GOP anti-socialism 'Freedom Squad' forms with Carlos Gimenez and Maria Elvira Salazar
WASHINGTON -- Miami’s two new Republicans in Washington are opposed to nearly everything “The Squad” stands for — except the branding.
Two years after New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and a group of left-leaning lawmakers gave themselves that name, a group of incoming Republican members of Congress are trying to turn Ocasio-Cortez’s messaging on its head by calling themselves “The Freedom Squad,” with the goal of pushing back anything they perceive as being too far left in Congress.
Carlos Gimenez, the former Miami-Dade County mayor, and Maria Elvira Salazar, a former TV journalist, are part of the group. All of the members left — or have family members who left — Cuba and Soviet Union-controlled Ukraine. The group, though informal, is an outgrowth of the repeated attacks during the 2020 elections by Republicans calling Democrats “socialists,” a line that wasn’t true in most cases but gained traction in places like Miami.
In addition to Gimenez, who was born in Cuba, and Salazar, whose parents were born in Cuba, the group includes newly elected members of Congress Nicole Malliotakis of New York, whose mother was born in Cuba, and Victoria Spartz of Indiana, who grew up in the Soviet Union before Ukraine became an independent country.
Read more: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article247272759.html
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