Marjorie Taylor Greene is trying to boot Ilhan Omar from her committees over misquoted remarks about Somalia
- Marjorie Taylor Greene is trying to censure Ilhan Omar and boot her from her committees.
- The reason: a speech Omar gave about Somali that's been misquoted online.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is forcing the House to vote next week to rebuke Rep. Ilhan Omar for a widely misquoted speech she recently delivered about Somalia.
The Georgia Republican's resolution would censure the Minnesota Democrat and remove her from the remainder of her committees. House Republicans voted last year to remove her from the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
It's the second time Greene has tried to censure a Muslim member of Congress in the last few months.
In November, she forced a vote on a censure resolution against Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan for "inciting an insurrection" by speaking at a pro-Palestinian protest.
Greene has previously said that Omar and Tlaib are not legitimate members of Congress because they were sworn in on the Quran, and on Thursday, she said that Omar, a Somali refugee who later became a US citizen, deserved to be deported from the US entirely.
But Greene's Tlaib censure failed after 23 Republicans voted against it, and Tlaib was later censured via a much more narrowly-tailored resolution days later.
And this time, Greene's effort may fail again: The resolution is based on a misquoting of Omar's remarks to a gathering of Somali Americans in Minnesota last Saturday.
Greene's resolution accuses Omar of making treasonous statements, arguing that the congresswoman is working on behalf of a foreign government while quoting Omar as saying she's "here to protect the interests of Somalia from inside the US system."
But that's not what Omar said, according to translations provided to the Minnesota Reformer.
According to The Reformer's report, Omar spoke generally about the political influence of Somalis living in the US, as well as her own voice in Congress, amid a dispute about Somalia's territorial integrity:
Ethiopia recently signed an agreement with Somaliland — a breakaway republic in the northern portion of the country — to use a port on the Red Sea.
The US government has not recognized Somaliland as an independent state and has itself raised concerns about the agreement.
But mistranslations of Omar's remarks have gone viral online, prompting fellow Minnesota Republican Rep. Tom Emmer to call for Omar's resignation.
And Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who recently ended his ill-fated presidential bid, said that Omar needed to be expelled from Congress, naturalized, and deported.