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WASHINGTON — House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said Wednesday that the House of Representatives would vote Thursday on whether to strip embattled Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., of her committee assignments after Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy failed to take action against her.
“I spoke to Leader McCarthy this morning, and it is clear there is no alternative to holding a Floor vote on the resolution to remove Rep. Greene from her committee assignments,” Hoyer, D-Md., said in a tweet. “The Rules Committee will meet this afternoon, and the House will vote on the resolution tomorrow.”
Hoyer told reporters at the Capitol that McCarthy “made a decision and we’re going to move forward.” He added, “I don’t know specifically what he’s going to do.”
A spokesman for McCarthy said he’d discuss the matter with members later Wednesday. A spokesman for Greene told reporters she has not decided whether to speak at the Rules Committee meeting.
A group of House Democrats introduced a resolution this week to remove Greene from her two committee assignments after more of her inflammatory and false statements from before she was elected came to light. Those statements included social media activity in which Greene liked posts calling for violence against prominent Democrats and a speech in which said that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was “guilty of treason” and that treason is “a crime punishable by death.”
Greene has suggested the Parkland and Sandy Hook school shootings were staged, which led Democrats to blast her assignment to the Education and Labor Committee. She also accosted Parkland survivor David Hogg in videos filmed before she was elected, later calling him an “idiot” who “only talks when he is scripted.”
McCarthy, R-Calif., and Greene met late Tuesday for 90 minutes ahead of a GOP steering committee meeting, multiple sources confirmed. The Steering Committee, headed by McCarthy, is the group that picks which committees Republican members sit on. The group can also take committee assignments away.
McCarthy asked Greene to either voluntarily depart the Education committee or apologize for her previous statements, according to a source familiar with the conversation. She did neither.
The Republican Steering Committee, a group of House Republicans who decide committee assignments, were unable to come to a decision on what to do with Greene during an emergency meeting late Tuesday. The group is expected to resume their meeting about Greene Wednesday before the full Republican conference is set to meet.
A source with direct knowledge confirmed to NBC News a Politico report that McCarthy proposed to Hoyer that Republicans would take Greene off the Education and Labor Committee but leave her on the Budget Committee if Democrats agreed not to put the House resolution up for a vote.
House Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., maintained the “best thing that could happen” would be for the Republican leader to step up. “Kevin McCarthy should handle this problem,” Jeffries said.
Action by the steering committee would also spare House Republicans from voting on Greene’s fate, which could lead to blowback from their constituents.
In 2019, McCarthy and the steering committee voted to remove Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, from his committee assignments because of comments he’d made to the New York Times questioning when the terms “white nationalist” and “white supremacist” became “offensive.”
Some Republicans have defended Greene by noting that unlike King, most of her offensive comments were made before she was elected. Hoyer told reporters Greene’s rhetoric “far exceeded” King’s. “I can’t remember … any situation that I believe is analogous to what Ms. Greene has done before and after being elected,” Hoyer said.
Top Senate Republicans, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, have spoken out against Greene and called for her to be marginalized, but she does have party defenders in the House, including Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Andy Biggs of Arizona.
Greene also claimed she had another high profile supporter earlier this week: former President Donald Trump. “Great news is, he supports me 100 percent, and I’ve always supported him,” she told OAN.
Haley Talbot contributed.
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