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Madison Cawthorn Slammed For Falsely Claiming To Be First Freshman Rep. To Have A Bill Pass House

John Sundholm
May. 20, 2021
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Freshman Republican Congressman Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina is once again stirring controversy after making a false claim. This time Cawthorn claimed to be the first freshman Representative to have a bill passed in the House.

The claim, pertaining to a bill to aid veterans in job searches, is fallacious on multiple levels.

But that didn't stop Cawthorn from triumphantly tweeting his supposedly record-breaking announcement and once again taking credit where it was not due.

Cawthorn tweeted the announcement early Wednesday morning.

By lunchtime, he'd issued a retraction after scores of people pointed out the falsehood.

Not only is Cawthorn not the first freshman to pass a bill, he hasn't passed a single one of the 10 bills or resolutions he's introduced since taking office in January.

Not even the all-important bill to honor a Russian town that was the center of a rebellion 100 years ago.

And while the bill referenced in Cawthorn's tweet did in fact pass, it wasn't Cawthorn's work.

He merely co-sponsored—or added his signature to—the bill. Any member of Congress can co-sponsor any bill at any time, and it is a standard part of the job of being a Congressperson to do so.

Cawthorn himself has done so 110 times since January.

The actual honor of first freshman Congressperson to pass a bill goes to a Democratic Representative Carolyn Bourdeaux of Georgia, a fact Cawthorn was surely familiar with at the time of his tweet since he voted in favor of the bill in March.

To be fair, Cawthorn did retract and apologize for his previous tweet—but not to Representative Bourdeaux.

Rather, he apologized to the first Republican freshman to pass a bill.

And really, his retraction wasn't a retraction at all.

He ended it by clarifying he was proud to be "among the first." Which, to reiterate is not true, because he has never passed a bill.

You cannot make this stuff up. And on Twitter, people weren't about to let it slide.












This is not the first time, or even the second or third, Cawthorn has been caught publicly lying about everything from legislation, to the accident that left him paralyzed, and even falsely claiming he was training for the 2020 Paralympics.