House votes to censure Gosar and boot him from committees

Source: The Hill | November 17, 2021 | Cristina Marcos

The House voted almost entirely along party lines on Wednesday to censure Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) and take away his committee seats for posting an anime video depicting him violently attacking Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and President Biden.

Only two Republicans, Reps. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (Ill.), joined all Democrats as the House voted 223-207, with Rep. David Joyce (R-Ohio) voting “present,” to punish Gosar.

In an extraordinary scene, Gosar was forced to stand in the center of the House floor as Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) read aloud the resolution that made him just the 24th lawmaker in the chamber’s more than 200-year history to be censured.

Gosar will also be removed from the House Oversight and Reform Committee, where he has served with Ocasio-Cortez, as well as the House Natural Resources Committee.

Democratic leaders had previously held off on allowing votes on resolutions to censure several other Republicans this year, primarily for promoting former President Trump’s false claims of 2020 election fraud or downplaying the severity of the violent Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. 

But they ultimately decided that the edited anime video posted by Gosar last week, which portrayed him killing Ocasio-Cortez and swinging swords at Biden, went too far at a time when members of Congress face unprecedented levels of violent threats.

Ocasio-Cortez urged her colleagues in an impassioned House floor speech ahead of the vote to make clear that they won’t tolerate any lawmaker promoting depictions of political violence. 

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