Victoria Spartz rejoins fight to strip Ilhan Omar from Foreign Affairs Committee
Ryan King
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Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-IN) reversed course Tuesday and threw her support behind a resolution to strip Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) of her spot on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Spartz had been one of a handful of House Republicans who publicly indicated they wouldn’t back the measure. She argued that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) adequately addressed her concerns about due process.
McCarthy can only afford to lose four Republican votes to push Omar off the committee successfully.
WHY OMAR COULD SURVIVE MCCARTHY’S CRUSADE FOR ‘POLITICAL VENGEANCE’
“I appreciate Speaker McCarthy’s willingness to address legitimate concerns and add due process language to our resolution. Deliberation and debate are vital for our institution, not top-down approaches,” Spartz said in a statement.
“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,” she added.
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Backers of the resolution to eject Omar from the panel have pointed to past remarks from Omar they allege were antisemitic, such as a tweet from 2012. In it, Omar said, “Israel has hypnotized the world.”
Omar has since apologized for her past comments and argued that the push to strip her committee assignment is “politically motivated.”
“It’s motivated by the fact that many of these members don’t believe a Muslim, a refugee, an African should even be in Congress, let alone have the opportunity to serve on the Foreign Affairs Committee,” Omar told CNN in a recent interview.
To successfully remove her, the full House must pass a resolution agreeing to it. With the GOP’s slim House majority of 222-213, McCarthy is working the phones seeking to court angsty members to support the measure. Another holdout, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), fielded a call from McCarthy on Monday but remained unmoved in her opposition to the resolution.
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Other Republicans, such as Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), have voiced consternation about the resolution as well. Democrats have cried foul and accused McCarthy of pursuing political vengeance against Omar for Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) ouster of Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and later Paul Gosar (R-AZ) from committee assignments during the prior Congress.
Last week, McCarthy announced that he would block Reps. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Eric Swalwell (D-CA) from serving on the House Intelligence Committee.
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Under the resolution to boot Omar, members of Congress will have the ability to appeal committee ousters before the Committee on Ethics.
“Any Member reserves the right to bring a case before the Committee on Ethics as grounds for an appeal to the Speaker of the House for reconsideration of any committee removal decision,” the language of the resolution says.