The House on Thursday officially rebuked Representative Al Green of Texas, the Democrat who Republicans ejected from the chamber on Tuesday night for standing and heckling President Trump during his address to a joint session of Congress.
A resolution of censure passed 224 to 198, with 10 Democrats joining Republicans in support of the punishment. Mr. Green and Representative Shomari Figures, a first-term Democrat from Alabama, both voted “present.”
But when Mr. Green stepped into the well of the House to receive his official scolding for a “breach of proper conduct,” the floor devolved into a scene of chaos. The Texas Democrat led a crowd of his colleagues in singing the gospel anthem “We Shall Overcome” as Speaker Mike Johnson raised his voice and finished reading out the censure.
Mr. Johnson was forced to call a brief recess as Republicans and Democrats lingered on the floor, shouting at each other. It was another dramatic moment after Mr. Green’s outburst on Tuesday night, reflecting a determination among some Democrats to aggressively resist Mr. Trump, even as others in the party urge a more staid and sober strategy for pushing back.
“The decorum that you expect from me, you have to expect from the president,” Mr. Green said later in a fiery speech from the House floor.
He made the case for Democrats to engage in “righteous indignation and righteous incivility” in the face of Mr. Trump’s language, tactics and attempts to circumvent Congress and the law itself.
“There comes a time when you cannot allow the president’s incivility to take advantage of our civility,” he added. “It is time for us to take that stand.”
Some of his fellow Democrats appeared to disagree. The Democrats who voted to censure Mr. Green were: Representatives Ami Bera of California, Ed Case of Hawaii, Jim Costa of California, Laura Gillen of New York, Jim Himes of Connecticut, Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, Jared Moskowitz of Florida, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington and Tom Suozzi of New York.
The progressive activist group Indivisible called the defections “cowardly and unacceptable” and condemned Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, for not holding his caucus together against the censure.
“This is Hakeem Jeffries sending a message to Dems: Don’t upset the apple cart,” said Ezra Levin, the group’s co-director. He added that Mr. Green’s leadership was what the Democratic Party needed, “not tone-policing, not pearl-clutching, and certainly not pretending this is a normal presidency.”
A censure is one of the highest forms of reprimand in the House. The resolution is a formal and public condemnation or disapproval of a member’s behavior. But in recent years, the bar for such moves has lowered considerably, as Democrats and Republicans alike have used it to settle political scores.
The last member to be censured by the House was former Representative Jamaal Bowman, Democrat of New York, who received the rebuke in 2023 after he pulled a fire alarm in a Capitol office building during a critical vote, leading Republicans to accuse him of deliberately trying to stall business on the floor.
On Thursday, it appeared that the partisan battle over Mr. Green’s actions was only beginning. One Republican, Representative Andy Ogles of Tennessee, announced that he planned to draft privileged resolutions to strip committee assignments from Mr. Green and the other Democrats who had gathered behind him on the House floor and sang as he was rebuked.
Later in his response, Mr. Green read the full censure resolution aloud and reiterated what he told reporters on Wednesday: that he would accept the consequences for his actions on Tuesday night and that he harbored no ill will toward the speaker or anyone else. He would do it again, he said, because he cared about people on Medicaid, a program many of his constituents rely on that is under threat from Republicans’ budget plan.
Mr. Green also called out what he said was a double standard for Mr. Trump, who labeled Democratic members of Congress “lunatics” in his speech on Tuesday and received no condemnation from Republicans, official or otherwise.
And he put his protest in the context of the civil rights movement that allowed people like him to have the chance to serve in Congress in the first place.
“I remember what it took to get me in this House — I’m not here because I’m so smart,” Mr. Green added. “I’m here because people made great sacrifices, and it was incivility, it was disruption.”
Annie Karni and Robert Jimison contributed reporting.