Rep. Bowman under investigation for pulling fire alarm as McCarthy compares it to Jan. 6
Rep. Bowman under investigation for pulling fire alarm as McCarthy compares it to Jan. 6
The fire alarm, which Bowman's office suggested was unintentional, came as Democrats were trying to delay a vote after Republicans rushed to pass the stopgap measure.
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,
It depends on the system. I install access control stuff. We use unpowered pneumatic timer buttons to open the doors in an emergency (they have to keep the door open for a certain number of seconds when pushed once), and they are indeed big and red with white text on them, shaped like a mushroom you can just slap with your hand. Often the fire alarm is also tied into the access control, so if the fire alarm is going off, the door will be open anyway. There's a relay from the fire alarm that triggers a special input on the access control panel.
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."
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.
Why? Cause he wanted to read the bill before voting on it. Republicans forced it through and overrode the minimum amount of time to read it. Sure, 72 hours would be problematic, but they didn't even want to give them a handful of hours.
In the end, he voted yes. Some guy also had to talk for 52 minutes straight to try and give them time to read the bill to ensure nothing bad was snuck in.
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.
How so? Republicans control the House.
A government shutdown would disrupt a lot more than the fire alarm. That's the consequence of Dems voting no on a bill they didn't read.
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.
This is what-about-ism. Sure, Santos should be investigated, but this guy as well, EVEN IF SANTOS IS NOT.
who cares none of us have to go along with it. Dude did nothing wrong, this is what happens when you don't let reps read the bill
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.
It wasn't to disrupt the vote. It was an arguably bad attempt to delay the vote so they could read it before voting. This is like getting angry and a starving kid stealing a loaf of bread. Is it illegal? Sure. Is it wrong? Absolutely debatable.
And technically they can't get arrested without getting impeached or expelled. Which you mentioned both consequences, but they need to be in that order. And it'd look really silly and likely not lead to expulsion without the Republicans looking bad. So they'll just let their extremists whine loudly about it and submit bill ands the like that will go nowhere, but keeps it in the news so they can talk about it in sound bites.
who cares none of us have to go along with it. Dude did nothing wrong, this is what happens when you don't let reps read the bill
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.
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