Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) slammed House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) after he said he plans to remove her from House committees if he becomes Speaker in the next Congress.
Over the weekend, McCarthy doubled down on his threat to remove Omar from the House Foreign Affairs Committee “based on her repeated anti-semitic and anti-American remarks.”
Omar fired back in a blistering statement on Monday, accusing McCarthy and Republicans of targeting her.
“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,” Omar said in the statement. “Whether it is Marjorie Taylor Greene holding a gun next to my head in campaign ads or Donald Trump threatening to ‘send me back’ to my country (despite the fact that I have been a proud citizen of the United States for more than 20 years), this constant stream of hate has led to hundreds of death threats and credible plots against me and my family.”
“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,” Omar said.
“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,” she continued. “It is a continuation of a sustained campaign against Muslim and African voices, people his party have been trying to ban since Donald Trump first ran for office.”
McCarthy also pledged to remove Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff (Calif.) and Eric Swalwell (Calif.) from the intelligence committee.
Schiff fired back on Sunday, calling McCarthy a “very weak leader” who will “adhere to the wishes of the lowest common denominator.”
“And if that lowest common denominator wants to remove people from committees, that’s what they’ll do,” Schiff said.
McCarthy could face some difficulty in his plan to remove Democrats from their committee assignments since it would require a vote of a majority of the House and Republicans have a very narrow majority in the lower chamber.
