Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., listens to fellow audio system earlier than President Joe Biden speaks throughout an occasion at SUNY Westchester Community College, May 10, 2023, in Valhalla, N.Y.

John Minchillo/AP

disguise caption

toggle caption

John Minchillo/AP

Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., listens to fellow audio system earlier than President Joe Biden speaks throughout an occasion at SUNY Westchester Community College, May 10, 2023, in Valhalla, N.Y.

John Minchillo/AP

WASHINGTON — House members voted once more Thursday to punish considered one of their very own, focusing on Democratic Rep. Jamaal Bowman for triggering a fire alarm in a U.S. Capitol office building when the chamber was in session.

The Republican censure decision handed with just a few Democratic votes, however a lot of the social gathering stood by Bowman in opposition of an effort they mentioned lacked credibility and integrity. The outstanding progressive now turns into the third Democratic House member to be admonished this yr by means of the censure course of, which is a punishment one step under expulsion from the House.

“It’s painfully obvious to myself, my colleagues and the American people that the Republican Party is deeply unserious and unable to legislate,” Bowman mentioned Wednesday as he defended himself throughout flooring debate. “Their censure resolution against me today continues to demonstrate their inability to govern and serve the American people.”

The 214-191 vote to censure Bowman caps practically a yr of chaos and retribution within the House of Representatives. Since January, the chamber has seen the elimination of a member from a committee project, the primary ouster of a speaker in historical past and, simply final week, the expulsion of a lawmaker for under the third time because the Civil War.

Rep. Lisa McClain, R-Mich., who launched the censure decision, defended it, claiming Bowman pulled the alarm in September to “cause chaos and the stop the House from doing its business” as lawmakers scrambled to cross a bill to fund the government earlier than a shutdown deadline.

“It is reprehensible that a Member of Congress would go to such lengths to prevent House Republicans from bringing forth a vote to keep the government operating and Americans receiving their paychecks,” McClain mentioned in a press release.

Bowman pleaded guilty in October to a misdemeanor count for the incident, which happened within the Cannon House Office Building. He agreed to pay a $1,000 positive and serve three months of probation, after which the false hearth alarm cost is predicted to be dismissed from his file underneath an settlement with prosecutors.

The hearth alarm prompted a buildingwide evacuation when the House was in session and staffers have been working within the constructing. The constructing was reopened an hour later after Capitol police decided there was no menace.

Bowman apologized and mentioned that on the time he was making an attempt to get by means of a door that was normally open however was closed that day as a result of it was the weekend.

Many progressive Democrats, who spoke in his protection, known as the Republican effort to censure him “unserious,” and the accused these throughout the aisle of weaponizing the censure course of in opposition to Democrats again and again for political acquire.

“Censure me next. That’s how worthless your effort is,” Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries mentioned on the ground late Wednesday. “It has no credibility. No integrity. No legitimacy. Censure me next, and I’ll take that censure and I’ll wear it next week, next month, next year like a badge of honor.”

The vote is the most recent instance of how the chamber has begun to deploy punishments like censure, long viewed as a punishment of last resort, routinely and infrequently in strikingly partisan methods.

“Under Republican control, this chamber has become a place where trivial issues get debated passionately and important ones not at all,” Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., mentioned throughout flooring debate. “Republicans have focused more on censuring people in this Congress than passing bills that help people we represent or improving this country in any way.”

While the censure of a lawmaker carries no sensible impact, it quantities to extreme reproach from colleagues, as lawmakers who’re censured are normally requested to face within the effectively of the House because the censure decision in opposition to them is learn aloud.

Bowman is now the twenty seventh particular person to be censured by the chamber — and the third simply this yr. Last month, Republicans voted to censure Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan in a unprecedented rebuke of her rhetoric in regards to the Israel-Hamas war.

In June, Democrat Adam Schiff of California was censured for feedback he made a number of years in the past about investigations into then-President Donald Trump’s ties to Russia.