House Republicans vote to censure Adam Schiff

House Republicans on Wednesday voted to censure Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), a rare reprimand of a sitting lawmaker that the GOP conference delivered as a rebuke for his efforts against former President Trump.

The vote — 213-209-6 — is the culmination of a week-long push led by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), which was stymied last week when a band of Republicans joined Democrats in blocking a censure resolution from coming to the floor for a vote. It advanced on Wednesday after Luna made changes to the measure.

It also marked the apex of Republicans’ years-long campaign against Schiff, who emerged as a bogeyman on the right for his unrelenting criticism of Trump’s alleged ties with Russia, and was cemented as a chief GOP adversary on Capitol Hill when he led the first impeachment inquiry targeting Trump.

A stunning scene took place after the vote, as Democrats in the chamber surrounded Schiff on the House floor, chanting “Adam, Adam.” They interrupted Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who had taken the gavel for the vote, repeatedly as he tried to deliver the results of the vote.

Schiff — who is currently entrenched in a competitive Senate primary against two House colleagues — embraced the extraordinary punishment, declaring on the floor in an impassioned speech that he would repeat his past actions of holding “a dangerous and out of control president accountable” if called upon to do so in the future.

“Today, I wear this partisan vote as a badge of honor,” Schiff said Wednesday. “Knowing that I have lived my oath. Knowing that I have done my duty, to hold a dangerous and out of control president accountable. And knowing that I would do so again — in a heartbeat — if the circumstances should ever require it.”

Luna’s resolution censures Schiff “for misleading the American public and for conduct unbecoming of an elected Member of the House of Representatives,” and it directs the Ethics Committee to conduct an investigation into the congressman’s “falsehoods, misrepresentations, and abuses of sensitive information.”

The four-page measure accuses Schiff of spreading false claims that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, abusing the trust afforded to him as chairman and ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee when airing the Trump-Russia allegations, and behaving “dishonestly and dishonorably” when discussing events related to Trump’s first impeachment.

“The American people do not trust Congress. The cyclical pattern of lies has worn down the credibility of every institution and every official in the United States government. You see it, I see it,” Luna said on the House floor during debate Wednesday.

“If we run away from the opportunity to hold this man accountable there is only one fault, and that is of ourselves,” she continued. “We will betray the people who trusted us and sent us here to do the right thing, we will be responsible of any shred of justice in this body, and we will reject the duty that we swore an oath to protect upon taking office.”

Luna first moved to censure Schiff last week, bringing a censure resolution — which she introduced last month — to the floor as a privileged measure, which forced the House to act on it. But 20 Republicans joined Democrats in supporting a motion to table the measure, a move that blocked it from coming to the floor for a vote.

A number of the GOP defectors took issue with a non-binding “whereas” clause in the measure that said if the Ethics Committee found that Schiff “lied, made misrepresentations, and abused sensitive information,” he should be fined $16 million, saying that it was unconstitutional. That dollar figure, the resolution claimed, was half the amount of money that American taxpayers paid to fund the investigation into potential collusion between Trump and Russia.

In an effort to allay those concerns, Luna introduced a new, revamped resolution at the end of last week that nixed the fine language — the chief difference between the two — and made a handful of other revisions. Additionally, the new resolution just calls for censuring Schiff while the original involved censuring and condemning the congressman.

The Florida Republican called the revised resolution to the floor as a privileged measure on Tuesday, restarting the process for the second time in a week and forcing another vote.

The changes were enough to erase the GOP concerns: all Republicans voted against a Democratic-led motion to table the resolution, sending it to the floor for a vote and setting up what would become just the sixth censure of a lawmaker since 1980, and the twenty-fifth in history, according to the House website.

The House last censured a lawmaker in November 2021, when Democrats delivered a rebuke to Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) for posting an anime video depicting him violently attacking Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and President Biden. Before that, the most recent censures were in December 2010 and July 1983.

It was not, however, the House GOP’s first rebuke of Schiff. Earlier this year, Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) blocked him and Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) from serving on the House Intelligence Committee. Luna has also filed a resolution to expel Schiff, though it has not progressed in the chamber.

Throughout the week-long censure saga, Democrats accused Luna — a vocal Trump supporter — and Republicans of launching an effort against Schiff as a way to distract from the former president’s legal troubles. Trump was indicted by the Justice Department on 37 counts earlier this month as part of the investigation into his mishandling of classified documents. He pleaded not guilty.

“The party of Lincoln and his Lincolnites has become the party of Luna and her Luna followers. Today's mad-cap antics are an obvious deflection from Trump's deepening legal troubles,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the ranking member of the Oversight Committee, said on the House floor.

“The GOP simply has no ideas for our economy, no ideas for our country and no idea for our people, but is on an embarrassing revenge tour on behalf of Donald Trump, who treats them like a ventriloquist's dummy,” he later added.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Republicans transformed the House into a “puppet show.”

“Today we are on the floor of the House, where the other side has turned this body, this chamber — where slavery was abolished, where Medicare and social security and everything were instituted — they’ve turned it into a puppet show. A puppet show,” she said during debate on the floor Wednesday.

Pelosi, who endorsed Schiff in his Senate race, was seated next to her colleague from California during a portion of Wednesday’s vote.

“And you know what?” Pelosi added, "the puppeteer, Donald Trump, is shining a light on the strings. You look miserable.”

Luna, for her part, disputed the claim that Republicans were bringing the Schiff resolution because of Trump. 

“If we want to talk about these little, fun games and comments back and forth, we’re here not about Donald Trump, we’re not here about Jan. 6, we’re here about the former chairman of the Intelligence Committee that used a lie that broke apart this country,” Luna said during debate.

Adam Schiff censured by House for ‘false’ allegations on Trump-Russia collusion

The House of Representatives voted Wednesday to censure Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., for pushing claims that former President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign colluded with Russia — a vote that made Schiff just the third member of the House to be censured since the turn of the century.

The resolution passed 213-209 in a vote — every Republican voted for it except for six who voted "present," and every Democrat voted against it.

Immediately following the vote, Democrats gathered on the floor and chanted "Shame!" and "Disgrace!" as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., tried to gavel the House in order for several minutes. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., was heard calling McCarthy a "spiteful coward" and accusing him of "weak leadership."

McCarthy then asked Schiff to present himself in the well of the House, and Democrats clapped and cheered as he approached. After being interrupted several times by Democrats, McCarthy said, "I have all night."

Schiff then stood in well of the House as required by the resolution, and was hugged and cheered by dozens of Democrats who surrounded him. The measure also requires the House Committee on Ethics to investigate Schiff’s "falsehoods, misrepresentations, and abuses of sensitive information."

ADAM SCHIFF DODGES BULLET: HOUSE VOTES AGAINST BILL CENSURING HIM FOR TRUMP-RUSSIA ‘LIES’

It was the second time the House tried to pass a resolution censuring Schiff from Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla. A resolution from Luna failed on the House floor last week because it recommended a fine against Schiff of $16 million, which Democrats and 20 Republicans opposed.

With that language removed, the resolution was able to pass on a party-line vote, which Luna said was needed to fight back against Schiff's "lies" about Trump.

"As chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff launched an all-out political campaign built on baseless distortions against a sitting U.S. president, at the expense of every single citizen in this country and the honor of the House of Representatives," Luna said before the vote. "With access to sensitive information unavailable to most members of Congress and certainly not accessible to the American people, Schiff abused his privileges, claiming to know the truth while leaving Americans in the dark about his web of lies… lies so severe that they altered the course of the country forever."

Schiff spoke in his own defense on the House floor, and thanked Republicans for bringing the resolution forward again.

"To my Republican colleagues who introduced this resolution, I thank you. You honor me with your enmity, you flatter me with this falsehood," Schiff said.

"You, who are the authors of a big lie about the last election, must condemn the truth tellers," he said. "And I stand proudly before you. Your words tell me that I have been effective in the defense of our democracy, and I am grateful."

THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO CENSURING SCHIFF THIS WEEK

Schiff was a leader of Trump’s first impeachment proceeding, which was launched over a phone call made to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in which he tried to leverage U.S. military aid in a bid to get him to announce an investigation of now-President Biden.

Democrats tried to table the resolution to censure Schiff on Wednesday but failed in a 218-208 vote along party lines.

THESE 20 REPUBLICANS SAVED ADAM SCHIFF FROM CENSURE OVER TRUMP-RUSSIA ‘LIES’

Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi did not mince words when she accused Republicans of doing Trump’s bidding and told them they looked "miserable" in the process.

"The other side has turned this chamber where slavery was abolished, where Medicare and Social Security and everything were instituted, they’ve turned it into a puppet show," Pelosi said. "And you know what? The puppeteer, Donald Trump, is shining a light on the strings. You look miserable. You look miserable… you're wasting time."

The vote is not the first time House Republicans have used their majority in this Congress to target Schiff. McCarthy pulled Schiff off the Intelligence Committee this year for promoting claims that the 2016 Trump campaign was working with Russia, an allegation that was never proven.

Ocasio-Cortez joins other squad members in boycotting Modi speech

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) is joining other progressives in boycotting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's joint address to Congress.

In a tweet, the New York Democrat urged her colleagues who stand for "pluralism, tolerance and freedom of speech" to join her boycott.

Ocasio-Cortez highlighted Modi's previous ban from entering the U.S. and reports from the State Department on India's record on religious freedoms, as well as the country's current ranking in the Press Freedom Index.

"A joint address is among the most prestigious invitations and honors the United States Congress can extend. We should not do so for individuals with deeply troubling human rights records - particularly for individuals whom our own State Department has concluded are engaged in systematic human rights abuses of religious minorities and caste-oppressed communities," Ocasio-Cortez added.

Her statement comes a day after Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), the two Muslim women in Congress, said they would not be attending the Indian leader's speech.

Tlaib added Tuesday on Twitter that Modi’s “long history of human rights abuses, anti-democratic actions, targeting Muslims and religious minorities, and censoring journalists is unacceptable.”

“Prime Minister Modi’s government has repressed religious minorities, emboldened violent Hindu nationalist groups, and targeted journalists/human rights advocates with impunity,” Omar wrote in her own statement.

While Democrats in both the House and the Senate have urged President Biden to address the issue of human rights in his meetings with Modi, the historic address is set to be a widely attended event.

This will be the Indian prime minister’s second address to the joint session of Congress and first official state visit to the United States.

House fails to overturn Biden veto in effort to cancel student debt relief

House Republicans were not able to convince the two-thirds majority they needed to overturn President Biden’s veto of a resolution that would have shot down his proposal to cancel up to $20,000 of a borrower's student debt. 

The 221-206 vote on attempt to overturn Biden's veto of a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution to end the president’s debt relief plan is officially dead in the water. Beating Biden’s veto would have required two-thirds support in the House and the Senate — both of which passed the original resolution.

Earlier this year, the Government Accountability Office found Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan was subject to the CRA, which lets Congress suspend actions taken by the president. 

Republicans jumped on the opportunity, quickly introducing a CRA measure in the House attempting to stop the student debt relief.


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In May, the House passed the resolution 218-203, with the support of all Republicans and two Democrats, Reps. Jared Golden (Maine) and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (Wash.). 

Shortly after, the Senate passed the resolution 52-46, with Democratic Sens. Jon Tester (Mont.) and Joe Manchin (W.Va.), and Independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.), joining Republicans in striking down the plan. 

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“Let me make something really clear: I’m never going to apologize for helping working and middle-class Americans as they recover from this pandemic, never,” Biden said when he signed the veto on the resolution.

Biden’s student debt relief plan, however, still faces a significant hurdle: the conservative-majority Supreme Court, which may rule on the proposal as early as Thursday.

5 things to know about the culture war hiding inside House appropriations bills

House Republicans are turning the federal funding process into a new front in the culture wars.

As the GOP-controlled Appropriations Committee prepares its version of the bills that underwrite the work of federal agencies, members are slipping in a wide range of new provisions that seek to undercut federal environmental and diversity policy. 

That adds a new chapter to the ongoing saga in which Republicans have turned the budgetary process into a means to influence federal policy in the rest of government. 

Last month, the House secured trillions in spending cuts and an easier permitting process for infrastructure as payment for passing the Fiscal Responsibility Act — the chamber’s version of the deal that aimed to raise the national debt limit and keep the federal government open. 

In the deal, Republicans got far less than they had initially wanted, Appropriations Chairwoman Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas) conceded in late May

“Some of our friends are critical that we didn’t get more. I wanted more, too. But we got the change in direction we need, and we can’t lose that,” she said. 

“We conservatives need to build on this win.“

The bills that the Appropriations Committee has released under Granger since May seek to advance conservative priorities by sliding language into the often-unrelated legislation that finances agencies like the departments of Agriculture or Defense.

That’s a “misuse” of the appropriations process, said Lisa Gilbert, executive vice president of consumer advocacy nonprofit Public Citizen. 

“Many of these policies are so unpopular and so clearly outside of public interest that they certainly could not pass on their own,” Gilbert said. 

“So they were attached to a must-pass piece of legislation, and they’re riding along.”

Public Citizen is part of the Clean Budget Coalition, an alliance of more than 100 labor, civil society and environmental groups. The coalition has called on lawmakers to remove the 39 such “poison pills” in the appropriations package.

In a statement, coalition members called on lawmakers to remove “these unpopular and controversial special favors for big corporations and ideological extremists” from the must-pass legislation that keeps the government running.

These span a wide range of conservative priorities, from bans on drag performances and display of the Pride flag at federal facilities to prohibiting Biden administration environmental justice initiatives. 

Here are five things these riders would do, from restricting LGBTQ rights and abortion access to kneecapping energy efficiency standards and keeping cigarettes high in nicotine.

Cutting medical care

Military personnel — or their partners — serving in states where abortion is illegal may get the Pentagon to pay for their travel to terminate a pregnancy.

Since 2021, the Department of Defense has also covered transition care for “a handful of million dollars per year” for the few thousand transgender service members in the U.S. military.

The House version of the Defense funding bill ends both policies. It “prohibits the use of funds for paid leave and travel or related expenses” for an abortion. Other language “prohibits the use of funds to perform medical procedures that attempt to change an individual’s biological gender.”

Other riders filed in May prohibit the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency from providing abortions and gender-affirming care to migrants in U.S. custody

Two riders take aim at medication abortions.

One rider reverses the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) decision to allow the abortion pill mifepristone to be dispensed for home use through certain pharmacies, not just in person and in hospitals.  

And a further rider in the House bill funding the agency seeks to protect “the lives of unborn children by including a provision that ends mail-order chemical abortion drugs.”

Legalizing discrimination in the military

Several riders in the Defense and Military Construction bills seek to counter attempts by the Biden administration to diversify the military — and its vast pool of contractors.

Under Biden, the Defense Department has described an increased focus on diversity as a means to “foster an integrated culture of agility, innovation, and acceptance.” It has described that goal as a means “ to prevail against the global security challenges facing the United States” and created a new title — the Deputy Inspector General for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility — to oversee it.’’

House Republicans disagree. A series of riders in the Defense Appropriations bill defunds that position for the Pentagon and prohibits the “implementation, administration or enforcement” of Biden’s executive order on diversity, equity and inclusion. 

Others ban the use of drag queens as military recruiters or their employment in events like drag queen story hours.

And the Clean Budget Coalition argues that one innocuous-sounding pair of provisions — which prohibit “censoring [the] constitutionally protected speech of Americans” and protect them “against religious discrimination” — are a stealthy means to allow arms contractors to get around federal discrimination laws. The coalition contends this language allows defense contractors to justify discrimination against LGBTQ people on religious terms while allowing them to continue selling arms and components to the U.S. military.

Pushing back on environmental justice

Another cluster of riders seeks to block the Biden administration’s push to use the vast power of America’s energy spending and entitlement programs to reverse historical discrimination, particularly around land, water and the environment.

“A clear feeling in many minority communities is that they have been targeted for unwanted land uses and have little if any, power to remedy their dilemma,” a Department of Energy report concluded.

One attempt to address that history has been the Justice40 initiative, which seeks to put 40 percent of the benefits of any federal energy spending into disadvantaged communities. A rider in the Energy and Water Development appropriations bill defunds that initiative and blocks those communities from preferential access to resources around clean energy, energy efficiency and transit. 

Other language in that bill takes back “billions of dollars in wasteful spending” from Biden clean energy stimulus packages, including $4.5 billion in rebates for new, non-polluting electric appliances and $1 billion to help state governments “implement the latest energy codes.”

Other riders seek to block the larger intellectual wellspring that environmental justice came out of. Separate riders block funding to agencies that use DEI, critical race theory — an academic framework evaluating U.S. history through the lens of racism that has become a political catch-all buzzword for any race-related teaching — and the concepts derived from them.

Another rider blocks federal enforcement of the Packers and Stockyards Act, which seeks to counter abusive or anti-competitive actions by big meatpackers.

Overriding environmental laws

This January, the federal government rewrote the definition of the Waters of the United States, a once-obscure bit of administrative law that has been hotly contested since the Obama administration. That administration’s policy of counting upstream and seasonal creeks as “waters” triggered a backlash from farmers and developers because it put such waterways — and any project that might impact them — under the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Clean Water Act.

While the Supreme Court threw out that Obama-era language in May — ruling that to be protected, wetlands had to be connect in an “indistinguishable” way to a navigable lake or river — the Biden administration had already moved on. A new “waters” definition considers “waters” to refer to any creek or waterway that has “a significant nexus” of connection to protected waters, even if that connection is only seasonal or underground. 

A rider in the Energy and Water Development bill quietly blocks that new definition, thereby “returning to state control of waterways” that Republicans argue have “historically have not fallen under federal jurisdiction.”

Another rider targeted the new Energy Department efficiency standards for the national electric grid, which the agency said would save energy and cut fossil fuel use — particularly through the use of more energy-efficient forms of steel in the cores of new transformers. 

But the transformer industry and many utilities argued that the new requirements were too stringent, too soon. 

“This technology change will disrupt existing manufacturing processes for the entire industry and its supply chain, making the proposed January 2027 effective date a much too short timeframe,” transformer manufacturers Powersmith wrote in a comment on the proposed rule. 

The House agreed. Its version of the Energy and Water Development legislation prevents the Energy Department from passing “onerous energy conservation standards on distribution transformers.”

And riders in the Agriculture and Rural Development bill ban eliminates funding for “climate hubs and climate change research and “conservation equity agreements,” as well as almost $4 billion in rural clean energy.

Keeping cigarettes maximally addictive 

In June, the FDA proposed sweeping restrictions to the tobacco and flavored vape industries, which restricted the levels of nicotine — the addictive chemical in cigarettes and vapes — and banned flavors like menthol.

The FDA noted that these compounds are not toxic in and of themselves in announcements accompanying the proposed rules. But flavoring helps get people smoking, and while nicotine isn’t harmful in itself, “it’s the ingredient that makes it very hard to quit smoking,” contributing to nearly half a million premature deaths per year. 

Riders slipped into the Agriculture appropriations bill eliminate those restrictions. Section 768 of that bill now bans the use of federal funds to “set maximum nicotine level for cigarettes,” while 769 prohibits any ban or standard setting around the use of menthol or other “characterizing flavors.”

Unlike most of the other measures, however — which conservatives promoted themselves under “Conservative Priority” lists in white papers summarizing the bills — the nicotine protections were curiously absent from the explanatory materials released by the Appropriations committee, though they made it into the actual bill.

NY Democrat on Schiff censure resolution: ‘You are the party of George Santos’

Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) criticized House Republicans on Wednesday over their resolution to censure Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), pointing to their lack of action against embattled Republican Rep. George Santos (N.Y.).  

“One of my colleagues says, ‘We will hold members accountable.’ You are the party of George Santos. Who are you holding accountable?” Goldman said during debate on the censure measure on the House floor.

“The guy is an alleged and acknowledged liar and indicted, and you protect him every day,” he continued. “Don’t lecture us with your projection and your defense of Donald Trump. It’s pathetic, and it’s beneath you and it’s beneath this body.”

Santos pleaded not guilty to 13 criminal charges last month for misleading donors, fraudulently receiving unemployment benefits and lying on financial disclosures.

The New York Republican previously admitted to embellishing his resume on the campaign trail, falsely claiming to have graduated from Baruch College and worked at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup.

The resolution to censure Schiff is expected to come to a final vote Wednesday evening, after overcoming a procedural hurdle earlier in the day. 

A previous effort to censure the California Democrat for his handling of investigations into former President Trump was blocked last week, after 20 Republicans joined Democrats in voting to table the motion.

However, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), who is leading the push, made several changes to the censure resolution and said she now has enough votes to secure its approval.