An anti-trans lawmaker shared a racist meme online & now he’s paying the price

Anti-trans Christian Michigan state representative Josh Schriver (R) has been stripped of his office staff, office budget, and House committee assignments after sharing a social media post pushing a racist and antisemitic conspiracy theory known as “The Great Replacement.”

On February 6, Schriver used his X account to re-post a meme initially shared by anti-LGBTQ+ conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec. The image, which remains on Schriver’s X account, says, “The great replacement!” and shows a world map largely populated with Black people and small groups of white people clustered in northern America, northern Europe, and southern Australia. The map is not an accurate representation of global racial diversity.

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The Great Replacement Theory is an anti-Semitic, anti-immigration, white supremacist conspiracy theory that claims rich Jews want to “replace” white Americans and Westerners with non-white immigrants and people of color (especially Black people and Muslims) to fundamentally change the nation’s racial makeup and political culture.

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Schriver’s congressional district is 90% white. He won nearly 65% of the district’s vote in 2022.

Michigan House Speaker Joe Tate (D), who is Black, condemned the post two days later, calling it a “blatantly racist,” “deplorable,” and a “false theory” that put Schriver’s “ignorance on full display” and “proliferat[ed] obvious hate.”

On Monday, Tate stripped Schriver of his seats on the House committees for natural resources, environment, tourism and outdoor recreation, as well as his sole office staff member and $132,000 office budget, The Guardian reported. Schriver will still be allowed to vote.

“I will not allow the Michigan House of Representatives to be a forum for the proliferation of racist, hateful and bigoted speech,” Tate said in a statement. “Representative Schriver has a history of promoting debunked theories and dangerous rhetoric that jeopardizes the safety of Michigan residents and contributes to a hostile and uncomfortable environment for others.”

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) blasted Schriver’s post as evidence of a “failure of leadership” on the part of the legislative Republican caucus. However, two state Republicans — Rep. Donni Steele and Sen. John Damoose — also condemned the post. Steele called the post “ugly” and Damoose called it “overtly cruel,” “racist,” and “sickening.”

On February 14, Schriver — a 31-year-old freshman legislator who wants to ban gender-affirming care for transgender adults — issued a statement doubling down on his X post.

“Day-to-day, we fight in our workplaces and schools to stop racist anti-White schemes and racist programs like DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] and CRT [critical race theory]. I will keep fighting,” he wrote. In other X posts, he said he is not racist, denounced the media for “trying to start a race war,” accused society of an “anti-white agenda,” and proclaimed “All Lives Matter,” a slogan created by conservatives as a negative response to the Black Lives Matter movement and its protest against institutionalized racism.

The worldwide decline of white populations is “a consequence of an old age structure, fewer births, more deaths, and little immigration,” according to the Brookings Institute, a self-described non-partisan social sciences think tank.

Jack Posobiec, who originally posted the image that Schriver shared, is the promoter of the anti-gay #Pizzagate conspiracy theory that eventually morphed into QAnon, whose believers regularly accuse LGBTQ+ politicians, Democrats, Hollywood elites, and allies of sexually abusing kids.