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FACT SHEET: Five Ways The MAGA GOP Is Weaponizing Congress To Attack Vice President Harris

Jul 24, 2024

Less than 48 hours after Vice President Kamala Harris launched her presidential campaign, MAGA House Republicans are already using their elected offices to attack her.  They are advancing resolutions that have no purpose but to malign the Vice President, floating new investigations, pushing baseless conspiracy theories, and even introducing bogus articles of impeachment. It’s their same old playbook of political attacks, but with a new target, demonstrating once again that the MAGA House Republican caucus is nothing more than a wing of the Trump campaign. MAGA Republicans are abusing their power to help convicted felon Donald Trump return to the White House and implement their radical Project 2025 agenda on the American people. Americans deserve elected officials who will deliver results on their priorities – lowering prices, securing the border, protecting freedoms – not these nonstop political games to benefit their presidential candidate. 

1. House Republicans Introduced Articles of Impeachment Against Vice President Harris. Yesterday afternoon, MAGA Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) introduced bogus articles of impeachment against Vice President Harris, charging her with high crimes and misdemeanors without pointing to a single impeachable offense or offering up any evidence of wrongdoing.

2. House GOP Leaders Advanced A Baseless Resolution Condemning Vice President Harris. Earlier today, House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-NY) introduced a resolution baselessly condemning the Vice President for immigration policy they disagree with. The facts are clear: border crossings by international migrants have plunged to their lowest levels since fall 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

During the House Rules Committee markup for the resolution, numerous House Republicans targeted Harris’ record directly. As Rules Committee Ranking Member Rep. Jim McGovern pointed out, “The United State Congress should be a place where we advance legislation that helps people. Instead, today it is being used as an arm of the Republican National Committee – a wholly owned subsidiary of the Trump campaign. The Rules Committee hearing room is being used for a campaign rally right now.”The GOP committee passed the resolution condemning Harris, sending it to the full House for a floor vote.

3. Key House Republicans Are Floating Investigations and More Resolutions Targeting Vice President Harris. 

Oversight Chair James Comer (R-KY) has already started plotting a new conspiratorial investigation into Vice President Harris for supposedly covering up the President’s health, telling reporters, “Was there a shadow government operation? I don’t think there’s any question whether or not Joe Biden was able to be running the day-to-day operations. He was not. Now, who was making the decisions? Who was calling the shots?”

Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) has started ​​pushing his MAGA Republican colleagues in the House to take up his resolution calling on the Biden administration, including Vice President Harris and the rest of his cabinet, to invoke the 25th Amendment against the President and remove him from office: Let’s remind people of the cover-up and remind people what Vice President Harris knew and when she knew it. It’s massively damaging to her and her credibility.”

As a reminder: President Biden released his medical records every year in office after annual physicals, which included numerous neurological exams which he passed. That is not true of Donald Trump. 

And, Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-CA) reportedly said Republicans would “expose” Vice President Harris’ record over the next few months in a House GOP meeting earlier today.

4. House Republicans Have Launched A Cavalcade of Racist and Sexist Attacks on President Harris. House Republicans serving on the powerful House Oversight Committee have launched a series of racist and sexist attacks on Vice President Harris, calling her qualifications into question. Echoing far-right MAGA attacks on Harris, these attacks even prompted the chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee to attempt to tamp down on the stream of “DEI” comments. 

Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) has repeatedly launched racist and sexist attacks against Vice President Harris, calling the former elected Attorney General of California and Senator from California a “DEI vice president.” He wrote on X, “The media propped up this president, lied to the American people for three years, and then dumped him for our DEI vice president.” He again referred to her as a “DEI hire” during a CNN interview. Earlier this month, during a Newsmax interview, Burchett declared, “When I hear her talk, I just scratch my head and think this is what DEI is really about. It clearly is. She checks all the boxes. She’ll say she’s of Indian descent one day, then she’ll say she’s of Black descent. It’s just box-checking.”

Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-WI), who chairs an Oversight subcommittee, echoed racist sentiments about Vice President Harris, telling reporters, “A lot of Democrats feel they have to stick with her because of her ethnic background.

5. House Republicans Are Pushing A Baseless Conspiracy About Vice President Harris Launching A ‘Coup’. MAGA House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and his MAGA allies have been scrambling to find fodder against Vice President Harris. Around the time President Biden announced his plans to not run for re-election, Johnson suggested his party would mount legal challenges to prevent Vice President Harris from replacing Biden on the ballot: “I think they would run into some legal impediments in at least a few of these jurisdictions.” Johnson has echoed Republicans who suggested that these efforts amounted to a “coup,” and he has even reportedly floated lawsuits to “force Joe Biden to stay on the ballot.” These comments have been widely discredited as false provocations, given that President Biden was never officially nominated and states only place officially nominees on their general election ballots.