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- House Democrats want GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert to lose her committee assignments.
- Boebert was criticized after a video of her making Islamophobic comments about Rep. Ilhan Omar surfaced.
- Dem. lawmakers rallied in two separate statements, calling for Boebert to face consequences.
Dozens of House Democrats are collectively calling for Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert to be stripped of her committee assignments following her anti-Muslim remarks about Rep. Ilhan Omar.
In a letter released on Wednesday, five House Democrat caucus chairs — Reps. Pramila Jayapal, Joyce Beatty, Judy Chu, David Cicilline, and Raul Ruiz — led the call for Boebert to face "consequences" for her anti-Muslim rhetoric.
Separately, 38 members of the House also issued a statement on Thursday calling for Boebert to be removed from the committees she sits on.
Earlier this month, a video of Boebert making Islamophobic comments about Omar went viral. In the video, Boebert describes running into Omar in an elevator and refers to Omar by the term "Jihad Squad."
Omar denied the story and said the far-right Colorado congresswoman "looks down when she sees me at the Capitol."
"This whole story is made up. Sad she thinks bigotry gets her clout," Omar continued. "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 later apologized on Twitter. "I apologize to anyone in the Muslim community I offended with my comment about Rep. Omar," she wrote. "I have reached out to her office to speak with her directly."
However, Omar revealed that her subsequent phone call with Boebert had been "unproductive," and the latter had "doubled down on her rhetoric."
During a press conference earlier this week, Omar played recordings of death threats she received, including an expletive-laden voicemail where the caller accused her of being a "jihadist."
"There must be consequences for vicious workplace harassment and abuse that creates an environment so unsafe for colleagues and staff that it invites death threats against them. There must be consequences for elected representatives who traffic in anti-Muslim and racist tropes that make all Muslims across the country less safe," the letter from the caucus chairs read.
The chairs also pointed the finger at House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, criticizing him for failing to lead his caucus to "condemn hate and bigotry" or "maintain any standards of decency within the halls of Congress."
A separate statement issued by nearly four dozen House progressives on Thursday called for Boebert to be removed from all committee assignments.
"Rep. Boebert has repeatedly weaponized dangerous, anti-Muslim bigotry at our colleague Representative Ilhan Omar," read the statement.
"Muslims across the country are looking to Congress at this moment, watching to see if those they sent to represent their interests in Washington are going to stand up in the face of blatant, vicious Islamophobia," the lawmakers said.
Boebert currently sits on the Committee on Natural Resources, the Subcommittee on Indigenous Peoples of the United States, the Subcommittee on Water, Oceans, and Wildlife, and the Committee on the Budget.
She would not be the first Republican to lose her committee seats this year.
In November, Rep. Paul Gosar was censured and lost his seats on both the House Oversight and Natural Resource committees after he tweeted a violent anime video of himself killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. And in February, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene lost her positions on the Education and Labor Committee and the Budget Committee after 11 House Republicans crossed party lines to vote to strip her of the seats, accusing her of promoting conspiracy theories and endorsing political violence.
from Business Insider https://ift.tt/3prLAKZ
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