It was a long time coming. Republicans have been periodically threatening to kick Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) off the House Foreign Affairs Committee since the first year she was on it, and with their new House majority, they finally got their wish this week.

The ostensible reason is the same they gave back in 2019, namely, that Omar’s criticisms of Israel and its influential US lobby are supposedly antisemitic. The actual reason is that in her few short years on the committee, Omar has been an unusually principled critic of US foreign policy, and has dared to demand what’s unthinkable in Washington: that the US government act on the world stage consistent with its stated values and the rhetoric of its officials.

If you listened to Omar’s critics, the congresswoman is guilty of everything from antisemitism to holding a “bias against India” to secretly doing the bidding of the Muslim Brotherhood. These accusations ought to clue us in on what’s really going on here. Besides the unique nature of her personal background that’s made her a magnet for these and other scurrilous attacks, Omar’s made a lot of enemies by using her perch on the Foreign Affairs Committee to bring up thorny questions and criticisms rarely aired in the halls of Congress. Even Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), a congressman on the polar opposite of the political spectrum, felt obligated to acknowledge her effectiveness.