Republican members of Congress who voted against Joe Biden’s presidential victory, even after a crowd broke into the Capitol, are under fire from critics in their home districts demanding that they resign or be impeached.
Protesters, newspaper editors, and local-level Democrats have urged lawmakers to resign or have their colleagues kick them out. Chamber and Senate can remove members with a two-thirds vote or disapproval or reprimand with a majority.
Representative Madison Cawthorn “should be held accountable for his incendiary behavior and for the consequences resulting from that behavior,” wrote a group of Democratic officials in a letter asking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to deport North Carolina freshman who took his oath of office . on January 3.
Cawthorn said he had a constitutional duty to vote against Biden. He condemned the violence during Wednesday’s attack, but compared it to last summer’s protests over police brutality. Those demonstrations never broke through a government building during official affairs.
A Capitol police officer died and an officer shot and killed a woman in the crowd. Three other people died from medical emergencies in the chaos, forcing lawmakers and staff to go into hiding while the rioters roamed the halls of one of America’s most sacred buildings.
Pelosi and other Democratic leaders in Congress are pushing for President Donald Trump to be impeached for encouraging insurgency and refusing to act to stop the violence. But they have been silent on whether lawmakers who made the untrue allegations of voter fraud that led to the melee should be punished.
Most of the earlier expulsions were for members who supported the Confederacy during the Civil War or for accepting bribes.
In St. Louis, hundreds of people protested on Saturday against Senator Josh Hawley, the first Missouri Republican who was in charge of the Senate to overturn Biden’s election. The protesters painted “RESIGN HAWLEY” in large yellow letters in the middle of the street.
A caravan of about 40 cars circled Senator Ron Johnson’s office in Madison, Wisconsin urging him to resign. Johnson initially backed Trump’s baseless claims about electoral fraud, but after the riot, he voted for Biden’s victory. Johnson condemned the violence but did not reverse the allegations of voter fraud.
The editors of two of the largest Wisconsin newspapers called on Johnson to step down, joining the editorial articles published around the country targeting GOP politicians.
The Houston Chronicle, long a critic of Senator Ted Cruz, said in an editorial that the Republican knew exactly what he was doing and what could happen if he went to the Senate to contest the election results.
“Those terrorists wouldn’t have been in the Capitol if you hadn’t staged this absurd challenge to the 2020 results,” the paper wrote.
Cruz calls the attack a despicable act of terrorism, but he continues to push for a committee to investigate the presidential election.
In Alabama, the Decatur Daily local representative Mo Brooks called on to step down. The York Dispatch in Pennsylvania, Congressman Scott Perry said “a disgrace to Pennsylvania and our democracy,” and if he still believes Biden’s election is fraudulent, he must resign because it means his election was also bogus. Perry condemned the Capitol’s violence.
The Danville Register & Bee in Virginia said his representative, Bob Good, should go because his words hit the matches that led to the withering crowd. Good said his vote was to protect his constituents.
The invading Trump loyalists “confronted security personnel and there were injuries and even deaths,” the paper’s editorial wrote. “And you’re just as guilty as they were.”