The House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman said he won’t remove Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) from the panel over comments that have been criticized as anti-Semitic, despite Republican calls for her ouster. “I don’t know that that would do anything except exacerbate the situation even more,” Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) told CNN, saying that he wasn’t even considering booting the freshman lawmaker from the committee. He said the decision would be up to House leadership, not him. Both Democrats and Republicans have criticized Omar ― one of two Muslim women elected to Congress in November 2018 ― for remarks they call anti-Semitic. She “unequivocally apologized” Feb. 11 for tweets critical of pro-Israel lobbying that some said used anti-Semitic tropes.

Source: Huffington Post March 06, 2019 12:26 UTC