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      Liz Cheney censured by Wyoming Republican party for voting to impeach Trump

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      Liz Cheney, the third-highest-ranking Republican leader in the House, was censured by the Wyoming Republican party on Saturday for voting to impeach Donald Trump for his role in the 6 January riot at the US Capitol.The overwhelming censure vote was the latest blowback for Cheney for joining nine Republican representatives and all Democrats in the US House in the 13 January impeachment vote.On Saturday only eight of the 74-member state GOP’s central committee stood to oppose censure in a vote that did not proceed to a formal count. The censure document accused Cheney of voting to impeach even though the US House didn’t offer Trump “formal hearing or due process”.“We need to honor President Trump. All President Trump did was call for a peaceful assembly and protest for a fair and audited election,” said Darin Smith, a Cheyenne attorney who lost to Cheney in the Republican US House primary in 2016. “The Republican party needs to put her on notice.”Cheney in a statement after the vote said she remained honored to represent Wyoming and would always fight for issues that matter most to the state. “Foremost among these is the defense of our constitution and the freedoms it guarantees. My vote to impeach was compelled by the oath I swore to the constitution,” Cheney said.Republican officials said they invited Cheney but she did not attend. An empty chair labeled “Representative Cheney” sat at the front of the meeting room.Cheney will remain as the third-ranking member of the House GOP leadership, however, after a 145-61 vote by House Republicans on Wednesday to keep her as conference committee chair.In Wyoming just three months after winning a third term with almost 70%, Cheney already faces at least two Republican primary opponents in 2022. They include the Republican state senator Anthony Bouchard, a gun-rights activist from Cheyenne, who was at the meeting but not among those who spoke. Smith also has said he is deliberating whether to run for Congress again.On 28 January the Republican US Representative Matt Gaetz, of Florida, led a rally against Cheney in front of the Wyoming Capitol. About 1,000 people took part, many of them carrying signs calling for Cheney’s impeachment though several were supportive.Trump faces trial in the US Senate on Tuesday over allegedly inciting insurrection when a mob of supporters stormed into and rampaged through the Capitol after a nearby rally led by Trump and close allies.Censure opponents mainly came from Casper, Wyoming’s second-largest city, and the Jackson Hole area near Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks.“Let’s resist this infusion of leftwing cancel culture to try to censure and get rid of anybody we disagree with,” said Alexander Muromcew with the Teton county GOP.Momentum for censure had been growing for weeks as local Republicans in around a dozen of Wyoming’s 23 counties passed their own resolutions criticizing Cheney’s impeachment vote. More

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      Extremists like Marjorie Taylor Greene are the real face of the new Republican party | Lloyd Green

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      Republicans in the House of Representatives remain enthralled to Donald Trump and fearful of his base. On Thursday, 95% of the chamber’s Republicans refused to strip the freshman member Marjorie Taylor Greene – a gun-brandishing, hate-spewing, conspiracy-monger – of her committee assignments. The deadly aftermath of the 6 January insurrection changed nothing.Trump is out of office but his spirit lives on. The anger and resentment of the Republican rank-and-file will likely define the party’s trajectory in the coming months and years. QAnon is now a pillar of the party, as much as the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, may disavow knowledge of its existence.Greene’s sins are real, not imagined. Over the years she has blamed California’s wildfires on a Jewish laser beam from space, claimed 9/11 was an inside job, and suggested that school shootings were staged. In 2018 and 2019 she endorsed social media comments that appeared to support the assassination or execution of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi. (Recently, Greene has partly walked back some of her more disturbing past remarks.)Sadly, the Republican party has morphed into a fever swamp fueled by racially driven animus tethered to a fear and loathing of modernity. A normal political party would not have someone like Greene holding office. But Republicans these days function like a fringe grouping.Likewise, the mob that attacked the Capitol cannot simply be discounted as an outburst of conspiratorial rage. The insurrectionist horde left a trail of dead and wounded. Military veterans, real estate brokers and seemingly upstanding members of America’s middle class filled the rioters’ ranks. Deep-pocketed Republican donors reportedly helped make the carnage possible.Yet the discontented-disconnect that propelled Trump’s 2016 electoral upset threatens to undermine Republican efforts to reclaim the House and Senate. In January, tens of thousands of voters exited the Republican party. In Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Utah, the party suffered a cumulative loss of more than 30,000 voters from its rolls.The Republican party has morphed into a fever swamp fueled by racially driven animus tethered to a fear and loathing of modernityPolitics is about addition, not subtraction. An exodus of college-educated suburban moms and dads is not what McCarthy needs to wrest the speaker’s gavel. Likewise, this hemorrhaging will not assist Mitch McConnell in dethroning Chuck Schumer from his perch as the Senate majority leader.Liz Cheney retaining the no 3 slot in the Republican House leadership does not alter this pocked and toxic landscape. Cheney’s hard-fought victory over 61 benighted colleagues is testament to her own grit and the desire of the Republican party’s top-guns to keep the existing power structure intact. Nothing more.Cheney and Greene each carried the day among the House Republicans, but the Georgia freshman actually garnered more of their backing. Cheney’s upward arc is done, while Greene is free to embark on an endless fundraising binge and tweet to her heart’s content. Freedom can be another word for nothing left to lose.Indeed, on the state level, religious-like devotion to Trump is the operative creed of the realm. Those who refuse to kiss the ring are the new heretics.Arizona Republicans censured Cindy McCain, the late senator’s wife, for backing Joe Biden. They also blasted Doug Ducey, the state’s Republican governor, for refusing to steal the election.In Wyoming, 10 Republican county organizations have censured Cheney for supporting Trump’s impeachment, and more are expected in the coming weeks. Already, Cheney faces a primary challenge.Meanwhile, Nebraska’s Ben Sasse confronts possible censure in his home state. He earned their wrath for condemning Trump’s efforts to subvert democracy. Once upon a time, Sasse wrote a book subtitled Why We Hate Each Other.For the record, Sasse is one of only five Senate Republicans who opposed dismissing impeachment charges against the 45th president. He also declined to back Trump four years ago and last November too. A church-going Presbyterian, Sasse framed things this way: “Politics isn’t about the weird worship of one dude.”Really?Even now, Trump is the top choice for his party’s 2024 presidential nomination. Beyond that, more than three-quarters of Republicans believe there was widespread voter fraud despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. For many, the truth is too much to handle.Regardless, Trump’s big lie has taken root and will not soon disappear. The demographic tectonics and disparities that spurred Trump to power are still with us. Biden’s election didn’t change that.Practically speaking, only a string of consecutive electoral losses may snap the Republicans out of their enchantment with the ex-television reality show host. Until then, Trump will remain the Republican party’s dominant force. In Greene’s words, it is his party, “it doesn’t belong to anybody else.” More

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      Who is the Republican extremist Marjorie Taylor Greene?

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      Awaiting punishment for her lengthy history of extreme and violent commentary on Thursday, Marjorie Taylor Greene rose to introduce herself to the Congress. Wearing a mask embroidered with the words “FREE SPEECH”, the freshman congresswoman from Georgia regretted that she had not yet had a chance to tell her House colleagues “who I am and what I’m about”.Over the next eight minutes, Greene sought to untangle herself from the litany of dangerous and unfounded conspiracy theories that she had peddled on social media in recent years – “words of the past” that did not represent her.Greene renounced her embrace of QAnon, an ideology the FBI has called a potential domestic terrorism threat. She said school shootings in Parkland and Sandy Hook were “absolutely real”, and not so-called “false flag” events designed to build support for gun control laws, as she once suggested. “I also want to tell you 9/11 absolutely happened,” she declared, somewhat sheepishly, after previously questioning whether a plane really flew into the Pentagon.Despite a show of contrition, however, she offered no explicit apology. Instead, a defiant Greene warned that those seeking to “condemn me and crucify me in the public square for words that I said and I regret” were wading into dangerous political territory that would haunt them should Republicans reclaim the majority.She remained in the chamber for the debate, as her colleagues litigated her past – and sought to tie it to her party’s future.“The party of Lincoln, the party of Eisenhower, the party of Reagan is becoming the party of Marjorie Taylor Greene and the party of violent conspiracy theories,” the House rules committee chairman, Jim McGovern, a Democrat from Massachusetts, said in a floor speech.Hours later, the House rendered its verdict, stripping Greene of her committee assignments in an extraordinary rebuke of the first-term lawmaker who Donald Trump once praised as a “future Republican star”.Yet Greene’s exile – over the objection of all but 11 House Republicans – has only exacerbated the growing chasm within the party, between an emboldened extremist movement that flourished under Trump’s presidency and an increasingly isolated group of conservatives who want to move beyond the divide-and-conquer politics of the last four years.As pressure built on Republicans to discipline Greene, Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, called her “looney lies” a “cancer” to the party and the nation. The House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, also condemned Greene’s statements, but ultimately declined to take any punitive action, arguing that she should not be punished for remarks made before she was elected.In those social media posts and videos, only some of which she disavowed and many of which came to light before she was elected, Greene indicated support for executing top Democrats, including the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi; claimed that Muslims should not be allowed to serve in government; and compared Black Lives Matter activists to neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan.She also trafficked in a slew of conspiracy theories, many of which are rooted in antisemitism, Islamophobia and white nationalism. Most notably, she embraced QAnon, a conspiracy that claims Trump is trying to save the world from a shadowy cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles. In posts unearthed recently, Greene wrote in 2018 that a devastating California wildfire was caused by a Jewish-controlled “laser” beamed from space.fIn another video, she accosts the gun-control activist David Hogg, who survived the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, as he walked down a street in Washington. He was there to lobby lawmakers in support of passing gun safety measures, while she was there to oppose them. “He’s a coward,” she said of Hogg.Greene represents an ascending far-right movement within the Republican ranks that carries the banner of Trump’s grievance politics – and the support of his loyal supporters who are now critical to the party’s future.“We’re thankful for her,” said Dianne Putnam, chair of the Whitfield county Republican party, which is situated in Greene’s district. “We’ve been waiting to have a congressman [sic] that would take a stand for conservative causes and be a voice for us that we felt we’ve never had.”In her telling, Greene was not particularly political before 2016, when she was galvanized by the billionaire’s “plain talk”. She became increasingly political – and radical.In 2017, disenchanted with mainstream news coverage of Trump’s presidency, she turned to online message boards where she discovered QAnon, at the time a fringe internet subculture. She began writing for a now defunct conspiracy blog called American Truth Seekers, publishing articles that expressed support for QAnon and other outrageous theories, among them that Hillary Clinton was behind John F Kennedy Jr’s 1999 death in an airplane crash.Greene told the House on Thursday that she “walked away” from QAnon in 2018 after discovering “misinformation, lies, things that were not true”. But as recently as late last year, she spoke openly and favorably of the movement.In 2019, Greene decided to run for Congress. She initially launched a campaign in the district where she lived, a competitive seat in suburban Atlanta held by the Democratic congresswoman Lucy McBath. But when the Republican congressman Tom Graves announced his retirement, she switched to run in Georgia’s 14th congressional district, a deep-red corner of the state that borders Tennessee to the north and Alabama to the west.Running on a “pro-Life, pro-Gun, pro-Trump” platform, the political novice cast herself as a deeply Christian mother of three who was the first in her family to graduate from college. She touted her success as a businesswoman, running a commercial construction company founded by her father, and later, a CrossFit gym.After placing first in a crowded primary field, Greene advanced to a runoff against John Cowan, a neurosurgeon who pitched himself as equally conservative and pro-Trump minus the “circus act”. “She is not conservative – she’s crazy,” he told Politico ahead of the election, adding: “She deserves a YouTube channel, not a seat in Congress.”Though her messaging raised concern among some national Republicans, there was never a concerted strategy to defeat her. A handful of party leaders and conservative groups intervened to endorse Cowan, but many remained neutral. She earned crucial support from the members of the arch-conservative House Freedom Caucus, including Jim Jordan, the group’s founder, and Andy Biggs, its chairman.Greene won the runoff with nearly 60% of the vote, and coasted to victory in November.Since her arrival in Congress, she has continued to build on her brand as a far-right provocateur. Sporting masks that said “Stop the Steal”, Greene was a vocal proponent of the baseless claim that Trump won the presidential election, and was among a handful of conservatives who met with him at the White House to discuss overturning the election results.Greene referred to 6 January, the day Congress was set to formalize the election results, as Republicans’ “1776 moment” before a rally to defend the president turned into a deadly riot on Capitol Hill. Even after the assault, she continued to claim Trump would remain in office and decried his impeachment. Days later, she announced that she would file articles of impeachment against Joe Biden – before he was even sworn into office.Far from being a fringe figure, Greene represents the “tip of the spear” of a radical movement that is building power within the Republican party, said Adele Stan, director of Right Wing Watch, a project of People for the American Way.In Congress, she is joined by Lauren Boebert, a freshman Republican from Colorado who has also expressed support for QAnon conspiracy theories. Across the country, local parties and elected officials are rushing to embrace – rather than confront – the swirl of toxic conspiracy theories and disinformation coursing through their grassroots.By failing to unilaterally punish Greene, Stan said Republicans were giving “passive affirmation” to the ideology promulgated by the web of far-right and white nationalist groups who organized and led the deadly siege at the Capitol on 6 January.“If you don’t hold people accountable, then things will continue to spiral out of control, which is what we’re seeing happen in the Republican party right now – and why there was an insurrection at the Capitol,” she said. “People need to be held accountable for what they say.”Banished from her committees by House Democrats and 11 Republicans after just a month in Congress, Greene said she felt liberated. At a news conference on Friday, Greene said she would use her political sway and social-media savvy to grow the pro-Trump movement and push Republicans further to the right.“I woke up early this morning literally laughing thinking about what a bunch of morons the Democrats (+11) are for giving some one like me free time,” Greene wrote on Twitter. “Oh, this is going to be fun!” More

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      The Guardian view on Republican extremism: Trumpism flourishes | Editorial

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      That someone is ludicrous doesn’t stop them being dangerous, as Donald Trump and now Marjorie Taylor Greene have demonstrated. The new Georgia congresswoman has not only repeatedly spread racist and antisemitic statements; she has suggested a Jewish banking family might have been involved in starting wildfires with “space lasers”, repeatedly endorsed QAnon conspiracy theories and questioned whether the Pentagon was attacked on 9/11. Her views are no less poisonous and extremist for being so bizarre.The most frightening and extraordinary thing about her, however, is that she is now welcome at the heart of the Republican party. Though Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, has described her “loony lies and conspiracy theories” as “a cancer for the Republican party”, his diagnosis comes much too late. Kevin McCarthy, his counterpart in the House, boasts of a “big tent” – so large that it now includes those who have supported the killing of political opponents. It took Democrats to strip Ms Greene of her committee positions via a House vote on Thursday, an unprecedented move that should never have been necessary. They are happy to seize the opportunity to portray the GOP as Ms Greene’s party. But they are not so wrong to do so.All but 11 Republicans in the House thought a woman who had described two school shootings as false flag operations and hounded a Parkland survivor was fit to serve not only on the budget committee but on that for education and labour too. The supposed justification is that she expressed her noxious views before she was elected. She has apologised (though only in private) for some of them, and walked back from some others publicly, stating that “school shootings are real” and “9/11 absolutely happened” – while boasting of raising $1.6m through her calls for support against a “Democratic mob”.The real reason is her popularity with the party base. Trumpism is flourishing. Mr Trump may have left the White House, but Mr McCarthy takes care to pay respects at his court in Florida. Meanwhile, the same colleagues who offered Ms Greene a standing ovation lambasted Liz Cheney for backing the former president’s impeachment for inciting violent insurrection; the ultra-conservative is now portrayed as a spineless liberal. Americans who align with the Republicans are far more likely to support Mr McCarthy and Ms Greene than Mr McConnell or Ms Cheney.To call this a battle for the soul of the Republican party, as many have done, is generous; it is a calculated set of choices about its long-term viability, the political ambitions of those within it, and the fundamental clash between its radicalised base and grassroots political operatives, and the broader national electorate. (That renewed efforts at voter suppression are already under way is a reminder that the party’s primary response to a shrinking demographic base has been to rig the system.)Ms Greene is less the cause of their dilemma than the result of it. This week’s events both echo and spring from the Republican response to Mr Trump’s candidacy, his sins as a president, his attempts to overturn the election result, and even his incitement of sedition and the storming of the Capitol: feeble expressions of distaste, but ultimately acquiescence and complicity – throwing a cloak of political respectability over the ugly and intolerable. Some of the party would now like to turn back, but can no longer find the old path. The rest are travelling further and faster along their new road, and taking others with them. More

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      Texas Republicans endorse legislation to allow vote on secession from US

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      The Texas Republican party has endorsed legislation that would allow state residents to vote whether to secede from the United States.In a talkshow interview, the party chair, Allen West, argued that: “Texans have a right to voice their opinions on [this] critical issue.“I don’t understand why anyone would feel that they need to prevent people from having a voice in something that is part of the Texas constitution,” the former Florida congressman said of the Texas Referendum Independence Act. “You cannot prevent the people from having a voice.”West is the latest Republican to come out in support of declaring Texas an independent nation. Last month, thestate representative Kyle Biedermann confirmed that he will introduce the bill for a referendum as early as this week.“Texit,” named after the British referendum to leave the European Union, refers to the process of Texas exiting the United States to become an independent, self-governing nation.The endorsement drew intense backlash from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. Many took aim directly at Allen as party chair, continuing a slew of criticism that has been levied at him since first he took on the role in July.Back then, Allen was immediately criticized for changing the political organization’s slogan to “We are the Storm,” in what the New York Times called an “unusually visible example of the Republican party’s dalliance with QAnon”, the conspiracy theory.This week’s endorsement also is not the first time the former Florida congressman has promoted secession.Earlier he insisted that “law-abiding states should bond together and form a Union of states that will abide by the constitution”, following a US supreme court ruling to dismiss a lawsuit seeking to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election.When corporate donors to the Texas Republican party were asked for responses, many companies stated that they had not made any recent political donations – some paused all corporate giving after the 6 January deadly insurrection at the US Capitol, the political news site Popular Information reported.The ride-hailing company Lyft, which donated $5,000 to the Texas GOP in 2016, told the outlet that it had “no plans to donate to the party in the future”, adding that the company was “troubled by chairman West’s statements”. More

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      Extremist Marjorie Taylor Greene loses key posts but Republicans slow to censure

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      In the end, just 11 Republicans voted to discipline Marjorie Taylor Greene, despite the Republican congresswoman having claimed space lasers had started wildfires, suggesting mass shootings didn’t really happen, and supporting the assassination of Democratic politicians.The vote, on whether to strip Greene of her committee assignments, neatly reflected the dilemma facing Republicans in 2021: does the GOP continue on the unhinged, conspiracy theory-laden path trodden by Greene and others, or return to the staid, conservative outlook of the relatively recent past – potentially alienating Donald Trump’s supporters along the way.Most Republicans members of Congress chose the former, but Greene was removed from her committee roles anyway, as 230 to 199 representatives voted to leave Greene with little to no power in the House.The vote came after the Republican House leader, Kevin McCarthy, decided against punishing Greene in an internal party meeting this week – a meeting where the congresswoman reportedly received a standing ovation from some colleagues after she apologized for her past remarks.Those remarks, uncovered by Media Matters, a progressive watchdog, include the claim by Greene in 2018 that a laser beam from space had started a devastating wildfire in California. According to Greene, an executive from “Rothschild Inc” was somehow involved – the Rothschild family have repeatedly been the subject of antisemitic conspiracy theories.In Facebook posts, Greene also implied that Hillary Clinton was involved in the 1999 plane crash that killed John F Kennedy Jr – Clinton was not – and suggested that Barack Obama deployed MS-13 gang members to kill a Democratic staffer – Obama did not.In another Islamophobic Facebook screed, uncovered by CNN, Greene that Muslims “want to conquer” the US and aim to mutilate American women’s genitalia.Greene, who has expressed support for the antisemitic QAnon conspiracy, which has been linked with several violent acts in the US, will now be removed from her positions on the House budget and education and labor committees, although will probably remain a vocal presence outside Congress.Reflecting the influence of the Trump wing of the Republican party, few GOP members have criticized Greene publicly. In a statement, McCarthy said he condemned Greene’s past remarks, but suggested the congresswoman would hold herself to a higher standard in the future.“This Republican party is a very big tent,” McCarthy said on Wednesday. “Everybody is invited in.”McCarthy and the GOP faced fierce criticism from Democrats for their stance, including from Nancy Pelosi, who attacked McCarthy for his “cowardly refusal” to discipline Greene. “McCarthy’s failure to lead his party effectively hands the keys over to Greene – an antisemite, QAnon adherent and 9/11 Truther,” the House speaker said.Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate minority leader, has been one of the few to criticise Greene, attacking her “loony lies and conspiracy theories”, and calling her views a “cancer for the Republican party”.In a sign of the dangers non-conspiracy-minded Republicans face, however, Senator Ben Sasse is facing a censure resolution from his own party in Nebraska, for his criticism of Trump’s role in the US Capitol riot.Sasse, seen as a relative moderate, responded to the Nebraska Republican party in a video message on Thursday.“You are welcome to censure me again, but let’s be clear about why this is happening: it’s because I still believe – as you used to – that politics isn’t about the weird worship of one dude,” Sasse said.As the vote on her committee assignments loomed on Thursday, Greene addressed some of her past comments, stating that “school shootings are absolutely real”, and that “9/11 absolutely happened”.By Friday morning, however, Greene seemed unrepentant, as she used a press conference to sum up the intertwining of the Republican party and Trump. “The party is his – it doesn’t belong to anyone else,” Greene told reporters. On Twitter, too, Greene seemed upbeat.“I woke up early this morning literally laughing thinking about what a bunch of morons the Democrats (+11) are for giving someone like me free time,” Greene posted.“In this Democrat tyrannical government, Conservative Republicans have no say on committees anyway. Oh this is going to be fun!” More

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      Nancy Pelosi 'profoundly concerned' by Republican reaction to Marjorie Taylor Greene – video

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      House speaker Nancy Pelosi said the House of Representatives would vote to remove Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene from committee positions after House Republican leaders declined to proactively discipline her. Pelosi said she was ‘profoundly concerned about House Republican leadership’s acceptance of an extreme conspiracy theorist’
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      Republicans take no action against Cheney or extremist Greene after vote More

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      Democrats press ahead with move to discipline extremist congresswoman

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      Democrats in the US House of Representatives moved forward on Thursday with ousting the extremist congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia from the committees she was assigned to, over incendiary statements she made before entering Congress.
      The move is the latest development in Congress members’ attempts to deal with Greene, who has been a stated supporter of the QAnon myth, for years pushing such unfounded conspiracy theories and lies that included racist and antisemitic tropes.
      A vote on Greene’s committee seats was due to take place on Thursday. Democrats, who have the majority in the House, could strip her of her positions without Republican votes.
      A day earlier, the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, the top congressional Republican, declined to take action against Greene, despite wider pressure from members of Congress to push some kind of punitive measure for uncovered past statements and social media posts.
      These included supporting the assassination of Democratic members of Congress, denying that the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US ever happened, and perpetuating the myth that the Parkland, Florida, school shooting in 2018 was faked.
      In a private meeting with her colleagues on Wednesday night, Greene received a standing ovation for apologizing for her association with QAnon.
      Democrats nevertheless took steps to remove the Georgia congresswoman from her positions on the House budget and education and labor committees, respectively.
      Greene addressed her past statements under the threat of losing a significant proportion of her legislative power. She stressed that she now believed “school shootings are absolutely real”, that they should be taken seriously, and that “9/11 absolutely happened”.
      She portrayed her descent into conspiracy theories as a misguided period in her life that was over when she realized the falseness of the movement.
      “I never once during my entire campaign said QAnon. I never once said any of the things that I am being accused of today during my campaign,” Greene said. Up until her Thursday speech, Greene did not deny any of her past statements and avoided having to publicly address them directly.
      In December, after she was elected, Greene praised a tweet promoting the QAnon movement.
      Democrats have been pushing for Greene to either be expelled from Congress or severely punished if she should stay. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican minority leader, has called Greene’s past comments “looney lies”.
      In arguing that Greene should lose her assignments, Democrats pointed to the now former congressman Steve King of Iowa, a Republican, who lost his committee assignments after associating with neo-Nazis and making racist statements for years.
      On Thursday, the House rules committee chairman, Jim McGovern, a Democrat, argued that Greene was not entitled to her committee postings.
      “Serving on a committee is not a right, it is a privilege and when someone encourages violence against a member they should lose that privilege,” McGovern said.
      After Greene’s speech, McGovern signaled that it was insufficient.
      “I stand here today still deeply, deeply troubled and offended by the things that she has posted and said and still not apologized for,” McGovern said.
      Republicans largely refrained from defending Greene’s previous comments directly and instead argued that taking away her committee appointments would establish a slippery slope.
      Congressman Austin Scott of Georgia, a Republican, skeptically asked during a floor speech whether Democrats would stop with Greene if successful.
      “We know better. We know better,” Scott said of his Republican colleagues.
      Tom Cole of Oklahoma, McGovern’s Republican counterpart on the rules committee, argued that taking away Greene’s committees “opens up troubling questions about how we judge future members of Congress”. More