The following article by Osita Nwanevu was posted on the Slate website February 7, 2017:
House Republicans blocked a resolution advanced by Democrats on Tuesday declaring that Jews were the primary victims of the Holocaust. From the Washington Examiner:
Led by [House Democratic Caucus Chairman Joe] Crowley, Democrats tried to force the House to vote on the resolution he introduced last week calling on the White House “to affirm that the Nazi regime targeted the Jewish people in its perpetration of the Holocaust.” More than 100 House Democrats co-sponsored the measure.
During debate on the rule for the House to consider three resolutions disapproving of three Obama administration rules concerning the Bureau of Land Management and Education Department, Crowley tried to defeat a procedural vote as a way to force Republicans to consider his resolution. But Republicans rejected the Democrats’ plan in a party-line vote.
The resolution, a shrewd effort to pin Republicans down on something the Trump administration has needlessly made an issue, condemned the White House’s Holocaust Remembrance Day statement, which failed to mention Jews or the anti-Semitism that led to Adolf Hitler’s genocide against them. It also called for the House to reiterate “the indisputable fact that the Nazi regime targeted the Jewish people in its perpetration of the Holocaust,” condemn Holocaust denialism, and demand acknowledgment from the White House that Jews were targeted.
In the wake of controversy over the Holocaust Remembrance Day statement, the White House defended it, saying that it had wished to be inclusive by acknowledging that other groups had been killed by Hitler’s regime as well.