House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) condemned the “outrageous” silence of House Republican leaders Wednesday ahead of an expected vote to censure Rep. Paul A. Gosar (R-Ariz.) for tweeting an altered anime video that depicted him killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and swinging two swords at President Biden.
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“It’s an emergency,” Pelosi told reporters at the Capitol when asked why the House is taking action against Gosar. “It’s violence against women, workplace harassment — really, I think, legal matters in terms of threatening a member and the president of the United States.”
She added: “It’s outrageous on the part of the Republican leadership not to act on this.”
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The House is expected to vote Wednesday afternoon on a resolution that both censures Gosar and removes him from his committee assignments.
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The Arizona Republican has long drawn criticism for his extremist views, including his spreading of conspiracy theories about the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob and the deadly white-nationalist rally in Charlottesville in 2017. In February, he appeared at an event whose organizer called for white supremacy. Gosar later distanced himself from the organizer’s remarks.
Wednesday’s House vote comes a little over a week after Gosar shared a 90-second clip that appears to be an altered version of the opening credits of the Japanese animated series “Attack on Titan.” The show revolves around a hero who sets out to destroy the Titans, giant creatures that have devoured nearly all of human civilization.
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“Any anime fans out there?” Gosar said in the tweet in which he shared a link to the altered video.
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In one scene of the video, Ocasio-Cortez’s face is edited over one of the Titans’ faces. Gosar flies into the air and slashes the Titan in the back of the neck, killing it. In another scene, Gosar swings two swords at a foe whose face has been replaced by that of Biden.
Twitter originally placed a “public interest notice” on Gosar’s tweet, which it said had violated its policy against hateful conduct. Gosar has since deleted the tweet. The White House condemned Gosar’s video last week, and Pelosi called for investigations by the House Ethics Committee and law enforcement.
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Ocasio-Cortez responded to the video last week, noting that while she was traveling to Glasgow, Scotland, as part of a congressional delegation, “a creepy member I work with who fundraises for Neo-Nazi groups shared a fantasy video of him killing me.”
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In June, Gosar denied that he planned to attend a fundraiser with a group that promotes white nationalist ideas, despite an invitation for the event that featured him alongside Nick Fuentes, a far-right operative who leads America First.
On Tuesday, Ocasio-Cortez told reporters that, “in a perfect world,” Gosar would be expelled from the House. She also cast doubt on Gosar’s defense of the video, in which the congressman described the clip as “a symbolic portrayal of a fight over immigration policy” that did not “espouse violence or harm towards any Member of Congress or Mr. Biden.”
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“If he was telling the truth, he would have apologized by now. It’s been well over a week,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “He not only has not apologized, he not only has not made any sort of contact or outreach — neither he nor the Republican leader of the party — but he has also doubled down.”
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House Democrats had originally planned to remove Gosar only from the Oversight and Reform Committee, where he serves with Ocasio-Cortez, and allow him to keep his seat on the House Committee on Natural Resources.
But later Tuesday, language was added to the resolution to boot him off that committee as well at the request of the panel’s chairman, Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), according to a senior Democratic aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the chamber’s plans.
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Late Tuesday afternoon, Gosar shared an article on Twitter from a right-wing outlet that mocked efforts to discipline him over the video, which it called “funny and completely harmless.”
In an interview with outlets including Gateway Pundit, an opinion and commentary blog that frequently promotes conspiracy theories, Gosar compared his video to popular children’s cartoons.
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“If my cartoon can be banned, and my free speech is to be banned — then the Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, Disney and indeed most of Hollywood obviously could be banned as well — not to mention Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner,” Gosar said.
Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) and other Democrats pushed back against Gosar’s efforts to play down the violence portrayed in the video. Speier, who announced Tuesday that she will not seek reelection in 2022, referenced the 2011 shooting of then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), as well as her own experience as a survivor of the 1978 Jonestown massacre, in which her then-boss, Rep. Leo Ryan (D-Calif.), and four others were killed in Guyana by members of a cult led by Jim Jones.
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“I know what violence can do,” Speier tweeted. “My mentor Congressman Leo Ryan was shot 45 times & killed in cold blood. My friend Gabby Giffords thankfully survived her shooting. This is not a game. We cannot condone the incitement of violence. Violence begets violence. We must censure Rep Gosar.”
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House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) told reporters Wednesday morning that “this is an issue about safety, not inciting violence and acting in a way that is consistent with what the House ought to expect.”
“If Democrats did something as egregious as Mr. Gosar, they ought to be censured. This is not a partisan issue,” Hoyer said.
At a meeting Tuesday of the House Rules Committee, Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), the panel’s chairman, noted the impact that threats have had on the security of Ocasio-Cortez and other lawmakers.
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“Is there no decency? Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez has to pay for her own security, and the threats that she gets come as a result of behavior like we have seen with Mr. Gosar,” McGovern said.
At least two Republicans, including Reps. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (Ill.), have stated they would support censuring Gosar. Most GOP lawmakers, however, have remained silent.
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In February, the House voted to strip Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) of her committee assignments for past extremist and racist remarks. The vote was 230 to 199, with 11 Republicans joining Democrats to remove Greene from the committees at the time.
A censure is less severe than expulsion from the House but more severe than a reprimand. If the House votes to censure a member, that lawmaker must stand in the “well” of the House chamber as the censure resolution and a verbal rebuke are read aloud.
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The last member censured by the House was then-Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) in December 2010. The chamber reprimanded Rangel for 11 rules infractions that included 17 years of unpaid taxes on property in the Dominican Republic, more than $500,000 in undisclosed financial assets and inappropriately raising millions of dollars for a New York City college from corporations with business before the Ways and Means Committee, of which Rangel was once chairman.
Paul Kane contributed to this report.