Biden declares 'diplomacy is back' as he outlines foreign policy agenda at state department – live

House minority leader Kevin McCarthy denounced the resolution to remove Marjorie Taylor Greene from her committee assignments over her extremist views.

McCarthy argued the resolution, if approved, would set a dangerous precedent that would only intensify partisan divisions in the House.

The Republican leader condemned Greene’s past racist and anti-Semitic comments, but McCarthy has refused to remove the congresswoman from her committee assignments.

McCarthy accused Democrats of being “blinded by partisanship and politics”.

The House floor debate over whether Marjorie Taylor Greene should be removed from her committee assignments over her past racist, anti-Semitic and extremist comments is underway.

Ted Deutch, the Democratic chairman of the House ethics committee, denounced Greene for supporting conspiracy theories suggesting that school shootings, like the Parkland shooting that took place in Deutch, were staged.

“The 17 people who never came home from school on Feb. 14, 2018 were my constituents. Their families’ pain is real. And it is felt every single day,” Deutch said.

Greene said in a speech today that school shootings were real, but she did not apologize for her past comments.

The House voted along partly lines, 205-218, to reject Republican congressman Chip Roy’s motion to adjourn for the day.

The House is now debating the resolution to remove Marjorie Taylor Greene from her committee assignments over her racist, anti-Semitic and extremist rhetoric.

The Guardian’s Kari Paul reports:

Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook CEO, announced last week the platform will no longer algorithmically recommend political groups to users in an attempt to “turn down the temperature” on online divisiveness.

But experts say such policies are difficult to enforce, much less quantify, and the toxic legacy of the Groups feature and the algorithmic incentives promoting it will be difficult to erase.

“This is like putting a Band-Aid on a gaping wound,” said Jessica J González, the co-founder of the anti-hate speech group Change the Terms. “It doesn’t do enough to combat the long history of abuse that’s been allowed to fester on Facebook.”

Read Kari’s full report:

The House has adopted the rule for the resolution to remove Marjorie Taylor Greene from her committee assignments, clearing another procedural hurdle.

But Republican congressman Chip Roy has now introduced a motion to adjourn the chamber, which is expected to be defeated by the Democratic majority.

Roy’s motion will delay the final vote on Greene, who has been widely denounced for her racist and anti-Semitic views, until about 5:30 pm ET.

Joe Biden also used his state department speech to emphasize the importance of an independent press in a healthy democracy.

“We believe a free press isn’t an adversary, rather it’s essential,” the president said. “The free press is essential to the health of a democracy.”

The comments represented a stark contrast to Donald Trump, who repeatedly attacked the press as “fake news” and “the enemy of the people” for revealing unflattering facts about him and his administration.

Biden’s speech at the state department has now concluded.

Over his four years in office, Donald Trump brought down the cap on annual US refugee admissions to historic lows.

Joe Biden said in his state department speech today that he would sign an executive order to raise annual refugee admissions back up to 125,000.

But the new president acknowledged it would take time to “rebuild what has been so badly damaged” after four years of Trump’s leadership.

Joe Biden criticized the Vladimir Putin’s government, after a Russian court ruled that opposition leader Alexei Navalny should be jailed for two years and eight months.

Biden said Navalny “should be released immediately and without condition,” as protests rage over the opposition leader’s detainment.

“We will not hesitate to raise the cost on Russia and defend our vital interests and our people,” Biden said at the state department.

The House has voted to move forward with the resolution to remove Marjorie Taylor Greene from her committee assignments over her racist and anti-Semitic rhetoric.

The House voted 218-209, exactly along party lines, to approve the procedural motion in connection to the resolution. A second procedural vote is now underway.

Congressman Don Beyer, a Democrat of Virginia, said Marjorie Taylor Greene’s floor speech was “filled with whataboutism that concluded with comparing American journalists to violent QAnon conspiracy theories”.

“She continued claiming to be a victim. She took no responsibility for advocating violence. She did not apologize,” Beyer said.

The House’s procedural vote on removing Greene from her committee assignments over her racist and anti-Semitic rhetoric is still underway.

As of now, the vote has fallen exactly along party lines.

A procedural vote on the motion to remove Marjorie Taylor Greene from her committee assignments is now underway in the House.

Earlier this afternoon, Greene delivered a floor speech to defend herself amid widespread condemnation over her racist and extremist rhetoric.

In the speech, Greene claimed that she has not promoted the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory QAnon since she was elected to Congress.

But as a Daily Beast reported noted, that is not true. In December, Greene sent a now-deleted tweet promoting QAnon.