Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Twitter account has been suspended for posting “misleading” information about Covid-19.
Twitter said Marjorie Taylor Greene’s account would be in “read-only mode” for 12 hours.
The Republican lawmaker has been an outspoken critic of vaccines and the use of masks.
Last month Marjorie Taylor Greene apologized for likening coronavirus mask rules to the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany.
In two tweets on July 19, she argued that vaccines should not be required, and that Covid was not dangerous for people aged under 65 who are not obese.
Both posts are still on display, but have been tagged by Twitter as “misleading”.
Marjorie Taylor Greene was suspended from Twitter in April, but the company later rescinded the ban, saying it was a mistake caused by its automated moderation system.
In response to her latest suspension, Marjorie Taylor Greene said Silicon Valley companies were attacking free speech with support from the White House.
“These Big Tech companies are doing the bidding of the Biden regime to restrict our voices and prevent the spread of any message that isn’t state-approved,” she said in a statement to the New York Times.
Last week, President Joe Biden urged social media companies to take more action against the spread of false information about coronavirus and vaccines on their platforms.
“They’re killing people,” he told reporters.
“The only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated.”
Health officials have warned the country’s current spike in Covid-19 deaths and infections is exclusively hitting unvaccinated communities.
Twitter has repeatedly banned users for sharing false information, and in March it introduced a new policy with penalties for users.
Under the new rules, 12-hour suspensions are given for second and third violations of its policy. A fourth breach results in a week-long ban, and a fifth leads to a full ban.
In January, Twitter permanently suspended President Donald Trump for posts that it said incited violence after the storming of the Capitol by hundreds of his supporters.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) has expressed regret for past incendiary comments and support for the QAnon conspiracy claims.
Her comments at the House of Representatives come as lawmakers gather for a vote today on whether to strip her of committee assignments.
She said: “I was allowed to believe things that weren’t true.
“And that is absolutely what I regret.”
However, Marjorie Taylor Greene, 46, stopped short of an apology, and cast blame on the media.
She said: “The media is just as guilty as QAnon for promoting lies.”
The Qanon conspiracy theory claims that former President Donald Trump was waging a clandestine war on a cabal of child-abusers.
Before taking office, Marjorie Taylor Greene liked posts calling for violence against Democratic lawmakers, claimed that school shootings and the 9/11 terror attack were staged events, and suggested Muslims should not serve in government, among other comments online.
Just hours before the Republican took to the floor, Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she was “profoundly concerned” by Republicans’ “acceptance of an extreme conspiracy theorist.”
“If any of our members threatened the safety of other members, we’d be the first ones to take them off a committee,” Nancy Pelosi said.
On February 4, Marjorie Taylor Greene sought to distance herself from some of these past remarks, saying they were made before she ran for office.
“I want to tell you 9/11 absolutely happened,” she said.
“I do not believe that it’s fake.”
“These were words of the past. These things do not represent me,” she said.
Marjorie Taylor Greene said she had been “upset about things” happening in the US and did not trust the government when she came upon conspiracy theories online in 2018.
However, she did not specifically apologize for past rhetoric widely seen as racist and anti-Semitic, or for comments suggesting support for violence against Democrats.
Marjorie Taylor Greene doubled down on other beliefs about abortion and immigration, expressing disgust at the “millions of Americans…murdered in the womb”, and saying that her friends had had loved ones “murdered by illegal aliens”.
Nancy Pelosi said the House would proceed with a vote on February 4 to expel Marjorie Taylor Greene from the education and budget committees.
The measure requires a simple majority to pass.
Committees assignments are typically the job of party leaders and are a vital channel for lawmakers to advance legislation. There’s also the symbolic value: veteran lawmakers may be rewarded with a position on the more prestigious committees.
Republicans condemned Marjorie Taylor Greene’s past comments but warned that Democrats were setting a dangerous precedent by sanctioning a lawmaker for things said and done before she entered Congress.
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