Home Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) unveiled his picks on Tuesday for the brand new Choose Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic: Republicans who’ve unfold harmful misinformation about COVID-19, in contrast sporting face masks to the Holocaust, and urged that the omicron variant of the lethal virus was a Democratic hoax.

“The 118th Congress marks a brand new starting for this establishment,” McCarthy declared in an announcement saying his decisions for this subcommittee. “Republicans’ governing agenda will likely be primarily based on transparency, accountability, and options.”

He’s not fallacious that it’s a brand new starting: It’s a contemporary infusion of bonkers atop the Home panel charged with conducting oversight of the federal government’s response to the COVID pandemic. The subcommittee was all the time destined to be extra actuality TV than professional policymaking; McCarthy handed out plenty of high-profile committee seats to extremists to safe their votes for his speakership. However on this case, his appointments are simply laughable.

His picks for the coronavirus panel embody Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who was routinely kicked off of Twitter for spreading COVID misinformation to a whole bunch of 1000’s of individuals in violation of the corporate’s coverage on the time.

Greene was suspended in July 2021 when she claimed COVID-19 wasn’t harmful until you had been overweight or over the age of 65. She was suspended again a month later when she falsely posted that COVID vaccines had been “failing.” She was permanently banned in January 2022 after falsely tweeting about “extraordinarily excessive quantities of Covid vaccine deaths.” (Twitter reinstated her account in November 2022 after Elon Musk took over the location.)

Greene additionally in contrast being required to put on a masks on the Home flooring to the Holocaust.

“, we are able to look again at a time in historical past the place folks had been informed to put on a gold star, and so they had been positively handled like second-class residents, a lot in order that they had been put in trains and brought to fuel chambers in Nazi Germany,” she said in May 2021. “And that is precisely the kind of abuse that Nancy Pelosi is speaking about.”

The Georgia firebrand’s feedback got here at a time within the pandemic when greater than 100 Home Republicans refused to say if they were vaccinated, which prompted then-Speaker Pelosi to maintain a masks mandate in place for the Home flooring.

Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas), a former doctor to presidents Donald Trump and Barack Obama, was additionally tapped for the Home coronavirus panel. In November 2021, he claimed the omicron variant of COVID was a Democratic hoax to justify new mail-in poll guidelines — a model of a right-wing conspiracy principle that President Joe Biden and public well being officers had been taking motion on COVID solely to spice up Democrats’ electoral prospects.

“Right here comes the MEV — the Midterm Election Variant! They NEED a motive to push unsolicited nationwide mail-in ballots,” Jackson tweeted, referring to omicron. “Democrats will do something to CHEAT throughout an election — however we’re not going to allow them to!”

In July 2020, within the early and most dangerous interval of the pandemic, Jackson known as sporting a masks “a personal choice.” His feedback on the time not solely contradicted common steering from public well being consultants however even undermined one other Texas Republican, Gov. Greg Abbott, who had mandated that almost all state residents put on a masks.

A staunch Trump ally, Jackson tweeted Tuesday that he can’t wait to get to work on the brand new subcommittee, the place “Each LIE that was used to LOCK YOU DOWN will likely be unearthed.”

McCarthy’s different GOP picks for the COVID subcommittee embody Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (Iowa), who spread false information concerning the CDC planning to mandate COVID vaccines for youngsters and about kids not being affected by COVID; Rep. Michael Cloud (Texas), who in March 2020 voted against the Households First COVID Response Act, which supplied emergency funding at no cost COVID testing and paid go away for staff hit by the pandemic; Rep. John Joyce (Pa.), who filed a bill to dam the federal government from issuing standardized COVID vaccine standing playing cards; and Rep. Wealthy McCormick (Ga.), an ER doctor who spread misinformation about masks and COVID vaccines.

The excellent news concerning the new subcommittee, when it comes to any GOP members having credibility, is that solely a few of them voted to throw out the results of the 2020 presidential election primarily based on the identical lie that fueled an tried coup on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Of the 9 Republicans tapped for this panel, six tried to forestall the peaceable switch of presidential energy that day: Reps. Nicole Malliotakis (N.Y.), Debbie Lesko (Ariz.), Cloud, Joyce, Greene and Jackson.

The opposite three GOP members of the committee are Miller-Meeks, McCormick and Chairman Brad Wenstrup (Ohio).