Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., hopes Thursday’s House vote to remove Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., from the Foreign Affairs Committee will be the last of its kind.

Mace had initially indicated she would vote against ousting Omar from the panel but changed her vote after, she said, Speaker Kevin McCarthy agreed to her request to launch a bipartisan effort to establish due process for committee removals moving forward.

The Republican-led House voted 218-211 on Thursday to remove Omar from the committee for her past anti-Israel comments.

Her removal from the committee — and McCarthy’s move to block Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell, both California Democrats, from the House Intelligence Committee — came after the Democratic-led House in 2021 removed Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Paul Gosar of Arizona from their committee assignments. McCarthy vowed retribution at the time.

Mace said she reached a deal with McCarthy to introduce legislation that would create new House rules relating to committee removals. Her office noted in a statement that there is a formal process to censure and unseat members, but not for removing them from panels. 

“Today, our constitutional republic functioned the way our founding fathers intended,” Mace said in a statement Thursday. “Working to protect the Constitution and due process has been a cornerstone of my work in Congress. Speaker Kevin McCarthy made his commitment today that I will lead the effort to amend the House Rules to provide due process and prevent the politicizing of committee removals in the future.”

Mace said McCarthy agreed that in the next 30 days she will lead an effort to amend the House’s existing code of conduct. Under her changes, in order for a member to be removed from a committee, the Ethics Committee would first investigate, hold a hearing and then hold a vote to send a resolution to the full House. 

Mace said both parties will negotiate the bill’s language. 

“I’m going to put a group of Democrats that [House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries] will select and a group of Republicans, and we’ll work to come and clarify the rules and pass something for not only this Congress but future Congresses as well,” McCarthy told reporters Thursday.

Said Mace: “I don’t want to continue this tit-for-tat. Two years ago, [then-Speaker] Nancy Pelosi bastardized the process.”

In February 2021, under Pelosi, the House voted to boot Greene from the Budget Committee and Education and Labor Committee over her endorsement on social media of violence against Democratic lawmakers and conspiracy theories. 

On the House floor just before the vote, Greene said she regretted believing misinformation and said her past comments “do not represent me.”

In November 2021, the House voted to censure Gosar and strip him of his assignments on the Oversight and Natural Resource committees after he posted an animated video on social media depicting him killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., with a sword and attacking President Joe Biden.

Gosar insisted on the House floor he does not “espouse violence towards anyone” and removed the video.