House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) confirmed late Monday that he will boot Congress members Adam Schiff (D-CA), Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Eric Swalwell (D-CA) from their assigned House committees.
Speaker McCarthy confirms that Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell, and Ilhan Omar are getting kicked off the Intel and Foreign Affairs Committees.
Promises made. Promises kept!
— Congressman Troy Nehls (@RepTroyNehls) January 10, 2023
A strong supporter of the Palestinian Authority’s international Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) economic war on Israel, Omar was serving on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Schiff and Swalwell both were serving on the House Intelligence Committee.
In booting the trio, McCarthy is making good on a midterm campaign promise to strip the three high-profile Democrats from their assignments, largely due to their behavior, and in response to the earlier ousting of Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Paul Gosar (R-AZ) from their own assignments due to inflammatory conduct during the last session of Congress.
In response, Omar’s office released a statement in which she played the race card.
“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 … this constant stream of hate has led to hundreds of death threats and credible plots against me and my family,” she said.
Omar also accused the GOP of “openly tolerated antisemitism, anti-Muslim hate and racism in their own party.”
She added that 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.”
Last week Omar tweeted a screengrab from the gangster film “Goodfellas” with the caption, “Kevin McCarthy walking into the new Congress with a fresh majority.”
Ahead of McCarthy’s win as Speaker, Omar accused McCarthy in a tweet of agreeing to a deal with “far right insurrectionists” that she said would “hold the entire economy hostage to extreme cuts to everything from housing to education, healthcare, Social Security and Medicare. Hard to overstate how dangerous this is.”
