Censure in the United States
[3][4][5] The United States Constitution specifically grants impeachment and conviction powers, respectively, to the House of Representatives and Senate.
[1] Like a reprimand, a censure does not remove a member from their office so they retain their title, stature, and power to vote.
"[8] There have been four cases in U.S. history where the House of Representatives or the Senate adopted a resolution that, in its original form, would censure the president.
"[10] In 1834, while under Whig control, the Senate censured Jackson, a member of the Democratic Party, for withholding documents relating to his actions in defunding the Bank of the United States.
[12] In 1860, the House of Representatives adopted a resolution admonishing both President James Buchanan and Secretary of the Navy Isaac Toucey for allegedly awarding contracts on the basis of "party relations."
[10] In 1864, during the American Civil War, Senator Garrett Davis introduced a resolution to censure President Abraham Lincoln for allowing two individuals to resume their service as generals after winning election to Congress.
The final resolution adopted by the Senate required generals to be "re-appointed in the manner provided by the Constitution," but did not overtly censure Lincoln.
In 1871, Senator Charles Sumner introduced an unsuccessful resolution to censure President Ulysses S. Grant for deploying ships to the Dominican Republic without the approval of Congress.
[18] In 1998, resolutions to censure President Bill Clinton for his role in the Monica Lewinsky scandal were introduced and failed.
[25] On August 18, 2017, a resolution was introduced in the House to censure President Donald Trump for his comments "that 'both sides' were to blame for the violence in" the Unite the Right rally.
[30] The House of Representatives is authorized to censure its own members by the scope of United States Constitution (Article I, Section 5, clause 2).
In the modern history of the United States House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct (since 1966), censure has been successful nine times.
[42] Between 2017 and 2020, several Members of Congress introduced motions to censure President Donald Trump for various controversies, including as a possible substitute for impeachment during the Trump-Ukraine scandal, but none were successful.
"Koreagate" was an American political scandal involving South Koreans seeking influence with members of Congress.
[46] On July 12, 1999, the U.S. House of Representatives censured (in a 355-to-0 vote) a scientific publication titled "A Meta-analytic Examination of Assumed Properties of Child Sexual Abuse Using College Samples", by Bruce Rind, Philip Tromovich, and Robert Bauserman; (see Rind et al. controversy) which was published in the American Psychological Association's "Psychological Bulletin (July 1998).
[49] On October 13, 2009, the mayor of Sheboygan, Wisconsin, Bob Ryan, was censured due to a YouTube video that showed him making sexually vulgar comments about his sister-in-law taken at a bar on a cell phone.
In November 2009, members of the Charleston County Republican Party censured Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina in response to his voting to bail out banks and other Wall Street firms, and for his views on immigration reform and cap-and-trade climate change legislation.
[51] On December 2, 2010, Democratic Rep. Charlie Rangel from the State of New York was censured after an ethics panel found he violated House rules, specifically failing to pay taxes on a villa in the Dominican Republic, improperly soliciting charitable donations, and running a campaign office out of a rent-stabilized apartment meant for residential use.
[51] On January 22, 2013, the Arizona Republican Party censured longtime Sen. John McCain for his record of occasionally voting with Democrats on some issues.
This marked the second attempt to censure Tlaib, who was accused of "promoting false narratives" and "calling for the destruction of the state of Israel".
[61] The censure was supported by 22 Democrats and drew attention as a symbolic move, given Tlaib's status as the only Palestinian American in Congress.
