When the House GOP’s newly created select subcommittee on the “weaponization of the federal government” held its first hearing last week, there was plenty of focus on the committee’s name:
Rep. Jamie Raskin (Md.) labeled it “odd” and cast it as “pure psychological projection,” accusing Republicans of ignoring instances in which he said then-President Donald Trump had weaponized the federal government.Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) asked one witness whether he thought the FBI sending Twitter lists of accounts possibly breaking its rules was an example of “targeting” or “weaponization” (the witness chose “targeting”).Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) said the w-word was appropriate and that there were so many examples of it occurring that “it will take us probably two years to lay that out.”Rep. Daniel S. Goldman (D-N.Y.) said the committee was “menacingly” named.
Whatever results from the committee’s work product, it’s difficult to argue with that last one — and the name is conspicuous, historically speaking.
Special and select committees are generally created for momentary purposes (often a scandal), in contrast to permanent committees that every Congress contains. Compared with its predecessors, the name of the “weaponization” committee stands out.
Most often, such committees are given bland names that reflect the broad topic area. The committee focused on the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya, last decade was named, simply, the House Select Committee on Benghazi. The Iran-contra committee was named the House Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran, at a time when those covert arms transactions were public record. The Jan. 6 committee’s full name was the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. (Even for the insurrection doubters, it’s virtually impossible to cast the events of Jan. 6 as anything other than an attack on the Capitol.)
But sometimes, Congress has gone to even greater lengths to make sure the committees are seen as neutral, and not as prejudging anything. Dozens of committees have included the caveat “to investigate” or “alleged” in their title, as when the subject was Alleged Abuses of the Franking System back in 1879. One of the subtlest names of all was the Senate’s Watergate committee, which was named, almost hilariously, the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities.
Even by the time the committee was created in February 1973, reporting from The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein had tied the break-in to President Richard M. Nixon’s campaign, and two former campaign officials had been convicted for their roles.
(You can check out the National Archives to get a sense for how these committees have been named in the House and the Senate.)
There are a few instances in which the committee names have been more colorful and leaned in to what they aimed to reveal. In 1952, the House created a Select Committee on Offensive and Undesirable Books, Magazines, and Comic Books (also known as the Select Committee on Current Pornographic Materials). In 1954 came the Select Committee on Communist Aggression. Both were short-lived and not especially impactful.
Perhaps the most loaded name for a committee is also one of the most infamous ones. In 1934, the House created the Special Committee on Un-American Activities Authorized to Investigate Nazi Propaganda and Certain Other Propaganda Activities, which at the time was commonly known as the McCormack-Dickstein Committee. The committee in 1938 was renamed simply the Special Committee on Un-American Activities, as it began focusing more on alleged communist ties of private citizens and entities. By 1944, it was made a permanent committee — the House Un-American Activities Committee — and came to be commonly abbreviated as HUAC.
But thanks its controversial tactics — including its broad targeting of leftists, the Hollywood blacklists that resulted and the even more infamous related exploits in the Senate by Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.) — the committee soon fell out of favor. Harry S. Truman in 1959 called the committee “the most un-American thing in the country.”
By 1969, amid intense continued criticism, the House decided a name change was in order, going with the much blander House Committee on Internal Security.
Similar to HUAC, the weaponization committee’s very title invites those observing the proceedings to view it as an established fact that the activities on its radar amount to weaponization.
There is some bipartisan agreement at least that the federal government has been weaponized at some point: In addition to Raskin accusing Trump of weaponizing the Justice Department and Republicans of treating the committee itself as a political weapon, Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-Tex.) pointed to the government’s “long history” of being weaponized against racial and religious minorities.
But the initial offerings from the committee and the House GOP appear focused on rather speculative instances of supposed “weaponization” — and specifically against its political allies. Among the focal points of last week’s hearing were the FBI purportedly persecuting school-board protesters by investigating threats against school officials, and the allegedly shoddy origins of the Russia investigation (on which special counsel John Durham’s years-long investigation hasn’t turned up much).
And despite Rep. Johnson’s assurance that this “weaponization” is already documented, the American people are skeptical of the committee. A Washington Post-ABC News poll last week showed they said by a 20-point margin that the committee was mostly about scoring political points rather than a legitimate committee. That’s in contrast to many of the things the committee will apparently scrutinize, which majorities of Americans regarded as legitimate.
And at least some Republicans aren’t leaning in as hard. Rep. David Joyce (R-Ohio) appeared on CNN ahead of the committee’s first hearing last week and demurred when asked whether he felt the government had indeed been weaponized against conservatives.
“Our government should be transparent,” Joyce said. “And if they’re truly weaponizing, then show the facts.”
Joyce added: “There’s been a lot of allegations made, as you alluded to. But I think it’s very important that if they have these hearings, at the end of the day, they produce something to show either tangible facts or back off that so people can have confidence in their government.”