WASHINGTON — The Republican-controlled House voted Thursday to censure Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, for disrupting President Donald Trump’s address to Congress on Tuesday.
The vote was 224-198, with 10 Democrats joining all Republicans in approving the censure resolution. Green and freshman Rep. Shomari Figures, D-Ala., voted present. As the vote proceeded, Green sat by himself along the center aisle.
After the vote, as the resolution required of him, Green stood in the well of the House chamber while Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., read the censure resolution to him.
Dozens of Democrats, including many fellow members of the Congressional Black Caucus, surrounded Green in the well and sang “We Shall Overcome” in a show of solidarity as Johnson repeatedly told them to stop and to clear the well.
Republicans in the chamber yelled, “Order! Order!” And two Black Caucus members, Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., and Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, shot back: “Shame on you!”
Democrats ignored Johnson’s request, and he then recessed the House.
All 10 Democrats who voted to censure Green are moderates: Ami Bera and Jim Costa, both of California; Ed Case of Hawaii; Laura Gillen and Tom Suozzi, both of New York; Jim Himes of Connecticut; Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania; Marcy Kaptur of Ohio; Jared Moskowitz of Florida; and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington.
Green, 77, an outspoken progressive who is a former local president of the NAACP, is a fixture in the House, where he has served for 20 years. Starting in Trump’s first term, he has repeatedly introduced resolutions to impeach Trump, and he has threatened to do so again this year.
Rep. Dan Newhouse, R-Wash., introduced the censure resolution. A Democratic effort to table the resolution was rejected Wednesday in a 209-211 vote.
A censure is a formal way for the House to express disapproval of a member’s conduct. A censured member does not lose any rights or privileges as a House member.
The matter, however, might not be closed. The far-right House Freedom Caucus, which had been racing to introduce its own resolution to censure Green, said after the vote that its members plan to roll out another resolution seeking to remove Green from the Financial Services Committee. The group said on X it expects Johnson to bring the resolution to the floor next week.
Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, was removed from the House chamber after he disrupted President Donald Trump’s speech to Congress.Win McNamee / Getty Images
While Democrats engaged in both silent and sometimes vocal protests of Trump during his long address to a joint session of Congress this week, Green took things a step further.
He rose from his seat toward the front of the chamber Tuesday night, shook his cane toward Trump and repeatedly shouted that the president had “no mandate to cut Medicaid … no mandate” — after Trump had said in his speech that voters in the 2024 election had handed him a mandate to slash the federal government.
Republicans across the aisle, including Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Nancy Mace of South Carolina, jeered and booed. The usually even-tempered Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, R-Wyo., screamed at Green: “Sit down!”
Johnson banged the gavel and gave several warnings to Green, but he refused to sit down or be quiet. Johnson then instructed the sergeant at arms to remove him from the chamber.
He did not resist, and he walked out of the room as Republicans chanted in unison, “Na-nah, na-na-nah-na … goodbye!”
Green said Wednesday that he had the “privilege of going to jail” with the late Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, the civil rights icon who Green said taught him the importance of peaceful protest.
“So I’m not angry with the speaker. I’m not angry with the officers. I’m not upset with the members who are going to bring the motions or resolution to sanction. I will suffer the consequences,” Green said. “But I must add this: What I did was from my heart. People are suffering, and I was talking about Medicaid. I didn’t just say you don’t have a mandate. I said you don’t have a mandate to cut Medicaid.
“I did it from my heart, and I will suffer whatever the consequences are,” he added. “But truthfully, I would do it again.”
Article I of the Constitution gives the House and the Senate alike the authority to determine how to “punish its Members for disorderly Behaviour.” The House first censured a representative in 1832 for insulting the House speaker. Since the, members have been censured for offenses such as using unparliamentary language in floor debate, corruption and even committing assault on the House floor.
Green is the 28th member of the House to be censured.
The last House member to be censured was another progressive Black Caucus member, then-Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., on Dec. 7, 2023. He was censured for pulling a fire alarm in a Capitol office building when there was no fire or other emergency; Bowman was ousted last year in the Democratic primary and has insisted pulling the alarm was an accident.
A month earlier, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., the first Palestinian American woman elected to Congress, was censured for comments she made about the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel in October 2023.
The last Republican censured was Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona in 2021, after he posted an animated video that depicted him killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and attacking President Joe Biden.
