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Well, it looks like Barely Speaker Kevin got his Republican caucus in line to remove Rep. Ilhan Omar from the House Foreign Affairs Committee for nothing but racist and retaliatory reasons.
He removed Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell from the House Intelligence Committee to punish them for investigating and impeaching the Republican Party’s favorite traitor. But he can’t just flip his hair and do that to Omar, because the House Foreign Affairs Committee isn’t a select committee. Therefore it goes to a vote of the House, and for a minute there, it looked like he didn’t have the votes.
But aw shucks, there’s really no such thing as a white supremacist party game Republican congressmen don’t like playing, so it looks like McCarthy’s got it sorted. Even though their majority is only three right now, because Florida GOP Rep. Greg Steube is still off recovering from fall down go boom.
Some behind the scenes, skip it if you don’t care how Republicans got from “didn’t have the votes” to “fuck youuuuuu, Ilhan Omar.”
[T]he inclusion of a provision in the four-page resolution, that Republicans argue provides due process to Omar, seems to have appeased at least one crucial voter, as Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.) announced Tuesdaythat she would now support the measure. Reps. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) and Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) have publicly suggested that they would vote against it before the resolution’s text was released Tuesday, while Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) has said he remained undecided. Republican leadership aides, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to outline private whip counts, said they have the votes to pass the measure whenever Democrats formally appoint Omar to her committee.
Kevin McCarthy has been saying Omar has made “repeated antisemitic and anti-American remarks,” but that’s a lie just like his lies about Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell.
Because let’s be clear. This is definitely not about antisemitic remarks, all of which Omar has apologized for profusely. Greg Sargent notes that Matt Gaetz is actually being entirely honest about what’s going on:
Republicans want to punish Omar “because they don’t like what she has to say,” Gaetz said Monday. Though he remains undecided on whether to remove her, he correctly questioned the validity of doing this because “I don’t like your viewpoint.”
Again, that’s Matt Gaetz, who doesn’t know whether he’s going to vote for Omar, but is the only one telling the truth about what’s happening here.
Sargent tears apart Republicans’ flimsy stated reasons for opposing Omar.
Yes, some of these were seriously problematic, such as her tweet that Israel’s U.S. allies are driven by money. But Omar has apologized for her genuinely offensive remarks, and retracted other ones that faced criticism.
And yet:
Other comments cited in the resolution, such as her remarks about Sept. 11, are ripped out of context in keeping with trickery that Republicans have employed about her comments for years.
Y’all remember that one? Republicans have been lying through their forked tongues about it forever, claiming that about 9/11 Omar said merely that “some people did something” — like it was no big deal — when the truth is that it was four words taken wildly out of context.
Since that’s in the Republicans’ resolution against her, it’s worth putting this fact-checking video in here so we can all watch it:
Sargent also notes that Rep. Omar — as a Muslim woman from Somalia who wears a headscarf — probably faces more bigotry and discrimination than any person in Congress. He points to Marjorie Taylor Greene calling her “bloodthirsty” and “basically an apologist for Islamic terrorists” and Lauren Boebert saying she’s on the “jihad squad.” And all the death threats. And Donald Trump’s constant nativist, white supremacist attacks on Omar.
This seems to be the real crux of Republicans’ objections, writes Sargent. This is what they mean when they say “anti-American”:
The constant depiction of Omar as a foreign interloper advances a deeper objection: It’s tothis Muslim American being repeatedlychosen by hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens to represent them in Congress. Omar has urged Muslim Americans to be maximally active in the political process to counter efforts to stigmatize them — that is, to fully avail themselves of their rights and privileges as citizens.
Sargent, quoting Peter Beinart, writes that Omar has a “unique insistence on describing U.S. foreign policy through the eyes of the rest of the world.” The mere fact of having a Somali-born progressive Muslim woman in Congress means there is somebody in the room who’s going to say things American members of Congress aren’t used to hearing. She has a perspective that American members of Congress quite frankly aren’t used to respecting.
So yeah, we weren’t being flippant. This is nothing more than a white supremacist toga party, and sounds like pretty much the entire Republican caucus can’t wait to go.
So what’s fucking new about that?
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