The House of Representatives voted Thursday evening to remove Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia, from her committee assignments. The vote came hours after Greene expressed regret, though they did not apologize, for some controversial views she has voiced in the past, including the pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy.
The vote passed by a margin of 230-199, with 11 Republicans siding with the Democratic majority. No Democrats voted against the resolution. The Republicans who voted to remove Green were Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (PA), Rep. Chris Jacobs (NY), Rep. Carlos A. Giménez (FL), Rep. John Katko (NY), Rep. Young Kim (CA), Rep. Adam Kinzinger (IL), Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (NY), Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (FL), Rep. Fred Upton (MI), Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart and Rep. Chris Smith (NJ).
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The vote was something that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a Republican from California, had hoped to avoid altogether because it forced Republicans to go on the record with their stance on the resolution condemning Greene’s conduct. Not many GOP members openly defended her remarks, but some arguing against the process. They warned that Democrats’ efforts to censure Greene would set a dangerous precedent. Other Republicans attacked Democrats for refusing to censure their own members who have made incendiary remarks in the past.
But Democrats insisted that Greene’s conduct puts her in a category all her own, requiring her removal from the Budget Committee and the Committee on Education and Labor. Rules Chairman Jim McGovern said Wednesday before his committee approved the resolution to remove Greene from her committees that “when a person encourages talk about shooting a member in the head, they should lose the right to serve on any committee.” He continued, “If this isn’t the bottom line, I don’t know where the hell the bottom line is.”
Before being elected, Greene promoted several radical conspiracy theories and extreme statements. She reportedly expressed support for the conspiracy theory that a plane did not hit the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. She reportedly suggested that some school shootings were staged and mocked a survivor of the Parkland, Florida, school massacre. She also reportedly suggested in 2018 that laser beams could have caused wildfires in California.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell blasted Greene’s “looney lies and conspiracy theories” earlier this week, calling them “cancer for the Republican Party and our country.” In a statement Wednesday, McCarthy said that he “unequivocally” condemns Greene’s controversial remarks about “school shootings, political violence and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.” He accused Democrats of capitalizing on the situation as part of a partisan power grab.
