Citing comments on shootings, Michigan Dems urge Marjorie Taylor Greene's ouster from education panel

Washington — The two Michigan Democratic lawmakers on the House education panel are calling for Republican U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to be stripped of her seat on the committee over her comments on school shootings.

U.S. Reps. Haley Stevens, D-Rochester Hills, and Andy Levin, D-Bloomfield Township, said the Georgia freshman lawmaker should not be seated on the House Education and Labor Committee and urged GOP leadership to rescind her committee assignments.

"This was an egregious error of the GOP conference," Stevens told CNN. "This is politics of the bizarre, and it's got to go."

Greene was appointed Wednesday to the House education committee after previous comments agreeing with people who said the 2018 Parkland, Florida, school shooting was a "false flag" operation. She was also recorded in a video harassing Parkland survivor David Hogge in 2019. 

“Having met and been inspired by David Hogg and other Parkland survivors — who are between the ages of my own children — I was shaken by the video of Rep. Greene harassing Mr. Hogg,” Levin said.

“My heart breaks for the parents of victims hurt by her denial of their children’s very real murders. Can you even imagine? Many of her statements are troubling but, first and foremost, she must not sit on a committee that deals with the safety of our schoolchildren when she is in complete denial of reality."

Levin said Greene's other actions, which include endorsing fringe conspiracies like QAnon and violence against prominent liberals, warrant investigation as well. 

Congress last year adopted a bipartisan resolution denouncing the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory that President Donald Trump is waging a campaign against “deep state” enemies and a child sex trafficking ring run by Satan-worshiping pedophiles.

Stevens said the GOP is allowing elected officials to "run rampant in our Congress espousing these insidious viewpoints." 

"This is retraumatizing our survivors of mass shootings, from Sandy Hook down to Stoneman Douglas," Stevens said, referring to recent mass school shootings.

"It's been almost 10 years since Sandy Hook. We need real policy solutions, not this distraction and not this complacency that is so tragically coming out of a party that, frankly, appears to be ripping apart before our very eyes." 

A spokesman for Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-California, told reporters this week that he found Greene's online comments “deeply disturbing and Leader McCarthy plans to have a conversation with the Congresswoman about them.”

Greene in a statement to Bloomberg News said her previous comments were being distorted.

“Democrats and their spokesmen in the Fake News Media will stop at nothing to defeat conservative Republicans,” she said.

“They are coming after me because like President Trump, I will always defend conservative values. They want to take me out because I represent the people. And they absolutely hate it.“

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, said Thursday it was "absolutely appalling" that Republican leaders assigned Greene to the panel. 

"Assigning her to the Education Committee when she has mocked the killing of little children," Pelosi told reporters. "What could they be thinking?"

mburke@detroitnews.com