After several controversial statements, including claiming that the Parkland 2018 shooting didn’t happen, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has been removed from congress’s education and labor and budget posts.
Congress voted 230-199 for the removals with 11 Republicans siding with Democrats, including South Florida Representatives Mario Díaz-Balart, Carlos A. Gimenez and Maria Elvira Salazar.
The move came in response to Greene’s past comments approving of QAnon conspiracy theories, her advocacy of violence against Democratic lawmakers, her skepticism that the Pentagon was attacked on 9/11, and her suggestions that the Parkland and Sandy Hook school shootings were staged “false flags.” On the House floor yesterday, instead of apologizing, Greene would only admit that “I was allowed to believe things that weren’t true.”
In a statement, Rep. Carlos A. Gimenez, former Miami-Dade County mayor, said he voted to remove Green from committee assignments as her “comments and intents to spread lies and conspiracies must not be tolerated.” He continued, “When she goes after students, victims, and survivors of senseless gun violence as in the case of the Parkland High School shooting, she loses all credibility as someone assigned to crafting policies and behavior to prevent us from governing responsibility.”
Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, another congresswoman representing South Florida, said in a statement that she voted yes as “everyone in Congress must be held to the same high standard.”
Max Schachter, father of Parkland victim Alex, told NBC Miami that listening to her denial of the shooting has been “very very hard to deal with, and I’m glad she will have less of a platform.”