Democrat Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, is demanding that newly elected speaker Kevin McCarthy reappoint California Democrats Eric Swalwell and Adam Schiff to the chamber’s Intelligence Committee. McCarthy is planning to block Swalwell, Schiff, and Minnesota Democratic representative Ilhan Omar, the lattermost of whom McCarthy has plausibly accused of borderline antisemitic rhetoric, from serving on the committee.
This is the same Eric Swalwell who had a close relationship with a suspected Chinese intelligence operative. Putting him back on the committee where he’d be privy to some of our nation’s most sensitive classified information is an untenable risk.
Jeffries’s demand to see Schiff return to the committee isn’t all that surprising. Schiff is undoubtedly a partisan Democrat, but he’s not a threat to national security. And at least Jeffries isn’t going to bat for Omar. But it remains unclear why Jeffries would stick his neck out for Swalwell.
One possible reason for the minority leader’s outrageous demand is that this move is just another way of “owning the cons.” This sort of petty one-upmanship seems to have displaced reasoned argumentation as the go-to means of outmaneuvering one’s political opponents among some segments of the terminally online Left. As unbecoming as this behavior may be, it’s par for the course for the Left these days. With moves like this, it seems Jeffries is more intent on owning the cons than on governing.