Mass. legislators call out maskless colleagues
As more lawmakers test positive after Capitol lockdown
Members of the Massachusetts congressional delegation are slamming Republican lawmakers who they say refused to wear masks as legislators sheltered together during the U.S. Capitol siege.
“The same @HouseGOP Members who provoked the deadly mob on our Capitol also refused to wear masks as they sheltered with @HouseDemocrats,” U.S. Rep. Katherine Clark, the assistant House speaker, tweeted Tuesday. “They’ve put lives at risk again and again.”
Democratic U.S. Reps. Pramila Jayapal, Brad Schneider and Bonnie Watson Coleman have all tested positive for the coronavirus this week — and are blaming their diagnoses on their Republican colleagues who did not don masks in lockdown as pro-Trump rioters stormed the Capitol.
“Several Republican lawmakers in the room adamantly refused to wear a mask,” Schneider, of Illinois, tweeted. “I am now in strict isolation, worried that I have risked my wife’s health and angry at the selfishness and arrogance of the antimaskers who put their own contempt and disregard for decency ahead of the health and safety of their colleagues and our staff.”
U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley tweeted her anger Tuesday that more of her colleagues were testing positive.
“The second I realized our ‘safe room’ from the violent white supremacist mob included treasonous, white supremacist, anti masker Members of Congress who incited the mob in the first place, I exited,” she said.
U.S. Sen. Edward Markey said the three lawmakers’ positive tests were “likely because of the irresponsible behavior of House Republicans” and linked to footage first published by Punchbowl News that reportedly shows several unmasked GOP lawmakers refusing masks from a Democratic colleague.
“To refuse to wear a mask in a confined space is to knowingly endanger those around you,” Markey tweeted.