Josh Hawley Proudly Declares Himself Pro-Hate Crimes

Fleeing to Cancún in the middle of a state of emergency and then blaming it on a 10-year-old and 12-year-old. Blocking a Supreme Court nominee because of a fake rule about needing to wait until a new president is installed, and then going against said rule on an even shorter timeline. Voting to overturn the results of a free and fair election. Publicly declaring someone “practically and morally responsible for provoking” an attack on the U.S. Capitol but voting to acquit him anyway. Telling cancer patients to fuck off and die—literally. There are some things that most of the human race would never do, and then you have Republicans, who were born without the gene for shame.

That shamelessness was on full display on Thursday when Senator Josh Hawley, late of pushing the voter-fraud lies that led to the storming of the Capitol, decided for some reason to vote against the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act, making him the only senator to do so. Passed with overwhelming, bipartisan support, the bill received 94 yeses to Hawley’s single no. What does the senator from Missouri have against the legislation? Is it the fact that it is in response to a wave of discrimination and attacks against Asian Americans over the past year, inspired in part by his buddy Donald Trump’s racist rhetoric? Does he have a problem with it expanding support for local law enforcement to respond to racially based crimes? Is he miffed about the part that, per The Washington Post, issues “guidance on mitigating the use of racially discriminatory language to describe the pandemic”? Does he have a soft spot for the guy who confessed to murdering six women of Asian descent at three Atlanta spas this spring, a crime that put the pressure on Congress to do something about the rise in attacks on the Asian American community? Does he simply love hate crimes? It’s possible the answer is all of the above! (Previously, Hawley claimed to reporters that the bill was simply too broad for his liking. “I’m just concerned the bill is hugely broad, hugely open-ended,” Hawley said. “It’s just, you know, the ability and power to define crimes, to define incidents going forward, and collect all that data, it just seemed hugely, hugely over broad.” (As the Daily Beast notes, the bill does not, in fact, “define” any new crimes.)

Earlier this month equally shameless lawmakers-cum-professional trolls Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert made headlines for similarly hateful votes when they were the only two representatives to vote against a bill reauthorizing the National Marrow Donor Program, which helps match bone marrow donors and cord blood units with people who have leukemia and other diseases. (Boebert claimed in a statement that saving people’s lives was not worth adding to the national debt, while a spokesperson for Greene explained that the bill went against her staunchly pro-life views, which apparently do not extend to people dying of cancer.)

In other words, these three should consider getting together to form a bicameral Horrible People Caucus (assuming it doesn’t cut into Greene’s time connecting the dots between wildfires and Jewish laser beams).

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