Ilhan Omar cries as Congress mourns the 600,000 Americans who have died from Covid – including her dad
REP Ilhan Omar broke down in tears on Monday as she joined a tribute to the 600,000 Americans, including her own father, who have died from Covid.
The Minnesota lawmaker was pictured wiping away tears as she stood with other members of Congress for a moment of silence on the front steps of the US Capitol.
She lost her father Nur Omar Mohamed to Covid in June 2020.
“It is with tremendous sadness and pain to say goodbye to my father, Nur Omar Mohamed,” Omar wrote in a tweet at the time.
“No words can describe what he meant to me and all who knew and loved him.”
The US on Monday marked the grim milestone of 600,000 Covid deaths.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers including Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Minority House leader Kevin McCarthy gathered for the Washington DC tribute on Monday evening.
The nation reached the tragic death toll as vaccination rates continue to threaten President Joe Biden’s target for 70 percent of American adults to receive at least one dose by July 4.
Biden is also pushing for 160million Americans to be fully vaccinated by the same date.
“This evening, Members of Congress held a bipartisan Moment of Silence for the 600,000 American lives lost to COVID-19 at the US Capitol,” Pelosi said in a tweet after Monday’s event.
“Get vaccinated. Save lives.”
Biden also addressed the death toll as he made an address at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.
“My heart goes out to those who’ve lost a loved one…. We have more work to do to beat this virus and now’s not the time to let our guard down,” he said.
Omar’s tears at the event came on the same day that Republicans sought to censure her and other members of the “Squad” for their public comments comparing Israel and the US to Hamas and the Taliban.
“Representative Omar equated the United States and Israel with Hamas and the Taliban,” stated a resolution spearheaded on Monday by GOP Reps Michael Waltz, Jim Banks, and Claudia Tenney.
Omar created uproar on Twitter last week after she tweeted a video question for Secretary of State Anthony Blinken captioned: “We have seen unthinkable atrocities committed by the US, Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan, and the Taliban.”
The tweet provoked accusations from Republicans that Omar’s rhetoric has encouraged anti-Semitism.
The backlash was not confined to the Republican side, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and seven other prominent Democratic lawmakers also signed off on a statement that condemned Omar’s comments “fomenting prejudice.”
Another statement signed by 12 Jewish Democratic lawmakers released last Wednesday also asked Omar to “clarify” her comments.
Pelosi revealed on Sunday that House leadership “did not rebuke” Omar for the comments after she “made a clarification.”
“Congresswoman Omar is a valued member of our caucus. She asked her questions of the Secretary of State,” Pelosi told State of the Union.
As of Sunday, 52 percent of the US population has received at least one dose of a Covid vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
Yet controversy still remains over the origins of the pandemic.
Ex-director of the CDC, Robert Redfield, on Tuesday said he believes Covid-19 did leak from a Wuhan lab and claims that the World Health Organization is “too compromised” to investigate the matter.
In an interview with Fox News, he insisted the lab-leak theory is the most likely explanation for the deadly outbreak.
Calls to investigate the theory have intensified in recent weeks, following months of dismissals from the likes of Dr. Anthony Fauci, who was quick to insist the idea was nothing more than an unfounded conspiracy.
They intensified last month when the Wall Street Journal reported that three researchers at China’s Wihan Insistute of technology were hospitalized with Covid like symptoms in late 2019, shortly before the pandemic began.
China has routinely dismissed the lab leak theory as a politically motivated “conspiracy.”
Fauci was also one of a number of leading US scientists to dismiss the claim in the throes of the pandemic.
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However, he has since said he welcomes an investigation into the matter amid calls for his resignation.
Biden said back in May that the nation’s scientists had “coalesced around two likely scenarios” but as of yet still hadn’t drawn a definitive conclusion.
Officials were ordered to present their best findings with 90 days.