Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene Removed from Committees
Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) was removed from her committee assignments in response to her past involvement in conspiracy theories and rhetoric condoning violence on social media. On Friday, February 5, she said that her removal would stifle her constituents, and then said that serving on committees controlled by Democrats was a waste of her time. “If I was on a committee, I’d be wasting my time because my conservative values wouldn’t be heard and neither would my district’s,” she said.
In a press conference she said those who voted to remove her from the committees “actually stripped my district of their voice, they stripped my voters of having representation to work for them.”
On Thursday, February 4, Greene was removed from the budget and education committees by a House vote of 230-199. Eleven Republicans sided with the Democrats. Her removal from the committees reduces her ability to shape legislation and work with other lawmakers. Just weeks into her first term in office, she has been sidelined.
While each party has occasionally moved to discipline its own members by stripping them of assignments, the majority has not moved to punish a member of the minority party in modern times.
The vote came the day after House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) publicly refused to strip Greene from the committees, and instead told reporters she should be moved from the Education and Labor Committee to the Small Business Committee.
Democrats cited the violent rhetoric and misinformation that helped bring about the January 6 riot at the Capitol, saying that removing Greene from the committees was a necessary reaction to her actions. Republicans in defense of Greene said she expressed regret and claimed that her removal was an infringement on the minority party’s rights. Greene renounced some of her extremist beliefs only hours before the vote.
Some of the rhetoric and misinformation in question was Greene’s support of QAnon and their ideology, which had a role in spurring the Capitol riot; comments she made on social media saying some mass shootings were staged by pro-gun control supporters; that a Jewish cabal has started a deadly wildfire with a space beam, and that the 9/11 attacks were designed by government forces. She also “liked” a Facebook post that suggested shooting Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).
The vote against Greene stemmed from the Democrat’s frustration over the apparent reluctance of the Republican leadership to take its own action to marginalize Greene, their willingness to attach the entire GOP to her extremism, and the Democrat’s anger over the lack of accountability for the January 6 riot.
House Rules Committee Chairman Jim McGovern (D-MA) said, “I don’t understand what is complicated here. We know the result of these violent conspiracy theories. We saw that on January 6. We know what it leads to. I don’t ever want to see that again. And we all should make clear where we stand on this.”
Greene’s speech on the House floor on Thursday included statements regretting posts she made about QAnon. She said she first encountered QAnon posts in 2017 but stopped believing their misinformation late the next year.
Her statement, which sounded more like making excuses and finger-pointing than making apologies, included this: “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. Because if it weren’t for the Facebook posts and comments that I liked in 2018, I wouldn’t be standing here today, and you couldn’t point a finger and accuse me of anything wrong.”
Greene also (formerly, she says) believed conspiracy theories about who was responsible for school shootings, and in a video she relentlessly questioned David Hogg, a former student at a school in Parkland, Florida where 17 people were killed by a gunman. Greene said Friday that she did not regret her interview with Hogg. She said, “David Hogg was an adult when I talked to him. I’m very opposed to those policies.” Hogg is in favor of gun control and has become a gun-violence prevention advocate. “And so being in the same situation as David Hogg my voice matters too. And so, no, I’m not sorry for telling him he shouldn’t push for gun control.”
“I know the fear that David Hogg felt. It’s terrifying,” she said, confessing that when she was in 11th grade a student with a gun at school held hostages for five hours. Greene believes people should be able to carry guns to protect others.
This was apparently enough to get most of the GOP behind her for Thursday’s vote.
Democrats were not assuaged. They noted her refusal last year to repudiate QAnon during her House campaign, her efforts to make money from the uproar that resulted, and her posts approving of violence against Democratic politicians, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi. Greene did not address these posts on Thursday.
“I believe in forgiveness, but in order to benefit from forgiveness, you've got to demonstrate contrition, and she has demonstrated no contrition,” said Representative G. K. Butterfield (D-NC), who saw “a correlation between that type of reckless rhetoric and what we saw on January 6.”
Representative Jim McGovern (D-MA) said of Greene’s remarks on the floor: “I just have to say that I did not hear a disavowment or an apology for those things. 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 have been made and posted over and over and over again.”
Her statement to reporters on Friday included that she was “grateful that I had the opportunity to say the things that I don’t believe, and I shouldn’t have said in the first place. I’m sorry for saying all those things that were wrong and offensive.” She said that school shootings are “absolutely real and the 9/11 attacks “absolutely happened.”
Republicans say that Greene’s removal from committees could result in retaliation in the future, and Greene said that the 11 Republican House members who voted to remove her could have “cost” the party down the road. “That’s something our leaders should be very upset about. When you have Republicans in the ranks voting against one of their own, opening the door for Democrats to go after every single Republican next. That really is a big betrayal and that could cost us the majority,” she said.
“I hope my Republican colleagues think about what they’ve done. I’m sure they’re going to hear from their voters at home because the base is loyal to President Trump and the base has been very loyal to me,” Greene said.
On the House floor Thursday, Greene accused the media of being “just as guilty as QAnon of presenting truth and lies to divide us.” To end her press conference, she added more criticism of reporters, accusing one of “telling the same story over and over, but you don’t want to tell the truth.”
Pelosi suggested that McCarthy and other Republican leaders should have acted against Greene from a “sense of responsibility to this institution.” A Pelosi deputy, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith (D-WA) characterized McCarthy’s refusal to act as a “national security threat.” He said, “While the behavior of one individual is deeply disturbing, her party’s near-unanimous capitulation is even more alarming.”
Republicans are claiming that Greene’s removal creates a slippery slope, one that endangers the rights of Democratic members of a future Republican-majority House. Pelosi said, “If any of our members threaten the safety of other members, we’d be the first ones to take them off a committee. That’s it.”
Representative Jimmy Gomez (D-CA) has introduced a resolution to expel Greene from the House. He is in talks with Democratic leaders about the timing of the move.
Gomez said, “If Donald Trump is Conspirator No. 1 in the insurrection, she’s Conspirator No. 2. That’s why I’m pursuing this, is to send a message that this kind of discourse in our politics is not acceptable — inciting political violence threatening people, is not acceptable, and a person like that should not hold a position in the House of Representatives.”
