House lawmakers are paying thousands of dollars in fines under a wave of new safety rules imposed by Democratic leaders fearful of Republicans spreading COVID-19 or turning violent in the chamber.
In recent weeks, the House sergeant-at-arms issued several GOP lawmakers $5,000 fines for violating a new rule that requires anyone entering the House chamber to pass through a metal detector. Other lawmakers were fined for going maskless.
At least four Republican lawmakers were penalized this week for entering the House chamber without masks. The lawmakers said they were following new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines declaring the fully vaccinated no longer need to wear masks.
The lawmakers each incurred $500 fines and will face $2,500 fines if they go maskless a second time.
Pelosi justified the new penalties as necessary to curb the GOP’s threatening behavior and the refusal of some Republican lawmakers to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, which she described as “selfish.”
Pelosi said she wouldn’t lift the mask mandate until 100% of lawmakers are vaccinated. There are no plans at all to remove the metal detectors.
The new fines have kept the House Ethics Committee busy. The panel rejected the appeals of two Republicans penalized for skipping the metal detectors, Reps. Louie Gohmert of Texas and Andrew Clyde of Georgia.
Gohmert called the penalty “arbitrary and capricious” and said he passed through the metal detector once, then used the nearby men’s room and reentered the chamber through a door in the nearby Speaker’s Lobby, which has no metal detector.
Gohmert said on the same day he was accused of averting the metal detectors, “Speaker Pelosi was seen avoiding the metal detectors by entering the floor through the Speaker’s Lobby.”
Pelosi moves in and out of the chamber through the Speaker’s Lobby doors and can be seen at times entering without undergoing police security screening with a hand-held metal detector wand.
Most of the doors are now guarded by standing metal detectors. Pelosi installed them on Jan. 12, days after the riot and in reaction to fears among members of her caucus of some GOP newcomers.
Freshman Republican Lauren Boebert, a gun rights advocate from Colorado, had talked openly of carrying her Glock around the Capitol and onto the House floor.
This terrified some Democrats, who grew more fearful after the Jan. 6 riots. Some in the party believed without evidence that the Capitol attacks were planned in cooperation with some House conservatives who wished harm on them.
The installation of metal detectors at the chamber doors was an unprecedented move. It aimed explicitly at Republican lawmakers, who, along with Democratic lawmakers, are the only people allowed to enter any of the Capitol buildings without a security screening. Pelosi put the equipment in place to ensure no lawmaker enters the chamber with a weapon, she explained.
“The enemy is within,” Pelosi told reporters on Jan. 28, about two weeks after she ordered metal detectors outside the chamber. “It means that we have members of Congress who want to bring guns on the floor and have threatened violence on other members of Congress.”
The mask mandate came in July.
Pelosi put the rule in place after Democrats complained some Republicans were refusing to don face coverings in and around the chamber. Among the occasionally maskless was Gohmert, who that month tested positive for COVID-19.
Pelosi reiterated the mask requirement despite the CDC guidelines, citing Capitol Attending Physician Brian Monahan, who said the House chamber and House Committee rooms have “received special medical consideration for continued mask wear,” including “underlying health conditions and age.”
Monahan described the number of unvaccinated lawmakers as “substantial,” although fewer than 25% of all members. House leaders appear to be relaxing some metal detector fines, perhaps because they have even snagged members of the Democratic caucus. On Thursday, the 10-member, bipartisan ethics panel for the first time agreed to the appeal of two lawmakers who were fined for entering the chamber without passing through the equipment.
Notably, one of the appeals came from the No. 3 Democrat, Majority Whip Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, who is also the author of a major gun control bill that passed the House earlier this year.
The ethics panel agreed to dismiss Clyburn’s metal detector fine and a fine levied against Republican Hal Rogers of Kentucky for the same offense.
Clyburn, 80, and Rogers, 83, both disputed the accusation that they specifically dodged screening.
Clyburn, like Gohmert, was screened after entering the chamber but not a second time after he left for a few moments and reentered, as lawmakers often do.
“At no time did I refuse any officer’s request to submit to screening,” Clyburn said.
Pelosi has been unyielding on mask fines.
She said that if Republicans continue to go unvaccinated and refuse to wear masks, she might banish the GOP to a third-floor vestibule above the chamber that was installed to protect people from the spread of COVID-19.
“We’re trying to balance everybody being able to exercise his or her constitutional duties as well as protect the staff and the other members,” Pelosi said.
