There are only a few things one member of Congress can do to another. They can vote to expel — almost never used. They can strip committee assignments. And they can censure: a formal condemnation that requires the member to stand in the well of the House while the resolution is read aloud to their face.

On November 17, 2021, the House did the last two to Paul Gosar.

What was in the video

Ten days earlier, on November 7, Gosar posted a 90-second video to his official House social media accounts. Not a personal account. The official one.

It was a doctored version of the anime series Attack on Titan. As Cronkite News described it, Gosar's face and those of other House conservatives were superimposed on the sword-wielding soldiers, while Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and President Joe Biden were pasted onto the man-eating giants.

The cartoon shows Gosar's character slashing Ocasio-Cortez's neck, killing her, then lunging at Biden with swords drawn.

Twitter flagged it for violating its rules on hateful conduct but left it up with a warning, deciding it was in the public interest. By the time Gosar took it down on November 9, it had been viewed more than 3.3 million times.

His explanation for removing it: not that it was threatening, but "out of compassion for those who generally felt offense."

The vote

The censure resolution — H.Res. 789 — passed 223 to 207.

Look at that breakdown, because it is the whole story of the modern House in two numbers:

• 221 Democrats voted to censure.
• 2 Republicans joined them: Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. Both are now out of Congress.
• All 207 no votes were Republican. One Republican voted present. Three didn't vote.

He was also stripped of his seats on the Natural Resources Committee and the Oversight and Reform Committee.

He would not say it was wrong

Standing before the House, Gosar did not apologize. He said he does "not espouse violence toward anyone" and insisted the video was a critique of immigration policy — an issue he would not stop speaking about.

"Last week, my staff posted a video depicting a policy battle regarding amnesty for tens of millions of illegal aliens. This is an enemy," he said. The cartoon, he argued, "directly contributes to the understanding and discussion of the real-life battle" over the border.

Ocasio-Cortez — the member depicted being killed — put the question plainly on the floor:

"What is so hard about saying that this is wrong?"

She noted that Republican leaders spent the debate attacking Biden's policies because they "cannot bring themselves to say that issuing a depiction of murdering a member of Congress is wrong."

She was right about that. Cronkite News reported that no Republican defended the video. They objected to the process — that Gosar hadn't gotten an Ethics Committee hearing, that committee assignments belong to party leaders, that Democrats were applying a double standard. Kevin McCarthy called it "rules for thee but not for me."

Not one of them said the video was fine. They just voted as though it were.

Rep. Tom Cole's account of the private GOP conference meeting the day before is telling: Gosar "explained the video in question" and "reiterated that he doesn't endorse violence." Cole's conclusion — "as far as I'm concerned, I think that should have been the end of the matter."

An explanation, delivered privately to his own party, should have ended it.

And then he posted it again

Here is the part that settles any argument about whether the censure landed.

Within an hour of the vote, Gosar re-shared the video — retweeting a post from a conservative podcast host that contained the same clip. He appeared to remove it from his feed afterward.

The House had just made him stand in the chamber while a resolution condemning him was read out loud. He walked off the floor and put the video back up.

That is not a man who misjudged a joke. That is a man telling the institution exactly what he thinks its condemnation is worth.

What censure actually cost him

Nothing, in the end.

Censure requires only a simple majority and carries, as Cronkite News noted, "few practical consequences." Gosar was escorted to the well by a handful of Republican colleagues. Analysts said at the time it was hard to see how the episode could hurt him in a district that red — one analyst suggested the likeliest outcome was that it elevated him with the party's far right and opened a new donor network.

That is roughly what happened. When Republicans took the House the next year, he got committee assignments back. He is on Natural Resources today.

He has since run and won three more times. He is on the ballot again this year, in a district where he has not held an in-person town hall since 2016.

Why this still matters five years later

Because a censure is supposed to mean something, and this one demonstrated that it doesn't — not when 207 members of a caucus will vote against it while privately conceding the conduct was indefensible.

Two of the three Republicans in this story who were willing to say so out loud are gone from Congress. The member they voted to condemn is still there, on a committee, writing bills, running again.

The video is what he did. The vote is what his colleagues did. The re-post an hour later is what he thought of both.

Source

• House censures defiant Paul Gosar for violent video, strips committee posts — Cronkite News, November 17, 2021. Photo: Cronkite News.
• Roll Call 379, H.Res. 789 — Censuring Representative Paul Gosar — Office of the Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives