The Republican National Committee issued a rebuke of Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, taking the remarkable step in part because of their participation in the House select committee formed to investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
The censure resolution was adopted by an overwhelming voice vote, along with four other resolutions in the Friday general session of the RNC’s Winter Meeting in Utah, where the committee’s 168 members gathered. There was no debate on the resolution ahead of adoption, and there were only a handful of “no” votes. It marks the first instance in Republican officials’ memory of the party working against an incumbent Republican.
It had started as an endorsement of removing Cheney and Kinzinger from the House Republican Conference, according to the Washington Post, but it was redrafted to a censure before it unanimously passed in a committee Thursday.
PUSH TO OUT CHENEY AND KINZINGER FROM GOP SIMMERS IN CONGRESS AS RNC DEBATES IT
“Representatives Cheney and Kinzinger have engaged in actions in their positions as members of the January 6th Select Committee not befitting Republican members of Congress, which include the Committee’s disregard for minority rights, traditional checks and balances, due process, and adherence to other precedent and rules of the U.S. House and which seem intent on advancing a political agenda to buoy the Democrat Party’s bleak prospects in the upcoming midterm elections,” read the resolution passed out of the committee Thursday.
It added that the pair “support Democrat efforts to destroy President Trump more than they support winning back a Republican majority in 2022.”
Cheney was ousted from her No. 3 House leadership spot last year following her vocal criticism of former President Donald Trump. But after she and Kinzinger were appointed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to sit on the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, some hard-right members of the House Freedom Caucus called to remove them from the conference. Republican leaders boycotted the committee after Pelosi vetoed two of House McCarthy’s picks, and top Republicans have painted it as designed to harm Republicans.
“Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger crossed a line. They chose to join Nancy Pelosi in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens who engaged in legitimate political discourse that had nothing to do with violence at the Capitol. That’s why Republican National Committee members and myself overwhelmingly support this resolution,” National Republican Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said in a statement. Republicans have highlighted the committee issuing subpoenas for low-level organizers of the Jan. 6 rallies, forcing them to shell out money for lawyers.
Cheney and Kinzinger responded to the resolution Thursday evening with a resolve to keep pushing forward with their work on the Jan. 6 committee.
“The leaders of the Republican Party have made themselves willing hostages to a man who admits he tried to overturn a presidential election,” Cheney said in a tweet, adding, “I do not recognize those in my party who have abandoned the Constitution to embrace Donald Trump. History will be their judge.”
While Kinzinger is retiring from Congress at the end of his term, Cheney faces a primary challenge from Trump-endorsed candidate Harriet Hageman.
Ahead of the vote on Friday morning, McCarthy declined to answer questions about the resolution. The censure, though, could increase the pressure to remove the pair from the Republican conference.
McCarthy has resisted calls to kick Cheney and Kinzinger out of the conference. Opponents warn that it opens the conference to criticism for rejecting Cheney and Kinzinger while declining to punish controversial firebrands such as Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar. They also worry it could have immediate negative structural consequences for Republicans in the House in regards to ratios of Republicans on House committees.
Some Republican members of Congress, particularly those who supported impeaching Trump following the riot, openly criticized the resolution. Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, McDaniel’s uncle, said in a tweet: “Shame falls on a party that would censure persons of conscience, who seek truth in the face of vitriol.”
“I don’t understand, when there’s so many bigger fish to fry, this is rising to the top. It just doesn’t seem productive,” Michigan Republican Rep. Peter Meijer told the Washington Examiner.
But many who have railed against Cheney and Kinzinger signaled support for the development.
“I’m pleased that they did it. I think we have a responsibility to hold each other accountable in the Republican Conference,” North Carolina Rep. Dan Bishop told the Washington Examiner, noting that never before has a congressional committee proceeded without members appointed by the minority leader. “If you leave that, be it festers, and I think we owe it to Republican voters to say we’re not going to abide that. So I’m glad the RNC did what it did. I think we ought to act over here.”
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House Republican rules require a two-thirds vote from the entire conference to expel a member, and it is not clear whether enough members agree with kicking them out.
Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs, a former chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, in July proposed a rule to get around the two-thirds requirement: change the conference rules by a majority vote to expel automatically any member who sits on a committee without a recommendation from the Republican leader or the Republican Steering Committee. That resolution was referred to a committee and has sat dormant since.
Read the full resolution that was passed out of the RNC Resolutions committee Thursday, obtained by the Washington Examiner, below:
