Home Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) unveiled his picks on Tuesday for the brand new Choose Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic: Republicans who've unfold harmful misinformation about COVID-19, in contrast sporting face masks to the Holocaust, and prompt that the omicron variant of the lethal virus was a Democratic hoax.
“The 118th Congress marks a brand new starting for this establishment,” McCarthy declared in a press release asserting his selections for this subcommittee. “Republicans’ governing agenda will likely be primarily based on transparency, accountability, and options.”
He’s not improper that it’s a brand new starting: It’s a contemporary infusion of bonkers atop the Home panel charged with conducting oversight of the federal government’s response to the COVID pandemic. The subcommittee was at all times destined to be extra actuality TV than professional policymaking; McCarthy handed out plenty of high-profile committee seats to extremists to safe their votes for his speakership. However on this case, his appointments are simply laughable.
His picks for the coronavirus panel embody Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who was routinely kicked off of Twitter for spreading COVID misinformation to lots of of hundreds of individuals in violation of the corporate’s coverage on the time.
Greene was suspended in July 2021 when she claimed COVID-19 wasn’t harmful except you have been overweight or over the age of 65. She was suspended once more a month later when she falsely posted that COVID vaccines have been “failing.” She was completely banned in January 2022 after falsely tweeting about “extraordinarily excessive quantities of Covid vaccine deaths.” (Twitter reinstated her account in November 2022 after Elon Musk took over the location.)
Greene additionally in contrast being required to put on a masks on the Home flooring to the Holocaust.
“You recognize, we are able to look again at a time in historical past the place folks have been advised to put on a gold star, and so they have been undoubtedly handled like second-class residents, a lot in order that they have been put in trains and brought to fuel chambers in Nazi Germany,” she stated in Could 2021. “And that is precisely the kind of abuse that Nancy Pelosi is speaking about.”
The Georgia firebrand’s feedback got here at a time within the pandemic when greater than 100 Home Republicans refused to say in the event that they have been vaccinated, which prompted then-Speaker Pelosi to maintain a masks mandate in place for the Home flooring.
Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas), a former doctor to presidents Donald Trump and Barack Obama, was additionally tapped for the Home coronavirus panel. In November 2021, he claimed the omicron variant of COVID was a Democratic hoax to justify new mail-in poll guidelines — a model of a right-wing conspiracy concept that President Joe Biden and public well being officers have been taking motion on COVID completely to spice up Democrats’ electoral prospects.
“Right here comes the MEV — the Midterm Election Variant! They NEED a motive to push unsolicited nationwide mail-in ballots,” Jackson tweeted, referring to omicron. “Democrats will do something to CHEAT throughout an election — however we’re not going to allow them to!”
In July 2020, within the early and most dangerous interval of the pandemic, Jackson known as sporting a masks “a private selection.” His feedback on the time not solely contradicted common steering from public well being consultants however even undermined one other Texas Republican, Gov. Greg Abbott, who had mandated that the majority state residents put on a masks.
A staunch Trump ally, Jackson tweeted Tuesday that he can’t wait to get to work on the brand new subcommittee, the place “Each LIE that was used to LOCK YOU DOWN will likely be unearthed.”
McCarthy’s different GOP picks for the COVID subcommittee embody Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (Iowa), who unfold false info concerning the CDC planning to mandate COVID vaccines for youngsters and about kids not being affected by COVID; Rep. Michael Cloud (Texas), who in March 2020 voted in opposition to the Households First COVID Response Act, which supplied emergency funding free of charge COVID testing and paid depart for employees hit by the pandemic; Rep. John Joyce (Pa.), who filed a invoice to dam the federal government from issuing standardized COVID vaccine standing playing cards; and Rep. Wealthy McCormick (Ga.), an ER doctor who unfold misinformation about masks and COVID vaccines.
The excellent news concerning the new subcommittee, when it comes to any GOP members having credibility, is that solely a few of them voted to throw out the outcomes of the 2020 presidential election primarily based on the identical lie that fueled an tried coup on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Of the 9 Republicans tapped for this panel, six tried to forestall the peaceable switch of presidential energy that day: Reps. Nicole Malliotakis (N.Y.), Debbie Lesko (Ariz.), Cloud, Joyce, Greene and Jackson.
The opposite three GOP members of the committee are Miller-Meeks, McCormick and Chairman Brad Wenstrup (Ohio).
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