Tell us how you really feel, Clay Higgins.
Democrats in the House of Representatives tried to censure Rep. Clay Higgins after the Louisiana Rep. typed up a deranged post targeting Haitian-Americans on Wednesday, calling them “thugs” and “slapstick gangsters” who need to get “their a-- out of our country.”
Many of Higgins’ colleagues in the House of Representatives were quick to call out the post. Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), called the remarks “vile, racist and beneath the dignity of the United States House of Representatives.”
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Members of the Congressional Black Caucus moved to censure Higgins shortly after the post was made. “Every member of Congress must be clear that we need to eliminate hate in all its forms,” Rep Steven Horsford (D-NV), the chair of the caucus, said in a statement. “It is time to turn the page on this pattern of denigrating and villainizing immigrants for political gain.”
Republicans quickly moved to shut the measures down, the Associated Press reported.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) defended Higgins, telling reporters that after he was confronted by colleagues he “went to the back and he prayed about it, and he regretted it, and he pulled the post down. That's what you want the gentleman to do. I'm sure he probably regrets the language he used.”
However, Higgins seemed to directly contradict that in a statement given to CNN’s Anderson Cooper shortly after the censure battle. “It’s all true, I can put up another controversial post tomorrow if you want me to,” Higgins told the network. “I mean, we do have freedom of speech, I’ll say what I want.”
Higgins, 63, indicated his outrage stemmed from a Haitian nonprofit’s decision to file criminal charges against JD Vance and Donald Trump for their role in sparking a recent spate of chaos in Springfield, Ohio, which began after they spread an unfounded rumor that Haitian immigrants were stealing and eating residents’ pets.
“These Haitians are wild,” Higgins wrote. “Eating pets, vudu (sic), nastiest country in the western hemisphere, cults, slapstick gangsters… but damned if they don’t feel all sophisticated now, filing charges against our President and VP.”
Higgins closed his since-deleted post with a veiled threat, writing, “All these thugs better get their mind right and their a-- out of our country before January 20th.”
Jan. 20 is slated to be inauguration day for either Trump or Kamala Harris, depending on who wins the election on Nov. 5.
Higgins’ post elicited shock and mockery in equal measure. As of Wednesday afternoon, its most-liked comment read, “Okay grand wizard calm down.” Another top response read, “I’ll give you this much, you just put the racism right out there for everyone to see. You aren't hiding behind a hood.”
Others mocked Higgins for misspelling “voodoo,” which is particularly ironic since Higgins was born in New Orleans, a city known to have rich history associated with the African diasporic religion.
Higgins, whose cover photo on X is a photo of Trump during his first assassination attempt, has long had a penchant for conspiracy. He suggested last fall that the FBI put operatives into “ghost buses” to incite the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
More recently, Higgins, a former cop, raged that Thomas Matthew Crooks’ body was cremated before he could arrive to personally examine it in Pennsylvania. This, he said, meant the coroner’s report about how Crooks died—by being shot dead by a counter-sniper—couldn’t be fully trusted.
“The problem with me not being able to examine the actual body is that I won’t know 100% if the coroner’s report and the autopsy report are accurate,” he said at the time. “We will actually never know.”
