Pa’s Houlahan: I’m not among lawmakers looking to censure Trump instead of impeaching

WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, D-6th District said Tuesday that she’s not among the U.S. House Democrats reportedly considering an effort to censure President Donald Trump rather than impeach him.

Asked Tuesday whether censure was a topic she’d been discussing, she said, “No, it’s not,” but declined to comment further.

Politico reported earlier Tuesday that about 10 vulnerable House Democrats in districts Trump won were floating the censure idea. The group includes Reps. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J.; Kurt Schrader, D-Ore.; Anthony Brindisi, D-N.Y.,  and Ben McAdams, D-Utah.

“I think it’s certainly appropriate and might be a little more bipartisan, who knows,” Schrader told Politico about the possibility of a censure resolution.

Houlahan, a freshman Democrat who flipped a seat from GOP control in 2018, was among the co-authors of a September op-ed that condemned reports that Trump pressured Ukraine’s president to investigate Trump’s political opponent.

U.S. Rep. Madeleine Dean, D-4th District, another Pennsylvania freshman who serves on the Judiciary Committee, cautioned against pursuing censure instead of impeachment.

“I think it is an appropriate discussion among members at any time,” Dean said Tuesday, “But if we pass on impeachment, if we do not move forward and take serious consideration of articles of impeachment, what will that leave us?”

We depend on our Constitution – and it depends on us | Madeleine Dean

Dean added, “I think we absolutely have a constitutional obligation to take up impeachment, beacuse it’s stunning the absolute nature and completeness of the violation by this president. The framers worried about abuse of power, they worried about corruption, they worried about foreign interference in our election. They knew these were dangerous, dangerous threats. Unfortunately, in this one president, he’s doing it all.”

As a member of the Judiciary Committee, Dean will be among the House members expected to vote on impeachment articles later this week.

She said she was pleased with the two articles unveiled by Democratic leadership earlier on Tuesday.

“We had a lot of robust conversations among the members with the chairman and the drafters,” she said. “These are two strong articles of impeachment and there’s room in them for being pretty comprehensive about the wrongdoing of this president.”