Newly elected Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy will reportedly oust notable Democratic representatives from the Intelligence Committee, among other assignments.
McCarthy will boot California representatives Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell from the Intelligence Committee, along with Minnesota representative Ilhan Omar from the Foreign Affairs Committee, according to Daily Mail.
Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Green and Arizona representative Paul Gosar, who were previously removed from committees by former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, will be assigned to committees along with newly elected New York representative George Santos.
Pelosi removed Greene from the Budget and the Education and Labor panels in February 2021. Gosar similarly was removed from committee assignments in 2021 after sharing a video meme of the Arizona representative, along with other Republican representatives, attacking villains with photoshopped Democrat representatives’ faces from the anime Attack on Titan.
“[Eric] Swalwell can’t get a security clearance in the private sector. I’m not going to give him a government security clearance,” Speaker McCarthy told Punchbowl News in an interview. “[Adam] Schiff has lied too many times to the American public. He should not be on Intel.”
“It’s not like it’s anything new,” McCarthy continued, noting he previously argued his points. “Remember, this is what Nancy Pelosi, this is the type of Congress she wanted to have.”
.@PunchbowlNews AM:
Out: Schiff, Swalwell and Omar.
In: Gosar, Santos and MTG.
With passage of the House rules package, the next big fight for the chamber will be “populating” its committees. And that’s going to lead to a big partisan brawl on the floor. https://t.co/fPDfqh0StL— Punchbowl News (@PunchbowlNews) January 10, 2023
“From the moment I was elected, the Republican Party has made it their mission to use fear, xenophobia, Islamophobia and racism to target me on the House Floor and through millions of dollars of campaign ads,” Omar previously wrote in a November statement. “Whether it is Marjorie Taylor Greene holding a gun next to my head in campaign ads or Donald Trump threatening to ‘send me back’ to my country (despite the fact that I have been a proud citizen of the United States for more than 20 years), this constant stream of hate has led to hundreds of death threats and credible plots against me and my family.”
She continued:
Instead of doing anything to address the open hostility towards religious minorities in his party, McCarthy is now lifting up people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, [Tom] Emmer and so many others. … McCarthy’s effort to repeatedly single me out for scorn and hatred—including threatening to strip me from my committee—does nothing to address the issues our constituents deal with. It does nothing to address inflation, healthcare, or solve the climate crisis. What it does is gin up fear and hate against Somali-Americans and anyone who shares my identity, and further divide us along racial and ethnic lines. It is a continuation of a sustained campaign against Muslim and African voices, people in his party have been trying to ban since Donald Trump first ran for office.
