The U.S House of Representatives voted Wednesday to censure Arizona Republican Paul Gosar over a video he tweeted depicting violence against fellow lawmaker Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
The resolution passed 223-207, with only Wyoming’s Liz Cheney and Illinois’ Adam Kinzinger from the Republican party voting in favor, according to the New York Times.
As a result of the vote, Gosar will be removed of his committee assignments, which included the House Committee on Natural Resources and the House Committee on Oversight and Reform.
The video in question has been removed from both Gosar’s private and his official congressional twitter accounts. Gosar said he “self-censored” because some viewed the tweet as a threat. Gosar had previously said the the video was just a “symbolic cartoon.”
Although this is the first formal censure in the House in over a decade, it marks the second time this year that Democrats voted to strip a Republican lawmaker of their committee priveleges, following their vote to remove Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor-Greene from her assignments in February.
Ocasio-Cortez lambasted Republican leadership, including Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, for failing to condemn “incitement of violence” against her.
McCarthy criticized the censure vote calling it a Democratic abuse of power.
Interestingly, he even went so far as to imply that if the GOP takes back the house in 2022, they may take up censure votes of their own, admitting “a new standard will continue to be applied in the future.”
He continued saying, “the minority rights that have served this body are things of the past, and furthermore under the Pelosi precedent, all the members that I have mentioned earlier will need the approval of a majority to keep those positions in the future.” Those members include California’s Maxine Waters and Eric Swalwell and Minnesota’s Ilhan Omar.
