Florida Republican Rep. Randy Fine is weighing whether to force a House vote aimed at expelling Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, according to a new report.
According to Axios, Fine said he is “actively considering” pursuing the move. He pointed to a fundraising email from Omar’s campaign that suggested he should be expelled over remarks in which he said Muslims should be “destroyed.”
“I won’t send out fundraising emails calling for her expulsion. If I’m going to do that, you will see me bring the piece of paper. And I am actively considering that,” Fine said. He then referenced unproven allegations that Omar married her brother and what he described as her “general embrace of Muslim terror.”
Omar has rejected both the allegations and the possibility of an expulsion effort, saying, “I don’t think anybody takes that man serious.” She added, “I don’t think he takes himself serious, so nobody should worry about anything he says.”
Axios noted that any such effort would likely fall short because expelling a member requires a two-thirds vote in the House.
Omar has also been targeted by President Donald Trump in recent weeks. She has said those remarks—along with disparaging comments about Somali Americans—have helped fuel threats against her life, arguing the rhetoric follows a familiar pattern of what she described as “boilerplate xenophobia” that escalates real-world danger.
In an interview with The Guardian this week, Omar described Trump’s recent rally remarks in Pennsylvania—where he mocked her hijab, repeated a false claim that she married her brother, and told supporters she should be expelled from the country—as “vile” and reflective of “a really unhealthy and creepy obsession.”
Omar added that there is “a clear correlation” between Trump’s rhetoric and the threats she receives. “When you have the president using dehumanizing language every single day, we know that message gets to the worst humans possible in this country and that they then take action,” she said, before adding:
“We’ve had people incarcerated for threatening to kill me. We have people that are being prosecuted right now for threatening to kill me and so it is something that does stay in the back of our minds.”
