September 18, 2025 09:30 AM UTC

Rep. Jeff Hurd Casts Deciding Vote To Save Ilhan Omar From Censure

•  
• by: Colorado Pols

As Politico reports, another moment of high manufactured drama from the ever-melodramatic Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina fizzled out yesterday afternoon, as a resolution fast-tracked by Rep. Mace to censure and strip of all committee assignments Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota over Omar’s remarks about deceased conservative activist Charlie Kirk failed by a single vote–putting four Republicans who voted to table the resolution, including Colorado’s Rep. Jeff Hurd, in the line of Mace’s raging counterfire:

The 214-213 vote ended an effort by Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) to censure Omar and strip her of all her committee assignments over her criticism of the late conservative political activist Charlie Kirk. Omar has strenuously denied directly making the comments cited by Mace, and House Democrats rallied behind her…

Four Republicans — Reps. Mike Flood of Nebraska, Jeff Hurd of Colorado, Tom McClintock of California and Cory Mills of Florida — supported the motion to kill Mace’s measure.

Mace said the GOP opposition was “unbelievable” in comments after the vote. “It’s really gross, very disappointing,” she said. A reporter overheard her telling a colleague that she had sent the four Republicans’ names to President Donald Trump. [Pols emphasis]

Washington Post:

Had the resolution succeeded, it would have removed Omar from her congressional committees for comments she made about Kirk during an interview with liberal commentator Mehdi Hasan. The resolution also criticized Omar for reposting a video to X from an anonymous user who called Kirk a “reprehensible human being” who was “spewing racist dog whistles” in his “last, dying words.”

During the interview with Hasan, Omar expressed “empathy” for Kirk’s wife and children but also chastised those who “completely pretend” that the conservative influencer just wanted a “civil debate,” pointing to his views on guns, slavery and George Floyd.

During the day before the censure resolution vote, Rep. Mace ramped up the vitriol against Rep. Omar to an extreme common enough for X/Twitter but most unusual for an exchange between members of Congress–re-upping old debunked allegations regarding Omar’s marriage, and offering Omar a “one-way ticket to Somalia.” But Mace’s racially-charged fury against Rep. Omar for daring to say less than laudatory things about Kirk after Kirk’s assassination last week didn’t sway the four Republicans needed to close the deal on a censure resolution. At a tele-town hall event last night, Hurd was questioned about his vote, and here’s his transcribed answer:

HURD: Yeah. So this is Ilhan Omar, a crazy liberal congresswoman from Minnesota. And she had made some comments about Charlie Kirk’s assassination. For those of you know, who know Charlie Kirk. I had the honor of meeting him once. [This] was before he was brutally and easily assassinated last week. A conservative First Amendment fierce advocate for free speech and debate and ideas. And he was murdered in Utah actually, a week ago today and and left behind a wife and two young, beautiful children.

So Ilhan Omar said a bunch of horrible and evil things about Charlie Kirk and also about the people who support him and who believe in what he was talking about in thoughtful conservative debate and engagement. And I would say what she had to say, Fran, those comments that she made are ghoulish and they’re also evil. And I condemn them completely. But I voted against a censure motion today in the House to censure Ilhan Omar because it tried to strip her from her committee assignments and it tried to silence her for exercising her First Amendment right to free speech. And I think the right response to reprehensible speech, like what she did, isn’t silencing someone. It’s more speech. And I would say that’s what Charlie Kirk believed and that’s what he practiced. And I agree. And so that’s why I voted against that censure motion in the House.

On the one hand, Rep. Hurd’s description of his colleague as “crazy” and having said “horrible and evil” and also “ghoulish” and for emphasis once again “evil” is itself an example of excessive and even dehumanizing rhetoric of the kind that has been so roundly condemned in the days since Kirk’s assassination–at least by those honest enough to admit as the data shows that the growing threat of political violence is a bipartisan problem.

On the other hand, Rep. Hurd acknowledged that Rep. Omar has the right to free speech. And that’s why he voted against a censure. The latter portion of Rep. Hurd’s answer was…better.

With that in mind, the very next question came from a mental health provider in Hurd’s district named Jennifer:

Hello, Congressman Hurd, thank you for holding this town hall and for taking questions. First, I would just like to encourage you to think about using the word crazy when describing people that were inappropriate evil, maybe made an insensitive comment. You just called your colleague crazy. And I’m a mental health provider and I find that a little bit offensive to just encourage you to self-reflect on the use of that word in particular when pairing it with the actions of someone that didn’t behave well. [Pols emphasis] Second, I’m a Medicaid mental health provider, and I believe that the changes to Medicaid with the work requirements go into effect in 2027. You said 2028. I may be wrong about that, but everything I read that 2027 So it does give people some time. I really appreciated you were interviewed about Medicaid and I thought you had some really forward thinking ideas, and then I ended up disappointed in the way that you voted on behalf of Medicaid. But maybe you can make some changes. I can tell you that I don’t agree with you that it is not causing hardship because they’re already putting a huge squeeze on providers. There’s a big funding loss in the state of Colorado right now that they’re working to make up and they’re going to start limiting services for individuals. They don’t have their Medicaid where they’re not going to be able to access the same amount of services. Yes.

(Staffer asks her to get to the question)

Yes. Well, yes, I will. My question is and I think maybe you addressed it. You just said we’re fighting hard for the ACA tax premium tax credit to be extended. I guess could you please explain what fighting hard means? Because I really don’t want it to end up how it did with Medicaid where you said right things and then voted in a disappointing way.

Rep. Hurd didn’t respond to the admonition about his word choice in describing his colleague, and his answer on Medicaid wasn’t much better:

I think my vote on the H.R. 1, One Big Beautiful Bill was consistent with my commitment to protecting Medicaid for the most vulnerable populations. [Pols emphasis]

The national news over this dramatic failure to exact official punishment on a member of Congress for being insufficiently mournful of Charlie Kirk most likely will not get into the weeds of what Jeff Hurd told constituents last night to explain it, and this morning Hurd is being severely castigated on social media for his vote with absolutely no credit redeemed for calling Omar “crazy” and her remarks “evil.” Hurd’s vote to table the censure of Rep. Omar was absolutely the right thing to do, but Hurd’s attempt to pad his vote with incendiary rhetoric about Rep. Omar compromises his moral high ground with, as readers can plainly see from the responses on social media, no placative benefit for Hurd’s Republican base.

And then we have to join in asking where Hurd’s courage was when it came to protecting Medicaid.