McCarthy locks out leading Democrats from key committees, sparking partisan outrage

Amna Nawaz:

Historic levels of drama played out over the first few weeks of the new Congress. Legislative leaders are just now beginning to get into the day-to-day of Capitol Hill.

Lisa Desjardins is here to break down what's happening now and what's to come.

Lisa, good to see you.

Lisa Desjardins:

Good to see you.

Amna Nawaz:

So, take us through some of these first actions we're seeing in Congress, especially the moves around the committees.

What's happened and why does it matter?

Lisa Desjardins:

Well, the first weeks, what happens now really sets the tone, any possible action, and also all of the leadership decisions are being made right now. So it's critical.

And I'm going to start with what's going on with committees, because those are the driving force, sort of the blood that pumps Congress. And, already, we have seen from new Speaker Kevin McCarthy some big decisions. He has kept up his pledge to remove two Democrats from the Intelligence Committee, so already sort of a tone of partisanship, kind of combat and divide.

McCarthy says the reasons he's removed Adam Schiff, the former chairman, is because he claims Schiff lied about intelligence that centers around former President Trump. Schiff says that was the impeachment effort, that he wasn't lying. That was what he knew.

The other one is Representative Eric Swalwell of California. We know that our intelligence agencies say he was targeted by what they see — say was a Chinese spy. There is no evidence that I have seen that he did anything wrong. He reported his contact once he knew there was a problem.

But Mr. McCarthy says that all of these questions are too much for such an important committee as Intelligence. Here's what he told me last night.

Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA):

I will put the national security ahead of partisan politics any day. I don't care if they're in my party or not. Integrity matters. And we're going to make the Intel Committee back to what it was supposed to be.

Lisa Desjardins:

It doesn't end there.

Mr. McCarthy and Republicans are also looking into removing another House Democrat, Representative Ilhan Omar, from the House Foreign Affairs Committee. That is due to remarks she's made in the past about Israel. She's apologized for those in the past.

She spoke to us today about, this and she said all of these removals are just politics.

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN):

It is not the accusations that McCarthy is making against us that is pushing for a removal from these committees. It is about revenge. It's about the — appeasing the former president. All three of us have been a thorn in the back of the previous disgraced president.

Lisa Desjardins:

It is not clear House Republicans have the votes to remove her. Some Republicans are saying, no, that's going too far. So that is still undetermined.

But what this set is sort of a tone of you, me, we are against each other, we're not working together.

I will say there is some bipartisanship when it comes to committees, so something to watch, new committees forming in the House. Let's go through these quickly. There is a new committee on competition with China passed overwhelmingly. And I think you will be talking about that more in the show coming up, Amna.

More partisan committees, though, there's one called the Weaponization of the Federal Government, a subcommittee. That is to look at recent investigations, and also one on the coronavirus pandemic. That subcommittee, by the way, has on it Marjorie Taylor Greene. She's someone who in the past has raised questions about vaccines, those kinds of things. This will also deal with the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, from a conservative point of view.

Amna Nawaz:

Quite a tone they're setting in the early days here.

Well, let's talk about one specific congressman. That is New York Congressman George Santos. We have been following a lot of headlines about him, how he has lied about several pieces of his resume and his past. Where does he stand right now as a new member?

Lisa Desjardins:

Right.

Representative Santos, as you can see, this was my video of him today as we were asking him questions. He did not answer really many of our questions. Asked what he's doing to serve constituents, he said he's working on nominations to military academies. That was the only thing he could raise.

But what we have seen now is Republicans in a very difficult position here. There are Republicans in his district — in fact, the Republican Party in Nassau County, New York, has asked him to resign. He is refusing to. Speaker McCarthy said he will not take him off of committees, but he will move to remove him if the Ethics Committee finds that he has done something illegal. That's down the road.

It takes two-thirds of the entire House to remove a member. He's nowhere near that. For now, he is safe. Republicans do need his votes. But privately, Amna, they all admit he's an embarrassment and they don't think he should be serving, but they're not taking action against him.

Amna Nawaz:

So, Lisa, zoom us out even further now. Take the big picture look at this, the early ideas for this agenda in this Congress.

What are they actually going to be doing? What are the priorities?

Lisa Desjardins:

Well, House Republicans have made some announcements.

Border security, no surprise, is going to be a big initial push for them. They were hoping to, I think, be farther along on that this week. I think it will take them a bit longer than they expected. But look for that issue to dominate, especially on the House side.

Also, I think Republicans are changing the process. Tomorrow, Amna, we will see something we haven't seen in seven years, which will be a bill, this — in this case about the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, being built in real time on the House floor. Any member will be able to propose amendments. It will take more than a day to work through the dozens of amendments.

It will be messy. Republicans say that is the point. But I want to point to something else going on right now that we don't talk about enough, big issues. There are many small issues. Thousands and thousands of groups are now on Capitol Hill lobbying for things that will affect them and add up to millions of people.

For example, I saw these signs outside the Republican National Committee today. Look at that. That's about Darrell Issa, a congressman from California. They're saying he's bad for start-ups. This is a group called U.S. Inventor. They do not want Darrell Issa to head up a subcommittee on intellectual property.

I guarantee we're the only broadcast talking about this tonight. But I raise this because, for these inventors, they say the person who runs that subcommittee will dictate whether they can get profits from their own inventions or not.

Mr. Issa says he's for reform and that someone is harmed one way or the other. He doesn't want to harm inventors. But the point is, this is the business of Congress that is happening now. These leadership decisions, who runs these subcommittees, very important, those decisions happening as we speak.

Amna Nawaz:

Early days of the new Congress, and a lot has already happened.

Lisa Desjardins tracking it all.

Lisa Desjardins:

You're welcome.