Two points for anyone who hasn’t read the article:
He pulled the fire alarm to delay the vote so that legislators had time to read what they were voting on - Republicans wanted to ram through a vote without waiting the agreed 72h to allow anyone to read the bill.
And:
Legislators are immune from prosecution of any crime less than a felony while they’re in session, so pulling the fire alarm doesn’t matter anyway. No one can touch this dude for this, the worst they can do is make angry noises on TV.
A third very important point:
It very well could not be a lie. People in a rush confronted with a locked door; a door they believe to not supposed to be locked… are freaking dumb. He could easily have been flustered for running late and in a moment of panic hit the fire alarm. (There’s a reason many places remove fire pulls. They almost never get pulled in a real emergency. Without some kind of prior alarm going off. The vast majority it’s a false alarm. Either a prank, a prick or a dumbass.)
It was, IMO, incredibly dumb to use the same form factor for emergency egress pull stations as emergency fire alarm stations.
For those who don’t know, doors whose lock fail-to-secured need to have a way to let people out. For electronic doors- anything with a reader or whatever- there’ll be a pull station of the same basic design.
The only difference is the text that’s something lane “emergency door release” and it being blue or green with white text instead of red with white text.
Personally they should have gone with a big red button type; it’s different, but it’s still obvious and easy to use. Well maybe not red button, you understand,
Then why did he lie and say it was unintentional and he didn’t know it would cause an alarm? If he’d just admitted it and given his reasons I could’ve respected that.
“But I want to be very clear, this was not me, in any way, trying to delay any vote. It was the exact opposite – I was trying urgently to get to a vote, which I ultimately did and joined my colleagues in a bipartisan effort to keep our government open,” he added."
Plausible deniability. If it was claimed to be an accident there’s no one who can honestly do anything .
Legislators are immune from prosecution of any crime less than a felony while they’re in session, so pulling the fire alarm doesn’t matter anyway. No one can touch this dude for this, the worst they can do is make angry noises on TV.
Technically speaking, if this was indeed an attempt to delay or stop a vote on the bill, it could be a felony. Obstruction of an official proceeding – the same charge many Jan 6 defendants got.
Goddamm it Republicans and their bullshit. But why did a Democrat do this? How stupid. But comparing it Jan 6th is just fucking stupid.
He did it because the Republicans were trying to rush a vote without giving anyone enough time to actually read what was being voted on.
Yeah, whether or not he should be expelled from Congress isn’t for me to say, but he should face serious repercussions for this. Pulling a fire alarm without a genuine emergency is often illegal, at the very least. Doing it to potentially disrupt the function of Congress is even more serious.
I have a handful of guesses why a democrat would do it, but, at the end of the day, they just help me understand and empathize with him as a human, not excuse his behavior.
Yeah, whether or not he should be expelled from Congress isn’t for me to say
I’ll take that responsibility then: he shouldn’t and it’s a comically stupid thing for that other rep to suggest. The guy who lied about every aspect of his life to get elected wasn’t expelled for it. A guy who posted a video depicting the death of another congresswoman wasn’t expelled. The last person to be expelled from Congress was after he was convicted of bribery and racketeering.
If the representative did intentionally pull the alarm, especially to delay the vote, by all means give him some reasonable consequences for that. More than a few votes get rushed through, but you can always just vote no on bills there has been inadequate time to have read. No need to disrupt congress and make a potentially dangerous situation.
Huge eye roll on the childish comparison to Jan 6th though. Not even close and McCarthy knows it. Grow up.
you can always just vote no on bills
It’s really not that simple. That would be a Republican wet dream to be able to market the Dems that shut down the government with a no vote on spending bill.
How so? Democrats already voted no on the shitty Republican fantasy spending bill just the other day. All they have to say is “They wanted us to vote on this bill without being able to even read it.” and I don’t think the Republican argument would hold up outside of the people who would be mad no matter what.
As opposed to marketing this?
How is this story remotely comparable to shutting down the government? Most people who even hear about this incident will forget about it before the day is over.
You’re not going to investigate Santos? Weren’t there members that did not answer a valid subpoena? But, you want to investigate this guy?
Santos was (is?) on their team, they think… once they figure out who he is.
Oh, boy. Here comes the shitstorm. What an idiotic thing to do. Guarantee this is going to start a whole campaign to get him arrested or resign as well.
They’ll probably want to lock Biden up over it
I chuckled out loud over this. Well played.
It’s idiotic to read a bill before signing it?
If pulling the alarm is illegal then why shouldn’t he be arrested?
If he did do it on purpose to disrupt the vote then why shouldn’t he be expelled or punished?
It’s an incredibly stupid thing to do and definitely sets the Dems back a bit.
I think he should lose committee spots or something, actual consequences not something like a censure vote.
We do not want a pattern of fake fire alarms established in that building.
Simple solution.
Remove the pull stations.
The usually cause more problems than they help adress- and there’s enough security in the capital complex that i would be shocked if they ever get pulled as any thing more than “oh we’re evacuating anyhow and I always wanted to pull them.”
This is the best summary I could come up with:
“Congressman Bowman did not realize he would trigger a building alarm as he was rushing to make an urgent vote,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
“Rep. Jamal Bowman pulled a fire alarm in Cannon this morning,” an account controlled by the Republicans on the committee wrote on X, the website formerly known as Twitter, including spelling the congressman’s first name incorrectly.
And fellow New York Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, a Republican, said on X that she’ll introduce a resolution to expel Bowman from the House over the incident.
The fire alarm sounded in the Cannon office building, which is connected to the Capitol via an underground tunnel, as the Republicans were trying to begin a vote on a 45-day spending measure to keep the government open.
“Today at 12:05 p.m., a fire alarm was activated on the 2nd floor of the Cannon House Office Building,” a Capitol Police spokesperson said in the statement.
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader, delivered a 52-minute speech in what was seen as an effort to give his fellow members and staff time to figure out whether his party would support the bill.
The original article contains 540 words, the summary contains 187 words. Saved 65%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
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