**FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE**

Contact: Emilia.Rowland@mail.house.gov 

Summer Lee Calls on Republican Party to Not Nominate White Supremacist Antisemite as Speaker

(Washington, DC) – Congresswoman Summer Lee (D-PA-12) today called on Republicans to withdraw support for Steve Scalise who the party picked on Wednesday as their presumptive nominee for House Speaker awaiting a vote.  

“I’m sickened to learn that years before he was caught calling himself David Duke without the baggage, Scalise spoke at the 2002 International White Supremacist Convention sponsored by a group whose website said that “Jews will attack us for wanting to restore white America and are responsible for the ‘browning’ of America” and peddled the same white-supremacist and antisemitic replacement theory that motivated the murders of 11 beloved members of my community in the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting,10 Black grocery shoppers in Buffalo, 23 Hispanic community members in El Paso, and 51 Muslim worshipers in Christchurch. Every Republican who votes for his Speakership will vote in support of rising anti-semitism, white supremacy, and islamophobia. I will vote for Leader Jeffries and continue my work building bridges between marginalized communities to dismantle the systems of white supremacy enabling violence against our communities.”

Background [CNN, 2014] 

Prior to calling himself “David Duke without the baggage” – in 2002, Scalise spoke at a conference sponsored and hosted by an anti-Semitic, white supremacist group called “the European-American Unity and Rights Organization (EURO)” run by the former KKK Grand Wizard and labeled as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The group’s horrifyingly vile anti-semetic, racist conspiracies and tropes on its own website include: 

• — Jeff Davis, whitecivilrights.com, Aug. 17, 2000 “The Jewish media and Jews in general will attack us for wanting to restore White America. The Jews are the enemy of the White race, and they are largely responsible for the ‘browning’ of America. The Jews want to rule over a multi-racial brown America that is too ignorant to ever rebel against them.” 

• — Ian Mosley, whitecivilrights.com, Oct. 30, 2007 “The beautiful Germany of the 1930s with blonde children happily running through every village has been replaced with a multi-racial cesspool. Out of work Africans can be seen shuffling along the same streets, which used to be clean and safe in the days of the National Socialists. One day, people in Germany will grow tired of the politically correct police state that is destroying their lives. They will recover their national pride and start speaking the truth about their past regardless of what the militant lesbians or thought police tell them.”

• — David Duke, 2001 essay: “So, the unvarnished truth is that we suffered the terror of September 11 because of our support of the criminal policies of Israel. We have let our country be controlled by a foreign lobby that has worked against the best interests of the American people. Israel has time and again proven it is not really our friend. It has conducted covert terrorist activities against America such as the Lavon affair in Egypt. It has deliberately attacked the USS Liberty with unmarked fighters and torpedo boats causing 174 American casualties in an attempt to blame Egypt and garner American support during the war of 1967. It has spied on us and stolen our greatest secrets, such as in the Jonathan Pollard affair. It has sold secret American technologies to the Communist Chinese. It has stolen nuclear materials from the United States. It has tricked America into bombing other nations such as in the attack on Libya in 1986. I could go on and on about Israel’s treachery against America.” 

https://www.cnn.com/2014/12/31/politics/scalise-scandal-explainer/index.html

https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/euro

https://cenlamar.com/2014/12/28/house-majority-whip-steve-scalise-was-reportedly-an-honored-guest-at-2002-international-white-supremacist-convention/

Scalise also:

• Called himself “David Duke (former head of the KKK) without the baggage…
• Literally attended a white supremacists conference that Duke organized in 2002
• Votes with Trump 98.2% of the time 
• Voted against MLK holiday and to stop a Louisiana resolution apologizing for slavery 
• Voted against working people 92% of the time according to AFLCIO
• Voted to overturn the results of the 2020 election and finish the coup attempted by an armed mob of white supremacists and antisemites on Jan 6
• Voted against workers rights and raising the minimum wage 
• Voted to cut Veterans benefits by 22 percent and to block healthcare for Veterans with cancer 
• supports a national abortion ban, 0% rating from Planned Parenthood
• doesn’t believe in climate change 0 % pro-envoironment score by the league of conservation voters 
• Braggs about having an A rating from the NRA 
• Opposes same-sex marriage 
• Voted against the Violence Against Women Act
• Took over $1.5 million in donations from corporations and special interest groups last cycle
• Voted for the Trump tax scam to give handouts to his billionaire donors on the backs of hardworking families