Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-IN) indicated Tuesday that she has reversed course on her previous opposition to removing Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) from the House Foreign Affairs Committee after she met with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) this week.
Spartz’s reversal comes after McCarthy already booted Reps. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Eric Swalwell (D-CA) from the House Intelligence Committee over security concerns surrounding their ability to be trusted with classified information.
The effort to boot Omar from the Foreign Affairs Committee comes in response to her history of anti-Semitism.
“I appreciate Speaker McCarthy’s willingness to address legitimate concerns and add due process language to our resolution,” Spartz said in a statement late Tuesday night. “Deliberation and debate are vital for our institution, not top-down approaches.”
“The rule of law, freedom of speech, and due process are fundamental to our Constitutional Republic,” she continued. “Our founding fathers understood that pure democracy is dangerous and can lead to the tyranny of majority, mob rule and dictatorship. As to my fellow conservatives, I think setting a precedent of allowing an appeal process for the Speaker’s and majority-party removal decisions is particularly important to freedom-loving legislators who usually are on the receiving end of issues like this.”
Spartz signaled earlier this month that she opposed the move to remove Omar from the committee because she believed that it was retaliation for Democrats removing GOP members off committees in the past.
“Two wrongs do not make a right,” Spartz said in a previous statement. “Speaker Pelosi took unprecedented actions last Congress to remove Reps. Greene and Gosar from their committees without proper due process. Speaker McCarthy is taking unprecedented actions this Congress to deny some committee assignments to the Minority without proper due process again.”
“As I spoke against it on the House floor two years ago, I will not support this charade again,” she claimed. “Speaker McCarthy needs to stop ‘bread and circuses’ in Congress and start governing for a change.”