February 8, 2021
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) will remain in the U.S. Congress, but will not be seated on any committees, following a vote by the full House on Thursday night, February 4, The Daily Beast reports.
On Wednesday night, 61 Republican lawmakers—30% of the conference—voted in favor of Representative Liz Cheney’s removal as the third-ranking leader in the House GOP after she said that former President Donald Trump had incited the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6. However, 145 voted for Cheney’s survival by secret ballot, in a move that she said “was [a] very resounding acknowledgement that we need to go forward together.”
Less than 24 hours later, nearly 100% of the GOP conference voted to keep Representative Greene (R-GA) on her committees after Democrats forced a vote on Thursday, prompted by a string of reports unearthing her past endorsement of outlandish conspiracy theories and threats of violence against top Democrats.
In a floor speech before the vote, Greene sought to distance herself from her past positions—clarifying she believes the 9/11 terror attacks were real and disavowing the QAnon conspiracy theory—while refusing to apologize or acknowledge a host of other comments and posts that have infuriated Democrats.
The vote effectively ends days of drama over what, if any, repercussions Greene might face for her mounting, outrageously offensive paper trail on social media. She was known to be an extreme conspiracy theorist even before her election, but scrutiny of her record grew after a CNN report last week that revealed that before taking office, she said recent school shootings like those in Parkland, Florida, and Las Vegas were staged “false flag” operations.
But Greene’s expulsion from committees—which ice her out from the main venue through which lawmakers do their work—figures to poison the well even further between the two parties, a month after the Jan. 6 attack that had already fomented distrust and resentment across the aisle.
Over the howls of Republicans who increasingly closed ranks around Greene, Democrats framed Thursday’s vote as an unfortunate but necessary step they had no choice but to take—because Republican leadership refused to address the outrageous past conduct of one of their own.
The second ranking House Democrat, Representative Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland), underscored the stakes of the vote when he appeared on the House floor during the debate on Thursday bearing a poster of a photo Greene posted to social media, in which she posed with a gun next to images of the progressive “Squad.”
Research contact: @thedailybeast
