House Democrat slams Stefanik for plagiarizing her letter to universities to 'score political points'

12 December 2023

A House Education Committee hearing in early December found Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-New York) angrily railing against the presidents of three major universities — including the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Massachusetts — for allowing expressions of antisemitism on campus. On December 9, Penn President Liz Magill announced her resignation.

Rep. Kathy Manning (D-North Carolina) is vehemently critical of Stefanik's performance during the hearing, arguing that she hijacked it "to score political points." Mann and Stefanik are both members of the House Education Committee.

In a December 11 post on X, formerly Twitter, Manning wrote, "When I shared my letter with @RepStefanik to try to make this a bipartisan effort, she made it clear with her 'edits' that she didn't care about protecting Jewish students. All she cared about was calling for the resignation of university presidents to score political points."

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Manning spokesperson Gia Scirrotto is equally critical of Stefanik, telling Politico that Stefanik "chose to take our language and use it as her own."

Manning and Stefanik wrote two different versions of a letter to universities on antisemitism, and Stefanik responded to Manning's tweet by saying that her version was the stronger of the two.

On X, Stefanik posted, "Our updated version of the stronger letter with significant edits got much more bipartisan support because it was right thing to do."

HuffPost's Marita Vlachou notes, "The top three paragraphs of both letters are nearly identical, and other similarities exist throughout the copy of both texts."

When Stefanik first entered Congress, she was known for being a traditional conservative along the lines of now-Sen. Mitt Romney and the late Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona). But in recent years, she has drawn criticism from a combination of Democrats and Never Trump conservatives for taking a far-right MAGA turn and becoming much more theatrical than she was in the past.

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