Congresswoman Jaime Herrera Beutler addresses a crowd at her in-person town hall in January 2017.
WASHINGTON — In an unprecedented move, the House of Representatives voted Thursday largely along party lines to remove freshman Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene from two committees over the controversial words and actions of the Georgia Republican who has espoused conspiracy theories and harassed mass shooting survivors.
Northwest Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Russ Fulcher, Dan Newhouse and Jaime Herrera Beutler were among the GOP lawmakers who opposed the action, all but 11 of the party's House members. The vote forced Republicans to go on the record supporting or opposing Greene's removal from two panels after GOP leaders rebuffed Democrats' demand to strip Greene of her assignments in a private vote.
The GOP steering committee's decision to appoint Greene to the Education and Labor Committee drew attention to a comment she made on Facebook in 2018 agreeing with a user that the mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, that year was a "false flag" operation staged by supporters of gun control .
Greene is also shown in a video following David Hogg, who became a gun-control activist after surviving the Parkland massacre, calling the then-teenager a "coward" and asking him, "Why do you use children as a barrier?"
Reflecting on the incident in a 2019 interview, she called Hogg, now 20, "an idiot" who is "trained ... like a dog."
Northwest Republicans sought to distance themselves from Greene but objected to the vote, wary of the precedent it sets for the party in control of the House to unseat a member of the minority party from committees, one of the primary ways lawmakers can influence policy and advance legislation.
"I completely disagree and disavow many of the statements and videos that have come out about Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene," McMorris Rodgers, a Spokane Republican, said in a statement. "Many of her comments are beneath the dignity of the office for which she has been elected."
"I also believe it sets a dangerous precedent to allow members of the opposing party to hand down punishments that impact an elected representative's ability to serve their constituents based on statements that were made prior to being elected."
Stripping a lawmaker of committee assignments as a punishment isn't entirely without precedent, but it had never been done by members of an opposing party. In 2019, GOP leaders removed former Rep. Steve King from all of his committees after the Iowa Republican lamented that "white nationalist" and "white supremacist" were considered offensive terms. King was ousted in a primary election last year.
Some Republicans argued Greene should not face the same standard for actions on social media before she was elected, but others in the party made their disapproval clear. In a statement Monday, Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said the Georgia lawmaker's embrace of conspiracy theories and "loony lies" was "a cancer for the Republican Party."
In posts on social media, Greene has embraced QAnon, a conspiracy theory in which former President Donald Trump is seen as a messianic figure who would save the country from a satanic cabal of Democratic cannibals and pedophiles. She liked Facebook comments suggesting prominent Democrats should be hanged and, in the case of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, killed with "a bullet to the head."
Speaking before Thursday's vote, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., held up a large print of an image Greene posted on Facebook during her campaign showing herself holding an assault-style rifle next to three Democrats known as "the Squad." A caption on the photo reads, "Squad's worst nightmare."
"They are people, they are our colleagues," Hoyer said, addressing the Republicans in the chamber. "This is an AR-15."
The Georgia lawmaker has suggested Muslims should not be allowed in Congress and the election of Muslims in 2018 was part of "an Islamic invasion of our government."
Liberal media watchdog group Media Matters for America has also unearthed statements from Greene suggesting no airplane crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, that mass shootings in Las Vegas and Sandy Hook, Connecticut, were staged, and that a Jewish cabal used a laser in space to start the 2018 Camp Fire in California in order to clear a path for a high-speed rail project.
Herrera Beutler, a southwest Washington Republican, sharply criticized Greene's statements but called the full House voting to punish her "a route to madness."
"Marjorie Taylor Greene has espoused and amplified views that are not just objectionable, but insane," Herrera Beutler said. "I'm sorry, but an airplane really did hit the Pentagon on 9/11. There is no cabal of celebrities and Democratic politicians running a satanic pedophile ring out of a pizza parlor. School shootings are not 'false flag events.' California wildfires were not ignited by a space laser. And the presidential election was NOT stolen.
"It is a national shame that politicians who know better, and maybe unfortunately a few who don't know better, nurture wrongheaded and dangerous beliefs and coddle the voters who hold them. People deserve the truth."
Under pressure from GOP leaders, Greene reportedly apologized in a private meeting Wednesday. Speaking on the House floor Thursday, she stopped short of issuing a public apology but expressed regret for her past statements while decrying the effort to punish her as an example of "cancel culture."
"I was allowed to believe things that weren't true," Greene said. "And I would ask questions about them and talk about them, and that is absolutely what I regret."
Greene emerged on the political scene in 2020, originally running in a moderate district in the Atlanta suburbs. When former Rep. Tom Graves announced his retirement in the far more conservative 14th district, Greene transplanted her campaign operation to the northern Georgia district.
Several prominent Republicans distanced themselves from Greene before the 2020 election over her statements, including a campaign email that referred to Pelosi as "that (expletive)." House Minority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana called her comments "disgusting" and endorsed her Republican opponent, but other GOP stars, including Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, endorsed Greene.
Thursday's vote came just a day after 61 House Republicans reportedly voted via secret ballot to remove Rep. Liz Cheney from GOP leadership after the Wyoming lawmaker and third-ranking Republican voted to impeach Trump over his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol.
The back-to-back votes cast light on the divide among Republicans, who ultimately decided to keep both women under the party's tent. An Axios-SurveyMonkey poll conducted Monday and Tuesday found Republicans and GOP-leaning voters favor Greene at a far higher rate than Cheney.
