The House could soon be forced into another tit-for-tat cycle of members attempting to discipline each other by forcing votes on the House floor \u2014 and derailing GOP leaders\u2019 control of the chamber.<\/p>\n
A massive wave of Democrats have called to formally censure Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.) and remove him from his committees over a post he made that said \u201cif they force us to choose,\u201d he would choose dogs over Muslims. Democrats roundly decried the post as Islamophobic.<\/p>\n
Democrats have not revealed an official censure resolution yet, but House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) strongly indicated Democrats would make such a move.<\/p>\n
\u201cGet your members under control, because if you don\u2019t, we will,\u201d Jeffries said in a message to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) during a Wednesday press conference.<\/p>\n
Fine, though, is warning that he will counter any such move. Any member can make a privileged motion to require the House to vote on a censure resolution within two legislative days.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t start fights, but I finish them \u2014 and if they go down that road, they won\u2019t like where it ends,\u201d Fine said in an interview with The Hill on Thursday. Asked if that means forcing votes on censures of Democrats, Fine said: \u201cIf that\u2019s the road they want to go down, yeah, absolutely.\u201d<\/p>\n
That will likely be unwelcome to Johnson, who has not publicly addressed Fine\u2019s post. The Speaker\u00a0said of the last censure war cycle in November: \u201cObviously, I\u2019m not in favor of this. I think censure is an extraordinary remedy, extraordinary cases. It should be used sparingly.\u201d<\/p>\n
A possible forced censure vote would come on top of another rank-and-file forced vote that threatens to distract from the message Republicans want to push as they blame Democrats for a shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, and as Trump delivers his State of the Union address on Tuesday. Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.)\u00a0plan to trigger\u00a0a vote to limit Trump\u2019s war powers in Iran.<\/p>\n
Fine pointed to Democratic members who are facing federal charges or facing other scrutiny.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think the American people are going to say, \u2018Wait, you can censure someone for saying Americans have a right to keep their dogs, but you\u2019re good with sexual predator friends. You\u2019re good with thieves. You\u2019re good with people who abuse our ICE workers,\u2019\u201d Fine said.<\/p>\n
Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-Fla.) has\u00a0pleaded not guilty\u00a0to\u00a0charges of stealing $5 million in COVID-19 and FEMA funds, funneling the money to her campaign and for personal benefit. And Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.) has pleaded not guilty to charges of assaulting and impeding federal officers during an unannounced visit to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility last May.<\/p>\n
Previous attempts to formally reprimand those Democrats and others have been scuttled as members grow tired of policing each others\u2019 every move, and aim to avoid a tit-for-tat censure escalation.<\/p>\n
An attempt to censure McIver and remove her from the House Homeland Security Committee, forced by Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.),\u00a0failed in September\u00a0after a handful of Republicans joined with Democrats to table the matter, with the GOP members saying it was more prudent to let the House Ethics Committee finish its work.<\/p>\n
And Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) had pledged to force a vote to expel Cherfilus-McCormick, which would require a two-thirds majority of the chamber \u2014 but\u00a0backed down\u00a0after Jeffries indicated Democrats would not support it while waiting for \u201cdue process.\u201d The House Ethics Committee is scheduled to hold a rare adjudicatory hearing to consider the\u00a0 Cherfilus-McCormick matter, and Steube said he will move on his resolution after the panel formally recommends expulsion.<\/p>\n
Many Republicans are eager to move on a measure to punish Cherfilus-McCormick as soon as the Ethics panel completes its work, without waiting for the federal charges to be resolved \u2014 challenging Democrats to keep with the new precedent set when the House voted to expel fabulist fraudster Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) from the House in 2023 before his trial.<\/p>\n
Failed Republican attempts to formally reprimand Democrats haven\u2019t stopped with those facing criminal charges, though.<\/p>\n
A\u00a0resolution to censure\u00a0and condemn Del. Stacey Plaskett (D-V.I.) over documents that showed her consulting with Jeffrey Epstein during a 2019 hearing was also scuttled after a handful of Republicans voted with Democrats. And a handful of Republicans\u00a0voted to table\u00a0a resolution from Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) to censure Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) for re-posting a video on social media that Mace said \u201csmeared\u201d assassinated conservative activist Charlie Kirk.<\/p>\n
Democrats have also repeatedly threatened to bring up a resolution to censure Republican Rep. Cory Mills (Fla.) over allegations of harassment of an ex-girlfriend and other personal controversies \u2014 which they dropped after the attempts to censure Democrats failed. Mace brought up a measure against Mills herself, but that was also\u00a0unsuccessful\u00a0as it was referred to the House Ethics Committee.<\/p>\n
If Fine or other Republicans move, that tit-for-tat censure cycle could bubble up again.<\/p>\n
Because House rules allow any member to force such a vote, there\u2019s nothing to stop members from doing so over the objections of House leadership. Even if it fails, it gives members the opportunity to slam a political opponent.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat about people who go to Germany and call what happened in Israel a genocide? That\u2019s a pretty inflammatory thing to say in Germany. That\u2019s speech that bothers me. Maybe you should get censured for that,\u201d Fine said, in an apparent reference to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez\u2019s (D-N.Y.)\u00a0speech\u00a0at the Munich Security Conference this month. \u201cIf this is the standard to try to censure people, who knows how many dozens of people could end up in that similar situation?\u201d<\/p>\n
Fine\u2019s controversial post \u2014 \u201cIf they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one\u201d \u2014 was a response pro-Palestinian activist Nerdeen Kiswani from saying on social media: \u201cFinally, NYC is coming to Islam. Dogs definitely have a place in society, just not as indoor pets. Like we\u2019ve said all along, they are unclean.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kiswani has since said the post was a joke as a reference to melting snow exposing dog waste, but Fine said he did not believe that: \u201cIn Islam, they don\u2019t like dogs \u2026 So when a major Muslim leader says we\u2019ve got to get rid of them, you should take them seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n
The backlash to Fine\u2019s post from Democrats included Jeffries calling him \u201ca disgrace to the United States Congress\u201d and \u201can Islamophobic, disgusting bigot.\u201d<\/p>\n
That outrage from Democrats against Fine, but not against Democratic members facing federal charges, has frustrated a number of Republicans who came to Fine\u2019s defense. GOP Reps. Brandon Gill (Texas), Chip Roy (Texas), Mary Miller (Ill.), and Keith Self (Texas)\u00a0cosponsored a bill\u00a0a defiant Fine is leading in response to the backlash, to block federal funds from flowing to any state or locality that bans dogs.<\/p>\n
On the other side of the Republican conference, some members are privately frustrated at Fine\u2019s comment and how it sparked a news cycle and delivered Democrats a messaging weapon \u2014 leading to uncertainty about what the result of a Fine censure would be. Republicans can afford to lose no more than one GOP member on any party-line vote, assuming all members are present and voting.<\/p>\n
Still, the desire to avoid a cycle of censures could prompt even the most moderate Republicans to vote against the censure. Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) has\u00a0co-sponsored a resolution\u00a0with Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) that calls for raising the censure threshold from a simple majority to 60 percent of the House. Johnson has expressed openness to raising the censure threshold.<\/p>\n
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