The four Republicans who voted with Democrats against reprimanding Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) over comments about Charlie Kirk are getting excoriated by the online right — with Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), who prompted the vote on the Omar censure, leading the charge against Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.) in particular.
The four — Reps. Mike Flood (R-Neb.), Jeff Hurd (Colo.), Tom McClintock (Calif.) and Mills — are defending themselves from the attacks, putting out videos and statements making their case. Flood also referred Omar for further investigation by the House Ethics Committee.
And Mills confronted Mace directly.
Mace accused Mills of sending her a “threatening message” Wednesday night. According to a copy of the message seen by The Hill, Mills talked about highlighting Mace’s previous statements criticizing President Trump for Jan. 6 if she is going to put out messages about him.
“You want to put me out for not wanting to penalize someone for 1A? Why don’t we show your words blaming Trump for J6?” Mills said in the message. “It was nothing to do with you or against you.”
Mace responded: “Not really helping the allegations of you threatening women, are you…”
She was referring to an ex-girlfriend of Mills alleging to police that he threatened to release nude images of her after they broke up — which Mills has denied.
Mills told Politico earlier this week that “if reminding someone of their own remarks is a threat, well, then that means everyone threatens each other every day to remind someone, ‘Hey, you voted for this, and you did this and you voted for this.’”
Mace had forced a vote on a resolution to formally censure Omar and remove her from her committee assignments, alleging Omar “smeared Charlie Kirk and implied he was to blame for his own murder” and pointing to a video Omar reposted on social media critiquing Kirk’s politics after the assassination.
The resolution referenced an interview that Omar gave in the aftermath of Kirk’s assassination, but did not quote her own words. Instead, it directly quoted from the re-posted video that said Kirk, whose suspected killer has been described as left-wing by government officials, “was Dr. Frankenstein and his monster shot him through the neck.”
The House voted to table the resolution 214-213, preventing it from moving to debate and a vote on the underlying censure, effectively ending Mace’s effort to formally reprimand Omar and remove her from committees.
Mace immediately called out the four Republicans who voted to table the measure on social media, saying they “sided with Democrats to protect Ilhan Omar.”
A wave of right–wing influencers and commentators followed, naming the GOP members and posting their photos while calling for primary challenges and calling them “cowards” and “RINOs” — racking up tens of thousands of interactions.
Mills was the last-minute deciding vote that pushed the resolution to fail — which came as he faced a retaliatory censure brought by Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) over the disputed allegations of domestic violence, threatening to release nude videos of an ex-girlfriend, and making false financial disclosures.
Axios had reported the day before that Casar was expected to withdraw his push to censure Mills if the Omar censure failed, just as a similar retaliatory censure of Mills was abandoned after Republicans voted to table a resolution to censure Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.), who faces charges resulting from a clash with officials at an immigrant detention center.
Mills posted a video on Friday addressing commentary that his vote against censuring Omar was a “vote-for-vote exchange” to avoid a vote on his censure. He noted he voted in favor of advancing the McIver censure, despite knowing it could lead to a vote about him.
“The thing about Ilhan Omar’s comments – were they vile? Were they abhorrent? Were they evil? In my opinion, yes,” Mills said, going on to praise Kirk while saying he believed in “open dialogue” and warning against making Omar a “free speech martyr.”
In a post alongside the video, Mills called for Omar to be investigated for immigration fraud in reference to unproven claims long pushed by conservatives.
Mace fired back on social media by noting Mills had voted in favor of a resolution to censure Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) in 2023 over comments she made about the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel.
“He voted to censure Rashida Tlaib. By his own logic, that’s a direct violation of her First Amendment rights. The hypocrisy is exhausting,” Mace said.
Flood, meanwhile, hopes to spark an investigation by the House Ethics Committee. He sent a letter to the chairman and ranking member listing 19 statements and incidents relating to Omar that he says collectively “speak to a pattern of behavior that does not reflect creditably on the House,” including her interview and the video she reposted. Flood said Omar “must be held accountable” and promised to submit a formal complaint to the panel.
Flood, unlike Mills, voted with a handful of other Republicans to table McIver’s censure.
Omar, for her part, said that “no one should be going after” the Republicans who voted to table the measure.
“Four Republicans didn’t join Democrats to protect me, they joined to defend the first amendment and sanity,” Omar said in a post on X, adding: “This country stands for freedom and right now what people are doing is totally unacceptable.”
McClintock issued a statement and took to the House floor to explain his vote, stressing the importance of the principles of free speech.
While Omar’s comments were “vile and contemptible,” McClintock said in the statement, he argued that hateful speech is still protected speech and said that the House has “already gone too far down this road” with formal censure.
“Omar’s comments were not made in the House and even if they were, they broke no House rules,” McClintock said.
Hurd, who called Omar’s statements “ghoulish and evil” in a statement, said he had been hearing both from constituents who supported the vote and those who opposed it.
“I think it’s the right decision. I stand by it,” Hurd told The Hill.
“It was a tough vote politically, but I came here to do the job that I was sent here to do, and part of that is following the Constitution and and also improving this institution as well, and making sure that we’re not engaging in this back and forth censuring on both sides,” Hurd said. “Censure should be reserved for the most serious offenses. And I think exercising one’s first amendment rights, however wrong-headedly, is not deserving of censure.”
One of the House’s most notable free speech advocates, however, voted with all other Republicans against tabling the censure: Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.).
“I think the debate would have been good,” Massie told The Hill.
Massie that he was “willing to entertain the thought” of removing Omar from her committees because Democrats had kicked Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) of their committees “for less than that.”
“In a perfect world, we wouldn’t be doing any of this stuff, but I mean, they do it to us,” Massie said.
