Ilhan Omar holds on to foreign affairs committee seat, but remains vulnerable to Republican threats

This week, US House Democrats finalised committee assignments, with Ilhan Omar keeping her seat on the Foreign Affairs Committee. She will, however, remain vulnerable until it becomes clear if there are enough Republicans who can vote her out, which most in the chamber's slim majority appear to support.

"I think it's important to indicate that this is really unusual," Karen Kedrowski, professor of political science at Iowa State University, told The New Arab. "The minority leader and the speaker usually work together on committee assignments. This shows how badly relations between the two parties have become, which makes it harder to govern."

For the past several months, outspoken members of the party, led by now-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, have threatened to remove Omar from the House Foreign Affairs Committee. It would require a majority vote in Congress to oust Omar, which a handful of Republicans have already said they won't do, dismissing the move as a tit-for-tat.

This comes just days after McCarthy ejected Representatives Eric Swalwell and Adam Schiff from the Intelligence Committee, showing the new Republican-led Congress is serious about retaliating against their Democratic foes. 

In the case of the two men, it was reportedly for their roles in former president Trump's impeachment and for tying him to the 6 January attack on the Capitol. 

For Omar, it was for multiple tweets she posted over the years, some dating back before she was elected to US Congress, criticising Israel and was deemed as 'anti-Semitic'. The post she made after coming to office said that US political leaders' support for Israel is "all about the Benjamins", invoking a rap song about hundred-dollar bills. 

However, there have been arguably much more blatantly anti-Semitic statements over the past several years by Republicans, including McCarthy, who tweeted that Jewish billionaires had tried to "buy" the 2018 election. 

In addition, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has joined McCarthy in leading the calls for Omar to be blocked from her committee assignment, suggested that Jewish space lasers caused the California wildfires in 2018.

Nevertheless, Omar's past tweets will not be forgotten, leading many Democrats to question Republicans' motivations over wanting to remove her from an important committee, with some suggesting racism and Islamophobia.

Regardless of Republicans' motivations for wanting to oust Omar from the committee, it is clear she made waves when questioning powerful figures about weapons, sanctions and drones in El Salvador, Iraq, Afghanistan and other parts of the world that have experienced hardship related to US policy.

On Monday, Omar tweeted a video clip of her work on the Foreign Affairs Committee, highlighting her tough questioning.

"Our work on the House Foreign Committee has been about advancing human rights, holding government officials accountable for past harms, and advancing a more just and peaceful foreign policy," Omar tweeted.

Also on Monday, the New York Times published a guest essay by Peter Beinart, editor at large of Jewish Currents, arguing that "House Republicans are poised to make a grave mistake by removing from the Committee on Foreign Affairs the only person who consistently describes American foreign policy as it is experienced by much of the rest of the world."

He described her work on the committee as translating "between Washington and the outside world."

Aside from party politics, ousting Omar from a committee could set a troubling precedent, hence the hesitation among some House Republicans.

"I don't like kicking members of committees willy-nilly. I don't want this to be the start of a precedent," J. Miles Coleman, associate editor of Sabato's Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, told TNA. "This is going to be a fun Congress."