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Republicans and Democrats have come together to back legislation making it harder for members to submit reprimand resolutions against each other
Joe SommerladFriday 28 November 2025 13:54 GMTComments
CloseSouth Carolina Republican Rep. Nancy Mace explains plan to censure Democrat Ilhan Omar
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The House of Representatives voted on three censures last week, as many as in the entire 118th Congress, prompting some Republicans and Democrats to demand a change in the rules to put a stop to a growing appetite for grandstanding.
On Monday, Washington Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez secured a rebuke of her fellow Democrat, the retiring Illinois Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, after accusing him of attempting to subvert the election of his successor. On Tuesday, South Carolina Rep. Ralph Norman submitted a failed motion to reprimand U.S. Virgin Islands Democratic Del. Stacey Plaskett after it emerged she had been on texting terms with the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein in 2019.
Finally, on Thursday, Rep. Nancy Mace, also of South Carolina, was likewise unsuccessful in seeking disciplinary action against Florida Rep. Cory Mills, a fellow Republican, for a range of offenses, including alleged corruption. Mills’s case was ultimately referred to the House Ethics Committee for further investigation.
In the entirety of the preceding Congress - which ran from 2023 to 2025, only the Democratic representatives Adam Schiff, Rashida Tlaib and Jamaal Bowman faced censure votes, all of which occurred between June and December 2023.
No one was reprimanded in either chamber in the whole of the 2022 and 2024 calendar years, underlining how extraordinary and atypical the events of the last week have been on Capitol Hill.
open image in galleryCongress voted on three censure resolutions in one week this month while there no formal reprimands at all in the entirety of 2024. (AP)
open image in galleryTexas Democratic Rep. Al Green was censured in March for heckling President Donald Trump during his address to a joint session of Congress (EPA)Censure resolutions are calls to formally reprimand a member of either chamber of Congress, the president, a federal judge or a government official, with the option to discipline representatives and senators, such as by stripping them of their committee assignments, a power granted under Article 1, Section 5 of the U.S. Constitution, which gives Congress responsibility for its own members.
The censure of non-members of Congress does not carry the same disciplinary authority. Still, it nevertheless stands as a weighty formal declaration of disapproval of the conduct of the individual in question in the view of the House and the Senate.
A notable recent example of a censure resolution in action came in March this year when the House reprimanded Texas Democratic Rep. Al Green for repeatedly heckling President Donald Trump as he addressed a joint session of Congress, with Green ignoring calls to pipe down before ultimately being forcibly removed by the sergeant-at-arms while Republicans cheered.
While that was an exceptional occurrence, the frequency with which censure resolutions have since piled up has caused Virginia Democratic Rep. Don Beyer and Nebraska Republican Rep. Don Bacon to lose patience and pitch legislation to raise the threshold for securing a reprimand vote from a simple majority to a 60-percent majority.
Beyer told The Washington Post that their proposal was amassing bipartisan support and said he submitted it because he was growing tired of “the tension, the anger, the refusal to work together.” He said he hopes to see a vote on it come to pass early next year.
Others have expressed concerns that the process is evolving into a tactic to tar an opponent who wastes time on the floor while also bypassing the Ethics Committee, which typically undertakes painstaking, rigorous probes into claims of misconduct against members of Congress. The panel can, however, struggle for resources and be blocked by the Department of Justice in certain instances.
Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar was the target of a failed recent censure push by Mace and others after comments she made accusing Republicans of exploiting the assassination of Charlie Kirk met with outrage and told the Post the process is overused and stymies “civil debate.”
open image in galleryMAGA Republicans attempted to formally reprimand Minnestota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar in September over comments she made about the killing of Charlie Kirk. (AP)“It puts us in a really bad shape when it becomes a tool to fundraise and to get your name out there, then it loses the seriousness of why the censure was created,” Omar said.
“And I believe that we are seeing members who are struggling to gain attention or want attention, utilizing it.”
Perhaps the most damning assessment of the situation comes from former Virginia Republican congresswoman Barbara Comstock, who said that, in the past, censures were much less common because members were expected to resign when confronted with serious allegations, but now they more likely to stand their ground and attempt to tough it out, a culture shift she blamed on President Trump’s example.
“Back in the day, these type of actions weren’t taken because there still was some sense of shame and decency by the members themselves,” Comstock said.
“They’d step down because they realized it caused a lot of turmoil within their own caucus.”
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CongressHouse of RepresentativesSenateHouse Ethics CommitteeRepublicansDemocratsDonald TrumpNancy MaceAdam SchiffRashida TlaibJamaal BowmanIlhan OmarAl GreenJoin our commenting forum
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