House Democrats said on Wednesday that they will force a vote on stripping freshman Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee assignments.
But Greene, who represents Georgia, predicted the Democrats will end up strengthening her politically, and she’s not the only one.
- “How stupid [Democrats] are,” she told the Washington Examiner. “They don’t even realize they’re helping me. I’m pretty amazed at how dumb they are.”
The vote: In announcing the floor vote against Greene, Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 Democrat, said he had spoken with Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California and “it is clear there is no alternative.”
- The vote, scheduled for Thursday, will put Republicans on the record either siding with former President Donald Trump to support Greene or with Democrats to punish her for promoting conspiracy theories and other inflammatory views before she was elected.
- Democrats’ unilateral action against Greene, a former QAnon supporter from Georgia, is highly unusual in that party leaders generally have authority over who represents them on committees.
A spokesman for McCarthy told The New York Times on Wednesday only that he would “address this with members later today.”
How we got here: According to Politico, McCarthy late on Tuesday night called a meeting with the panel that designates committee assignments to discuss how to handle Greene.
- The GOP leader said he would talk to Stoyer and offer to remove Greene from either the education or budget committee if Democrats backed off their threat to remove her from both, the report said.
- McCarthy and other Republicans reportedly thought having to vote on the Green controversy could be politically damaging for the party — and some warned it would end up “making Greene a martyr with the Republican base.”
Earlier in the evening, McCarthy held a two-hour meeting with Greene in which he pressed her to either denounce QAnon and publicly apologize for her past comments or to step down from the committees to spare her colleagues a vote on the matter, Politico reported.
McCarthy apparently failed to sway either Stoyer or Greene.
- After blasting Democrats in a series of defiant tweets on Wednesday, Greene told the Examiner that McCarthy is no better.
- “I think Republicans need to get back to who they are, and they need to stop talking and actually doing,” she said.
- “And Kevin McCarthy and all these leaders, the leadership, and everyone is proving that they are all talk and not about action and they’re just all about doing business as usual in Washington. And so what’s the difference between them and the Democrats? There isn’t a difference.”
Greene in the past week raised over $150,000 in her clash with the establishment and won a letter of support signed by key Republican leaders in her district.
Meanwhile, several Republicans have sponsored an amendment to the resolution against Greene, calling for Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, to also lose her committee assignments over past anti-Semitic comments.
The Trump factor McCarthy has in recent weeks struggled to manage a divide within the GOP over the party’s relationship with Trump and his most-committed supporters.
- The House leader yet to address the controversy surrounding Greene and has equivocated on a separate debate over the future of Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming.
Republicans will meet on Wednesday at 4 p.m. to discuss whether Cheney should lose her role as the No. 3 Republican for voting to impeach Trump over his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
