Inside Democrats' plan to stop the Ilhan Omar censure
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Rep. Ilhan Omar attends a House Budget Committee hearing at the U.S. Capitol on May 16. Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
House Democrats are resting their strategy to defeat a censure vote against Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) on a simple bargain for the GOP: Vote it down, and we'll withdraw our censure resolution against Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.).
Why it matters: It could actually work. The prospect of voting down one censure vote to avoid another will look attractive to Republican lawmakers weary of the nonstop partisan tit-for-tat.
- The exhaustion played out in stunning fashion earlier this month when five House Republicans voted with Democrats to defeat a censure measure against Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.).
- Once a powerful rebuke for malfeasance, censure has increasingly become a meaningless slap on the wrist that lawmakers use to punish their ideological opponents.
State of play: Just after Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) introduced her resolution to censure Omar for her comments about the assassination of Charlie Kirk on Tuesday, Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) introduced a measure to censure Mills.
- The Mills resolution centers on an array of allegations including domestic abuse, stolen valor and financial misconduct, all of which Mills denies.
- The House is set to vote Wednesday on motions to table — kill — the Omar resolution or to refer it to the House Ethics Committee, sources told Axios' Kate Santaliz.
- If both those votes fail, it will be voted on Thursday along with similar procedural motions on the Mills censure.
What we're hearing: Casar, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, introduced the Mills resolution in coordination with Democratic leadership, multiple senior Democratic sources told Axios.
- "They move one, we move one," said a senior House Democrat who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share details of leadership's strategy.
- Casar is expected to withdraw his resolution, however, if the House votes to either table or refer the Omar resolution, according sources familiar with the matter.
Zoom out: Both parties have been on something of a censure spree in the last few years.
- In 2023 they censured Reps. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) for a variety of offenses, and this year they censured Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) for disrupting President Trump's speech to Congress.
- When Democrats held the House in 2021, they voted to censure Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) for posting a video depicting violence against former President Biden and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).
- That is on top of votes to kick Omar and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) off committees and an unusually bipartisan vote to expel Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.).
The bottom line: House members are retiring or running for other offices at a historic pace, and many are blaming growing partisan antipathy, threats and lack of productivity for their burnout.
- This week's censure votes may be a test of whether the remaining members of the House are willing to try to put a stop to those phenomena.
