Posted on 02/02/23
| News Source: The Hill
House Republicans voted on Thursday to remove Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) from the Foreign Affairs Committee, notching a win for Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who has long vowed to oust the Minnesota Democrat from the panel.
The chamber approved the resolution in a party-line 218-211-1 vote. Rep. David Joyce (R-Ohio) voted present.
The resolution — sponsored by freshman Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio), who is Jewish — lists a number of remarks Omar has made in the past Republicans say are antisemitic. It argues that the congresswoman “disqualified herself” from serving on the Foreign Affairs panel, which “is viewed by nations around the world as speaking for Congress on matters of international importance and national importance and national security.”
Omar — a Somali refugee and one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress — delivered an impassioned defense of herself during debate on the House floor Thursday.
“This debate today, it’s about who gets to be an American? What opinions do we get to have, do we have to have to be counted as American?” she asked. “That is what this debate is about, Madam Speaker. There is this idea that you are suspect if you are an immigrant. Or if you are from a certain part of the world, of a certain skin tone or a Muslim.”
“Well, I am Muslim. I am an immigrant, and interestingly, from Africa. Is anyone surprised that I’m being targeted? Is anyone surprised that I am somehow deemed unworthy to speak about American foreign policy?” she added.
The resolution hit the floor on Thursday after more than a week of closed-door haggling during which McCarthy faced steep odds in his quest to oust Omar from the committee.
Three Republicans — Reps. Nancy Mace (S.C.), Victoria Spartz (Ind.) and Ken Buck (Colo.) — initially came out against the resolution removing Omar from the Foreign Affairs panel, signaling that they would vote “no” when the measure hit the floor. If all Democrats oppose the resolution, Republicans can only afford to lose four members.