WASHINGTON – House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has vowed to bar Democrats Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell and Ilhan Omar from serving on House committees.
Threat, which McCarthy repeatedly this weekin retaliation for Democrats who have removed Representatives Paul Gosar of Arizona and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia from their committee jobs in 2021 over inflammatory statements, including about Omar.
The alleged reasons for the ban on Omar’s committee candidate are somewhat vague. A refugee from Somalia and an African-born member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Omar is a frequent target of GOP members.
Republicans often claim Omar, who has represented Minnesota’s 5th
District since 2019, is antisemitic. But Omar said he believed McCarthy wanted him out of the committee because he was Muslim.
“I don’t think they have any reason outside of me being a Muslim and thinking I shouldn’t be,” Omar told HuffPost. “When you look at the comments from Republicans, it’s just for that reason.”
For years, Republicans have targeted Omar and espoused it conspiracy theory about him, when rejecting behavior and egregious comments from members of his own party, such as when Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) repeatedly portraying Omar as a terrorist that could blow up the Capitol.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) said Tuesday that Republicans will consider removing people from the committee because Democrats have done so.
“The Democrats set a precedent that we strongly urge not to go down the last Congress,” said Scalise. “They decided to break a precedent that has existed for more than 200 years and remove members of the opposing party who are elected by the party to the committee, so that is the practice that they are doing.”
But Scalise declined to say that Democrats are certain to launch because neither party has made committee appointments. Rep. Pete Aguilar (Calif.), a member of the Democratic leadership, said Tuesday that Democrats are working on the committee’s work and refused to get into a “hypothetical” question about what would happen if McCarthy was blocked by members.
Tom Williams via Getty Images
Republicans Gosar and Greene are the same stripped committee assignments in previous Congresses. In 2021, Gosar post videos on social media describes violence against President Joe Biden and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (DN.Y.), while Greene has repeatedly posted racist and antisemitic conspiracy theories and advocated for the execution of the above. Democrats, including Omar.
McCarthy said last year that he would allow Greene and Gosar to return to the committee when Republicans seize control of the House – a statement made in the same week that the pair participated in a real white nationalist conference.
McCarthy was able to unilaterally block Swalwell and Schiff (both from California) from returning to the House Intelligence Committee because it was a “voted” committee over which the speaker had more control than the regular standing committee. Republicans have criticized Schiff for hyping what happened false information about Donald Trump in the discredited spy dossier. Swalwell had contact with an alleged Chinese spy who tried to help his political career from 2011 to 2015, although Swalwell was not accused of any wrongdoing.
But removing Omar from the House Foreign Affairs Committee, if Democrats drop him, would require a majority vote by the entire House.
Omar has faced several accusations of antisemitism for his harsh criticism of the Israeli government. In 2019, congressman please excuse me for him to tweet “it’s all about Benjamin” – which he said was meant to criticize pro-Israel lobby groups. Since then, House Republicans quickly started calling for Umar removed of Foreign Affairs, sworn McCarthy said in November which will uphold.
“I promised you last year as speaker that he would no longer be in Foreign Affairs, and I kept that promise,” McCarthy told the Republican Jewish Coalition.
Some progressive Jewish organizations published his own letter a few weeks later opposed McCarthy’s swearing-in, writing that the group “rejects any suggestion that his positions or policy statements should disqualify him from his role on the committee.”
“As violent and cynical as the nativist faction of our government is, targeting Muslims is politically credible,” said Sumayyah Waheed, senior policy adviser at Muslim Advocates, a national civil rights group based in Washington, DC.
“By removing Rep. Omar from his committee, McCarthy killed two birds with one stone: He tried to silence an effective and principled voice on the Foreign Affairs Committee, and he highlighted a culture of anti-Muslim hate for cheap political points,” he added. .
Omar, who was one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress, has long been targeted by Republicans in a series of Islamophobic attacks and has been the subject of death threats. In March 2019, a poster of Omar and the September 11 attacks was available sent in the event sponsored by the Republican Party of West Virginia. In the same year in July, then president Donald Trump said four progressive congresswomen of color known as “Squad,” including Omar, must “go home and help repair the broken places and many of the crimes from which it originated.
“So far, the leadership of the Republican Party has done nothing to punish and punish its own members for incidents of anti-Muslim hate and harassment.” Omar said in November 2021 after Boebert refused to apologize directly to the congresswoman afterwards suggesting he was a terrorist.
“This is not about one hateful statement or one politician; it’s about a party that has mainstreamed bigotry and hatred. It’s time for Republican Leader McCarthy to really take responsibility for his party.