Rep. Al Green Thursday was censured by the House of Representatives for heckling President Trump during his speech to a joint session of Congress.
The firebrand Houston lawmaker’s colleagues voted 224-198 to hit him with what amounts to a slap on the wrist over his cane-waving interruption of Trump on Tuesday night.
Ten Democrats joined all Republicans in chiding Green over the disruption, including Tom Suozzi and Laura Gillen of New York.
A member of Congress who is censured is normally ordered to stand in the well of the House to accept his or her punishment.
But Green stood with about a dozen colleagues and sang the civil rights anthem “We Shall Overcome,” forcing House Speaker Mike Johnson to put the House into recess instead.
Green, an 11-term Democrat, was escorted out of the House chamber when he stood and shouted at Trump after the Republican president claimed the Nov. 5 election had handed him a historic governing mandat.
“You have no mandate,” Green shouted, shaking his trademark walking stick and refusing an order from Johnson to sit down and keep quiet.
Green, who said he wasn’t sorry, was hit with the censure resolution by Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Washington), who called it a “necessary, but difficult step.”
Green shook hands with Newhouse but insisted he had no regrets about taking on Trump.
“This resolution is offered in all seriousness, something that I believe we must do in order to get us to the next level of conduct in this hallowed chamber,” said Newhouse.
Once an extremely rare action, censure has become more common in recent years as Congress has become more polarized along partisan lines.
House Republicans censured former Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) for triggering a Capitol fire alarm and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) over her anti-Israel views.
GOP Rep. Joe Wilson (R-South Carolina) was reprimanded by the House in 2009 for interrupting then-President Barack Obama’s speech by shouting “you lie.”