Rep. Al Green, a Democrat from Texas, was swiftly escorted from the House chamber Tuesday night after interrupting President Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress. On Thursday, the House voted to censure Green for the disruption.
Green, a 77-year-old congressman, was ejected for shouting early on during Mr. Trump’s speech, in which the president reviewed his administration’s sweeping legislative agenda and outlined, for an hour and 40 minutes, his vision for how Congress should start to implement it.
How long has Al Green been in Congress?
Green has represented Texas’ 9th congressional district, which includes Houston, since 2005. He is currently serving his 11th term in the U.S. House of Representatives.
His congressional biography touts him as “a veteran civil rights advocate” who “has fought for those in society whose voices, too often, are not heard.”
Green was among the federal lawmakers who pushed to remove Mr. Trump from office during his last term, introducing the first articles of impeachment against him in 2017 and threatening to do it again when the president suggested a U.S. takeover of Gaza last month.
He was arrested in 2012 outside of the Sudanese embassy in Washington, D.C., where he and other lawmakers at the time protested the civil war policies of Sudan’s then-president, and again in 2021, outside of the U.S. Capitol while protesting a voting rights bill.
Win McNamee/Pool Photo via AP
Green is the assistant whip for House Democrats. Since his election to Congress, he has become a member of both the Congressional Asian American Caucus and the Congressional Black Caucus, a show of “his commitment to serving the communities he represents,” his biography says.
The congressman also serves on the House Financial Services Committee, focusing on diversity and inclusion, housing, community development and insurance, as well as the Committee on Homeland Security and the Committee on Oversight and Reform.
Why was Al Green removed during Trump’s speech?
After Mr. trump touted his victory in the 2024 election on Tuesday night, Green stood up from his seat, raised his cane in Mr. Trump’s direction and could be heard shouting — in a departure from the largely quiet protests of his Democratic peers.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, who sat behind the president during his address, immediately banged a gavel and said “members are directed to uphold and maintain decorum in the House and to cease any further disruptions,” in a response to Greene. “That’s your warning,” Johnson said. Green continued as Johnson told him to sit down. The House Speaker ultimately instructed the sergeant at arms to “restore order” and remove Green from the chamber.
Green later told reporters he was “willing to suffer whatever punishment is available to me.”
“I’m not fighting the punishment,” Green said. “This is about the people who are being punished by virtue of losing their health care. This is the richest country in the world, and we have people who don’t have good health care. We’ve got to do better and now we’re about to cut Medicaid, which is for poor.”
SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images
Where is Al Green from?
Green was born in New Orleans in September 1947. He attended Florida A&M University, Howard University and the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. “Without receiving an undergraduate degree, he enrolled in the Thurgood Marshall School of Law, where he earned his Juris Doctorate in 1973,” his bio states.
He went on to co-found and co-manage a law firm and was appointed Justice of the Peace in Harris County, Texas, where he served for 26 years before serving in the House. Green also served for a decade as president of the Houston branch of the NAACP prior to joining Congress, according to his bio.
What does it mean to censure a congressman?
On Thursday, the House censured Green in a 224 to 198 vote, making Green the 28th lawmaker to be censured in the lower chamber of Congress.
Censure is one of three types of “punishment” that the U.S. House of Representatives says it can impose on its members.
“Censure registers the House’s deep disapproval of Member misconduct that, nevertheless, does not meet the threshold for expulsion,” the House says. “Once the House approves the sanction by majority vote, the censured Member must stand in the well of the House (“the bar of the House” was the nineteenth-century term) while the Speaker or presiding officer reads aloud the censure resolution and its preamble as a form of public rebuke.”
A censure is considered more serious than a “reprimand,” but not as severe as member expulsion, which requires a two-thirds vote.
