Press Releases

Washington, D.C. – Rep. Becca Balint, a member of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Administrative State, Regulatory Reform, and Antitrust, called out the Republican obsession with “DEI”. Immediately following the Los Angeles wildfires in January, Republicans blamed diversity for this tragedy in a committee hearing. 

Transcript below:

Balint: The scale of this disaster is really almost impossible to comprehend. We've got 29 people who are dead. We've got 16,000 structures that were destroyed. So many Californians were injured. And while these devastating fires were raging on, Republicans first reaction was to blame the wildfires on DEI.

So I’d like every witness to answer this simple question, yes or no. Do you believe people in Los Angeles died because the fire chief is a lesbian?

Mr. Greenhut: No.

Mr. Ring: No.

Mr. Hilton: No. 

Mr. Frievalt: No. 

Balint: Great. So glad we established that, but I want to remind everyone that while raged through Main Street in the Palisades, Elon Musk said that ‘DEI means people die,’ in reference to the Los Angeles Fire Department's response. And my house colleagues seem to agree.

This here is a tweet from Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene posted on her official social media. It says, ‘How's your DEI mayor of Los Angeles working out for you?’ So it's become crystal clear that the phrase DEI is used in place of much more offensive terms to talk about people of color. You talk about women, queer people in this country. It's sickening and they're literally saying this while people were dying.

So obviously, this has nothing to do with the families who lost everything. It does not do anything for the communities that were destroyed. It's absolutely the wrong way to deal when you have a natural disaster.

I know because the last two summers in Vermont, we've had catastrophic flooding. What people need in this moment is leadership. Americans need us to get the resources that they need out to them immediately. America does not need a president that is hell-bent on dismantling our federal emergency management system or conditioning aid to California to profit off of a community's devastation. All this talk of DEI is a complete and utter distraction from the fact that we need a plan, an actual plan to help the people of California who lost everything.

See video of her remarks here.