The House floor devolved into chaos Thursday after Republicans, joined by 10 Democrats, voted to censure Rep. Al Green for disrupting President Donald Trump’s Tuesday night speech.
Green and other Democrats huddled together on the House floor and sang “We Shall Overcome,” drowning out Speaker Mike Johnson as he read the censure resolution. Then the shouting began.
Democrats yelled at Republicans, accusing them of a double standard and pointed to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who wore a MAGA cap Tuesday night during Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress. Wearing hats in the chamber is a violation of House rules.
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At one point progressive Rep. Ayanna Pressley confronted GOP Rep. Dan Meuser, who voiced irritation with Democrats for singing on the floor. “Your members do the same thing,” Pressley shot back.
Rep. Pat Fallon (R-TX) charged progressives with hypocrisy.
“First of all, there was a censure because of a lack of decorum, and then ironically, what happens during the censure is additional lack of decorum,” he told the Daily Beast.
Fallon said he spoke to a Democrat who he wouldn’t name “and he agreed wholeheartedly that we need to respect decorum, because it’s not about Republican or Democrat, right or left, it’s about the country and this institution, and it should be greater than all of us.”
Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver told the Daily Beast that “all this wouldn’t have happened” if Greene, the Georgia Republican firebrand, had faced similar consequences for also breaking chamber rules.
“Now I’ve been told that somebody asked her to, and she said, ‘No.’ And so we end up in a situation like this, that where now race is seeping into it,” Cleaver said. “Two Greens violated the House rules, and one gets punished.”
One source said Greene had been asked to remove her MAGA cap, but she refused.
The House voted 224-198 to censure Green of Texas, a rare formal rebuke that falls one step short of expulsion.
Green sidelined himself Thursday from adjudicating his fate by voting “present.” One other Democrat also voted present.
But 10 Democrats—Reps. Ami Bera (CA), Ed Case (HI), Jim Costa (CA), Laura Gillen (NY), Jim Himes (CT), Chrissy Houlahan (PA), Marcy Kaptur (OH), Jared Moskowitz (FL), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (WA) and Tom Suozzi (NY)—joined 214 Republicans in ruling that Green’s behavior during Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday deserved formal punishment.
The veteran lawmaker from Houston was ejected from the House chamber on Tuesday night at the order of Speaker Mike Johnson after he interrupted the president just minutes into his 99-minute marathon speech. Green shook his cane in Trump’s direction, shouting that the president had no mandate to cut Medicaid, the federal health insurance program that serves 80 million low-income and disabled Americans.
“The President was giving his speech. I was in attendance, and the President made a statement that caught my attention. He said that he had a mandate, and I was about to walk out—I had my coat and my cane," Green told reporters following his censure.
“I didn’t come to address the president, but spontaneity, and I wanted him to know that he did have a mandate to cut Medicaid.”
His public pushback on the president’s agenda during the speech sparked conservative Reps. Nancy Mace and Greene to yell“sit down.”
The censure’s passage came after competing resolutions flooded the floor, with Johnson ultimately selecting the measure sponsored by moderate Rep. Dan Newhouse—who faced a primary challenge from the right—measure over alternatives proposed by House Freedom Caucus-backed Rep. Eli Crane and Texas Republican Troy Nehls.
“The sheer disregard for decorum during the President’s address from my colleague is unacceptable. A member’s refusal to adhere to the speaker’s direction to cease such behavior, regardless of their party, has and will continue to be reprimanded in the people’s House,” Newhouse said on the floor on Wednesday.
Green was physically escorted out by the Sergeant at Arms on Johnson’s orders, with Johnson defending the move, posting “despite my repeated warnings, he refused to cease his antics and I was forced to remove him from the chamber.
Green said he harbors no hard feelings against Johnson for having him removed from the joint address.
“He did what he was supposed to do as speaker, and he then required that I be escorted out. The people that escorted me out were very kind to me. They didn’t say anything,” Green said. “They said very kind words to me as they escorted me out of the building, well, not out of the building but off the floor.”
While Green was the only Democrat removed from the chamber, several progressives held up signs rebuking Trump and left the speech early in protest.
Green has said he does not regret standing up against Trump despite the repercussions.
Green is now the 28th House member to be censured.
The last was Rep. Jamal Bowman, in 2023, for pulling a fire alarm, which Republicans said was an intentional illegal action to delay House debate on a federal funding bill. Two other Democrats were also censured that year: Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, for rhetoric deemed offensive about the Israel-Hamas war, and Adam Schiff of California, for past remarks he had made about Trump’s ties to Russia.
