House Democratic leadership has considered the possibility of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez filing a restraining order against Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene after the Republican verbally attacked the other lawmaker.
Top Democrats floated the idea of Ms Ocasio-Cortez seeking a restraining order, Politico reports, but have gone back and forth on the legality of the order.
It was noted by these lawmakers that the New York Democrat would likely have to file a restraining order on her own if she wanted one. But how it would work in prohibiting contact with Ms Greene remained unknown.
This discussion came after several heated incidents between the lawmakers where the Georgia Republican appeared to verbally accost her colleague from across the aisle.
One incident that took place earlier this month, and was first reported in The Washington Post, involved Ms Greene running towards Ms Ocasio Cortez, who was apparently walking away from her, and repeatedly screaming “Hey Alexandria!”
“You don’t care about the American people,” Ms Greene screamed, before falsely referring to activists and Black Lives Matter organisations as “terrorists”. “Why do you support terrorists and antifa?”
Ms Ocasio-Cortez, who worked previously as a bartender in New York before being elected to Congress, responded by telling reporters that the Georgia Republican represented the “kinds of people that I threw out of bars all the time.”
“For me, this isn’t even about how I feel. It’s that I refuse to allow young women, people of color, people who are standing up for what they believe, to see this kind of intimidation attempts by a person who supports white supremacists in our nation’s Capitol,” she added.
Ms Greene has become one of the most controversial members within the GOP for her outlandish statements and verbal attacks.
Already the lawmaker was stripped of her House committee assignments after suggesting that some of the nation’s deadliest school shootings, such as the Parkland mass shooting, were fake. Several social media posts that the congresswoman interacted with prior to taking office also promoted violence against top Democrats.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy previously supported Ms Greene by claiming that her controversial behaviour occurred prior to her taking office.
But the congresswoman has found herself in hot water again after she compared the mask mandate to the Holocaust, with prominent congressional Republicans condemnninng her remarks.
“Marjorie is wrong, and her intentional decision to compare the horrors of the Holocaust with wearing masks is appalling. The Holocaust is the greatest atrocity committed in history,” Mr McCarthy said in a statement. “The fact that this needs to be stated today is deeply troubling.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who previously compared Ms Greene to “cancer”, said her remarks were “once again an outrageous and reprehensible comment,” when asked by CNN.
House Democrats have considered several routes in managing Ms Greene and her controversial behaviour. That included House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and several other Democrats calling publicly for an ethics investigation into the Georgia lawmaker through the House Ethics Committee.
Ms Pelosi was also asked if Democrats were considering censure or expulsion of the lawmaker, and she responded that Ms Greene “should stop talking”.
