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AMY GOODMAN: He did not obey. We begin today’s show with Democratic Congressmember Al Green of Texas, who was censured by the House Thursday for disrupting President Donald Trump’s joint address to Congress Tuesday night. The dramatic protest came near the start of Trump’s record-long 100-minute speech, when Congressmember Green rose and spoke out, shaking his walking cane, as Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson called on him to sit down.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Likewise, small business optimism saw its single-largest —
REP. AL GREEN: [inaudible]
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: — one-month gain ever recorded, a 41-point jump.
REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMEMBER 1: Sit down!
REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMEMBER 2: Order!
SPEAKER MIKE JOHNSON: Members are directed to uphold and maintain decorum in the House and to cease any further disruptions. That’s your warning.
SPEAKER MIKE JOHNSON: He has no mandate to cut Medicaid!
SPEAKER MIKE JOHNSON: Members are engaging in willful and continuing breach of decorum, and the chair is prepared to direct the sergeant-at-arms to restore order to the joint session. Mr. Green, take your seat. Take your seat, sir.
REP. AL GREEN: He has no mandate to cut Medicaid!
SPEAKER MIKE JOHNSON: Take your seat. Finding that members continue to engage in willful and concerted disruption of proper decorum, the chair now directs the sergeant-at-arms to restore order, remove this gentleman from the chamber.
AMY GOODMAN: Congressmember Al Green’s interruption of President Trump’s address Tuesday night came amidst reports that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries had urged Democrats not to disrupt the address. Ten Democrats joined Republicans in favor of the resolution to censure Green, which said he had, quote, “repeatedly violated the rules of decorum.”
Meanwhile, about two other dozen Democrats surrounded Green in the chamber and sang the civil rights anthem “We Shall Overcome” as House Speaker Johnson read the censure resolution and banged his gavel before he ultimately had to call the session into recess.
SPEAKER MIKE JOHNSON: The House will come to order. The House will come to order. … The House will come to order. Shhhh. By its adoption of House Resolution 189, the House has resolved that Representative Al Green be censured, that Representative Al Green forthwith present himself in the well of the House of Representatives for the pronouncement of censure, and that Representative Al Green be censured with public reading of this resolution by the speaker.
CONGRESSMEMBERS: [singing] … someday
Oh, deep in my heart
I do believe
SPEAKER MIKE JOHNSON: The House will come to order. The House will come to order.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s House Speaker Mike Johnson trying to call the House to order as congressmembers surrounded Al Green after his censure on Thursday, a day and a half after Trump’s speech, singing “We Shall Overcome.”
Congressmember Al Green has repeatedly called to impeach Trump in the president’s first and second terms. For nearly two decades, he has represented his district in Houston, Texas, which is home to many low-income and Black residents.
It’s great to have you with us, Congressmember Al Green. Thank you for joining us. Why did you interrupt President Trump’s speech?
REP. AL GREEN: Thank you for having me, Ms. Goodman.
President Trump indicated that he had a mandate, and I wanted to let him know that he didn’t have a mandate to end or to gut or to eviscerate or to cut Social Security, as well as Medicaid, but my focus was on Medicaid. And I said to him, “You don’t have a mandate to cut Medicaid.” Medicaid is needed by people who are not of means.
We now live in a government that is of the plutocrats, by the plutocrats, for the plutocrats. They have Medicaid. They have doctors. We have to stand for people who are not as fortunate as others. I have good healthcare. I want my constituents to have the same healthcare I have. Many won’t have it, but I’m going to protect what they do have.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, President Trump has said he is not going after Social Security, yet they are firing thousands of Social Security Administration workers. On the issue of Medicaid, you are not alone in representing so many people who are on Medicaid. In fact, many MAGA Republican congressmembers are in exactly the same situation. Are you seeing behind the scenes that they’re deeply concerned about these massive cuts to pay for massive tax cuts for the richest Americans?
REP. AL GREEN: I have not seen a scintilla of evidence indicating that there is any consternation with reference to the cuts. The state of Texas, Ms. Goodman, was offered $100 billion to aid people who are sick and without means, to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Texas turned down $100 billion to aid the poor, because Texas would eventually have to pay 10%, the government would pay 90%. I assure you I’m concerned, but many of my colleagues are not. We have to fight to protect those who cannot protect themselves.
AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you — I think it was 10 Democratic congressmembers joined with the Republicans in censuring you yesterday. I’m wondering, as someone who has survived segregation yourself — in a few years, you’ll be 80. You’ve survived Jim Crow, where decorum was seen as a way to dampen protest. What message do you have for all of those who censured you and said you broke the decorum of the Legislature?
REP. AL GREEN: Well, there’s so much to be said about what you’ve just called to my attention. Let me start with this. The president of the United States of America, at that joint session, pointed over to Democrats and called them “lunatics.” That was a breach of decorum. The president uses his incivility to take advantage of our civility. I refuse to allow him to do this. The president has to understand that he has to demonstrate some degree of civility and respect decorum himself, but he does not.
Now, with reference to my colleagues, I told them I was going to vote “present,” so as not to pressure anyone to vote in any particular way, because I voted my conscience. I did what conscience called upon me to do and my convictions demanded that I do when I spoke to the president. I would do it again. I regret that I’ve been censured. There is talk now of removing me from my committee with the Honorable Maxine Waters, the Financial Services Committee. My guess is this is not over. But I will stand on what I have done. I’m not ashamed of what I have done.
And when you mentioned John Lewis at the genesis of this interview, it caused tears to well in my eyes. I knew him. I know his story. He told me that he thought he was going to die on that bridge. And he told me about peaceful protest. And the one thing that stands out in my mind is, when you do it, be prepared to suffer the consequences. Dr. King went to the Birmingham jail because he was prepared to suffer the consequences. I’m prepared to suffer the consequences. I don’t say I agree, but I will suffer whatever the consequences are, because I represent people who cannot represent themselves.
AMY GOODMAN: So, just to reiterate what you’re talking about, today is the 60th anniversary of Bloody Sunday —
REP. AL GREEN: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: — March 7, 1965, when John Lewis, your colleague in Congress — before that, civil rights leader — led hundreds of voting rights activists from Selma, trying to go to Montgomery. They were walking over the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and they were beaten down by Alabama state troopers, John Lewis having his skull fractured.
REP. AL GREEN: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: It would be a turning point in the civil rights movement. Five months later, President Johnson would sign the Voting Rights Act into law. Congressmember Green, do you think this is a Bloody Sunday moment right now, the low point before a high point?
REP. AL GREEN: I hope that we have reached the depths of this, but I’m not sure, given the behavior of this president. This president doesn’t seem to understand that there are people who don’t live in the same level of life that he lives in. He lives in the suites. There say some people who live in the streets. And we have to concern ourselves with them, as well.
And with reference to that march, may I just share this piece of information? Frank M. Johnson was a federal judge who issued the order to part the way to cause those officers to leave the Edmund Pettus Bridge and to allow them to march on. I mention him because his place in history has not been acknowledged. He was a white Southerner who was a George Wallace contemporary, but he had the guts — he had the guts and the courage to take a stand that caused him to have to have security 24 hours a day. They bombed his mom’s home.
We have to have that kind of courage now. We’ve got to take a stand against what this president is doing with his incivility. We are going to have to demonstrate. We’re going to have to protest. I don’t want us to have to harken back to the ’60s, but we are being treated is though we are in the ’60s. We have to do more than simply say that we want legislation. We’ve got to demonstrate, and we’ve got to protest and be prepared to suffer the consequences.
AMY GOODMAN: Congressmember Green, in 2017, you became the first congressmember to call for President Trump’s impeachment from the floor of the House of Representatives. You’re doing this again?
REP. AL GREEN: I am. And I am currently nearing the end of the first draft. I believe that he has done things that would merit impeachment. For edification purposes, if we wanted to impeach a president for speaking ill of Congress, as the president did, we can do it. How do I know? Because in 1868, Andrew Johnson was impeached for speaking ill of the House of Representatives. Impeachment is not all that the scholars would have us believe it is. It is what Gerald Ford said when he was in the House: whatever a given Congress concludes that it is on a given time — at a given time. When you can get 218 members, assuming that you have a full complement of members voting, to vote for it, then that’s impeachment. It really is that simple. It’s been done to presidents before. And, of course, we knew about Clinton, and we know about others.
But the point that we have to make is, impeachment is a remedy for a runaway president who believes that there are no guardrails, who believes that the Supreme Court has placed him above the law, and who is now very close to a point where he will not honor court orders. When he does that, Ms. Goodman, he at that point will become a dictator. We are this close. When he goes over that line, that second, that scintilla of a second, he will become a dictator, and we will be under a dictatorship. I refuse to wait until that happens before I act, so I will act in defense of the Constitution and for the people of this country.
AMY GOODMAN: Congressmember Green, I would be remiss if I didn’t ask you to talk about your friend, the former Houston mayor and recent congressmember, Sylvester Turner, who died Wednesday at the age of 70 after he had attended President Trump’s speech the night before. I want to play Sylvester Turner’s last public message, addressing the potential cuts to Medicaid.
REP. SYLVESTER TURNER: This is Angela Hernandez, my guest tonight for the State of the Union. Angela is here to advocate on the importance of Medicaid.
ANGELA HERNANDEZ: Hi. I’m Angela. I’m from Houston, District 18. My daughter is Baislee Garcia. She’s 2 years old. She has a rare genetic disorder, chromosome 8p inversion/duplication/deletion. It causes a lot of developmental and medical challenges, so losing Medicaid would be devastating to us.
REP. SYLVESTER TURNER: So, please let people know: Don’t mess with Medicaid.
AMY GOODMAN: That is Sylvester Turner, a newly minted congressmember, longtime Houston mayor’s last message before he died on Wednesday. Your final thoughts, Congressman Green?
REP. AL GREEN: Twenty-five years he served in the state House, eight years as mayor of the city of Houston. He was a public servant par excellence. He cared about people, and he made a difference in the lives of people. I will miss him. When Bishop Dixon called me and told me that he had transpired, I fell to my knees and I cried, literally — not an exaggeration — because he had just been with me on the floor of the House, and I couldn’t believe that this could happen in this way. So, I miss him, but I want his family and his friends to know that he served us well. They have my deepest sympathies, and my prayers are going to be that others of us will take up the mantle, the torch that he has carried all of his life. He was a great public servant.
AMY GOODMAN: Congressmember Al Green, I want to thank you so much for being with us, Texas Democrat —
REP. AL GREEN: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: — who was censured by the House yesterday for disrupting President Trump’s first presidential address as the second-time president. In 2017, Congressmember Green became the first congressmember to call for President Trump’s impeachment from the floor of the House of Representatives.
Coming up next, as House Republicans push for $2 trillion in federal spending cuts, more than $4 trillion in tax cuts for the richest Americans, we’ll speak to Bishop William Barber. Back in 30 seconds.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: “We Shall Overcome,” Dorothy Cotton, Pete Seeger and the Freedom Singers. It’s what Democratic congressmembers sang as they surrounded Congressmember Al Green on the floor of the House after he was censured for disrupting President Trump’s speech.
