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The GOP-majority House of Representatives voted Thursday to remove Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., from the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
According to Fox News, the 218-211 vote comes as House Republicans committed to removing Omar from her committee assignment due to her previous anti-American and anti-Semitic remarks.
The four-page resolution passed by House Republicans and obtained by Fox News states, “Representative Omar, by her own words, has disqualified herself from serving on the Committee on Foreign Affairs, a panel that is viewed by nations around the world as speaking for Congress on matters of international importance and national security.”
The Republican resolution explained that Foreign Affairs Committee members should be held to “an equal standard of conduct” because of the committee’s importance regarding “national security” and “international sensitivities,” the outlet reported. Speaking against the House of Representatives’ decision to remove her from the Foreign Affairs Committee, Omar said, “I am Muslim, I am an immigration, and interestingly, from Africa. Is anyone surprised that I am being targeted? Is anyone surprised that I am somehow deemed unworthy to speak about American foreign policy, or that they see me as a powerful voice that needs to be silenced?”
The House of Representatives’ decision to remove Omar from the Foreign Affairs Committee fulfills the promise of House Republicans to remove her from the committee during the 2022 midterm election campaign.
While Democrats have quickly labeled the Republican majority’s decision to remove Omar as “racist” and “hypocritical,” Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif, has made it clear that Omar’s removal from the Foreign Affairs Committee does not mean that she cannot be placed on a House committee, but that she should not continue to be on the Foreign Affairs Committee due to her past statements regarding the United States and Israel.
“I’m not saying she can’t have committees,” he said, according to CBS. “But to sit on Foreign Affairs, I worry about … what the rest of the world looks at, every single word that is said there. I’m worried about predetermining what she believes in that situation. She admitted herself, she didn’t even know referring to financial money, dollars, was a trope for those who happen to be Jewish.”
Despite the left’s backlash to House Republicans removing Omar from the Foreign Affairs Committee, the previously Democrat-controlled House set the standard under the leadership of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., when Democrats stripped Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., from their committee assignments due to “controversial comments.”