A House Republican is pushing to have Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., removed from her committee assignments after her remarks about Charlie Kirk following his assassination last week.
Rep. Buddy Carter, R-Ga., announced Monday he is introducing a resolution to strip Omar of her seats on the House Budget Committee and the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. Omar also serves as the top Democrat on the Workforce Protections Subcommittee.
The move comes in the aftermath of Kirk’s killing in Utah, where the Turning Point USA founder was shot during a campus event. Republicans have accused Democrats of downplaying or dismissing the political assassination.
Omar has drawn particular fire from the right over comments she made in an interview with the progressive outlet Zeteo. She criticized Kirk’s past rhetoric and blasted Republicans for, in her words, “taking her comments out of context.” While she did call his death “mortifying,” she also revisited her long-standing disputes with him.
She pointed to his remarks on Juneteenth, saying Kirk “downplayed slavery and what Black people have gone through in this country by saying Juneteenth shouldn’t exist.” Omar added, “There are a lot of people out there talking about him just wanting to have a civil debate. There is nothing more effed up … than to pretend his words and actions have not been recorded for the last decade.”
Republicans seized on those remarks as evidence she was justifying violence. Omar pushed back on X, insisting she condemned the assassination. “While I disagreed with Charlie Kirk vehemently about his rhetoric, my heart breaks for his wife and children. I don’t wish violence on anyone,” she wrote. “Right-wing accounts trying to spin a false story … is fitting for their agenda to villainize the left.”
Carter dismissed her defense. “Disparaging Charlie Kirk’s legacy, a God-fearing, honorable man, for boldly sharing his conservative beliefs is disgusting,” he told Fox News Digital. “The radical left has normalized meeting free speech with violence, and it must stop.”
He argued Omar’s remarks crossed a line. “No one who justifies the assassination of someone with different political views than them deserves to sit on a committee,” Carter said. “Committees are for serious lawmakers, not hate-spewing politicians.”
Carter, who is running for U.S. Senate, currently serves on the Budget Committee alongside Omar.