CONGRESS
House strips Marjorie Taylor Greene of her
committee posts
Republicans vowed to retaliate against Democrats if
and when they retake the majority.
By HEATHER
CAYGLE and SARAH FERRIS
02/04/2021
11:29 AM EST
Updated:
02/04/2021 07:03 PM EST
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/02/04/marjorie-taylor-greene-house-vote-465855
The House
took the extraordinary step Thursday to strip Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of
her committee posts over a series of incendiary comments and actions by the
controversial GOP lawmaker, including endorsing the assassination of Speaker
Nancy Pelosi.
It is
extremely rare for one party in the House to intervene in another’s personnel
affairs. But the vote, which occurred mostly along party lines, came after GOP
leaders refused to act on their own. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has
denounced Greene’s past actions but rebuffed calls to take away her committee
assignments, only offering to reassign her.
“If anybody
starts threatening the lives of members of Congress on the Democratic side,
we’d be the first to eliminate them from committees. They had the opportunity
to do so,” Pelosi said Thursday.
Pelosi
later told reporters that she was “profoundly disturbed” that Republicans were
continuing to allow Greene, a known conspiracy theorist, to sit on those
panels.
"You
would think the Republican leadership in the Congress would have some sense of
responsibility to this institution,” Pelosi said.
Eleven
Republicans joined all Democrats in voting to remove Greene from the House
Education and Budget committees. Republicans, including McCarthy, vowed
retribution whenever the GOP is next in the majority.
“If this is
the new standard, I look forward to continuing out the standard,” McCarthy said
in a floor speech before the vote.
The action
against Greene comes after her racist and anti-Semitic comments and social
media posts — most from before her time in Congress — surfaced over the last
week. Greene has also closely aligned herself with QAnon until just recently
and was one of the most vocal promoters of baseless election fraud claims
touted by former President Donald Trump in the lead up to a violent mob
attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Democrats
have taken particular issue with her sitting on the Education Committee after
she said the Sandy Hook and Parkland school shootings were staged. Greene was
also filmed harassing David Hogg, a teenage school shooting survivor.
The vote
comes at a critical moment for the Republican Party as it grapples with its
identity in a new era where Trump is out of office — and recently out of sight
— but still looms large and wields significant power. McCarthy’s efforts to
carefully balance the competing factions was on full display during the meeting
Wednesday, where he stood by Greene while simultaneously offering a forceful
defense of No. 3 Republican Liz Cheney amid attempts to oust her from
leadership for voting to impeach Trump.
Greene
delivered her first public response to the resolution on the floor Thursday,
just hours before the vote. But her remarks — which fell short of an apology
for spreading conspiracies or endorsing violence against sitting members of
Congress — didn’t appease Democrats.
In a
roughly five-minute speech, Greene distanced herself from her record of
promoting conspiracy theories including QAnon, declaring, "I walked away
from those things," and she said she did "regret" believing
those falsehoods.
"School
shootings are absolutely real. ... I also want to tell you 9/11 absolutely
happened," Greene said in what many considered an extraordinary set of
remarks for the House floor.
But Greene
also used her speech to attack Big Tech, "cancel culture" and Black
Lives Matter, while describing "a media that is just as guilty as QAnon of
presenting lies that divide us."
Her attacks
on American journalism quickly drew a rebuke from House Rules Chair Jim
McGovern (D-Mass.) on the floor, who said in rebuttal, "To equate the
media to QAnon is beyond the pale."
Democrats
panned her floor speech Thursday, with Rep. Chuy Garcia (D-Ill.) saying it came
off as "premeditated."
"I did
not hear remorse and I didn't hear an apology," Garcia said. "It's
all about spin and I think she'll probably try to raise a lot of money from it.
I think it's disgraceful.
Before her
appearance on Thursday, Greene had only issued defiant statements declaring she
wouldn’t back down and fundraising off the push to punish her. Greene did
express remorse during a tense closed-door GOP meeting Wednesday night —
leading to a standing ovation by half the conference — but even Republicans in
the room disagreed on whether she gave an actual apology.
While
Greene's speech didn’t win over Democrats, it seemed to help solidify her place
in the GOP conference, where members had wanted Greene to denounce her rhetoric
publicly.
Since last
year, POLITICO has reported on a series of videos and statements by Greene
espousing racist, Islamophobic and anti-Semitic views. And CNN and other
outlets have also reported that Greene liked social media comments about
violence against Pelosi, including “a bullet to the head” of the speaker; and
even saying a Jewish space laser was responsible for deadly California
wildfires.
McCarthy
had tried to avoid a House floor vote, which put many of his members in the
uncomfortable spot of defending Greene — and therefore offering at least tacit
support for her behavior — or going against the Georgia Republican, who is
closely aligned with Trump.
The GOP
leader reached out to House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer on Wednesday, offering
to move Greene from the Education panel to the Small Business Committee if
Democrats agreed to call off the vote. But Hoyer rejected the idea, saying that
didn’t go far enough given Greene’s actions.
Hoyer
delivered a passionate speech on the floor before the vote, carrying around a
poster board with one of Greene’s Facebook posts that depicted her with an
assault rifle next to pictures of Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of
New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota with the
caption “Squad’s Worst Nightmare.”
“When you
take this vote, imagine your faces on this poster,” Hoyer said to Republicans.
“Imagine it’s a Democrat with an AR-15, imagine what your response would be.”
Several
Republicans, including Washington Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, who voted to
impeach Trump, argued that she voted against the resolution not because she
supported Greene but because Democrats would be setting a dangerous new
precedent for the House.
“Republicans
can show leadership by sanctioning her,” Herrera Beutler said. “But what I
won’t do is vote on the House floor to set a new precedent where the majority
party now dictates to the minority the way in which it seats its members.”
Typically,
the question of yanking a member off of committees is handled internally by
each party. McCarthy moved quickly to strip then-Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) of
his committee posts in 2019 after he defended white supremacy.
House
Democrats are outraged over Greene, with several moving to take more severe
action including censuring or even expelling her. Democratic leaders have not
wanted to go that route yet and see the effort to strip her of committee
assignments as appropriate punishment for now.
Rep. Jimmy
Gomez (D-Calif), who is leading a resolution to expel Greene, said he still
plans to pursue the issue but is discussing timing with leadership.
“It's about
timing, it's not about whether or not to do it,” Gomez said Thursday. “I'm
committed to bringing it up, and I said that to leadership — that there needs
to be a vote sooner rather or later on this. But I'm gonna do it.”
Melanie Zanona contributed to this repor
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