Summary
It is 4pm in Washington DC. Here is a wrap-up of the day’s key events:
The GOP-led House voted to censure New York’s Democratic representative Jamaal Bowman with 214 yeas and 191 nays. There were also five votes of present and three Democrats out of party lines against Bowman, who pleaded guilty to setting off a fire alarm in a House office building in September.
Jamaal Bowman issued a statement in response to his censure saying: “This Republican House is unserious and unproductive.” He added: “I know that their efforts to target me are a testament to the importance of my voice in pushing back against their disingenuous rhetoric and harmful policies.”
In response to the House’s vote to censure Jamaal Bowman, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said that Maga Republicans “have nothing to show for their narrow, fading and decreasing majority”. “Extreme Maga Republicans continue to utilize tactics such as censuring Democratic members of Congress, burying their heads in the sand with respect to unlawful or unacceptable conduct by their own members,” he added.
Michigan’s Democratic representative Rashida Tlaib criticized House Republicans following the vote to censure Jamaal Bowman. In an impassioned address, she said: “You all [are] so desperate to distract from the fact that you all have nothing, nothing to improve the lives of the American people or end the ongoing genocide [in Gaza]. So now you’re trying to shift the focus by baselessly attacking Rep Bowman to score cheap political points.”
Massachusetts’s Democratic representative Ayanna Pressley also condemned the censure of Jamaal Bowman. Pressley called the censure “just the latest in this chamber’s shameful history of telling Black and brown folks they don’t belong in Congress”.
The Joe Biden administration has announced new actions to promote competition in healthcare and support lowering prescription drug costs for Americans. A statement released by the White House on Thursday revealed that the actions include the promotion of equitable access to lower-price taxpayer-funded drugs, as well as the launch of a cross-government public inquiry into corporate greed in healthcare.
The White House has pushed back against House Republicans’ impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden. In a statement released on Thursday, Ian Sams, a White House spokesperson for oversight and investigations said: “This baseless stunt is not rooted in facts or reality but in extreme House Republicans’ shameless desire to abuse their power to smear president Biden.”
CNN has announced that it will host two Republican presidential primary debates next month in Iowa and New Hampshire. The first debate will take place on 10 January at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. The second debate is scheduled for 21 January at St Anselm College in Goffstown, New Hampshire.
That’s it from me, Maya Yang, as we wrap up the blog for today. Thank you for following along.
Updated
Jahana Hayes, one of the three Democrats who voted to censure Jamaal Bowman, has released a statement explaining her vote:
Today, I voted YEA on a resolution to censure representative Jamaal Bowman for pulling a fire alarm in the Cannon House office building on September 30th, 2023.
While I disagree with the decision of the Republican majority to put the resolution on the House floor, and the watering down of the censure process, I believe what representative Bowman did was wrong and as members of Congress we should be held to a higher standard.
My statement on the vote to censure Representative Bowman. pic.twitter.com/cnHKnLltJq
— Jahana Hayes (@RepJahanaHayes) December 7, 2023
The other two Democrats who voted to censure Bowman are New Hampshire’s Chris Pappas and Washington’s Marie Gluesenkamp Perez.
Updated
