Parkland Rep. Ted Deutch says Marjorie Taylor Greene should be expelled from Congress

Alex Daugherty

Democratic Rep. Ted Deutch, who represents Parkland in Washington, said Thursday he supports an effort to expel one of his colleagues, Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who expressed support on social media for executing congressional leaders and liked posts that described the 2018 school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High as a “false flag planned shooting.”

“I do believe she doesn’t belong in the House of Representatives,” Deutch said.

In recent days, Greene’s incendiary social media posts and videos from 2018 and 2019 have resurfaced, with the videos showing her harassing Parkland survivor and gun control advocate David Hogg. Greene shouted at Hogg, followed him around on Capitol Hill calling him a “coward,” said she has a concealed weapon permit and told him she carries a gun.

California Democratic Rep. Jimmy Gomez introduced a resolution for Greene’s expulsion on Wednesday evening, the first formal effort to punish her in Congress.

“As if it weren’t enough to amplify conspiracy theories that the September 11 attacks were an inside job and the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School was staged, a string of recent media reports has now confirmed that Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene had previously supported social media posts calling for political violence against the Speaker of the House, members of Congress and former President Barack Obama,” Gomez said in a statement. “Such advocacy for extremism and sedition not only demands her immediate expulsion from Congress, but it also merits strong and clear condemnation from all of her Republican colleagues.”

In a statement to the Miami Herald, Greene did not apologize for her past activities, saying, “Democrats and their spokesmen in the Fake News Media will stop at nothing to defeat conservative Republicans.”

Broward Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz said Thursday she will introduce a resolution to remove Greene from her committee assignments if Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy won’t do it. Wasserman Schultz and Deutch were particularly alarmed that Greene was assigned to the House Education and Labor Committee, which has oversight over federal education policy, because of her past social media activity that questioned both the Parkland shooting, in which 17 people died, and the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, where 20 children and six staff members died.

“As soon as possible I’ll be introducing a ... resolution to remove her from committee assignments if Kevin McCarthy won’t do it,” Wasserman Schultz said.

Expelling a member of Congress is the most serious punishment a sitting member can face from their colleagues, and expelling Greene for her behavior is without precedent. Only five U.S. House members have ever been expelled, and it requires a two-thirds vote. Three were expelled in 1861 for supporting the Confederacy, while one was expelled in 1980 after being convicted of bribery and another was expelled in 2002 after being convicted of bribery, racketeering and tax evasion.

Deutch’s calls for Greene’s resignation are noteworthy because — in addition to representing Parkland — he is also chairman of the House Ethics Committee, the body that self-polices members of Congress. Deutch rarely weighs in on the behavior of his colleagues because he could be in a position to determine punishment for a member in the future.

McCarthy has previously removed members of his party from their committees. In 2019, he kicked former Iowa Rep. Steve King off two committees after King, who had a history of racist remarks, said, “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?”

McCarthy spokesperson Mark Bednar, when asked if McCarthy was going to take action against Greene, referred the Miami Herald to a statement from Tuesday, which said in part that Greene’s social media activity was “deeply disturbing and Leader McCarthy plans to have a conversation with the congresswoman about them.”

As of Thursday, no House Republicans have called for Greene’s expulsion, though a small minority have publicly criticized her.

Greene has promoted the lie that former President Donald Trump won the 2020 election and garnered attention after winning a Republican primary for a heavily conservative seat in northern Georgia last year. But calls for her ouster grew louder this week after a CNN report indicating her support for executing members of Congress in 2018 and 2019. After the CNN report, Parkland parent Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter Jaime was one of the 17 Parkland shooting victims, shared videos of Greene harassing Hogg and other March For Our Lives activists as they tried to lobby members of Congress to support gun control legislation.

Guttenberg said in an interview with the Miami Herald that Greene needs to go.

“I’ve been calling on [her expulsion] for days,” Guttenberg said. “Pretty much all my time is focused on Kevin McCarthy and the need to expel her from office.”

McCarthy was in South Florida on Wednesday to visit Trump at Mar-a-Lago and Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, who posted a video of their meeting to Twitter.

One Parkland parent said he doesn’t agree with the effort to expel Greene.

“Marjorie Taylor Greene won her primary by nearly 20%, her runoff by nearly 20%, and her General by FIFTY %,” tweeted Andrew Pollack, a vocal Trump supporter whose daughter, Meadow, was one of the victims of the Parkland shooting. “The Democrats are now introducing a resolution to expel her from Congress because she’s an avid defender of President Trump. I stand with Marjorie!”

But Deutch said the vast majority of his constituents and Parkland families are tired of conspiracy theories about the deaths of their loved ones, and Greene doesn’t deserve the megaphone that comes with being a member of Congress.

“As really disgusting as her approach has been to the families in my district, to the survivors of Stoneman Douglas, she shouldn’t have a platform of sitting on a committee,” Deutch said. “McCarthy should take her office away.”

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