Two Republican lawmakers worked together to create an “America First Caucus” that emphasizes “common respect for uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions” and infrastructure that “befits the progeny of European architecture.”
White nationalists and Hitler enthusiasts are hailing the news.
Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar collaborated to form the far-right caucus, whose aim is to “follow in President Trump’s footsteps, and potentially step on some toes and sacrifice sacred cows for the good of the American nation,” according to a document obtained by Punchbowl News.
GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz, who is currently facing a federal sex-trafficking probe, announced his “proud” support for the group, tweeting, “We will end wars, stop illegal immigration & promote trade that is fair to American workers.”
Other Trump loyalists on Capitol Hill, like Reps. Barry Moore and Louie Gohmert, have also agreed to join the caucus.
“America is a nation with a border, and a culture, strengthened by a common respect for uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions,” the document said in a section outlining its views on immigration.
It went on to say, without citing any evidence, that “societal trust and political unity are threatened when foreign citizens are imported en-masse into a country, particularly without institutional support for assimilation and an expansive welfare state to bail them out should they fail to contribute positively to the country.”
The document also pushed the lie that immigrants who came to the US before 1965 were “more educated, earned higher wages, and did not have an expansive welfare state to fall back on when they could not make it in America and thus did not stay in the country at the expense of the native-born.”
The Pew Research Center noted in a 2018 study that “the estimated 44 million immigrants in the United States are better educated than ever, due in part to rising levels of schooling in many of the countries they came from and an influx of high-skilled workers to the U.S. in recent years, especially from Asia.”
The document’s section on infrastructure said the caucus will “work towards an infrastructure that reflects the architectural, engineering and aesthetic value that befits the progeny of European architecture,” and criticized the US government for “sending trillions of dollars out the door to support the infrastructure of other nations — even to countries that hate the United — with nothing to show for it.”
On foreign aid, the document said it would be “unwise” for the US to send financial and military support to other countries because it represents an “entanglement that rarely provides any benefit to our citizens.”
This view stands in stark contrast to what experts in the field say.
As George Ingram, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, wrote in 2019, “there is hard evidence that development and humanitarian programs produce considerable results,” including a sharp decline in extreme poverty over the last three decades; a significant decrease in maternal, infant, and child mortality rates; an increase in global life expectancy; and the eradication of diseases like smallpox and a steep drop in cases of polio and malaria.
Sending foreign assistance also bolsters US national security “by supporting allies in promoting regional and global stability and peace,” Ingram wrote, and it shores up “national economic progress and stability, which can make it more viable for citizens to remain at home rather than migrate to other countries.”
The America First Caucus’ mission statement also parroted many of Trump’s lies about the 2020 election and voter fraud, saying, “Recent election results demonstrate a compromised integrity of our elections and made our election system a subject of global mockery.”
It went on to falsely claim that “federal elections have been undermined by using voting machines that are readily compromised and illegally accessed whereby results appear manipulated, voters are disenfranchised, and faith in our system eroded.”
The document added: “Mail-in voting, long recognized as subject to fraud, has become normalized.”
According to Trump’s Homeland Security and Justice Departments, the 2020 election was the safest and most secure in US history.
Trump and Republicans filed dozens of lawsuits challenging the election results in battleground states that President Biden won, and the GOP either lost every case or it was dismissed for a lack of standing.
The Department of Homeland Security under Trump also publicly refuted his conspiracy theories and confirmed that the 2020 election was the “most secure in American history.”
This article first appeared in Business Insider.