Despite winning reelection by just 550 votes in a race that’s now undergoing a recount, Rep. Lauren Boebert this week won a vote of confidence from her fellow Republican members of the U.S. House as she was elected to join the party’s policy committee.
The office of Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold on Thursday announced Boebert’s unexpectedly close race with her Democratic challenger, Adam Frisch, would go to a recount under state law.
“When Boebert is writing your policy, you know the MAGA inmates are officially running the asylum.”
In Colorado, any election race within a 0.5% vote differential must be recounted; the 3rd Congressional District race is currently within 0.34%.
The close race surprised election-watchers, as former President Donald Trump, with whom Boebert is strongly aligned, won the 3rd District by eight points in 2020.
The recount was announced just after Boebert was elected to be a new member of the Republican Policy Committee, which serves as an advisory panel and provides “conservative policy solutions to the House Republican Conference.”
Boebert — whose party takes narrow control of the House in January — will represent Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma on the committee.
The congresswoman, who has represented the 3rd District since 2021 and is the owner of a gun-themed restaurant in Colorado, has garnered outrage by threatening to carry a firearm on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol; joking in a video that Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota), a Muslim, was a member of the “jihad squad” and saying she felt safe riding in an elevator with her only because she didn’t “have a backpack”; celebrating fascist electoral victories in Europe; and making anti-LGBTQ+ comments.
“Question: Who is the House Republican Party looking to for policy leadership and ideas? Answer: MAGA Congresswoman Lauren Boebert,” tweeted Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison, referring to the abbreviation for Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan.
Democratic strategist Sawyer Hackett noted that along with Boebert’s new role, the Republicans are also expected to allow Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) and Paul Gosar (R-Arizona), who have both advocated for violence against Democrats on social media, to rejoin congressional committees from which they were earlier removed.
“This is the Republican Party after a catastrophic midterm underperformance,” said Hackett.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment. We are presently looking for 130 new monthly donors before midnight tonight.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy