Representative Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) declined to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential bid on Friday at a United Auto Workers union rally in Detroit.
One of the only Democrats to not endorse Harris, Tlaib has been vocal about her disapproval of the Biden-Harris administration’s stance on the war in Gaza.
“Don’t underestimate the power you all have,” she told rally-goers, encouraging them to vote in down ballot races. “More than those ads, those lawn signs, those billboards, you all have more power to turn out people that understand we’ve got to fight back against corporate greed in our country . . . We’ve got to make sure that the nonpartisan part of the ballot gets filled in.”
Fellow progressive ‘Squad’ representatives Ayanna Pressley (D., Mass.), Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.), all endorsed Harris this summer, after Joe Biden withdrew from the presidential race. Ocasio-Cortez joined Tlaib at Friday’s rally, where she said that Michigan would be “the place that is going to deliver a Kamala Harris presidency.”
UAW President Shawn Fain also endorsed a Harris presidency, and said that union workers “need people like Kamala Harris at the helm, who are allies with us that will demand deals that serve working class people.”
Tlaib, a Palestinian American, has criticized Trump’s efforts to sway Muslim voters in the state, who, unhappy with the Biden-Harris’s approach in the Middle East, have threatened Democrats by promising to either vote for Trump or a third-party candidate next week.
Trump, who appeared in Dearborn, a city with a large Arab-American contingent, this week, is “a proud Islamophobe + serial liar who doesn’t stand for peace,” Tlaib said on social media.
“The reality is that the Biden admin’s unconditional support for genocide is what got us here. This should be a wake-up call for those who continue to support genocide. This election didn’t have to be close,” she added.
Muslim mayors of Dearborn and Hamtramck have endorsed Trump for president, hoping that he will bring peace to the Middle East region quicker than would a Harris administration, they say.
Tlaib and other ‘Squad’ members authored a letter to Biden on Friday, questioning “the increasing role and involvement of the U.S. Armed Forces in expanding wars across the Middle East.”
“Despite the Administration’s stated goal of avoiding a regional war, increasingly dangerous escalations have been made possible by transfers to the Israeli government of billions of dollars’ worth of weapons and military aid, comprehensive intelligence sharing and operational coordination, and diplomatic cover from the United States in the face of widespread condemnation from the international community,” the Democrats wrote.
