(TheRedWire.com) – House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries have agreed to create a bipartisan task force that would focus on the establishment of a process that the House can use for the removal of members from their committee assignments.
McCarthy, R-Calif., has already begun his efforts of trying to find members to join the task force, and Jeffries, D-N.Y., is also going to provide a list of the Democrats he suggests should join in the endeavor.
McCarthy’s suggestion on the creation of the task force came after the criticisms he faced following his decision to have Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., removed from the Foreign Affairs Committee.
On the Republican side, Reps. Nancy Mace of South Carolina has been offered to become the task force chair. She would also be joined by Tom Cole of Oklahoma; Ken Buck of Colorado and David Joyce of Ohio. On the Democratic side, the suggested representatives include Reps. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts; Veronica Escobar of Texas; Nikema Williams of Georgia and Derek Kilmer of Washington.
Many Republicans have spoken up about their concerns regarding the removal of Omar and the lack of a proper system that would allow them to remove members from the assignments if necessary. They further pointed out the comparison between their move and the process under then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, which led to the removal of Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and Paul Gosar, R-Ariz.
In February 2021, the then-Democratically controlled House voted for the removal of Greene from the Budget Committee and the Education and Labor Committee following her social media posts which had promoted a number of racist conspiracy theories. In November 2021 they also voted to remove Gosar from his two committees — Oversight and Reform and Natural Resources — following a video he posted that showed an animation of him killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and attacking Joe Biden.
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