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The House of Representatives has voted to strip Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga) of her committee assignments. Greene had been assigned to the Education and Labor committee and the Budget committee.
The House voted to take away Greene’s committee assignments in direct response to Greene’s spreading of false information, conspiracy theories, and support of violence against Democratic House members.
The House voted in a 230 to 199 margin, with 11 Republican members joining all Democrats to support the resolution.
Greene took to the chamber floor before the vote and issued retractions on some of her previous statements saying she believes “9/11 absolutely happened” and “school shootings are absolutely real.” She also attempted to distance herself from the QAnon conspiracy theory. Greene said she “stumbled across” it in 2017, but stopped believing in it a year later when she “started finding misinformation.”
“The problem with that is though is I was allowed to believe things that weren’t true, and I would ask questions about them and talk about them, and that is absolutely what I regret,” she said.
While she acknowledged many of her prior comments, she did not offer an apology for promoting violence against other House members. Greene reportedly suggested the killing of top Democrats would be better than just getting them removed from their positions.
In a January 2019 social media post, Greene liked a comment that said “a bullet to the head would be quicker” to remove House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She also liked several comments about murdering FBI agents she deemed a part of the “deep state.”
She also suggested that some U.S. school shootings were staged and mocked a Parkland, Florida school massacre survivor.
Rep. Jim McGovern responded To Greene’s floor remarks. “I did not hear an apology or denouncement for the claim, the insinuation that political opponents should be violently dealt with. I didn’t hear anybody apologize or retract the anti-Semitic and Islamophobic remarks that had been made that have been posted over and over and over again.”
Closing out the debate before the actual vote Majority Leader Steny Hoyer gave a powerful speech in support of the resolution while displaying a campaign poster from Greene that shows her with an AR-15 standing next to Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Ilhan Omar.
“I urge my colleagues to look at this image that Rep. Greene posted on social media in September of 2020 when she was running for Congress. Here she is, armed with a deadly assault rifle, pointing it toward three Democratic members, three women of color, whom many refer to as ‘The Squad.’ And she captioned it with ‘the squad’s worst nightmare.’ Imagine your faces on this poster.”
“And they are not 'the squad,'" says House Dem Whip Steny Hoyer.
"They're Ilhan. They're Alexandria. And they're Rashida. They are people! They are our colleagues!" pic.twitter.com/zqstNFDjZE
— Poli Alert ⚖️ (@polialertcom) February 4, 2021
Many Republicans have disavowed Greene’s rhetoric but choose not to vote to remove her. Several brought up the precedent Democrats were setting by voting to remove a member from another party.
McGovern responded, saying he hopes it does set a precedent.
“Because if this isn’t the bottom, then I don’t know what the hell is,” he said. “I hope we are setting a clear standard for what we will not tolerate. Anyone who suggests putting a bullet in the head of a member shouldn’t serve on any committee period.”
