WASHINGTON — U.S. House progressives are pushing to strip Rep. Lauren Boebert of her committee assignments after the Colorado Republican suggested Minnesota’s Rep. Ilhan Omar, one of only three Muslims in Congress, was a terrorist.
Rep. Ayanna Pressley, (D-Mass.), introduced a resolution Wednesday to remove Boebert from the Natural Resources Committee and Budget Committee for violating a House rule requiring members to act “in a manner that shall reflect creditably on the House.”
“For a Member of Congress to repeatedly use hateful, anti-Muslim rhetoric and Islamophobic tropes towards a Muslim colleague is dangerous,” Pressley said in a statement.
“Without meaningful accountability for that Member’s actions, we risk normalizing this behavior and endangering the lives of our Muslim colleagues, Muslim staffers and every Muslim who calls America home.”
Asked about the resolution at a press conference on Wednesday morning, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that she was not yet ready to make an announcement on how Democrats would proceed.
“How we deal with addressing the fear that they have instilled with their Islamophobia and the rest is something that hopefully we can do in a bipartisan way,” she told reporters. Pelosi, (D-Calif.), and other members of the House Democratic leadership last month called on GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy to “finally take real action against racism” in reaction to Boebert’s comments.
“I don’t feel like talking about what the Republicans aren’t doing or are doing about their members, the disgraceful, unacceptable behavior of their members,” Pelosi added
In addition to Pressley, 18 fellow House Democrats cosponsored the measure, including Cori Bush of Missouri, Rashida Tlaib and Andy Levin of Michigan, Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, Hank Johnson of Georgia and Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey.
Another 15 Democrats, including Natural Resources Chairman Raúl Grijalva, (D-Ariz.), signed onto a statement last week calling for Boebert’s removal from committees.
About 400 House staffers, including about 50 Muslim aides, wrote an open letter to the chamber’s leadership calling for a condemnation of Boebert’s remarks, according to NBC News. Their identities and a text of the letter had not yet been released Wednesday morning.
In a video posted to Facebook late last month and since deleted, Boebert told a group of supporters that she comforted a supposedly fretful Capitol Police officer concerned about Omar’s presence on an elevator by telling the officer, “She doesn’t have a backpack, we should be fine.”
She then said she called Omar, a Minnesota Democrat and one of only four Muslims ever elected to Congress, “the jihad squad.”
Omar said in a Thanksgiving Day tweet the story was fabricated.
“Fact, this buffoon looks down when she sees me at the Capitol, this whole story is made up,” she tweeted. “Sad she thinks bigotry gets her clout. Anti-Muslim bigotry isn’t funny & shouldn’t be normalized. Congress can’t be a place where hateful and dangerous Muslims tropes get no condemnation.”
Boebert released a statement on Twitter the following day apologizing “to anyone in the Muslim community” she offended and said she reached out to Omar to discuss the incident directly.
But that conversation, a Nov. 29 phone call, went poorly.
Omar said she hoped for a direct apology, but that Boebert refused to acknowledge her comments and “instead doubled down on her rhetoric.”
Boebert said on the right-wing Newsmax network the call was an attempt to “make amends” and that Omar hung up on her after Boebert demanded Omar be the one to apologize.
The resolution to remove Boebert from committees was drafted two days later, according to a timestamp on Pressley’s office website.
A spokesman for Boebert did not return an email seeking comment Wednesday.
Ariana Figueroa contributed to this report.
The post U.S. House progressives file resolution yanking Boebert committee assignments first appeared on Daily Florida Press.
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