A Virginia state delegate who compared DOGE cuts to the Holocaust was lambasted by a GOP leader who called the remarks “utterly insensitive and hyperbolic.”
State Del. Joshua Cole, D-Fredericksburg, invoked a famous Holocaust-related quote from a reformed German clergyman who once identified with the Nazi Party during a hearing last week.
House Minority Leader Todd Gilbert, R-Woodstock, told Fox News Digital that Cole should apologize to Holocaust survivors and “every citizen of Virginia” after he associated DOGE’s targeting of government jobs to the extermination of millions of Jews by the German Nazi regime.
“Comparing the loss of some government jobs to the Holocaust is an insult to the memory of the millions who were slaughtered [by the Nazi regime],” Gilbert said.
During a hearing of an “emergency” panel addressing the effects of DOGE on the Virginia workforce, Cole claimed that his constituents are within the congressional district that has the highest concentration of federal workers in the state.
Cole represents a portion of Rep. Eugene Vindman’s, D-Va., 7th District. Democratic Rep. Don Beyer’s 8th District to the north in Alexandria houses more federal workers, according to the Virginia Public Access Project.
“I must say that I have seen so many different people on social media rather excited about these [DOGE] cuts; rather excited about these job losses,” Cole said.
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“And that reminds me of a quote from a long time ago that said: ‘At first they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t Jewish. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. And then when they came for me, there was no one to speak up because everyone had been taken.'”
The quote was a rough translation of a famous 1946 “confession” by Rev. Martin Niemöller, a minister who had reportedly briefly identified with Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party before he became a high-profile critic in the late 1930s and was thrown into a concentration camp.
Niemöller’s confession, “Habe ich geschwiegen” – or “I had remained silent” – described the guilt felt by many German intellectuals as Hitler accumulated more and more power and persecuted more and more people in his rise as kanzler, or chancellor.
In the hearing, Cole said he recalled a similar emergency committee being empaneled to deal with the 2020 onset of the coronavirus pandemic.
“The difference between then and now is we had extra money coming in. We’re not going to have extra money coming in. We’re actually going to be losing money over this situation,” he warned.
“And I’m very much interested in how the loss of that money of federal income is going to impact our communities.”
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He also expressed concern as to how DOGE would treat the upcoming opening of a Spotsylvania veterans’ hospital, noting the once rural but increasingly suburban county receives a large amount of federal funding. About 144,000 Virginians are federal employees, according to the Congressional Research Service.
Fox News Digital reached out to Cole’s offices in Richmond and Fredericksburg for comment.
Fox News Digital also reached out for reaction from committee chairman David Bulova, D-Fairfax, and vice chairman Robert Bloxom, R-Cape Charles.
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German pastor Martin Niemöller (1892-1984) addresses a press conference on the Central Committee Meeting of the World Council of Churches in Chichester, at the Institute of Journalists, July 15, 1949. (Douglas Miller/Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears, the current Republican frontrunner in the 2025 governor’s race, slammed Cole’s comments.
“Virginia Dems disgustingly compared cutting wasteful spending to the Holocaust – trivializing the murder of 6 million Jews,” Sears wrote on X.
“Did Josh Cole just compare cutting government waste to the Holocaust?” asked Mason DiPalma, an official with the Republican State Leadership Committee.
“Virginia Dem[ocrats] really have no message and it shows.”
