The Clip Was Ten Months Old. Justine Bateman Called It Treason.
On July 12, 2026, the conservative outlet TheBlaze reposted a video clip on X that had first circulated, quietly, nearly a year earlier. The footage showed Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) at Detroit’s “People’s Conference for Palestine” on August 31, 2025, delivering a profanity-laced address that accused pro-Israel Americans of enabling genocide. The repost caught fire overnight.
The next morning, actress and director Justine Bateman — known for Family Ties and, more recently, for pointed conservative commentary — posted a scathing rebuke, accusing Tlaib and her allies of having “lost all tethers to a sense of self,” their politics reduced to “treasonous hate of America.” Twitchy wrote up the exchange July 13, and the clip was suddenly in front of an audience that had mostly never seen it the first time.
What makes this more than a one-day viral flare-up is what happened in between. A House censure resolution over these same remarks has sat untouched in the Ethics Committee for ten months. Tlaib was never disciplined for the Detroit speech. What she actually said, who tried to hold her accountable, and why nothing came of it, is the record below.
- Aug. 312025date Tlaib delivered the Detroit speech at the People's Conference for Palestine — MEMRI TV transcript
- 10.5monthslater, TheBlaze's July 12, 2026 repost sent the clip viral again — Twitchy
- 234-188house votemargin by which the full House censured Tlaib in Nov. 2023, over separate remarks
- 0floor votestaken on Rep. Buddy Carter's Sept. 2025 censure resolution — still parked in Ethics Committee, GovTrack
Video clips don’t expire, and in an attention economy built on outrage, an old clip with the right hook can outperform breaking news. TheBlaze’s July 12 repost is a case study: the same footage had circulated in smaller right-of-center circles back in September 2025, drawing coverage from Fox News, the Daily Caller, and The Gateway Pundit at the time — but it never broke through to a mass audience. Ten months later, a single repost did what the original upload could not.
Resurfaced: Rep. Rashida Tlaib at a Detroit pro-Palestinian conference, saying America's political structures were 'built on slavery and genocide and oppression' and that 'we aren't going anywhere.'
Bateman’s response is what turned a recirculated clip into a fresh news cycle. In a post amplified across conservative media, she wrote in part:
“These people are ridiculous. They have lost all tethers to a sense of self. Their entire identity now relies on this treasonous hate of America.”
Justine Bateman · post on X · July 12-13, 2026
She went further, drawing an explicit line between political speech and what she framed as material harm: “If your plan is to tear down the United States of America, if your plan is treason, I will not tolerate you, I will have zero patience for you, and I will not defend your right to free speech.” That last line is worth pausing on — free speech is normally the reflexive defense across the political spectrum, not the thing being withheld. No criminal or civil authority has found Tlaib’s remarks to constitute treason, a specific and narrowly defined federal offense; Bateman’s use of the word is rhetorical, not legal.
These people have lost all tethers to a sense of self. Their entire identity now relies on this treasonous hate of America. I will not defend your right to free speech if your plan is treason.
The event itself is well-documented. The “People’s Conference for Palestine” ran August 29-31, 2025, in Detroit, drawing pro-Palestinian activists, academics, and commentators for a weekend of speeches and organizing sessions, according to the Detroit News. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), the first Palestinian-American woman elected to Congress, addressed the crowd on the conference’s final day. A full transcript, published by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), captures what she said without paraphrase.
Tlaib told the crowd that “the political structures that we are surrounded by were built on slavery and genocide and oppression.” She then turned sharper, telling the room: “I want to say to all of them, every genocide enabler — look at this room, motherf***ers, we ain’t going anywhere.” The Anti-Defamation League condemned the conference in a public statement, writing that “this weekend’s People’s Conference for Palestine again promoted antisemitic tropes, glorified terror & violence.”
“I want to say to all of them, every genocide enabler — look at this room, motherf***ers, we ain't going anywhere.”
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) · People's Conference for Palestine · Detroit · Aug. 31, 2025 · MEMRI TV transcript
Coverage at the time — from Fox News, Mediaite, the Daily Caller, and Legal Insurrection — was largely consistent on the underlying facts even where the framing diverged sharply: a sitting member of Congress used profanity and the phrase “genocide enabler” to describe Americans who support Israel, at an event the ADL had already flagged for antisemitic rhetoric from other speakers. Tlaib’s office did not walk back the remarks in the days that followed.
Three days after the speech drew national coverage, Rep. Buddy Carter (R-GA) introduced H.Res.674, a resolution to censure Tlaib over the Detroit remarks. Carter did not mince words in the release announcing it: “Her conduct is beneath that of a civilized person, let alone a member of Congress.” The Jewish News Syndicate separately quoted Carter describing the speech as “vile, blatant antisemitism.”
Formally, a House censure is a public rebuke, not a criminal or ethics penalty — the member typically stands in the well of the House chamber while the resolution is read aloud, but keeps their seat, committee assignments, and voting rights.
H.Res.674 was introduced Sept. 3, 2025, and referred to the House Committee on Ethics, per GovTrack and Rep. Carter’s office. As of this writing, it has not been scheduled for a committee vote or a floor vote.
That stalled outcome is not how Tlaib’s last censure fight went. In November 2023, the full House voted 234-188 to censure her over separate remarks about Israel — a resolution that succeeded, with a bipartisan group of Democrats joining Republicans. The 2025 effort, over arguably harsher language, has gone nowhere procedurally. Whether that reflects a different Ethics Committee calculus, a more crowded legislative calendar, or simple fatigue with censure fights is not on the public record; what is on the record is the outcome — inaction.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib's antisemitism is emboldening terrorists and endangering the lives of Jewish people. I'm calling on the House to censure her for her vile remarks and for the rest of the Democrat party to denounce the Pro-Hamas caucus.
The Detroit speech is not an isolated data point; it sits inside a longer, well-documented run of confrontations between Tlaib and the Trump administration that has continued through 2026. In late February, President Donald Trump (R) used his address to a joint session of Congress to say that lawmakers including Tlaib and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) should be removed from the United States — a remark Al Jazeera and other outlets covered as an extraordinary escalation from a sitting president toward two sitting members of Congress.
Four months later, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller posted his own rebuke of lawmakers defending Antifa-linked unrest — coverage at the time widely read the target as Tlaib, given her public comments on the same case, though Miller’s post did not name her directly. It is a separate flashpoint, unconnected to the Detroit speech, but part of the same recurring dynamic: Tlaib says something publicly, a senior Trump-administration figure or ally responds forcefully, and the exchange becomes its own news cycle.
Member of Congress defending antifa terrorists who tried to massacre state and federal law enforcement.
Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld addressed the broader dynamic on-air, arguing Tlaib’s rhetoric does concrete damage beyond the news cycle it generates — the kind of commentary-driven amplification that has become as much a part of these episodes as the original remarks themselves.
None of this changes what is verifiable and what is not. Tlaib’s Detroit remarks are a matter of public record, captured on video and in a published transcript. Carter’s censure effort is a matter of public record too — introduced, referred to committee, and left there. What the resurfaced clip and Bateman’s rebuke actually demonstrate is a gap between rhetoric and consequence: a remark can go unpunished by Congress for the better part of a year and still have enough shelf life to detonate a new news cycle the moment someone hits repost.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) told a Detroit crowd in August 2025 that political structures were “built on slavery and genocide and oppression,” then singled out “genocide enablers” with a profanity-laced warning that “we ain’t going anywhere.”
A Republican censure resolution over those remarks has sat in the House Ethics Committee for ten months without a vote. No formal consequence has followed.
Ten months after the speech, a repost by TheBlaze and a public rebuke from actress Justine Bateman did what Congress didn’t: put the remarks back in front of a national audience — and back in the news.
