer Elon Musk—whom the president has named to lead his proposed Department of Government Efficiency—at an event Monday night.
" Elon Musk did not do those salutes," Stefanik asserted.
Murphy countered by reading several comments from right-wing commentators who applauded Musk's "Heil Hitler" salute.
"Over and over again last night, white supremacist groups and neo-Nazi groups in this country rallied around that visual," said Murphy.
JVP Action said Stefanik has "deeply embraced Trump's anti-democratic agenda."
"Her nomination must be blocked," said the group.