Turnabout: Republicans Want Ilhan Omar Removed From House Committees

Under pressure from Democrats calling on House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to take punitive action against Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), several House Republicans turned the tables this week, calling on Democrats to clean up their own caucus before pointing fingers across the aisle. To make the point crystal clear, these Republicans singled out Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) for her conspiratorial, anti-semitic views, which are at least as dangerous as anything that Greene has ever espoused.

“The House is set to consider a measure this week that calls for Taylor Greene, a controversial first-term lawmaker known for his support of the QAnon conspiracy theory, from her assignment on the Education and Labor Committee,” reports Fox News. “A proposed GOP-backed amendment to that measure calls for Omar, frequently identified as a member of the ‘Squad’ of progressive Democrats, to be removed from her committee assignments.”

In other words: How serious ARE you about cleaning up these House committees?

Reps. Brian Babin, Jeff Duncan, Ronny Jackson, Jody Hice, and Andy Biggs have sponsored the amendment.

Not long ago, after Omar made a reprehensible remark about Israel having “hypnotized the world,” New York Times columnist Bari Weiss said the comment had echoes dating back to the Nazis.

“The Jewish power to hypnotize the world, as Ms. Omar put it, is the plot of Jud Süss — the most successful Nazi film ever made,” Weiss wrote. “In the film, produced by Joseph Goebbels himself, Josef Süss Oppenheimer, an 18th-century religious Jew, emerges from the ghetto, makes himself over as an assimilated man, and rises to become the treasurer to the Duke of Württemberg. Silly duke: Allowing a single Jew into his city leads to death and destruction.”

As for Greene, Politico reports that she had a two-hour meeting with McCarthy on Tuesday, in which the House Minority Leader laid out her choices:

McCarthy tried to give Greene options, according to a person familiar with their talk: She could denounce QAnon and apologize publicly for espousing hurtful conspiracy theories and endorsing violence on Democrats. She could remove herself from the panel to spare her colleagues a vote on the matter. Or, she could face removal from her own GOP peers.

Whatever comes of this, it doesn’t feel like an apology from Greene is on the table.

“No matter what @GOPLeader does it would never be enough for the hate America Democrats,” she tweeted on Wednesday. “As much as he genuinely tries to work with @SpeakerPelosi for the good of this country, she refuses to see the hypocrisy of her own conference.”