After meeting with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) this week, Indiana Republican Rep. Victoria Spartz announced Tuesday that she now supports removing Minnesota Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar from the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Spartz’s about-face comes after McCarthy removed California Democrat Adam Schiff and fellow Democrat Eric Swalwell from the House Intelligence Committee due to security concerns.
The movement to remove Omar from the Foreign Affairs Committee is a reaction to her anti-Semitic past statements and actions.
Speaker McCarthy’s willingness to add due process language to our resolution was much appreciated, as Spartz noted in a statement released late Tuesday night. Top-down strategies are useless for our institution, but deliberation and debate are essential.
As she continued, she emphasized the need for “the rule of law, freedom of speech, and due process” for a functioning Constitutional Republic. Our forefathers knew that unchecked democracy may lead to authoritarianism, mob rule, and other unsavory outcomes. Freedom-loving lawmakers are frequently on the receiving end of situations like this, therefore I think it’s crucial to create a precedent of enabling an appeal mechanism for the Speakers and majority-party removal decisions.
Spartz made it clear earlier this month that she was against the effort to remove Omar from the committee out of vengeance for the removal of Republican committee members in the past by Democrats.
Spartz had previously stated, “Two wrongs do not constitute a right.” As the article states, “Speaker Pelosi took extraordinary moves to remove Representatives Greene and Gosar from their committees without appropriate due process during the past Congress. This Congress, Speaker McCarthy is going to great lengths to refuse the Minority Party’s requests for committee seats without following the usual procedures.
She said, “I will not support this sham again, just as I did not support it two years ago when I spoke against it on the House floor.” “Speaker McCarthy should put an end to ‘bread and circuses’ in Congress and get to work making laws for a change.”