Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-California) has announced her picks for a select committee to investigate the Capitol breach of January 6, and included among them is Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming), who up until May was the third-highest ranking member of the Republican caucus in the House.
Pelosi’s selections were announced a day after House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-California) threatened to strip fellow Republicans of their committee assignments if they serve on the body.
McCarthy made the threat on Wednesday, reportedly telling a group of Republican freshmen lawmakers that anyone accepting a role from Pelosi to be on the panel would lose their positions on congressional committees, according to sources with knowledge of the conversation. On Thursday, after Pelosi announced her picks for the select committee, McCarthy denied making the threat, but in the same breath suggested retaliation was possible for any Republican lawmaker that had been cooperative with the House Speaker on the matter.
“I’m not making any threats about committee assignments, but you know how Congress works,” McCarthy said to reporters. “You get elected by your district and you get your committees from your conference … I don’t know in history where someone would go get their committee assignments from the Speaker and expect to have them from the conference as well.”
Cheney lost her position in the GOP caucus after voting to impeach former President Donald Trump, and for refusing to bolster his false claims of election fraud, which many (including a majority of Americans) view as being partly responsible for the attack on the Capitol in the first place.
“I’m honored to have been named to serve on the January 6th select committee,” she said in a statement on Thursday. “Congress is obligated to conduct a full investigation of the most serious attack on our Capitol since 1814.”
The House voted to form the select committee earlier this week, after a bipartisan effort was blocked in the Senate by a Republican filibuster.
“January 6th was one of the darkest days in our nation’s history, with five people killed, 140 members of law enforcement physically harmed and countless more seriously traumatized,” Pelosi said in a statement. “It is clear that January 6th was not simply an attack on a building, but an attack on our very democracy: an attack on the peaceful transfer of power.”
In addition to Cheney, Pelosi also named seven Democrats to serve on the committee — Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Mississippi) to chair the committee, and Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-California), Adam Schiff (D-California), Pete Aguilar (D-California), Stephanie Murphy (D-Florida), Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) and Elaine Luria (D-Virginia) to serve on the committee.
The five remaining members will be named after consultation with McCarthy. If McCarthy selects only Republicans to serve, six members will be from the GOP.
Cheney was one of only two Republicans in the House to vote in favor of forming the select committee on which she now serves. Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Illinois), the other Republican that voted for it, responded to McCarthy’s threat of stripping members of committee assignments if they accepted an invite from Pelosi to take part.
“Who gives a shit?” Kinzinger said to Politico, adding that it was “ironic” that McCarthy wouldn’t “go after the space lasers and white supremacist people” in his party.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.