According to a person familiar with the situation, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries are forming a bipartisan task force to devise a procedure for removing members from committees in the future.
Hakeem Jeffries has agreed to name members, and McCarthy is taking the initiative to form it. Republican Representatives Tom Cole, Nancy Mace, David Joyce, and Ken Buck, as well as Democratic Representatives Jim McGovern, Veronica Escobar, Nikema Williams, and Derek Kilmer, have been named to the task committee.
This task force resulted from an agreement made between Mace and McCarthy to secure Mace’s cooperation in removing Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar from the House Foreign Affairs committee.
Mace revealed earlier this month that she had worked with legislative leadership to come to an agreement to assure that there would be due process in the future on House
Omar was expelled from the committee in early February in a vote that Republicans unanimously supported in the House of Representatives. Given prior comments Omar had made towards Israel that in some cases had been denounced by members of both parties as antisemitic, House Republicans claimed that Omar shouldn’t be on the panel.
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Democrats Slam Republicans’ Efforts to Remove Ilhan Omar
Democrats condemned the effort to remove Omar, saying it was political retaliation and that the Minnesota Democrat had already been held accountable for her prior statements.
Before the vote, however, a few Republican lawmakers had expressed their disapproval of the effort to oust Omar from the significant committee. Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar were demoted from committee positions in 2021 while Democrats controlled the House, prompting Republicans to act to remove Omar.
After the Arizona Republican released a photoshopped mime video to social media depicting him assaulting President Joseph Biden and appearing to assassinate Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the House adopted a resolution to reprimand and remove Gosar from committee assignments.
Following the finding of incendiary and violent prior utterances, the House voted to remove Greene from her committee duties.
Reps. Eric Swalwell, Adam Schiff, and Ilhan Omar’s committee assignments would be revoked if Republicans regained control of the House, according to McCarthy, who said that Democrats had established a “new standard” with the removal of Gosar and Greene.
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