The GOP-led House of Representatives voted Tuesday night to censure Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) over language she has used to criticize Israel amid its war against Hamas.
The vote, which came down after 10:30pm ET, was 234-188 along mostly partisan lines. Twenty-two Democrats voted with 212 Republicans to censure Tlaib, the only Palestinian-American member of Congress. Just 4 Republicans joined with 184 Democrats to vote against censure.
The censure resolution on which the lawmakers voted had been introduced on Monday by Rep. Rich McCormick (R-GA), who had called Tlaib’s actions regarding Israel “entirely unbecoming” of a member of the House.
Tlaib had posted a video on social media on Friday that included footage of protesters chanting, “from the river to the sea.”
The Anti-Defamation League has said that chant is part of a full slogan, “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” which the ADL called an “antisemitic slogan commonly featured in anti-Israel campaigns…[calling] for a Palestinian state extending from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, territory that includes the State of Israel, which would mean the dismantling of the Jewish state.”
Tlaib disagreed with the ADL’s characterization, saying that the phrase is an “aspirational call for human rights, and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate.”
Tuesday was the second attempt at censuring Tlaib. An effort this past Wednesday by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) to censure Tlaib for her remarks was “tabled,” or killed, by a vote of 222 to 186, with 23 Republicans siding with all 199 Democrats who voted.
Greene, who engaged in a name-calling squabble with Republicans who voted against her initial measure last week, had introduced a second, separate censure resolution alongside McCormick’s on Monday. But her second resolution was put on hold after McCormick’s advanced to a final vote.
Tlaib, without responding directly to the censure resolutions, has accused her colleagues of “distorting my positions in resolutions filled with obvious lies.”
She is now the 26th person to ever be censured by the House, and the second this year. In June Republicans voted to censure Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) over his role in investigating former President Trump.
On Wednesday, House Democrats yanked a resolution that Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-CA) had filed on Monday to censure Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL) for inflammatory comments he made last week comparing Palestinian civilians to Nazis during World War II. A Democratic aide told The Hill that Jacobs was working House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) staffers to consider the best time to move forward with that resolution.
PHOTO: House vote to censure Rashida Tlaib
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