Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene was the target of Twitter ridicule on Wednesday after she claimed that a school in Illinois had received over $5 billion in COVID-19 federal relief funding to be used for critical race theory curriculum. The statement was made during the first hearing of the new congressional term of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, which focused on instances of waste or fraudulent spending of pandemic-related federal aid. Greene questioned Gene Dodaro, the Comptroller General of the U.S. and head of the U.S. Government Accountability Office, about the funding allocation.
According to Greene, millions of dollars of the COVID-19 relief funding had been misused by local governments and programs for initiatives that did not address the crucial issues during the height of the pandemic. She asked Dodaro if federal funding had been used for abortion services at Planned Parenthood or drag queen story hours. In a video shared on Twitter, Greene asked Dodaro about the allocation of federal funding for critical race theory. When Dodaro answered that he did not know, Greene told the comptroller that an elementary school in Illinois received $5.1 billion for equity and diversity.
Twitter users mocked Greene for suggesting that $5.1 billion of the relief funding had been allocated to just one school district. Some Republicans came to her defense, including former Illinois congressional candidate Jack Lombardi, who confirmed that Illinois received $5.1 billion in federal pandemic aid, with a portion of it being used for critical race theory and equity programs.
Greene's communications director, Nick Dyer, later clarified to Newsweek that the congresswoman had misspoken and that she was referring to the entire Illinois elementary and secondary school system. He directed Newsweek to a Fox News report from April 2022 that claimed that Democratic-led states such as Illinois were using COVID relief funding to implement critical race theory in public schools. The report found that $5.1 billion in funding had been awarded to the Illinois Board of Education for its reopening plan that emphasized equity and diversity
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