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Kevin McCarthy isn’t the only one being held hostage as the Republican House conference repeatedly tries and fails to elect a new Speaker of the House — the presumed GOP chairpersons of several powerful committees are being prevented from starting important investigations into the Biden administration’s misdeeds. This isn’t to say that “Never Kevin” holdouts aren’t pushing for important concessions, but the lack of a speaker means all House business grinds to a halt and much-needed accountability from the current administration is frustratingly delayed.

Take, for instance, Jim Jordan. Despite being nominated on early ballots, he hasn’t shown any desire to be Speaker but has shown a very strong inclination to hold the DOJ and the FBI accountable for their various witchhunts when he becomes chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. As we previously reported, he “has already put Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and other DOJ officials on notice that his committee will be calling on them to testify about the blatant politicization of their offices. He is ‘seeking voluntary testimony and compliance’ from Garland and Wray, but, hey, this is Jim Jordan and he can be relied to go ham on them if pushed.”

Then there’s Steve Scalise, presumed Majority Leader to McCarthy’s Speaker of the House, who recently laid out the GOP’s ambitious floor schedule for the first two weeks of the session. In a letter to his Republican colleagues, Scalise noted, rightly, that: “The American people spoke on November 8th and decided it was time for a new direction.” Among the priorities:

• Rescind “tens of billions of dollars allocated to the IRS for 87,000 new IRS agents in the Inflation Reduction Act”

• Prohibit “non-emergency drawdowns of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve without a plan to increase energy production on federal lands”

• Address “our crisis at the southern border by empowering the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to turn away illegal migrants at the border if the Secretary of DHS does not have operational control”

• Make permanent “the long-standing Hyde Amendment as well as similar provisions to prohibit federal funding for abortion and funding for any insurance plan that includes abortion on demand”

McCarthy himself has laid out a bold agenda for the new Congress, writing on his official website:

“We will leave no stone unturned in order to deliver the accountability the American people deserve. Too many decision points in the government are made by agency heads and implemented by unelected and unconfirmed government actors – all of whom need to be accountable to the American people. And with gavels and subpoena authority in the upcoming Congress, we will use interviews, subpoenas, depositions, and hearings to expose the truth.”

It’s a long list of oversight priorities, but one that instills glee in the hearts of conservatives and other Americans concerned by unprecedented power grabs and media malfeasance. Here are a few highlights.

Big Tech and the Silencing of Americans’ Free Speech

We’ve seen Americans silenced, the truth censored, and viewpoints suppressed. House Republicans have a duty to ensure our fundamental freedoms prevail. We will investigate:

• Coordination and collusion with the Federal Government and intelligence officials to silence speech
• Twitter, Facebook, and Google censoring information and suppressing Free Speech
• TikTok’s threat to national security and Paypal’s debanking efforts

COVID Origins

House Republicans will investigate where COVID originated, how it initially spread, and who potentially played a role in the virus’ creation. We will investigate:

• CCP’s role in the spread of COVID and withholding information from the world
• To what extent the American taxpayers have funded gain of function research in China
• The collusion within NIH to discredit the “lab leak” theory and push natural occurrence against gathered data and evidence.

Hunter Biden

We will investigate:

• Impact of Hunter Biden’s foreign business deals on U.S. national security interests
• Influence peddling and selling access to hostile foreign powers
• Connection between the CCP purchasing American natural gas and the Biden family receiving millions of dollars from a Chinese      business with close ties to the CCP

As Steve Scalise noted, Americans are “looking for a new direction,” but they are also looking for quick and decisive action for past wrongs. Every day that House Republicans fail to unify behind a Speaker candidate means accountability denied and justice delayed.