The new Republican House majority is planning to create a subcommittee under the House Judiciary Committee to investigate government censors and snoops.
The "Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government" stems from the Twitter Files having revealed coordination between government agencies and Twitter during the 2020 pandemic and past election cycles, led by the FBI.
The subcommittee came to be after House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., received input from incoming House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and incoming House Oversight Chair James Comer, R-Ky., a source told Axios.
McCarthy has had to make concessions to House GOP holdouts who had threatened to not vote for him as speaker, and The Wall Street Journal's Kim Strassel reported this committee was one of them.
The new subcommittee will target government influencers, including potential censorship requests from the FBI, Justice Department, and intelligence community. Also, the attempts to establish a Department of Homeland Security Disinformation Governance Board will be under review.
"It takes a fair amount of malfeasance to land a new congressional committee," Strassel wrote in an op-ed. "Congratulations to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Justice Department and other government censors and snoops."
The designation of this as a subcommittee will give it the resources of the Judiciary Committee and allow it to work with other committees on related issues for legislative reform, according to Strassel.
Strassel expressed concern, saying that the left is going to call it out as partisan — similar to what happened to the 1975 Church Committee — and keep it from doing real work.
"The nation needs a GOP Congress to get to the bottom of government abuse, but it also needs lawmakers who take that duty on soberly, with an eye to more than headlines," she wrote. "Here's hoping."