Month: November 2021

The U.S. House on Wednesday voted to censure Rep. Paul Gosar for tweeting an animated video of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez being killed. The chamber voted 223-207 in favor of the resolution, with two Republicans — Reps. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., and Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill. — siding with Democrats. A censure is the most serious action the House can take to punish a lawmaker short of expulsion from Congress. Gosar, R-Ariz, will be stripped of his committee assignments but will remain a House member. The last time the House voted to censure one of its members was in 2010, against former Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., over ethics violations. It was the 24th time the House had censured a lawmaker in its history.

The tweet, since-deleted showed Gosar and Reps. Marjorie Taylor Green, R-Ga., and Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., as the protagonists of the Japanese anime series Attack on Titan in an altered version of the series’ opening credits as they fly through the air and use swords to fight against Titans, on whom Ocasio-Cortez and President Joe Biden’s faces were photoshopped. “Any anime fans out there?” Gosar wrote on the video.  Gosar was defiant about being censured: “I do not espouse violence against anyone. I never have. There is no threat in the cartoon other than the threat that immigration poses to our country.”

Ocasio-Cortez said: “It is a sad day in which a member who leads a political party in the United States of America cannot bring themselves to say that issuing a depiction of murdering a member of Congress is wrong. The glorification of the suggestion of the killing of a colleague is completely unacceptable. And I think that it’s a clear violation of House rules. I think it’s a sad day. But I think that it’s really important for us to be very clear that violence has no place in our political discourse. 

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Jacob Chansley, the self-styled “QAnon shaman” who became one of the faces of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, has been sentenced to nearly three and a half years in prison for his role in the riot. At a hearing Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., Judge Royce Lamberth sentenced Chansley to 41 months in prison, although he will be given credit for the roughly 10 months he has already served.

Photographs of a bare-chested Chansley carrying a bullhorn and a spear adorned with the American flag in the halls of the Capitol became some of the iconic images of that day.  The Justice Department says Chansley was among the first 30 rioters to enter the Capitol on Jan. 6 as the crowd overwhelmed police and pushed into the building.  Chansley was arrested days later and indicted on six charges, two of which were felonies, and ordered detained pending trial. He ultimately struck a deal with the government and pleaded guilty in September to a single count of obstruction of an official proceeding.

At Wednesday’s hearing, Chansley addressed the court for around 40 minutes, saying he has spent much of the time he’s been locked up reflecting on his life and his actions on Jan. 6, adding: “Men of honor admit when they’re wrong. Not just publicly but to themselves. I was wrong for entering the Capitol. I have no excuse. No excuse whatsoever. The behavior is indefensible.” Chansley admitted that he was guilty, but also said “I am not a violent man. I am not an insurrectionist. I am certainly not a domestic terrorist. I am a good man who broke the law. And I’m doing everything I can to take responsibility for that.”

Before announcing his sentence, Judge Lamberth told Chansley he believes that his remorse is genuine and heartfelt, but he also told Chansley that “what you did was terrible.” He said Chansley had made the right decision to plead guilty and take responsibility for his actions, instead of going to trial where he faced a much longer possible sentence.

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Law enforcement officials in northern Colorado ordered evacuations Tuesday after a wildfire broke out in Estes Park.The Kruger Rock Fire, which broke out around 7 a.m. Tuesday, grew to about 100 acres with zero containment as of early after noon.

The Larimer County Sheriff’s Office ordered mandatory evacuations for areas east and south of Highway 36, which was closed between Estes Park and Lyons to the south. Officials set up an evacuation center at the Estes Park Fairgrounds and an overnight shelter at the YMCA on Tunnel Road. The city of Longmont also closed the Button Rock Preserve, located southeast of Estes Park.

The blaze has not burned any structures, but it is near homes and businesses in downtown Estes Park. Sources from the sheriff’s office say the wildfire may have been started by an electrical issue; the cause was under investigation.

The Republican party of Wyoming will no longer consider their sole U.S. House lawmaker, Rep. Liz Cheney, as a member of the GOP. Cheney, who is a consistent critic of former President Donald Trump, was one of 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Trump in January following the insurrection attempt on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 by a mob of his supporters who were attempting to halt the counting of electoral votes, which found Joe Biden to be the victor of the 2020 presidential election.

Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, has repeatedly defended her vote to impeach Trump. Last week she called Trump a “dangerous and irrational man” who is at “war with the rule of law and the Constitution.” Cheney has also criticized Trump for his baseless claims that he won the 2020 presidential election before House Republicans removed her from her post as the third-highest ranking Republican, conference chair, in May.

In February, the Wyoming GOP also censured Cheney over her impeachment vote, arguing Cheney’s vote to impeach ran counter to the will of Wyoming voters, who supported Trump by a more than 40-point margin. The state party also made baseless claims that members of the anti-fascist movement Antifa and Black Lives Matter instigated the violence on Jan. 6. The congresswoman said she had put the Constitution above party in her impeachment of Trump and criticism of his attempts to undermine the 2020 election, but the state central committee voted to pass a resolution that questions her decision making.

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