AMAC Exclusive – By Daniel Berman
The ideal strategy in politics is one which will unite your supporters and divide your opponents, while also leaving you on the right side of morality. In blocking Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell from the House Intelligence Committee and Ilhan Omar from the House Foreign Affairs Committee, new Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy pulled off such a feat.
The move was almost required as a matter of partisan fair play after Democrats broke with decades of precedent to strip Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee assignments, and it helped that Schiff and Omar are both hated figures among conservatives. But the true brilliance of the strategy is that neither has any business being on either Committee, a view shared by many of their Democratic colleagues, and both have a tendency to publicly demonstrate why that is with their inability to resist a microphone.
Nonetheless, Democrats are obligated to defend them for reasons of party unity, even as they are unable to rebut the arguments for their removal.
The move places Democrats in a bind from the start, given their own behavior towards Greene. For decades, it was accepted practice that each party, whether the minority or majority, was allowed to assign its own members to committees. While the majority reserved the right to decide the numerical balance of each committee, the minority leader chose which members filled their party’s spots. Democrats broke this precedent when they ejected Greene from her committees. Having done so, it is impossible for them to argue on the basis of precedent against what has happened to Schiff, Swalwell, and Omar. At most, they are simply accusing the Republicans of stooping to the level of Nancy Pelosi, not a very compelling case.
Democrats have instead been forced to argue on the merits of the individual cases. This involves claiming that Greene behaved in a way that was so outside the norm it justified her removal. What makes this hard is the difficulty of describing just what she supposedly did. Few remember the original argument Democrats made, which was that Greene must be banished for comments she had made online prior to entering Congress.
But the real problem McCarthy’s move poses for Democrats is that it forces them not to justify the removal of Greene, but rather the retention of Schiff, Swalwell, and Omar on their respective committees.
For Eric Swalwell, his presence is hard to justify on the House Intelligence Committee, given his past intimate relationship with a Chinese spy. The FBI reportedly even briefed then-Speaker Pelosi on the scandal, making a clear case for why Swalwell cannot be trusted with sensitive classified information.
InSchiff and Omar’s cases, it is an even harder task, and one Democrats cannot relish.
While Adam Schiff wielded the House Intelligence Committee as a weapon against Donald Trump and those who worked for him, that was a means to an end of getting himself attention. Previous committee chairs have weaponized their committees, but tried to maintain a veneer of official pretense. Schiff made sure to brief Rachel Maddow on his committee’s work nightly, a remarkably public approach for someone supposing to investigate the Trump administration’s handling of national security.
Schiff’s contempt for anything that relates to secrecy or intelligence is one of his defining traits. Schiff took to TikTok, a platform with deep links to the Chinese Communist Party, to complain about his ousting, evidently forgetting Biden had signed a law – which Schiff cosponsored – in December banning use of the app on government devices. In using the app, Schiff also stepped on the messaging of his former counterpart in the Senate, Mark Warner, the Chair of Select Intelligence Committee who has proposed a much more extensive ban of the app.
Schiff’s record makes it hard for Democrats to mount a compelling case that he is the most qualified Democratic pick for the committee, or that his loss will hurt the country. Worse, he has shown a contempt for his party and colleagues.
It must also be grating for Democrats that Schiff used his removal as a platform to announce a campaign for Senate to replace Diane Feinstein, a move which must have been in the works for some time. This in turn implies he fully expected and planned for his own removal. Democrats are now expected to fight for Schiff’s claims to the ranking spot on a House Committee when he has no intention of being in the House come 2025.
If Democrats are struggling to defend Adam Schiff, and likely resenting being forced to do so, the prospect of going to bat for Ilhan Omar’s claims to a role on the House Foreign Relations Committee must infuriate them. In 2021, more than a dozen House Democrats signed a letter declaring that “Equating the United States and Israel to Hamas and the Taliban is as offensive as it is misguided,” and revealed a “deep-seated prejudice.” In 2019, Nancy Pelosi had already rebuked and forced a House vote condemning antisemitism after Omar suggested supporters of Israel in the United States “held allegiance to a foreign power.”
When it comes to mixed allegiances, there are reasons beyond her bigotry and prejudices towards Israel that Omar should not be on a committee dealing with foreign policy. There is extensive evidence that Omar has maintained ties to clan networks in Somalia and has used her position in the U.S. government to interfere in Somali politics, including efforts to oust the elected president in favor of one backed by her clan. This provoked a major backlash in the Somali-American community, with Omar having to flee a community gathering in her district to escape angry crowds. It also contributed to her narrow 50%-48% primary victory in 2022.
If Omar is unqualified by both her anti-American ideology and her inability to avoid engaging in foreign politics on behalf of her clan and relatives, then her behavior with colleagues, especially in response to criticism, explains why they must find defending her so painful. She proclaimed in response to the aforementioned letter that “The islamophobic tropes in this statement are offensive. The constant harassment & silencing from the signers of this letter is unbearable.”
Omar presents a particular challenge for moderate Democrats. Unlike the House Intelligence Committee–where, as a “Select” Committee, McCarthy, as Speaker, has the right to eject members at will–spots on the Foreign Affairs Committee are in theory subject to election by the entire House. That means Omar can challenge her removal, and she has made clear she fully intends to do so.
Worse, from the perspective of moderate Democrats, the vote looks to be close – a consequence of a closely divided House, an absent Republican, and three Republicans who have come out against removal on the basis of precedent. That is the exact number McCarthy can afford to lose, meaning that there is a good chance the vote of any single Democratic representative is the deciding one for whether Omar returns to the Committee.
Omar’s Democratic critics face only bad options. If they support her, they are arguing that she belongs on the House Foreign Relations Committee, and will have to defend that position back home in their districts. That will be a particularly difficult explanation for the nine of the twelve signatories of the 2021 letter who are still in office.
If, however, Democrats don’t support Omar, they are, in the words of the House Progressive Caucus’ response to the 2021 letter, ignoring “a right-wing media echo chamber that has deliberately and routinely attacked a Black, Muslim woman in Congress, distorting her views and intentions, and resulting in threats against Rep. Omar and her staff.” In other words, progressives assert, by not supporting Omar for Foreign Relations, they are endangering her very life.
Either way, McCarthy has already won. He has forced the entire Democratic caucus, including future candidates for Senate and governorships, to risk their careers vouching for Schiff’s and Omar’s fitness for roles to which they are manifestly unfit. McCarthy seems to have set himself up for an easy political victory.
Daniel Berman is a frequent commentator and lecturer on foreign policy and political affairs, both nationally and internationally. He holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from the London School of Economics. He also writes as Daniel Roman.
