With a party-line vote, the House has removed Rep. Ilhan Omar from the Foreign Affairs Committee, the latest disgrace for a chamber where Speaker Kevin McCarthy has ceded control to his party’s militant fringe.
Some will claim a political tit-for-tat, that this is just another bit of political maneuvering where Republicans are simply whacking Democrats with the same trick that the latter pulled two years ago with the removal of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene from all her committee assignments. That lazy analysis requires one to believe that Greene and Omar are substantively equal in their transgressions, an idea that dissolves under the most cursory scrutiny.
This board does not agree with Omar’s wrongheaded characterizations of Israel’s policies and U.S. support for them, but that doesn’t disqualify her from sitting on the panel, where she has served for four years, two under former Chair Eliot Engel and two under former Chair Greg Meeks, both strong backers of Israel.
