In an unprecedented move, the House voted to strip Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) of her committee assignments.
On Thursday, in a vote mostly along party lines—11 Republicans sided with the Democrats—the House passed the resolution 230-199 to remove Greene from her assignments on the budget committee, and the education and labor committee, according to the Washington Post.
Greene has sparked controversy from the moment she was elected for her embrace of dangerous and false QAnon conspiracies that helped fuel the siege on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, and claims that 9/11 and several school shootings were “false flags,” the Post notes.
In recent weeks, posts were unearthed on Greene’s social media pages supporting violence against prominent Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and a video of Greene heckling gun-reform activist David Hogg, a survivor of the Parkland, Fla., school shooting in 2018, went viral.
Before the House debate on the resolution to remove her from committees, Greene took to the House floor to claim that she no longer believed in QAnon conspiracy theories and that school shootings and the events of 9/11 did happen, but notably she did not apologize for liking social media posts that called for the execution of Pelosi and other posts that called for political violence against members of Congress.
“School shootings are absolutely real,” Greene said. “I also want to tell you 9/11 absolutely happened.”
Wow, what a courageous late-stage concession from an elected official. Somehow, I still don’t feel reassured of her suitability to be in government—especially given the rest of her explanation, which blamed some nameless entity for “allowing” her to push violence and lies on the internet.
“I was upset about things and didn’t trust the government,” Greene said. “I was allowed to believe things that were not true.”
It’s a curious abdication of responsibility, since Mother Jones recently reported that Greene is still listed as a moderator on a Facebook group that shared disturbing content like a photo of a noose alongside the caption “If we want to make evil people fear America again we will have to make evil people fear punishment again,” and another of a Punisher skull reading, “God will judge our enemies. We’ll arrange the meeting.”
Despite her willingness to call for violence against her political opponents, Greene claimed on the House floor that Democrats were trying to “crucify her in the public square.”
But in one of the more stunning rebukes of Greene during the resolution’s debate period, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) asked House Republicans to imagine themselves receiving the same violent rhetoric Greene directed at three members of The Squad—Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Rashida Talib (D-Mich.)
From the Post:
In one striking moment on the House floor Thursday, Hoyer hoisted a sign showing a Facebook posting her campaign made in September — one showing Greene posing with an assault rifle juxtaposed with photos of three liberal Democratic congresswomen and the caption, “The Squad’s Worst Nightmare” — and walked it over to the Republican side of the chamber.
“When you take this vote, imagine your faces on this poster,” he said. “Imagine it’s a Democrat with an AR-15. Imagine what your response would be.”
According to the New York Times, committee assignments and removals are traditionally handled by the party of the member in question. The House removing Greene with votes mostly by Democrats sets a precedent that Republicans suggest Dems might come to regret in the future. But Speaker Pelosi didn’t seem to be bothered by that as much as she was bothered by the danger Greene’s rhetoric poses.
“If anybody starts threatening the lives of members of Congress on the Democratic side, we’d be the first to eliminate them from committees,” CNN reports Pelosi said ahead of the vote on Thursday. “They had the opportunity to do so. I’m not answering any more questions about it.”