National News

The regulator set to hear a campaign finance complaint about Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has a yard sign for the senator's campaign at his house, reported the San Antonio Current on Wednesday.

"Trey Trainor, an attorney serving on the Federal Election Commission (FEC) — the panel scheduled to hear the complaint — recently retweeted a photo his wife Lucy Trainor shared of a yard sign outside their Austin-area home promoting the Texas Republican's campaign for a third term in the U.S. Senate," said the report. "'Got my new ⁦@tedcruz⁩ yard sign installed today,' Lucy Trainor tweeted April 19, 10 days after a pair of campaign-finance watchdogs filed their FEC complaint against Cruz. Trey Trainor retweeted the image the same day his wife posted it."

Per federal contribution records, Trainor also made three contributions to Cruz in 2013, totaling to $325.

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"Trainor's retweet follows last month's report by the Current that FEC Chairman Sean J. Cooksey served as Cruz's deputy chief counsel in 2018. From 2019 until joining the FEC in 2020, Cooksey served as general counsel for Missouri U.S. Senator Josh Hawley, a GOP hardliner frequently aligned with Cruz," noted the report. "Both Trainor and Cooksey are Trump appointees to the six-member FEC, which is comprised of equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats."

The complaint in question stems from iHeartMedia, which hosts Cruz's podcast, making a $630,000 payment to Truth and Courage PAC, which supports Cruz. Senate rules prohibit senators from accepting greater than "nominal value" gifts from companies that employ lobbyists, as iHeartMedia does.

Cruz, for his part, denies that anything about this arrangement is unlawful.

The senator has personally challenged campaign finance laws in the past. For instance, in 2022, after he ran afoul of a law that limited how much he could pay himself back with campaign contributions for money he loaned to his own campaign, he got the Supreme Court to toss out the law altogether.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene announced Wednesday she's refusing to vote for a bill on antisemitism awareness, arguing it would see Christians arrested for their faith.

Greene made this announcement on X the same day the bipartisan Antisemitism Awareness Act of 2023 (H.R. 6090) — crafted to combat the problem on college campuses — was slated to go to a vote in the House of Representatives.

"Antisemitism is wrong, but I will not be voting for the Antisemitism Awareness Act," Greene explained. "[It] could convict Christians of antisemitism for believing the Gospel that says Jesus was handed over to Herod to be crucified by the Jews."

Greene backs up this claim with two images; the first a screenshot of the bill's definition of antisemitism and the second a printout Greene doesn't source.

The bill uses the definition crafted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, of which the U.S. is a member, and adopted by the State department, congressional records show.

“Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews," the IHRA definition states. "Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

The IHRA website page on which this definition appears also includes a bulleted list of 11 contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life that does not appear in the legislation's text.

But this appears to be the document Greene references in her refusal to back the bill.

"Read the bill text and contemporary examples of antisemitism like #9," Greene demands of her readers.

Number nine, in both the IHRA list and Greene's, reads as follows: "Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis."

ALSO READ: Former FBI official accuses Marjorie Taylor Greene of spreading foreign propaganda

These claims, according to the Holocaust Encyclopedia, were commonly repeated by the Nazis.

"The term blood libel refers to the false allegation that Jews used the blood of non-Jewish, usually Christian children, for ritual purposes," the definition states. "The Nazis made effective use of the blood libel to demonize Jews, with Julius Steicher's newspaper Der Stürmer making frequent use of ritual murder imagery in its antisemitic propaganda."

Greene is not alone in refusing to support the bill, but her reasons differ widely from those cited by the American Civil Liberties Union in their letter in opposition to House representatives.

"Federal law already prohibits antisemitic discrimination and harassment by federally funded entities," the ACLU argues. " H.R. 6090 is therefore not needed to protect against antisemitic discrimination; instead, it would likely chill free speech of students on college campuses by incorrectly equating criticism of the Israeli government with antisemitism."

As this important debate on a complex issue unfolded in the House of Representatives, Greene's social media followers took the opportunity to remind readers of the Georgia lawmaker's history.

"BREAKING NEWS," wrote X user Mr. Newberger. "Woman who key noted a Nazi rally won't vote for Antisemitism bill."

This likely references Greene's decision to speak at a White Nationalist event in 2022.

"This you?" asked Travis Matthew, sharing an article entitled "Republicans blast Marjorie Taylor Greene's Holocaust remarks" about her likening COVID-19 masks to the Nazi's mass murder of Jewish people.

"This is absolutely nuts," wrote Hadar Susskind. "MTG is just mad that they didn’t accept her space laser amendment."