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Editor's Note: Happy Friday! Thank you so much for sending us your questions last week. We won’t be able to answer all of the hundreds of questions we received individually, but next week we’ll do our best to address the major themes that cropped up. Stay tuned!
If you’re nervous about gathering with friends and family in these politically fraught times, please check out Living Room Conversations’s holiday resources including conversation guides, good questions, and a tip sheet for navigating tough topics. For a more hands-on alternative, Braver Angels hosts workshops aimed at preserving important family bonds while still being true to your values and political beliefs. (Both organizations are doing incredible work and have many other useful resources and workshops -- check them out!)
“The House of Representatives voted to censure hardline Republican Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., and remove him from his two committee assignments… The formal rebuke came after Gosar posted an anime style video on Twitter last week that depicts him murdering Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y, and attacking President Biden. The video, which he deleted after intense blowback, shows [a] character with Gosar's image wielding a sword to kill a character with the image of Ocasio-Cortez.” NPR
The right is critical of the censure, arguing that the video was not a true threat of violence.
Rep. Peter Mejier (R-MI) writes, “As someone who has faced death threats and had a senior party official reference my assassination, I take political violence seriously. Rep. Gosar disgraced himself with his actions leading up to January 6th, and he has disgraced himself further by associating with anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers…
“Sadly, disgracing oneself with anti-Jewish associates isn’t a rare occurrence for a handful of my colleagues on either side of the aisle, but today’s vote wasn’t about these actions. It was about a dumb anime clip… Rep. Gosar’s conduct has been contemptible, but calling that video a death threat is an unreasonable exaggeration.”
Peter Mejier, House.gov
“It was a stupid cartoon, not an actual incitement to violence. The most recent case of actual violence against Members was the 2017 shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise by a deranged supporter of Bernie Sanders at a practice for the annual Congressional charity baseball game. Mr. Scalise nearly died, and without Capitol police on hand with guns, many others would have been shot. Mr. Gosar, who is 63 years old but acts like a teenager on TikTok, deserves ridicule more than censure, which should be reserved for serious offenses.”
Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal
“The Democrats are very likely to lose their House majority a year from now. By 2023, Republicans will be able to cite Gosar’s deprivation of committee assignments as precedent for removing radicals like Ocasio-Cortez from committee assignments for their misconduct…
“Unless Kathy Griffin gets elected to Congress, I don’t expect House Dems, even the ‘squad’ members, to post videos like Gosar’s. But what about the next time Rep. Ilhan Omar indulges in anti-Semitic rhetoric? In 2019, the House ‘condemned’ her in a resolution for such rhetoric. Republicans wanted to censure her, but didn’t have the votes. By 2023, they probably will. Why, given what happened to Gosar, wouldn’t they also remove her from committee assignments?”
Paul Mirengoff, Power Line Blog
“Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) happily joined Pelosi in disenfranchising the almost 300,000 voters in Arizona’s 4th Congressional district who voted for Gosar in his landslide [re-election] in 2020…
“In February of this year, Pelosi led an effort – [also] supported by Cheney and Kinzinger – to strip Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee assignments for opinions she held prior to her election. Opinions that were well known to her constituents at the time they overwhelmingly elected her to Congress. Pelosi and the Democratic majority – aided by a handful of Republican enablers – essentially overturned the will of the people of Georgia’s 14th Congressional District (Greene won her election with almost 75% of the vote in 2020)…
“If Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) wants to continue to lead the Republican caucus in the House then it is time for him to lead and it is time for him to fight. McCarthy should act immediately to strip both Cheney and Kinzinger of their committee assignments. If Cheney and Kinzinger want to do the bidding of Nancy Pelosi, then they can go to Pelosi to ask for committee assignments.”
Chris Barron, Human Events
The left supports the censure, arguing that the threat of political violence is a serious problem.
The left supports the censure, arguing that the threat of political violence is a serious problem.
“Gosar was not censured because of his views, as noxious as they are, but because of his inability to share an office with others. It was about ‘workplace harassment and violence against women,’ Pelosi told her colleagues—a rebuke for crossing a line no one should have any trouble staying on the right side of… In singling Gosar out, Democrats were simply sending a message that if a 62-year-old man wants to conduct himself like a 15-year-old 8chan Nazi, then maybe he ought to be treated like one.”
Tim Murphy, Mother Jones
“America is experiencing increasingly virulent politics and violent political threats. The New York Times reports that at a conservative rally in western Idaho last month, a young man stepped up to a microphone to ask when he could start killing Democrats. ‘When do we get to use the guns?’ he said, as the audience applauded. ‘How many elections are they going to steal before we kill these people?’ The local state representative, a Republican, later called it a ‘fair’ question…
“According to the Times, violent threats against lawmakers are on track to double this year. Republicans who break party ranks and defy Trump have come to expect death threats – often incited by their own colleagues, who have denounced them as traitors. Unless those at the highest levels of government who foment or encourage violence – or who remain conspicuously silent as others do – are held accountable, no one in political life will be safe.”
Robert Reich, The Guardian
“After the [infrastructure bill] vote [the 13 Republicans who voted in favor] were inundated with hatred and even death threats. Conservatives in the House argued that the 13 should be stripped of their committee assignments as retribution. Former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows agreed… You can tell a great deal about a party from what it advocates, but also what it finds unacceptable and where its zeal for punishment and retribution lies… In today’s GOP, voting for infrastructure is heresy. Threatening violence is not.”
Paul Waldman and Greg Sargent, Washington Post
“In all likelihood, Democrats won't hold a House majority much longer — they're probably going to get wiped out by Republicans in next year's midterms. When that happens, GOP leaders will be looking for revenge…
“[Stripping House members of their committee assignments] used to be relatively rare in Congress, but today's vote will be the second time the mechanism has been used just this year. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) lost her committee assignments in February based on her past violent and anti-Semitic public comments. That's probably a sign of how extreme the Republican Party has become, but GOP leaders will argue instead that Democrats have set a precedent by ‘weaponizing’ the process…
“What's more, if committee-stripping becomes routine in Congress, Democrats will pay disproportionately because they care more about actually governing… Greene doesn't seem to have been hurt by her punishment; it just freed her up to raise money and draw attention to herself by accosting prominent Democrats in Capitol hallways. For some GOP members of Congress, being freed of job duties might not actually be a punishment.”
Joel Mathis, The Week
A libertarian's take
“Rep. Ted Lieu (D–Calif.) pointed out that ‘in any workplace in America, if a coworker made an anime video killing another coworker, that person would be fired.’ He's probably right about that. But Congress is not like other workplaces. Employees are chosen not by bosses, but by a democratic process: elections. Gosar doesn't work for an HR-conscious manager; he works for the voters of Arizona, and it's their job to boot him if they don't like his anime videos…
“Though it was in poor taste for Gosar to share it, he did not actually credibly threaten the lives of Biden or Ocasio-Cortez. A parody video of an anime figure vanquishing a villainous Democrat is clearly not a true threat of violence. Just as Kathy Griffin's infamous Trump head photo op was ill-advised yet completely legal, so too is Gosar's satirical tweet.”
Robby Soave, Reason
