Tlaib, Rashida

Rashida Tlaib. An American politician and lawyer serving as the U.S. representative for Michigan’s 12th congressional district. She is the first Palestinian American woman to serve in Congress and one of the first two Muslim women elected (along with Ilhan Omar) to Congress.

Tlaib was born to working-class Palestinian immigrants in Detroit in 1976. She graduated from Wayne State University with a B.A. in political science in 1998, and from Thomas M. Cooley Law School with a J.D. in 2004. Tlaib was admitted to the bar in the state of Michigan in 2007.

She began her political career in 2004 when she interned with State Representative Steve Tobocman, who hired her to his staff when he became majority floor leader in 2007 and encouraged her to run for his seat the next year. She did so and won the election.

A member of the Democratic Party, Tlaib represented the 6th and 12th districts in the Michigan House of Representatives. She was the first Muslim woman to serve in Michigan’s legislature. In 2018, she won the Democratic nomination and the general election for the U.S. House of Representatives in Michigan’s 13th congressional district.

Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are the first female members of Democratic Socialists of America to serve in Congress. Tlaib is a member of The Squad, an informal group of U.S. representatives on the left wing of the Democratic Party.

As a U.S. representative, Tlaib has been a vocal critic of both the Trump and Biden administrations. She has argued in favor of abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Tlaib voted to impeach President Donald Trump in both 2019 and 2021.

She is sharply critical of Israel, viewing it as an apartheid state. Tlaib has called for an end to U.S. aid to Israel; she supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement and a one-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. On November 7, 2023, Tlaib was censured by the House of Representatives in response to her public statements on the Israel-Hamas war and the overall Israeli-Palestinian conflict.