The House of Representatives has stripped Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee assignments.
According to the CNN, Thusday’s vote was 230-199, with congress members voting largely down party lines. All Democrats and 11 Republicans voted in favor of the resolution, citing concern over Greene’s inflammatory rhetoric and support for baseless QAnon conspiracy theories.
The Georgia lawmaker and outspoken Trump supporter has received widespread backlash for her social media comments that suggested 9/11 was an inside job and that a number of school shootings were staged by gun-control advocates. Greene attempted to defend her online activity prior to Thursday’s vote, claiming she was drawn toward QAnon movement in 2017, after “seeing things in the news that didn’t make sense to me.”
“The problem with that is though is I was allowed to believe things that weren’t true, and I would ask questions about them and talk about them, and that is absolutely what I regret,” she said. “… 9/11 absolutely happened … school shootings are absolutely real and every child that is lost, those families mourn it … These were words of the past, and these things do not represent me. They do not represent my district, and they do not represent my values.”
Greene, who was booted from the Education and Labor Committee, as well as the House Budget Committee, has also been accused of endangering the lives of three progressive lawmakers: Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib. During Thursday’s debate, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) shared a screenshot of a Facebook post in which Greene is seen holding a gun while standing next to a picture of the Squad members. Greene shared the image last September with the caption, “Squad’s Worst Nightmare.”
“They’re not ‘the Squad.’ They’re Ilhan. They’re Alexandria. They’re Rashida. They are people. They are our colleagues,” Hoyer said. “’Squad’s Worst Nightmare.’ Is that what it was intended to do, that each one of these ladies would have a nightmare about somebody with a gun, an AR-15?”
Thursday’s vote was considered risky by some lawmakers and political pundits, who believe it will ignite a cycle of retribution. House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy warned Democrats that they’ll regret the move, suggesting the GOP would take similar action once they regain control of the House.
“You’ll regret this and you may regret this a lot sooner than you think,” McCarthy said. “We have a long list.”
