WASHINGTON – Democrats on Tuesday defeated Attorney Kevin McCarthy, the top Republican in the House, on Tuesday to condemn Representative Maxine Waters for proposing that racial justice protesters “should be more confrontational” than the Derek Chauvin jury does not deliver a conviction.
In an episode designed by Republicans for maximum political benefit, the Democrats remained united in a vote of 216 to 210 over the decision of Mr. McCarthy for formal reprimand to Ms. Destroy Waters, a prominent black congresswoman who is a regular target for insults by conservatives. The vote in the House took place hours before the jury heard. Chauvin, a white police officer, was convicted of murdering George Floyd, an unarmed black man.
Mr. McCarthy said Waters, 82, chair of the House Financial Services Committee, incited violence when she gathered in downtown Brooklyn, Minnesota, over the weekend to protest the deaths of Daunte Wright, a black man. hands of a white police officer.
Waters on Saturday asked what protesters should do if not found guilty at the Chauvin trial. “Waters need to stay on the streets, and we need to become more active. We need to become more confrontational. We need to make sure they know what we mean by business. ”
Mrs. Waters, a 15-year-old Californian, later said she referred to demonstrations in the civil rights era, which used tactics of civil disobedience, and Democratic leaders stood behind her.
But Mr. McCarthy – who this year refused to punish Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who previously endorsed the assassination of Speaker Nancy Pelosi – sees an opening to put politically vulnerable Democrats on the spot. He took the remarks of Mrs. Condemned Waters as violent and dared her colleagues to support her by bringing the matter to a vote. It’s a dangerous proposition that the Democrats’ razor-sharp margin in the House left almost no room for deviations.
Yet the Democrats held together. Me. Pelosi, also from California, told reporters on Monday that Waters had no reason to apologize for her remarks, and that she could be seen on the floor of the house on Tuesday.
“I love my colleagues and they love me,” she said. Waters said after the vote. “I do not want to do anything to hurt them or harm their chances of re-election. I’ll make sure they’re comfortable with my kind of advocacy so we can all be sure we can do the right thing. ”
After the defeat of the measure, the Republicans lost no time to tackle the political attacks that were intended to feed. Mr. McCarthy issued a news release saying Democrats had “decided to side with violence instead of the law.”
The Republicans’ House campaign has exploded news reports to the districts of endangered Democrats, claiming they voted ‘for violence’.
In a tweet Tuesday, Mr. McCarthy the actions of Mrs. Waters called ‘under the dignity of this institution’, saying that ‘they increased the potential for violence, directed lawlessness and possibly interfered with an equal branch of government.’
His resolution cites extensive comments by Judge Peter A. Cahill, who referred the case to Mr. Chauvin led and who on Monday said in an unusual way that the comments of Ms. Waters may have given the defense an opening to stop the trial on appeal. Judge Cahill said he wished “elected officials would no longer speak on this matter, especially in a way that is disrespectful to the rule of law.”
The attempt of mr. McCarthy was particularly conspicuous after refusing to take action against Ms Greene, who referred to the deadly uprising of the Capitol on January 6 as a ‘1776 moment’. Democrats denounced his move as hypocritical because he also did not condemn the inflammatory speech that colleagues in his party used during the riot.
“Clean up your mess, Kevin,” Hakeem Jeffries, a New York City Representative, told a news conference ahead of the vote Tuesday. ‘Put this one out. You have no credibility. ”
The attempt to me. Censoring waters has raised tensions between Democrats and Republicans in the House, where many Democrats are still reluctant to cooperate with those who have challenged the legitimacy of President Biden’s victory or encouraged their supporters to march to the Capitol. In the immediate aftermath of the congressional storm, some Democrats complained about suspecting or even expelling Republican members who used it in the days of the assault, but these attempts came to nowhere.
Some Democrats who were dissatisfied with the comments of Ms. Waters, feared that moving forward with the censorship of her would unleash an endless flood of retaliatory measures, a concept that representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the no. 2 House Democrat, in a speech before the vote.
“If there is a sanction subject to confrontation, we will have a lot of people on your side of the aisle every day who we think are confrontational on a daily basis,” he said, adding that Democrats have not directed a number of similar resolutions at Republicans . .
“However, it makes it harder not to proceed with numerous decisions on my side of the aisle,” he said. Hoyer said.
The situation was reminiscent of the situation that Mr. McCarthy faced when the Democrats put him under pressure to Ms. To punish Greene for her comments in the past. Democrats sided unilaterally to strip her of her committee seats, citing the Republican leader’s unwillingness to do so – an argument that Mr. McCarthy made parrot Monday.
“Speaker Pelosi ignores Waters’ behavior,” he said. McCarthy said wrote on Twitter on Monday. ‘Therefore, I propose a resolution to Rep. Too disrespectful of waters for these dangerous remarks. ‘
The House rarely moves to disregard lawmakers. Steve King, a former Republican congressman from Iowa, for example, was never convicted of a group of racist remarks he made during his tenure, and also claimed that non-white people did not contribute as much as the white people to the civilization and that the “mixing of cultures does not lead to a higher quality of life, but to a lower quality.”
Charles B. Rangel, a former Democratic congressman from New York, was the last lawmaker convicted of the House in 2010 for a group of offenses related to financial corruption.