April 20, 2021- 4:57 p.m.
The House on Tuesday rejected a Republican resolution to censure Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) for saying that “we’ve got to get more confrontational” about police brutality against African Americans.
Lawmakers voted along party lines 216-210, with no defections on either side, to table the resolution from Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) that would have issued the chamber’s harshest disapproval short of expulsion.
Republicans argued that Waters incited violence with her remarks at a protest over the weekend in Minneapolis, where tensions are spiking over the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former police officer who’s charged with the murder of George Floyd, and the recent police killing of Daunte Wright.
The resolution’s text cites comments on Monday from the judge in the Chauvin trial who criticized the remarks from Waters and warned they could give the defense “something on appeal that may result in this whole trial being overturned.”
Democrats casted Republicans’ outrage over Waters as hypocritical, given how many of them defended former President Trump, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and other GOP lawmakers accused of inciting violence ahead of the Jan. 6 insurrection or of other misconduct.
House Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.) cited the examples of Reps. Lauren Boebert (Colo.), Matt Gaetz (Fla.) and Greene and described each as a “mess.”
“Clean up your mess, Kevin. Sit this one out. You’ve got no credibility here,” Jeffries said.
House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) dodged a question at a press conference earlier Tuesday about why Republicans believed Waters deserved censure but not Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), who said at a rally outside the White House on Jan. 6 that “today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass.”
“Well, first of all I’ve been very clear in speaking out against any kind of political rhetoric that incites violence,” Scalise said, before pivoting back to Waters.
“Right now I haven’t heard any Democrats speaking out against what Maxine has said. And it’s time for Democrats to speak out when they see it on both sides. They only want to speak out on one side of the aisle, not on both. And that hypocrisy, I think, is starting to shine through.”
House Democratic leaders all rallied behind Waters, but their margin for defeating McCarthy’s resolution was extraordinarily tight. They can currently only afford two defections and still prevail on any vote in the face of unified GOP opposition.
Many centrist Democrats in swing districts are sensitive to any incendiary remarks about police, after blaming progressive activists’ calls for “defunding the police” for their electoral losses last November.
Republicans have seized on censuring Waters days after outcry over initial plans by Greene and Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) to launch a caucus with a draft policy platform that called for promoting “Anglo-Saxon political traditions” and infrastructure that reflects “European architecture.”
McCarthy and other top House Republicans quickly distanced themselves from the proposed caucus that threatened to subject the party to an internal debate over white supremacy. But in the last few days, Republicans have united around sanctioning Waters.
Waters said on Saturday while attending an anti-police brutality protest in Minnesota that “we’ve got to get justice in this country, and we cannot allow these killings to continue.”
“We’ve got to stay on the street, and we’ve got to get more active. We’ve got to get more confrontational. We’ve got to make sure that they know that we mean business,” Waters told reporters.
Waters maintained in an interview with The Grio on Monday that she wasn’t encouraging violence.
“I talk about confronting the justice system, confronting the policing that’s going on, I’m talking about speaking up. I’m talking about legislation. I’m talking about elected officials doing what needs to be done to control their budgets and to pass legislation,” Waters said.
It’s not the first time that Waters, the outspoken House Financial Services Committee chairwoman and senior member of the Congressional Black Caucus, has drawn ire from Republicans.
Waters encouraged supporters in 2018 to harass Trump administration officials in public over the separation of migrant families, saying that “if you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them. And you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.”
And in 2017, Waters told a crowd that she would “go and take out Trump tonight.”
