US House kicks lawmaker embracing conspiracy theories, violence off committees

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The Democrats-led U.S. House of Representatives voted Thursday evening to remove Republican lawmaker Marjorie Taylor Greene from two House committees over her embrace of QAnon conspiracy theories and political violence.

The 230-199 voting was largely along party lines, with 11 House Republicans joining all their Democratic colleagues to cast the "yea" vote to oust Greene from the Budget Committee and the Education and Labor Committee, a move seen by local media as unprecedented in congressional history.

The move came one day after House Republicans refused to take punitive action against the 46-year-old congresswoman over her repeated spreading of conspiracy theories and implying support for killing prominent Democrat officials before she ran for office.

"I remain profoundly concerned about House Republicans' leadership acceptance of extreme conspiracy theorists," Speaker Nancy Pelosi said at her weekly news conference.

"Particularly disturbing is their eagerness to reward a QAnon adherent, a 9/11 truther, a harasser of child survivors of school shootings," she said.

Greene, who was sworn in last month, took to the house floor to defend herself ahead of the vote, saying she had been "allowed to believe things that weren't true" and now she regrets her past remarks.

She did not make direct apology for her social media posts that recently triggered fierce widespread backlash after resurfacing.

Greene said she now believes that 9/11 attacks and deadly school shootings in the U.S. were real, walking back on her social media posts suggesting that the tragedies might have been staged.

Social media records show that Greene had also backed QAnon conspiracy theories such as a Democratic-run pedophile ring.

The congresswoman claimed that she "stumbled across" QAnon in late 2017 and began posting about it on Facebook throughout 2018 since she was "upset about things" happening in the U.S. and did not trust the government.

Greene, who wore a mask printed with "FREE SPEECH" on House floor, remained defiant on social media. She tweeted on Thursday that "It's not just me they want to cancel. They want to cancel every Republican. Don't let the mob win."

She liked a Facebook comment in 2019 that said "a bullet to the head would be quicker" to remove Pelosi. She also once suggested in an online video that Pelosi could be executed for treason.

House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy said in a statement released Wednesday that Greene's past comments "do not represent the values or beliefs of the House Republican Conference. I condemn those comments unequivocally."

However, McCarthy accused Democrats of "choosing to raise the temperature by taking the unprecedented step to further their partisan power grab regarding the committee assignments of the other party."

Without naming the congresswoman, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Monday slammed Greene for her embrace of "loony lies and conspiracy theories" as a "cancer for the Republican Party."

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