Ilhan Omar responds to Kevin McCarthy over committee removal threat: "It does nothing to address inflation, health care or solve the climate crisis"
Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar blasted House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy over the Republican's threat to remove her and Democratic Reps. Eric Swalwell and Adam Schiff from their committees when Republicans control the House come January.
On Fox News Sunday, McCarthy said he'll stick with a promise he made earlier this year to remove California's Swalwell and Schiff from the House Intelligence Committee, and remove Omar from her place on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, decrying what he called Omar's past "antisemitic comments."
- Rep. Ilhan Omar apologizes for tweets widely denounced as anti-Semitic
In a statement posted to Twitter, Minnesota's Omar said McCarthy's efforts do "nothing to address the issues our constituents deal with" and "nothing to address inflation, health care, or solve the climate crisis."
"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, Emmer and so many others," she wrote. "If he cared about addressing the rise in hate, he would apologize and make sure others in his party apologized. McCarthy's effort to repeatedly single me out for score 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, health care or solve the climate crisis."
Full statement on Kevin McCarthy threat: pic.twitter.com/IAOP27ujlt
— Rep. Ilhan Omar (@Ilhan) November 21, 2022
Schiff and Swalwell have not yet publicly responded to McCarthy's pledge to remove them from the House Intelligence Committee.
Removing any of those members from their committees would require a full vote in the House, with a majority voting to remove her. It's not something McCarthy could do unilaterally to a member of the opposite party.
And speakership is far from guaranteed for the California Republican, who would need 218 votes to be come the next speaker. A growing number of Republicans are threatening to tank his chances, despite McCarthy winning the GOP nomination for speaker.
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Kathryn Watson is a politics reporter for CBS News Digital based in Washington, D.C.
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