Congress doing vital work this country desperately needs once again.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
WASHINGTON (AP) — House members voted again Thursday to punish one of their own, targeting Democratic Rep. Jamaal Bowman for triggering a fire alarm in one of the U.S. Capitol office buildings when the chamber was in session.
“It’s painfully obvious to myself, my colleagues and the American people that the Republican Party is deeply unserious and unable to legislate,” Bowman said Wednesday as he defended himself during floor debate.
“It is reprehensible that a Member of Congress would go to such lengths to prevent House Republicans from bringing forth a vote to keep the government operating and Americans receiving their paychecks,” McClain said in a statement.
He agreed to pay a $1,000 fine and serve three months of probation, after which the false fire alarm charge is expected to be dismissed from his record under an agreement with prosecutors.
Many progressive Democrats, who spoke in his defense, called the Republican effort to censure him “unserious,” and questioned why the party decided to target one of the few Black men in the chamber and among the first to ever represent his district.
In June, Democrat Adam Schiff of California was censured for comments he made several years ago about investigations into then-President Donald Trump’s ties to Russia.
The original article contains 669 words, the summary contains 207 words. Saved 69%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
The alarm was a button that was next to the open door button and he hit it by mistake.
No it wasn’t. They have him on camera. It’s a giant box labeled “FIRE”.
He tried to make it sound like he confused the buttons.
What happened is he found himself locked on the wrong side of a secured door, and he was going to miss the vote. He (according to his explanation) panicked and pulled the fire alarm, thinking it would unlock all the doors and let him in. So he’s either intentionally pulled the alarm to stop the vote, or he’s a whole-ass moron.
Yup. And, considering the situation, it’s hard not to take that as malicious.
I mean, I’ve done incredibly stupid things when I was panicking, so I can believe it. I’ve never pulled a fire alarm, but I have had the experience where your brain just stops working right. Is that malicious? I suppose it still might be.
Either way, I wouldn’t expect to avoid the consequences of my decisions. If I did something stupid, I did something stupid. My motivations don’t really enter into the equation. This guy fucked up in a big way, and he deserves whatever is coming to him. Frankly, a censure is barely a slap on the wrist anymore, considering how frequently they are handed out for partisan posturing. If I pulled a fire alarm, I would expect a fine and maybe community service.
I just think it’s very convenient that his brain stopped working on the day of that vote to the point where he forgot how fire alarms work.
My understanding was this was one of those votes where the bill was huge and they gave folks like 30 minutes to read it, and part of the unstated reasoning was to give folks a chance to at least skim the whole bill before voting on it. That would be deliberate, but I’d say it isn’t exactly malicious.
That being said, I haven’t kept up with this story and my information might be out-dated.
That’s procedural, though. The implied malice is that he pulled the alarm to stop the vote since it required evacuating people.
It was a stall tactic. He probably expected some kind of backlash and thought it was worth it anyway. Give him his lumps so we can move on.
He pled guilty and the video is pretty clear. This is misinformation at this point. Censuring him after he was already fined, though, is pretty extreme.
