WASHINGTON — As House Speaker Kevin McCarthy seeks to follow through on his promise to keep Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar from serving on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, it is unclear whether he will succeed given opposition from some by his fellow members of the Republican Party.
McCarthy has long threatened to hold a vote to deny Omar a seat on the panel if the GOP wins a majority in the House of Representatives because of past comments she has made about Israel that have rankled Republicans and Democrats alike. But GOP leaders also see the move as retaliation against Democrats who voted to strip two Republicans from their committees over inflammatory social media posts when they controlled the House.
Republicans now enjoy a slim majority, and McCarthy can only afford four GOP defections to successfully muster the votes needed to prevent Omar from taking committee seats.
But already two Republican lawmakers, Reps. Nancy Mays of South Carolina and Victoria Spartz of Indiana, have indicated they will oppose McCarthy’s efforts against Omar.
“Two wrongs don’t make a right,” Spartz said in a statement. “Speaker Pelosi took unprecedented action in the last Congress to remove representatives. [Marjorie Taylor] Green and [Paul] Gosar by their commissions without due process. Speaker McCarthy is taking unprecedented action this Congress to deny some minority committee assignments again without due process.”
Spratz cited votes in the Democratic-controlled House, which won the support of some Republicans, to strip Green and Gosar of their commissions. The two lawmakers won seats on two House panels in the new Congress.
Citing earlier votes targeting Green and Gosar, Spartz said he would oppose the “charade” and urge McCarthy to “stop the ‘bread and the gauntlet’ in Congress and start governing for change.”
A third Republican, Congressman David Joyce of Ohio, told the Washington Post last week that committee assignments should be considered “within each party” and said the votes against Green and Gosar “create this revenge problem for our conference.” .
Further complicating McCarthy’s path forward is the absence of Republican Rep. Greg Steube of Florida, who said he will be home in Sarasota for “a few weeks” recovering from a 25-foot fall from a pole.
While proxy voting allowed absent House members to get another lawmaker to vote for them in the last Congress, McCarthy abandoned proxy voting after receiving the gavel.
It’s unclear when House Republican leaders might move to vote to remove Omar from the committees. McCarthy told reporters on Tuesday that he was “not at all” concerned about securing the necessary votes, and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said on Wednesday that Republicans had “no intention” of having Omar sit on the Foreign Affairs Committee , and Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swawell of California are members of the Intelligence Committee.
“If people have shown a propensity to hold anti-American, anti-Semitic views, to do things that put them in a compromised position, including lying about classified information, that raises serious questions,” Scalise said.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries selected Schiff and Swawell to the Intelligence Committee, but the Republican leader plans to block their appointments, which he can do unilaterally because it is a select committee.
Omar told reporters on Tuesday that he has a “good name” on the foreign affairs panel. In addition to Republicans who have publicly voiced opposition to removing her from the committee, many others have spoken with her privately and said they believe the move is “unfair,” she said.
“They’re trying to do what they can within their conference to make sure there’s not going to be a vote to remove me from the Foreign Affairs Committee,” Omar said.
Omar drew a distinction between former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s decision to hold the vote to remove Green and Gosar from their committees in the last Congress and what McCarthy is trying to do now.
“They threatened the lives of their colleagues. They were a danger to the people they could serve on the committees, to the very institution they swore to protect,” she said. “Unless McCarthy can say how I, Adam Schiff, and Eric Swawell are a danger to the institution, our colleagues, then he’s not following the example set by Speaker Pelosi.”
Ellis Kim and Rebecca Kaplan contributed to this report
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