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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Matthew Cantor in Los Angeles

Hospitalized lawmakers showing up for last-minute votes? Not as rare as you’d think

Man with beard wearing suit and red tie with a microphone in front of him.
Congressman Al Green speaks at a conference in New York City, on 12 April 2023. Photograph: Pacific Press/LightRocket/Getty Images

The US House of Representatives was on edge on Tuesday night: would the homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, be impeached? The Republicans’ mission looked likely to succeed, just barely, when a lone Democrat in a wheelchair and a hospital outfit emerged and put a stop to it.

That man was Al Green – not that Al Green, but a representative from Texas who’d taken an Uber from the hospital to make his views known. In a line perfectly tailored to a scene the New York Times compared to a political thriller, Green told the paper: “I came because it was personal.” He had undergone emergency abdominal surgery days before and was back in his hospital bed when he spoke to the reporter, Kayla Guo.

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