Fierce Patriots

Conservative Political News

  • Subscribe

House Foreign Affairs Committee

Democrats Attack Republican’s ‘Islamophobic’ Removal of Rep. Omar from HFAC, Blame Racism, Xenophobia, ‘White Supremacy’

by Leave a Comment

Reap what you sow: Democrats now express regret for skirting norms to boot Republicans from committees

by Leave a Comment

What did the Democrats say?

At a House Ethics Committee hearing, Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) admitted that Republicans were right when they warned two years ago that removing GOP lawmakers from committees would later come back to bite Democrats.

In February 2021, the House stripped Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) from her committees. Nine months later, Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) was stripped of his assignments and censured.

“I do concede that some of the warnings about the dangers,” said Neguse of removing Greene and Gosar, “were prescient.”

Moreover, the top Democrat on the House Ethics Committee, Rep. Susan Wild (D-Penn.), admitted that “I don’t think that it was the correct process” to remove the Republican lawmakers without going through traditional Ethics Committee procedures, the Jewish Insider reported. She disclosed that she shared conversations with colleagues at the time worrying that removing Greene and Gosar would establish bad precedents.

Additionally, Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) admitted to the Jewish Insider that the way in which Democrats lorded over the removal of Greene and Gosar from their committees “was not consistent with the way the institution had been run in the past.”

What happened in Omar?

The Minnesota Democrat was officially removed from the House Foreign Affairs Committee after the House passed a resolution on her removal. Three Republicans abstained from voting, while one voted “present.”

Democrats responded to the vote by accusing Republicans of exacting partisan revenge, alleging they targeted Omar because she is Muslim and African.

Before the vote, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy met with Republicans who were opposed to removing Omar. Those meetings resulted in promises that, in the future, it will be more difficult to remove lawmakers from committees, especially without giving them due process.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

House Ousts Ilhan Omar from Foreign Affairs Committee in Party Line Vote

by Leave a Comment

The House voted Thursday along party lines to remove Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) from her seat on the Foreign Affairs Committee through a resolution that cites her past derogatory remarks about Jewish people and anti-Israel posture.

The vote passed 218 to 211, with all Democrats voting against the resolution and one Republican, Rep. David Joyce (R-OH), voting “present.”

The vote is a win for House Republicans, who hold a slim majority in the chamber, after a few from their conference initially objected to the resolution. The three who had vocally opposed it, Reps. Victoria Spartz (R-IN), Nancy Mace (R-SC), and Ken Buck (R-CO), had flipped their vote by Thursday morning.

Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN), a key player in the successful whip operation, told Breitbart News in an exclusive statement that Omar, a fellow Minnesotan, had “no place representing American interests” on the Foreign Affairs Committee.

“There is no debate that Ilhan Omar, the face of antisemitism in the Democrat Party, has no place representing American interests on the Foreign Affairs Committee. Ms. Omar is an embarrassment to Minnesota and our country,” Emmer said.

The vote is also a victory for Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who first indicated he would strip Omar of the committee seat in an interview with Breitbart News more than a year ago.

“Ilhan Omar should not be serving on Foreign Affairs,” McCarthy said at the time. “This is a new level of what the Democrats have done.”

The House voted mostly on partisan lines to strip Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Paul Gosar (R-AZ) of their committee assignments in 2021 because of their inflammatory rhetoric and social media posts. That same year, then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) also rejected two of McCarthy’s choices for the January 6 select committee.

One of the Republicans who had initially opposed booting Omar from the committee, Spartz, credited McCarthy with adding “due process language” to the resolution on Omar to convince her to flip her vote, though Rules Committee ranking member Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) said, per the Hill, that the “notion this resolution has any due process is simply bullshit.”

Republicans’ opposition to Omar serving on the committee comes after the two-term Minnesota Democrat gained a reputation for promoting antisemitic tropes, such as claiming Israel had “hypnotized the world” and that support for Israel was “all about the Benjamins.”

Omar later apologized for the remarks but continued to take anti-Israel positions.

In 2019, Omar introduced a resolution that supported the anti-Israel “boycott, divestment, sanctions” (BDS) movement. In 2021, she lumped “atrocities” supposedly committed by the U.S. and Israel in with those committed by the Taliban and Hamas. Equating the U.S. and its Middle East ally to the two terrorist groups led to condemnation from her own party’s leadership and again resulted in Omar apologizing. Later in 2021, Omar was one of just nine members of the House to vote against a $1 billion investment in Israel’s defense system.

Omar also made headlines in 2019 for remarks she made at a conference hosted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Omar, who is Muslim,  said the group “was founded after 9/11 because they recognized that some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties.”

The phrase “some people did something” outraged some, who criticized her for downplaying the deadly terrorist attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 Americans. Omar however defended the remarks, likening them to remarks made by former President George W. Bush at the time of the attacks and suggesting he would have been criticized more if he were Muslim.

Rep. Claudia Tenney, a Republican congresswoman from New York, evoked Omar’s comments in a statement online ahead of the vote on Thursday, saying, “Today, some people will do something to Ilhan Omar’s committee assignment.”

CAIR, for its part, had been advocating for Omar to keep her seat, calling her the target of “bad-faith” allegations.

The group said in a statement this week, “American Muslims are prepared to fight for our Muslim representatives in Congress when they are unfairly targeted with politically-motivated attacks, Islamophobic rhetoric, and in-bad-faith allegations.”

Omar, a Somali American who lived in a refugee camp as a child, spoke on the House floor ahead of the vote next to a photo of herself when she was nine years old. Omar vowed “to continue to speak up, because representation matters” in spite of her anticipated ouster from the committee.

“Is anyone surprised that I am being targeted?” Omar asked. “Frankly it is expected because when you push power, power pushes back.”

Write to Ashley Oliver at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter at @asholiver.

Republican lawmaker abruptly switches course before House votes to remove Rep. Ilhan Omar from committee

by Leave a Comment

She said:

Two wrongs do not make a right. Speaker Pelosi took unprecedented actions last Congress to remove Reps. Greene and Gosar from their committees without proper due process. Speaker McCarthy is taking unprecedented actions this Congress to deny some committee assignments to the Minority without proper due process again.

As I spoke against it on the House floor two years ago, I will not support this charade again. Speaker McCarthy needs to stop “bread and circuses” in Congress and start governing for a change.

What is she saying now?

After meeting with McCarthy, Spartz said she will support a resolution to remove Omar from the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

“I appreciate Speaker McCarthy’s willingness to address legitimate concerns and add due process language to our resolution,” she said in a statement. “Deliberation and debate are vital for our institution, not top-down approaches.

“The rule of law, freedom of speech, and due process are fundamental to our Constitutional Republic. Our founding fathers understood that pure democracy is dangerous and can lead to the tyranny of majority, mob rule and dictatorship,” she said.

Spartz added that she supports “setting a precedent of allowing an appeal process,” suggesting she believes removing Omar is not simply vindictive politics.

The development is significant because McCarthy cannot boot members from standing committees, including the Foreign Affairs Committee. Thus, to remove Omar, a resolution on her removal must go before the House floor for a full vote.

The House is expected to take that vote on Wednesday.

With Spartz’s support, the resolution will likely be approved. Reps. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) and Ken Buck (R-Colo.) are the only other two Republicans who have said they oppose removing Omar. That means there is majority support for Omar’s removal.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Kevin McCarthy: ‘Yes’ GOP Has Votes to Remove Ilhan Omar from Foreign Affairs Committee

by Leave a Comment

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said on Tuesday that he has enough Republican votes to keep Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar (MN) off the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

“Yes,” McCarthy told CNN congressional correspondent Manu Raju when asked about whether the GOP has enough votes to keep Omar off the committee.

Before McCarthy secured the speakership, he pledged to remove Omar from the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Reps. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Eric Swalwell (D-CA) from the House Intelligence Committee.

McCarthy made good on a piece of his pledge earlier this month when he formally removed Schiff and Swalwell from their posts on the House Intel Committee.

However, as McCarthy moved forward with his attempt to oust Omar, he faced opposition from a few House Republicans who expressed concern over due process and the precedent it would set.

With a thin five-vote majority, just a handful of House Republicans could block McCarthy’s efforts to remove Omar from her committee post.

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) has expressed concern about McCarthy’s move. Additionally, Reps. Ken Buck (R-CO), Nancy Mace (R-SC), and Victoria Spartz (R-IN) publicly opposed the decision to remove Omar. House Republicans are also down one vote as Rep. Greg Steube (R-FL) recovers from an accident.

However, Spartz agreed to support the resolution to remove Omar from the committee on Tuesday. Spartz’s change of heart occurred after McCarthy included language in the resolution to remove Omar that would allow members to appeal their removals from committees.

“As to my fellow conservatives, I think setting a precedent of allowing an appeal process for the Speaker’s and majority-party removal decisions is particularly important to freedom-loving legislators who usually are on the receiving end of issues like this,” Spartz said in a statement declaring her support of the resolution.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) also told Axios Tuesday that the GOP had secured the necessary votes to remove Omar.

McCarthy is seeking to remove Omar from the House Foreign Affairs Committee due to her past antiemetic remarks.

As the resolution states:

Whereas on February 10, 2019, Representative Ilhan Omar suggested that Jewish people and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) were buying political support, saying, “It’s all about the Benjamins, baby,” leading to condemnation from Republicans and Democrats alike for her use of an anti-Semitic trope;

Tuesday’s House Rules Committee meeting on the resolution to remove Omar is reportedly being held under “emergency,” procedures, which would allow the committee to “move in an expedited fashion,” Raju reported.

“It’s the first time they’ve done so this year,” Raju added.

The vote on the resolution to remove Omar from her committee post could take place as soon as this week, Axios reported.

Jordan Dixon-Hamilton is a reporter for Breitbart News. Write to him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter.