It would have been nice if the Republicans had dealt with this, but given that
she has repeatedly called for the assassination of member of the House, but
the Democrats (plus 11 Republicans) had to take action, meaning that
Marjorie Taylor Greene will sit on no committees at all, the first time since, IIRC, Steve King was removed from his committees by
the Republican Caucus after he explicitly supported white nationalism in
2019. (Before that, the Democrats refused to assign Jim Trafficant after
he voted for the Republican Rpeaker of the House in 2001)
Normally, removal from committees is done by the Congressman's own party, but Kevin McCarthy is too much of a wimp to do the right thing:
The House on Thursday exiled Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene from congressional committees, blacklisting the first-term Georgian for endorsing the executions of Democrats and spreading dangerous and bigoted misinformation even as fellow Republicans rallied around her.
The House voted 230 to 199 to remove Ms. Greene from the Education and Budget Committees, with only 11 Republicans joining Democrats to support the move. The action came after Ms. Greene’s past statements and espousing of QAnon and other conspiracy theories had pushed her party to a political crossroads.
The vote effectively stripped Ms. Greene of her influence in Congress by banishing her from committees critical to advancing legislation and conducting oversight. Party leaders traditionally control the membership of the panels. While Democrats and Republicans have occasionally moved to punish their own members by stripping them of assignments, the majority has never in modern times moved to do so to a lawmaker in the other party.
In emotional remarks on the House floor, Ms. Greene expressed regret on Thursday for her previous comments and disavowed many of her most outlandish and repugnant statements. She said she believed that the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks “absolutely happened” and that school shootings were “absolutely real” after previously suggesting that aspects of both were staged.
………
Democrats argued that Ms. Greene’s comments — and Republican leaders’ refusal to take action against her — had required unusual action. In social media posts made before she was elected, Ms. Greene endorsed executing top Democrats, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi; suggested a number of school shootings were secretly perpetrated by government actors; and repeatedly trafficked in anti-Semitic and Islamophobic conspiracy theories.
………
Ms. Greene also told the House that she had broken away from QAnon in 2018. “I was allowed to believe things that weren’t true,” she said, “and I would ask questions about them and talk about them, and that is absolutely what I regret.”
However, that does not square with a series of social media posts she made in 2019, including liking a Facebook comment that endorsed shooting Ms. Pelosi in the head and suggesting in the same year that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had been replaced with a body double, an element of QAnon’s fictional story line.
………
But the majority party, at least in modern history, has never before leveraged its power to dictate the minority party’s committee assignments. Democrats, who have been particularly incensed by Ms. Greene’s previous calls for violence after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, have insisted that Ms. Greene’s conduct demanded extraordinary measures.
………
“If anybody starts threatening the lives of members of Congress on the Democratic side, we’d be the first to eliminate them from committees,” Ms. Pelosi said.
Of course, when the Republicans regain power in the Congress, I'm sure that they will do this to Muslim members of Congress, claiming that this is a precedent, because acting in profoundly bad faith is their thing.
1 comments :
Why does she still have staff, a salary, or office space?
Arguably, you can't keep her from the floor of the House, because she has to be able to participate in floor debates and votes. That restriction on what can be done to her short of expulsion is implied by the fact that expulsion, and a 2/3 majority needed to expel, is mentioned in the Constitution.
Failure to go further in taking action against Greene is entirely a matter of the Ds allowing themselves to be tied in knots by mere norms that you can bet the other side will not honor if they ever get the majority. Retaliation threats are exactly what they were talking about when they complained that this was a bad precedent for the majority to set, taking away committee assignments itself, rather than leaving it up to the party to take that step. They will retaliate if ever in the majority, and their actions will be all out of proportion to whatever our side has done while we hold the majority. That die has already been cast. Might as well give them something to cry about.
Oh, and, more importantly, act while we have the trifecta so as to never lose the majority. Partly this involves structural reform, such as a new voting rights act that preempts state control of at least federal elections, plus statehood for DC and PR, plus getting citizenship to as many as possible of our fellow citizens-in-all-but-name before the next election. But because doing these structural reforms could be perceived by swing voters as unfair to the other side, the much more important element in making sure our side keeps winning elections isn to given voters what they want and need.
I can't think of anything right now that would make us as popular as Ds after the New Deal as universal health care with no deductibles, co-pays, or any other demand management clogs. It has to be in place for a good year before the next election, to give it time to prove that such rank socialism is not going to crater health care in this country. But if we meet that requirement, we will not lose any part of the trifecta for a generation.
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