Congress to vote on removing Ilhan Omar from foreign affairs committee—report

(February 1, 2023 / JNS) The U.S. House of Representatives will vote as early as Wednesday on a resolution to remove Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) from the Foreign Affairs Committee, Axios reported.

The development comes after Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.), one of three Republicans to have expressed opposition to the move, said on Tuesday that she would vote in favor of the resolution after language was added to allow lawmakers to appeal their removals from committees.

The text of the resolution, introduced by Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio) on Tuesday, says that “any Member reserves the right to bring a case before the Committee on Ethics as grounds for an appeal to the Speaker of the House for reconsideration of any committee removal decision,” according to the report.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) earlier this month repeated his promise to oust Omar from her influential post, however the report said that holdouts and several absences had kept the GOP below the threshold needed to pass party-line bills given their five-seat majority in the House.

“Look at Congresswoman Omar, her antisemitic comments that have gone forward. We’re not going to allow her to be on Foreign Affairs,” said McCarthy in a December interview.

Omar previously said that Israel had “hypnotized the world,” accused Jews of buying control of Congress, called Israel an “apartheid state” and likened Israel to the Taliban and Hamas terrorist groups.

McCarthy’s pledge to remove Omar has previously been applauded by pro-Israel groups including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Zionist Organization of America, B’nai B’rith International and the Republican Jewish Coalition, among others.