(RepublicanDaily.org) – The GOP-controlled Arizona House of Representatives voted to expel a Republican member, Representative Liz Harris, NBC News reported. Harris was expelled from the Arizona House for inviting a witness to present false charges about lawmakers and other state officials, and afterward lying about her involvement in the baseless testimony, an ethics complaint stated, NPR News reported.
Harris told reporters that her expulsion was an example of how you “need to toe the line.” She claimed that, if you fail to toe the line, “this is what happens.” Contrary to her statements, Harris was reportedly removed for “disorderly behavior.”
Harris’ expulsion was a historic vote for the Arizona state legislature, Axios reported. In Arizona, it requires a two-thirds vote to expel a member of the state legislature. All 28 Democrats on the Arizona floor voted to expel Harris. They were joined by 18 out of the 31 majority of Arizona’s Republicans.
Representative Harris was elected in 2022 and had been in office for about three months at the time of her expulsion.
Arizona’s vote to expel a representative comes at a time of tense state politics across the United States. Following the Covenant School shooting in Nashville, Tennessee, Tennessee legislature Democrats hosted a demonstration on the legislature’s campus, which the Republican majority deemed unacceptable. They then voted to expel two of the three Democratic representatives. The state fell under heated political criticism nationwide following this decision.
In April, the two expelled Democratic representatives were reinstated in their offices, one of the expelled representatives confirmed. One of the expelled representatives, Justin J. Pearson, told CNN in an opinion piece that the motion to expel him from the legislature “backfired.”
This led to political criticism of state legislatures across the United States, with The New York Times calling out other state legislatures as being “broken,” and “plagued with partisanship.”
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