House Republicans on Thursday asked Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn. Voted to oust U.S. President Donald Trump from the Foreign Affairs Committee — the latest skirmish in a long-running partisan battle over committee functions.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., had faced a handful of GOP faults, but by Thursday he and his team had brought GOP members back in line, and 218 Republicans voted to condemn Omar for past antisemitic comments. and voted to return the motion to remove him. Committee.
Dave Joyce of Ohio, a Republican, a senior member of the Ethics Committee, voted in favor.
All 211 Democrats rallied behind Omar, who delivered an emotional and impassioned speech before the vote that brought tears to many of his colleagues.
“The idea that you’re a suspect if you’re an immigrant or if you’re from certain parts of the world or a certain skin tone or Muslim. It’s no coincidence that members of the Republican Party accused the first black president of Barack Obama, being a secret Muslim,” said Omar, a Somali refugee who made history as one of the first two Muslim American women elected to Congress.
“Well, I’m Muslim,” she said. “I am an immigrant and interestingly from Africa. Is anyone surprised that I am being targeted? Is anyone surprised that I am somehow deemed unfit to speak about American foreign policy Or do they see me as a powerful voice that needs to be spoken.” silenced?”
Republicans defended their action, arguing that antisemitic comments Omar had made years earlier had disqualified him from serving on the Foreign Affairs Committee. In 2019, Omar incensed Democrats and Republicans alike – as well as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – when he tweeted that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and other Jewish charities were paying politicians to back Israel. were, saying: “It’s all about Benjamin, kid.”
She came under fire from fellow Democrats when she said she had “equated the United States and Israel to Hamas and the Taliban”.
“How can someone who is not welcomed by one of our most important allies serve on the Foreign Affairs Committee as an ambassador for American foreign policy?” Rape. said Max Miller, R-Ohio, a former Trump White House aide who is Jewish and who authored Thursday’s resolution. “And given her biased comments against Israel and the Jewish people, how can she serve as an objective decision-maker on the committee?”
Others argued that Democrats took similar action two years ago when they voted to oust two Republicans from their committees over racist and violent social media posts. Then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., blocked two other Republicans from serving on the select Jan. 6 panel.
Those comments prompted one of Omar’s closest allies, Rep. infuriated Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., who was targeted in a social media post by Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., and who took to the floor to rail Thursday. against the Republicans.
“Compatibility? There is nothing consistent with the continued attacks of the Republican Party, except racism and inciting violence against women of color in this body,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “I had a member of the Republican caucus who risked my life, and all of yours – and the Republican Caucus rewarded him with one of the most coveted committee assignments in this Congress.”
The vote to remove Omar almost did not happen. Last week, many Republicans protested the GOP’s action against Omar, threatening to derail the proposal, given his new, razor-thin majority.
But this week, defectors started to line up. On Tuesday, Rep. Victoria Spartz, R-Ind., changed her vote to yes after a meeting with McCarthy and language was added to the Omar proposal that would give lawmakers a chance to appeal their removal from committees.
Representative Thomas Massey, R-Ky., who was on the fence, said he would back the resolution. On Wednesday, Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo. said he would change his vote to yes after speaking to McCarthy, adding that the speaker appeared open to a proposed rule change that would make it harder to exclude lawmakers from committees.
Moments before the vote, Representative Nancy Mays of South Carolina, the lone GOP holdout, emerged from McCarthy’s office and announced she too would vote yes. Mays said he received a commitment from McCarthy to develop a better process for removing members from committees.
Mays told reporters, “Today we have a process for [censure]. We have a process today for expelling members from Congress.” “We do not have a process for removing members from their committee.”
Speaking to reporters after the vote, McCarthy said he had spoken with Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., about appointing members of both parties to a working group that would come up with a proposal In which the reasons for the removal of MPs will be explained. Committees and the process of doing it. McCarthy said he would appoint Mays and Buck.
“Going forward, it is the responsibility of each member of Congress to determine how they conduct themselves. And it is our responsibility to tell them what that is.
“So I’m going to have a group of Democrats that Hakim chooses and a group of Republicans, and we’ll work to clarify the rules and pass something not only for this Congress but for future Congresses.”
McCarthy argued that the House’s action did not amount to “tit for tit” against Democrats—Republicans would allow Omar to serve on other committees, he said.
But Omar’s expulsion is the latest example of how both parties have used the committee’s functions over the past two years to punish MPs who cross the line.
It began in February 2021, when House Democrats — and 11 Republicans — voted against far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. voted to boot him from two committees for past social media posts that spread racist and antisemitic conspiracy theories and threatened violence. Pelosi and Obama.
Months later, Democrats also moved to censure and oust Gosar from two of their committees after he tweeted an animated video depicting the murder of Ocasio-Cortez and attacking President Joe Biden.
That same year, Pelosi unilaterally blocked two of McCarthy’s picks – Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Jim Banks, R-Ind. — from the Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Parliament House; McCarthy and the Republicans then boycotted the special panel.
At the time, Republicans warned that Democrats would regret those decisions. When Republicans took back control of the House this year, they immediately reinstated Green and Gosar to the committees.
McCarthy then blocked two of Jefferies’ picks for the Intelligence Committee: former chairman Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell, both California Democrats who played key roles in the Trump impeachment proceedings.
And on Thursday, McCarthy made good on his promise to boot Omar from the foreign affairs panel.
“Rep. Omar has certainly made mistakes. He has used antisemitic tropes that were clearly and unequivocally condemned by House Democrats four years ago,” Jefferies told reporters.
But he called Thursday’s vote “not a public policy debate”: “It’s not about accountability. It’s about political vendetta.”