House Democratic leaders bottle up effort to censure Iowa Rep. Steve King

House Democratic leaders blocked an effort to censure Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) for racial comments, referring the measure to the House Ethics Committee for further review because of concerns that it might set a dangerous precedent for policing members’ speech.

Censure is the most serious sanction for a House member short of expulsion, and it has been imposed only six times in the past 100 years. Prompted by King’s recent comments to the New York Times questioning the offensiveness of the terms “white nationalism” and “white supremacy,” the House adopted a resolution condemning those remarks Tuesday.

But Rep. Bobby L. Rush (D-Ill.) sought to go further by censuring King and pressed for a vote on Wednesday. After the House clerk read the resolution detailing King’s inflammatory comments over the years, House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) moved to refer the matter to the Ethics Committee — a step that could bottle up the effort indefinitely.

Speaking earlier on Wednesday, House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), who introduced the disapproval resolution, noted that King made his statements to the news media, not during House proceedings.

“I don’t know that it’s a good thing for us to talk about censure for things that are done outside of the business of the House of Representatives,” said Clyburn, the highest-ranking African American congressional leader. “We should be very, very careful about doing anything that constrains, or seems to constrain, speech.”

By doing so, you “open the window for anybody to attack speech, no matter if it’s Democrats or Republicans,” he added in a subsequent interview.

Same Democrats who's members in the Senate voted to make protest against Israel illegal.

— RedskinsFanSJ (@RedskinsFanSJ) January 17, 2019