House censures Rep. Paul Gosar for violent tweet

Nov. 17 (UPI) -- 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.

The vote means Gosar, R-Ariz., will be stripped of his committee assignments -- natural resources, and oversight and reform.

The since-deleted video 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.

The House debated ahead of the vote, with Democrats calling for civility among the members of the chamber and Republicans accusing Democrats of attempting to censor them.

"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," Ocasio-Cortez said.

Cheney said she voted in favor of the censure because the issue isn't about party.

"The glorification of the suggestion of the killing of a colleague is completely unacceptable," she said. "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," she said.

House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy said Democrats' desire to censure Gosar was hypocritical, pointing to multiple instances in which Democrats tweeted violence, though not specifically against a colleague. He called the vote an "abuse of power" and said a "new standard will continue to be applied in the future."