R&I – FS
WASHINGTON — In a bitterly divided Congress, it was a rare measure that had been expected to sail through without a fight.
A bill to name a federal courthouse in Tallahassee, Florida, after Justice Joseph W. Hatchett, the first Black man to serve on the Florida Supreme Court — sponsored by the state’s two Republican senators and backed unanimously by its 27 House members — was set to pass the House last month and become law with broad bipartisan support.
But in a last-minute flurry, Republicans abruptly pulled their backing with no explanation and ultimately killed the measure, leaving its fate unclear, many of its champions livid and some of its newfound opponents professing ignorance about what had happened.
Asked what made him vote against a measure that he had co-sponsored, Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Fla., was brief and blunt.
“I don’t know,” he said.
The real answer is as much an allegory about the state of House Republicans in 2022 as it is about a federal building in Florida. With little notice and nothing more than a 23-year-old news clipping, a right-wing, first-term congressman mounted an eleventh-hour effort on the House floor to convince his colleagues that Hatchett, a trailblazing judge who broke barriers as the first Black State Supreme Court justice south of the Mason-Dixon Line, was undeserving of being honored.
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Article URL : https://www.yahoo.com/news/house-gop-banding-together-kills-183257703.html