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U.S. House votes to strip Georgia U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of committee assignments
Greene expresses regret for embracing conspiracy theories but does not address past support for violence against Democratic colleagues
♦By Rich Shumate, ChickenFriedPolitics.com editor
WASHINGTON (CFP) — On a largely party-line vote, the U.S. House Thursday took the unprecedented step of removing Georgia Republican U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene from her committee assignments after GOP leaders refused to do so in the wake of Greene’s past online support for conspiracy theories and violence against Democrats.
Eleven Republicans joined Democrats in support of the resolution, including three GOP members from South Florida, Carlos Giménez, Mario Diaz-Balart, and Maria Elvira Salazar.
Family members of victims of the deadly 2018 high school shooting in Parkland, Florida — which Greene has in the past questioned as a hoax — lobbied members to take action against Greene.

U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia, defends herself on the House floor
The move means that while Greene will remain a voting member of Congress, she won’t be able to participate in any of the committee work that is a key part of a member’s job.
The vote came after Greene took the floor to express regret about her past embrace of QAnon and conspiracy theories about school shootings and the 9/11 terror attacks, during which she also blamed the news media for mischaracterizing her views and lamented “cancel culture.”
“I think it’s important for all of us to remember that none of us is perfect,” she said, adding that if Democrats “want to condemn me and crucify me in the public square for words that I said and I regret a few years ago, then I think we’re in a real big problem.’
In her remarks, Greene did not address her past expressions of support for violence against Democrats, including liking a Facebook post in 2019 that called for putting “a bullet in the head” of Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Those threats were front and center in House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer’s impassioned argument for the resolution, during which he brandished a campaign poster showing Greene carrying a AR-15 rifle next to pictures of three Democratic women known as “The Squad,” over a caption reading “Squad’s Worst Nightmare.”
“I ask my colleagues to look at that image and tell me what message you think it sends,” he said. “These three faces are real people.”
The three members of The Squad are Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. In 2019, Greene posted a video arguing that Omar and Tlaib could not serve in Congress because they are Muslim.
Greene — calling herself a “very regular person” and wearing a mask emblazoned with the phrase “Free Speech” — explained that she became interested in the QAnon conspiracy in 2018 due to her frustration about events in Washington, including “Russian collusion,” which she dismissed as a false conspiracy theory.
“I was allowed to believe things that weren’t true, and I would ask questions about them and talk about them, and that is absolutely what I regret because if it weren’t for the Facebook posts and comments that I liked in 2018, I wouldn’t be standing here today and you couldn’t point a finger and accuse me of anything wrong,” she said.
She also noted that she did not advance QAnon during her campaign for the House last year or since she was elected to represent Georgia’s 14th District, which covers the northwestern corner of the state.
Despite previous expressions of support for conspiracy theories holding that mass school shootings were staged and expressing skepticism about official accounts of the 9/11 attacks, she said she now believes that “school shootings are absolutely real” and that “9/11 absolutely happened.”
However, she also said the news media is “just as guilty as QAnon in presenting truth and lies.”
“You only know me by how Media Matters, CNN, MSNBC and the rest of the mainstream media is portraying me,” she said. “Big media companies can take teeny, tiny pieces of words that I’ve said, that you have said, any of us, and can portray us as someone that we’re not, and that is wrong.”
In her remarks Thursday, Greene did not address one of the more outlandish conspiracy theories that she supported in 2018, which posited that wildfires in California may have been ignited by lasers from outer space by a cabal that included a Jewish-owned bank.
The fuse leading to Thursday’s vote was lit when Republican leaders appointed Greene to the budget and education committees, with the latter appointment triggering particular outrage because of her past comments about school shootings.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has condemned Greene’s earlier comments but declined to strip her of her committee assignments, prompting Democrats to take action, which McCarthy dismissed as a “partisan power grab.”
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North Carolina voters bounce Renee Ellmers from Congress
Ellmers ends campaign with disparaging comment about a female GOP official’s weight
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com editor
RALEIGH (CFP) — Running in a redrawn district and facing a tsunami of outside spending aimed squarely at her, U.S. Rep. Renee Ellmers of North Carolina has lost her bid for a fourth term, becoming the first GOP lawmaker to fall in a primary in 2016.

U.S. Rep. Renee Ellmers
Ellmers lost the June 7 GOP primary to U.S. Rep. George Holding, who opted to run against Ellmers after a court-ordered redraw of the Tar Heel State’s U.S. House map moved his district to another part of the state.
Her campaign ended on a bizarre note when a television camera captured Ellmers making a disparaging remark about Maggie Sandrock, a former chair of the Harnett County Republican Party, as she made her way into a polling place to vote.
“You’re eating a little too much pork barbecue. Woo,” Ellmers said in an exchange captured by Raleigh TV station WNCN.
Reacting to the comment, Sandrock, a former Ellmers supporter who now backs one of her opponents, said the congresswoman had “become a mean girl on steroids.”
Holding took 53 percent of the vote in the the 2nd District primary. Ellmers managed just 24 percent, edging past Greg Brannon, who jumped into the race after losing a U.S. Senate primary back in March.
The House primary was delayed three months after a federal court panel ordered state lawmakers to redraw the map passed after the 2010 Census. The judges ruled that two districts were improperly gerrymandered using racial considerations.
Ellmers’s district in suburban Raleigh was substantially redrawn in the new map, forcing her to run in unfamiliar territory. Her task became more difficult after Holding decided to give up his 13th District seat, which had been moved west to the Greensboro area, and run against Ellmers instead.
Ellmers, 52, a nurse, was first elected in the 2010 Tea Party wave as a critic of Obamacare, with the support of outside conservative groups such as the Club for Growth, FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity.
But those groups turned on Ellmers with a vengeance this year, spending more than $1 million to paint her as a Washington insider who supported wasteful spending.
In her concession speech, Ellmers said she was “disappointed” that the outside spending derailed her re-election bid, despite a high-profile endorsement from Donald Trump.
“The special interest groups with their deep pocks in Washington, unfortunately, have won today,” she said. “I hold my head up high. I’ve done what is necessary to serve the people of the (district).”
Ellmers also ran afoul of anti-abortion groups when she forced Republican leaders to carve out a rape exception in a bill outlawing abortions after 20 weeks.
In October 2015, Ellmers publicly denied rumors that she was having an extramarital affair with House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, which came to light after McCarthy abruptly abandoned a run for House speaker.
Holding will now face Democrat John McNeil, a Raleigh lawyer, in November, in a district with a strong Republican tilt.
U.S. Rep. Daniel Webster enters contest for House speaker
Florida Republican calls for decentralizing power, empowering backbenchers
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com editor
WASHINGTON (CFP) — U.S. Rep. Daniel Webster of Florida has announced he will run for House speaker to replace outgoing Speaker John Boehner on a platform of decentralizing the GOP leadership’s control of the House agenda by pushing down “the pyramid of power.”
“What I want to see is a principle-based, member-driven Congress,” Webster said in a September 28 appearance on Fox News where he announced his candidacy. “We don’t have that now. I’d like to have us have it.”
“We can show ourselves as leaders by opening up the process, by allowing lots of debate and lots of amendments and lost of opportunities for members,” he said.
Webster, 66, from Winter Haven in Central Florida, is serving his third term in the House. Prior to his service in Congress, Webster served 28 years in the Florida legislature and was state House speaker from 1996 to 1998.
Webster is running to replace Speaker John Boehner, who announced September 25 that he was stepping down amid conflict within the Republican House conference between Boehner’s allies and conservative backbench critics.
Earlier this year, Webster ran against Boehner in an unsuccessful attempt to bounce him from the speaker’s chair. Afterward, Boehner removed Webster from the powerful House Rules Committee.
Conservative critics of Boehner have complained about attempts to punish members who defied the House GOP leadership.
Webster will face one of those leaders, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California, in the race for speaker.