The Republican-led chamber condemned Ms. Omar’s Israel comments in retaliation for the dismissal of G.O.P. members when Democrats were in power.
Washington— On Thursday, a sharply split House removed Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar from the Foreign Affairs Committee over her racist comments against Israel. Republicans bowed to right-wing demands and punished a Democrat their party has maligned for years.
The 218–211 party-line vote, with one member voting “present,” settled a partisan score that had festered since 2021, when the House, then controlled by Democrats, stripped Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Paul Gosar of Arizona of their committee assignments for social media posts endorsing violence against Democrats.
Ms. Omar’s dismissal fulfilled Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California’s pledge to remove Democrats from committees if his party won the House majority. He unilaterally withdrew California Representatives Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell from the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, where membership is appointed and not subject to a vote, last week.
In the first days of his new majority, Mr. McCarthy forced the expulsion of Ms. Omar, a move that several of his rank-and-file opposed, to please the hard-right Republican base, which has viciously attacked the Somali-born congresswoman. Despite being the only non-American, former President Donald J. Trump reportedly declared in 2019 that Ms. Omar and three other progressive women of color should “go back” to their countries.
Mr. McCarthy used Thursday’s vote to win over pro-Israel groups and evangelical voters and divide Democrats, many of whom had criticized Ms. Omar’s comments about Israel.
In 2019, Democrats and Republicans criticized Ms. Omar for tweeting that certain pro-Israel groups were “all about the Benjamins, baby,” referring to hundred-dollar bills and invoking an antisemitic stereotype about Jews and money. She apologized. Two years later, Ms. Omar appeared to compare U.S. military “atrocities” to those done by terrorist groups like the Taliban and Hamas. She later denied this.
On Thursday, prominent Democrats, including many Jewish members, defended Ms. Omar in emotional statements on the House floor. They accused Republicans of hypocrisy, xenophobia, and racism for targeting her while ignoring antisemitic remarks by party members, some of whom are Holocaust deniers.
“A flagrant double standard is being applied here,” said Foreign Affairs Committee ranking Democrat Gregory Meeks of New York. “It doesn’t stack up. What distinguishes Representative Omar from these members? Her appearance? Her religion?
New York Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was more forthright about Ms. Omar’s exile. “This is about attacking women of color in the United States of America,” Ocasio-Cortez stated in brief but impassioned remarks.
Republicans argued for Ms. Omar’s removal calmly.
“Individuals who possess such vile ideas should rightly be banned from that type of committee,” said New York Representative Mike Lawler. Words matter. Rhetoric matters. It harms, thus the representative is accountable for her words and actions.”
Still, corralling votes to expel Ms. Omar showed Mr. McCarthy’s struggles to deliver on his agenda with a razor-thin majority that has already proven unruly. The effort stalled and nearly faltered because of the disquiet of some Republicans about being seen as hypocritical after they railed against the removals of Ms. Greene and Mr. Gosar from committees, and about the precedent set by expelling a lawmaker for her views and statements, particularly by a party that routinely condemns “cancel culture.”
The only Republican to vote “present” was Ohio Representative David Joyce, who also voted “present” on Democrats’ proposals to remove Ms. Greene and Mr. Gosar.
Ms. Omar’s expulsion ended a House month dominated by political maneuvering and message rather than substance. Mr. McCarthy made a series of concessions to his hard-right detractors to win their votes in a historic struggle to become speaker, and he has spent the weeks since paying off those debts by appointing ultraconservatives to powerful committees and creating a new panel to investigate the “weaponization of government.” The House has also passed bills to defund I.R.S. tax cheat enforcement, prosecute some abortion providers, and terminate federal coronavirus vaccine mandates and safeguards.
The stage was set this week for Ms. Omar’s expulsion when Representative George Santos of New York — the embattled Republican freshman who has admitted to having misrepresented his background and is facing multiple investigations for fraud and campaign finance violations — announced that he would temporarily remove himself from the House committees on Small Business and Science, Space and Technology, to which he was appointed last month. Mr. Santos had been a lightning rod for claims of a double standard, as Democrats blasted Mr. McCarthy for protecting him while attacking Ms. Omar, Mr. Schiff and Mr. Swalwell.
But the dam began to break only after Mr. McCarthy agreed to add wording to the proposal mentioning lawmakers’ ability to appeal such judgments to the Ethics Committee, a tool that was already accessible to them.
“He added expressly to this resolution to make sure that we apply the same standard not only to Democrats but to Republicans,” Indiana Representative Victoria Spartz said of Mr. McCarthy during the floor debate, explaining her support.
Some Republicans were unsatisfied. Representative Ken Buck of Colorado, one of the more conservative naysayers, got Mr. McCarthy to promise to tighten the appeals procedure for future punitive actions, which won over most of the remaining holdouts.
