Republican Lawmaker Reverses Course On Ilhan Omar, Now Supports Removing Her From Committee

Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-IN) indicated Tuesday that she has reversed course on her previous opposition to removing Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) from the House Foreign Affairs Committee after she met with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) this week.

Spartz’s reversal comes after McCarthy already booted Reps. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Eric Swalwell (D-CA) from the House Intelligence Committee over security concerns surrounding their ability to be trusted with classified information.

The effort to boot Omar from the Foreign Affairs Committee comes in response to her history of anti-Semitism.

“I appreciate Speaker McCarthy’s willingness to address legitimate concerns and add due process language to our resolution,” Spartz said in a statement late Tuesday night. “Deliberation and debate are vital for our institution, not top-down approaches.”

“The rule of law, freedom of speech, and due process are fundamental to our Constitutional Republic,” she continued. “Our founding fathers understood that pure democracy is dangerous and can lead to the tyranny of majority, mob rule and dictatorship. As to my fellow conservatives, I think setting a precedent of allowing an appeal process for the Speaker’s and majority-party removal decisions is particularly important to freedom-loving legislators who usually are on the receiving end of issues like this.”

Spartz signaled earlier this month that she opposed the move to remove Omar from the committee because she believed that it was retaliation for Democrats removing GOP members off committees in the past.

“Two wrongs do not make a right,” Spartz said in a previous statement. “Speaker Pelosi took unprecedented actions last Congress to remove Reps. Greene and Gosar from their committees without proper due process. Speaker McCarthy is taking unprecedented actions this Congress to deny some committee assignments to the Minority without proper due process again.”

“As I spoke against it on the House floor two years ago, I will not support this charade again,” she claimed. “Speaker McCarthy needs to stop ‘bread and circuses’ in Congress and start governing for a change.”

More than 2,000 Rabbis Urge Congress To Kick Ilhan Omar Off Foreign Affairs Committee

An organization representing more than 2,000 rabbis is urging congressional leaders to keep Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) off the House Foreign Affairs Committee over her extensive history of anti-Semitism.

The letter comes as a small group of Republicans, including Reps. Nancy Mace (SC), Victoria Spartz (IN), and Ken Buck (CO) have suggested that they may not support House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) bid to kick her off the committee.

The Coalition for Jewish Values addressed the letter to McCarthy and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), asking that Congress follows through on McCarthy’s pledge to remove her from the committee.

“This is not a political matter, but one of moral conscience, and a necessary step to quell the rising tide of antisemitic speech and violence now impacting Jewish communities across America,” wrote Rabbi Yoel Schonfeld, President; and Rabbi Yaakov Menken, Managing Director.

The letter also comes after Omar claimed during a CNN interview on Sunday that she had no idea that her anti-Semitic statements “were trafficking in antisemitism.”

“On three separate occasions, we wrote to the previous Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, to make this same request,” the rabbis wrote. “We were ignored all three times, while antisemitic hate crimes became ever more common in this country. Upon learning of the appointment of Rep. Omar to the Foreign Affairs committee, we wrote to express our ‘alarm, dismay and outrage,’ given that even before her election to Congress, Ms. Omar had repeatedly used antisemitic tropes.”

The rabbis said that they warned that allowing Omar on the committee would embolden anti-Semitism across the U.S. and in Congress.

“Less than a month later, we renewed our request after Rep. Omar showed that her bigotry was unabated,” they wrote. “She employed, among others, the classic trope of Jewish disloyalty, and implied that House colleagues who supported Israel had been bought off. As she wrote, ‘it’s all about the Benjamins.’”

The group continued by highlighting numerous other instances of Omar’s anti-Semitism and saying it was “clear that the failure of Congress to dissociate itself from Rep. Omar’s bigotry helped create the environment of hate now evident in New York and across the country, precisely as Lord Rabbi Sacks warned.”

“We believe that to remove Rep. Omar from the Foreign Affairs committee is the only morally responsible choice for a Member of Congress who opposes racism, bigotry, and antisemitism,” the letter concluded. “We implore each and every member to demonstrate their concern for all of America’s minorities, by acting against hatred directed against those most frequently targeted.”