The Republican National Committee has voted to censure Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, largely because of their participation in the January 6 House Committee.

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Republicans voted on the matter early Friday morning via voice vote, after it was introducedd by David Bossie of Maryland. Originally, the language endorsed completely disavowing Cheney and Kinzinger, but it was later altered to just a formal censuring.

“We don't want to disenfranchise those voters,”  Harmeet Dhillon, a member of the California GOP, told Buzzfeed News after a Resolutions Committee vote on the censure on Thursday. “But at the same way, we want to send a message that we are disapproving of their conduct.”

Dhillon said the vote to censure Cheney and Kinzinger was unanimous.

She continued, stating that Cheney and Kinzinger “decided to cross party lines, basically, in violation of our protocol. That's viewed as deeply offensive and a repudiation of the party, so this is the party’s repudiation of them.”

However, Newsweek reports that some prominent members of the Republican Party are backing Cheney and Kinzinger.

Michael Steele, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee called the move to censure them "pathetic."

"As the former chairman of the Republican party, I cannot express enough of my condemnation of this pathetic act of cowardice taken by its current leadership to censure Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger," Steele wrote on Twitter. "You are wrong. I stand with Liz and Adam."


Mitt Romney, another extremely prominent Republican and former presidential candidate called the move shameful. "Shame falls on a party that would censure persons of conscience, who seek truth in the face of vitriol," he wrote on his Twitter page. "Honor attaches to Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for seeking truth even when doing so comes at great personal cost.


Cheney herself expressed disappointment with her party

“The leaders of the Republican Party have made themselves willing hostages to a man who admits he tried to overturn a presidential election and suggests he would pardon Jan. 6 defendants, some of whom have been charged with seditious conspiracy," Cheney wrote. "I’m a constitutional conservative and I do not recognize those in my party who have abandoned the Constitution to embrace Donald Trump. History will be their judge. I will never stop fighting for our constitutional republic. No matter what.”

Read More: Cheney: I Do Not Recognize Those In My Party Who…Embrace Donald Trump

Though the censure is a public lashing, it doesn't actually bear any weight. It is a "motion of no confidence," a public reprimanding or an expression of strong disapproval. Cheney was censured in 2021 as well, also because of her criticisms of Trump.

Wyoming Responds: Was January 6 an Insurrection or an Inconvenience?

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