McCarthy pledges to kick three Democrats from committees if elected speaker
Washington — House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy pledged to remove three House Democrats from their committees if Republicans gain control of the House and elect him speaker in 2023.
McCarthy told Breitbart News in an interview published Monday that Democrats have set a "new standard" of removing lawmakers from the opposing party from their assigned committee with their decisions to kick Congressman Paul Gosar of Arizona and Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, both Republicans, off their panels last year due to violent content posted to social media.
The California Republican said that if the GOP wins a majority of House seats in the November midterm elections and tap him to serve as speaker, Democrats Eric Swalwell and Adam Schiff, both off California, and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota would be removed from their committees.
Schiff leads the House Intelligence Committee, of which Swalwell is also a member, and Omar serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
"The Democrats have created a new thing where they're picking and choosing who can be on committees," McCarthy told Breitbart. "Never in the history have you had the majority tell the minority who can be on committee."
House Democratic leaders moved to discipline Gosar and Greene in response to violent and extremist statements they promoted online and said they were driven to act after GOP leaders failed to step in. In November, the House voted to censure Gosar and strip him of his two committee assignments after he posted an anime video to social media that depicted violence against Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and President Biden.
Gosar, who has served in Congress since 2011, was a member of the Oversight and Reform Committee and Natural Resources Committee.
The House took action against Greene, who has served for a year, in February after extremist and racist social media posts and videos from before she was elected to Congress surfaced. In the posts, Greene embraced far-right conspiracy theories and expressed support for violence against Democratic leaders.
