| At what point does "just a joke" cross over into inciting political violence? That's what House lawmakers are debating Wednesday as they decide whether to censure Rep. Paul A. Gosar (R-Ariz.) for sharing an animated video that depicts him killing another member of Congress, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). Let's jump into the debate, because it's an interesting one. What he did: Last week, Gosar shared on his social media accounts an anime-style cartoon. In it, he is shown wielding a sword, coming up on Ocasio-Cortez from behind and killing her. Then he approaches President Biden with a sword. "The creativity of my team is off the hook," he said as he posted the video. Gosar is a far-right Republican lawmaker who has called Jan. 6 rioters "peaceful patriots." A response to the video from Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.): Gosar deleted the tweet, but he didn't apologize. He said the outrage over a cartoon is "hyperbolic." "I do not espouse violence toward anyone. I never have," he said. So Wednesday, House Democrats held a rare vote to censure Gosar for this.  Rep. Paul A. Gosar (R-Ariz.) heads to a vote on the House floor to censure him. | What a censure is: A censure doesn't do anything to him. It's up to the voters in his district if he keeps his job. But it's an official slap on the wrist, and it came with lots of attempts to publicly shame him for the video. Gosar had to stand front and center in the chamber today as they read the censure resolution out loud. The House voted to censure Gosar, with two Republicans joining Democrats to do it. Congress hasn't censured anyone in a decade, and only 23 have been censured in House history. (In 1866, Rep. Lovell Rousseau of Kentucky was censured for "Assaulting Representative Josiah Grinnell of Iowa with a cane.") Congress also voted to kick Gosar off his committee assignments, which is where lawmakers do most of their work. The debate over this: Gosar may say that this is just a cartoon, but his actions carry weight as an elected official, say those who support the censure. "Disguising death threats ... in an anime video doesn't make them any less real. It makes them potentially more dangerous by normalizing violence," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said. What Gosar did is more sinister than that, she added: "These threats specifically target a woman, a woman of color, which is part of a global phenomenon meant to silence women and discourage them from taking positions of authority." House Republicans' leader, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), didn't defend Gosar. But he didn't condemn him, either, instead accusing Democrats of not holding their own to the same standard. Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.) defended Gosar this way: "It was dumb, it was stupid, it was mean-spirited. But you know what it was not? It was not an incitement of violence." But while some Democratic members have said questionable things, none of them have used social media to depict violence against a Republican colleague. What Gosar did ignores, at best, the extreme and dangerous political climate lawmakers face for doing their jobs and having differing opinions. Lawmakers these days routinely face death threats, and some have hired security. One Republican from South Carolina said today that her car was keyed last year. A Republican lawmaker from Indiana said a political activist tried to run her over in a car. One even retired, citing in part the potential for political violence. The Post's Aaron Blake has tracked public opinion polling and lawmakers' remarks that underscore that Republicans are trafficking in a higher degree of violent political rhetoric. What happens to the Jan. 6 committee if Republicans take back the House? Speaking of political violence, there's a special committee in Congress investigating the Jan. 6 attack on both chambers of Congress as they certified Biden's win. That committee has the support of all Democrats in the House. But just two Republicans joined them — Reps. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (Ill.), both of whom supported Donald Trump's second impeachment for inciting the violence. There's a very real possibility that Republicans take back the House in next November's midterm elections, which means that when the new Congress is sworn in January 2023, Republicans could unilaterally decide what to do with the Jan. 6 committee. It seems likely that they would just end it, or at least make it defunct. Trump has called the investigation a "Democratic trap," and Republicans in the House have followed suit in downplaying the committee's work and even sometimes the attack on the Capitol itself. SALT: What is it? Let's take a hard turn to talk briefly about tax policy. Specifically, tax policy that Democrats are trying to pass that could be politically difficult for them to defend. For a long time, people who pay thousands of state and local taxes (SALT) have been able to deduct those from their federal income taxes. The deduction largely benefits high-income earners from high-income states in urban areas who are paying a lot in property taxes. Translation: It's a tax cut for wealthy people in Democrat-led states such as New Jersey, New York and California. In their social spending bill, Democrats want to allow these constituents to deduct even more from their federal taxes than was allowed during the Trump era. It would largely benefit millionaires — exactly the kind of constituents they are trying to tax in other ways to pay for things like universal prekindergarten. Expect this to become more of an issue as Democrats learn how much their bill will cost later this week. | 
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